From Wholesaling To Virtual Assistant Power: The Dual Playbook Of Ricardo Rosales

 

In today’s highly interconnected world, running a remote team can save you a lot of time and money without putting quality and profit at risk. Managing people across the country or the globe is indeed challenging, and this is where hiring a virtual assistant is a must. Ava Benesocky and August Biniaz chat with Ricardo Rosales, CEO of the Venezuela-based company Top Of The Line VA. Ricardo discusses the importance of hiring the right VA to support lead generation, media production, and event planning of your business. He also looks back to his proven track record as a wholesaler and how it helped shape the mission and vision of his current venture.

Get in touch with Ricardo Rosales:

Website: https://www.topofthelineva.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-rosales-95394234

If you are interested in learning more about passively investing in multifamily and Build-to-Rent properties, click here to schedule a call with the CPI Capital Team or contact us at info@cpicapital.ca. If you like to Co-Syndicate and close on larger deals as a General Partner, click here. You can read more about CPI Capital at https://www.cpicapital.ca.

#avabenesocky #augustbiniaz #cpicapital

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Important Links

• Top Of The Line VA
• Think and Grow Rich
• Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
• Ricardo Rosales on Instagram
• Ricardo Rosales on Facebook
• Attend Growth
• Ricardo Rosales on YouTube
• Ricardo Rosales Email

 

About Ricardo Rosales

Ricardo has been a wholesaler for almost 15 years. He has also worked as a mentor and real estate coach, served as a producer for the Real Business Entrepreneurs Event Attend Growth, and is the owner of a VA company based in Venezuela called Top Of The Line VA.

 

From Wholesaling To Virtual Assistant Power: The Dual Playbook Of Ricardo Rosales

Returning From A Family Vacation In Alberta

Since we’ve been married for a few years now, I’ve always heard about Ava and her farming family from Alberta. Not only me, but many people are on stages all over the world and on the show, we’ve read about Ava’s family, but with their farms. They have a bison farm, a North American buffalo farm. I was always very interested to go and see the farm. Obviously, our two sons. It was something great for them to also go see and their heritage.

We found some great stories and about the farm. There was a great interesting real estate story as well that I wanted to share. We’re going back to what was so important for the family to go see the farmers for myself, but also for our sons to see. We learned that your mother’s side is eighth-generation Canadian. That is unbelievable. Eight generations. All the way from Norway. I think there’s some Irish there as well, but the Norway side of the family, there’s a lot much literature and information on, but we also met our Uncle Perry, which is your mom’s brother. Great uncle drove us around the farm and showed us 200 buffalo heads that he had. He had wood buffalo and plains buffalo.

August, you were not scared at all. August got out of the truck and he had all the buffalo herd running up to him from behind. I was actually quite impressed. I have a feeling that you would’ve made a great farmer yourself.

I wasn’t scared until the buffalo came at me with its horn. A quick lesson that I learned, a real estate lesson I learned from Uncle Perry that he shared with us was in real estate, you’re always taught to be cutthroat. There are a lot of institutions out there that really deal with people and emotions as if they are non-existent. Banks, a lot of times financial institutions, but mainly institutions in real estate investments. It makes it seem that the only way to win is to be cutthroat, to be shrewd.

However, the story that Uncle Perry shared was very interesting one with me. He said that he had a neighbor, an older guy, that called him one day and he had a quarter for sale. Quarter, in the language of the farmers, I’m learning, is 160 acres. That’s considered a quarter. He had a quarter for sale, he wanted to retire. He is like, “Perry, I’ll have this quarter I want to sell.” He’s like, “Sure, I’m interested.” He is like, “I want to sell for $100,000.” He was like, “Your plot of land is worth way more.”

 

 

He’s like, “I don’t care it’s worth many more. I just want to sell it for $100,000.” This is where the shocking part comes in. Not that Uncle Perry turns back to his neighbor of his and says his property’s worth much more, it’s what he does next. That could happen in business. “Jose, that’s worth much more.” He’s like, “No, I don’t care. I’ll sell it for that price.” It’s what he does next. He goes and gets an appraiser to do an appraisal on the property, and the appraisal comes back between $180,000 and $220,000. He takes the appraisal back to his neighbor and said, “This is what the appraisal is coming back at.”

The neighbor says, “I don’t care. I want to sell it for $100,000.” Uncle Perry goes to a lawyer and buys that piece of property. In business, you don’t always have to be shrewd. You don’t have to always be cutthroat. There are other ways to make money and good old farmers teach us that it’s in business as well. That was very interesting. Something new I learned. Let’s get into about learning new lessons and ideas. Let’s get into our guest because he’s going to give us a crash course on a few different things, but quickly, give us background and about him and so we can start the show off. Forgive me, I didn’t give you any moment to say anything back about the farm and all that stuff.

A Venezuelan Who Served In The American Military

No, not at all. I love that you shared that story. We had a great time and you got to see where I spent a lot of my time as a young girl. That was amazing. Let’s get into the show. I’m really excited. We are joined by Ricardo Rosales. Ricardo has been a wholesaler for many years. He has been a mentor and a Real Estate Coach, Real Estate Business Entrepreneur Event, Attend Growth Producer and an owner of a VA company based in Venezuela called Top Of The Line VA. Welcome to the show, Ricardo. We’re excited to get into things with you.

Welcome to the show.

Number one, I am honored to be here with you guys. Thank you so much for the invitation. I know we’re scheduled to get you on our podcast as well, and I can’t wait until I hear both of you guys’ journeys. You guys make a great couple, by the way. You look beautiful on camera and I love to see that. Much congratulations to you.

Thank you. I want to get into quickly here. I I’ll salute you for that, first of all. Second, all I want to get into, you’re a military you’re born American and you are calling in from Houston. You have a connection to Venezuela. Your heritage background is from Venezuela. There are tensions going on between the US and Venezuela. There’s posturing happening on both sides. There have been attempts of regime change in Venezuela for a long time. Venezuela is an oil-rich country. Very similar to Iran, actually. There have been tensions between Venezuela and the US for a long time.

 

 

Nicholas Maduro is in power. The last president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, died from cancer. A lot of people say that CIA actually gave him that cancer. A lot of conspiracy theorists out there. Nicholas Maduro is in power. He’s posturing. He’s doing military parades. The Americans are out there in the coast. Talk to us about someone whose background is from Venezuela, but is an American, served in the American military, put his life on the line for the freedom and the lifestyle that Americans live.

We just talked about your bio and how you have a company and you provide these services in Venezuela. How are the feelings, how is the emotion right now knowing your two of the countries you have connections with are potentially at war? The reason I ask that is because my heritage is Iranian and Iran had a conflict with the US not too long ago, a twelve-day war where they were pretty surgical, but still there was bombs being dropped on Iran. Even though I’m against the regime personally, that was hard for me to see bombs being dropped and some civilians dying. Give us your feeling of what’s happening.

It’s very tough because like me, there’s a lot of people out there that have dual nationalities or they still have family there or like me, I operate a business in Venezuela. The last thing I want is for Venezuela to be bombed by any means. Usually, when that happens, there are innocent casualties that take place and those are the last things we want.

It’s in God’s power, in my opinion. I just wish the people in Venezuela the best. I want to continue to contribute to Venezuela, to where I can provide more labor and provide more opportunities to the local people that are out there. I actually enjoy being there more than I do being in the US. That’s something crazy because a lot of the people that immigrate from Venezuela to the United States, they want to be here for all the possibilities we have here.

This is the country of opportunities. Personally, I grew up in Venezuela since I was nine months old. That was my first country, that was my first language. I left for many years. Now that I’m going back, I’ve been going back to Venezuela for the last few years, I’m always almost living there, pretty much. I was supposed to go there when they announced these ships were headed over there. I was like, “This is not the right time for this,” or whatever. It’s completely out of my power. In my opinion, the tensions are high, but let me tell you something about the people from Venezuela. If you were to take a plane and you landed in any of the cities, you’ll see life happening like nothing is going on, which is crazy.

 

Here, all we get to see is the news. “The ships are going. They’re going to attack, they’re going to do this. They’re after a regime change,” or whatever. Put yourself in their shoes. Now that people are over there, they’re hearing the same things they still have to provide. They still have to go make money to put food on the table. They’ve got to go to their jobs. Are they worried? Not too much, to be honest with you, because for twenty years, the opposition to this current government has been saying, “We’re going to go get you guys out at one way or another,” and nothing has happened. I don’t know how this is going to unfold. I hope it’s for the best of everybody. I don’t want to see anybody dying or casualties and things of that nature.

The universe has a way of working things for everybody at the end of the day, and you collect what you put on the ground. I just wish that there were no tragic events happening. The people from Venezuela and from whatever part of the world, even Iran, you guys just got bombed by the United States and supposedly some nuclear facilities that they had that they were developing. We shouldn’t come to that. We shouldn’t come to where we got to go and drop bumps and things of that nature, but when it’s necessary, it’s necessary. I’m just going to leave it at that.

We understand that you go back and forth, so we’re not going to really press you on that. You got just briefly touching on it a bit more. I’m a big capitalist. I’ve made the move to the US, both of my sons were born in the US. At heart, I feel American that more than anything else in the world. Hollywood has done a great job to do that as well for a lot of people around the world. When it comes to US foreign policy and when it comes to CIA regime changes around the world, it’s beginning to become comical. It’s so obvious when they try to do that. There was an opposition leader that came out of the woodwork for Venezuela, somebody nobody knew about. They’re like, “He’s the true leader of Venezuela.”

Watching from outside, watching on my Twitter feed, it felt like a joke. Many other pundits and experts were making jokes of what the CIA was doing with this new guy that they brought up. At the end of the day, it’s about civility. People from certain areas of the world are just so tough. Look at Cuba, for example. There has been sanctions against them for many years, but they’re still fighting through. They’re still great athletes. They’re still great contributors of the world, great place to go. Safe.

Venezuela, there’s a meme I always see on Twitter where they say Communism failed because there’s a picture of a grocery store owner in Venezuela who’s standing by, the rack behind him. Before Hugo Chavez, it was full of food and what have you, and after that, there was no food. Sometimes, the policies that the US puts on these countries results in their economy failing and going through hyperinflation, which is just a fact of life.

The sanctions have definitely caused hyperinflation, not only in Venezuela, but probably Nicaragua and other places.

What Life Is Like Back In Venezuela

Before we finish this subject, you said you enjoy living there more. Forgive me for being unaware, but is that maybe because you have more funds when you go to Venezuela and you can live a better lifestyle than you can? What do you mean when you say that? Do you enjoy that?

In the United States or North America, I’m not sure Canada is the same way, because I did spend a year in Halifax and I had a great time over there. Canadians are some of the coolest people on earth. I could tell stories on and on about that, that one year I spent in Halifax. In the United States, the system is built to where you live to work. That’s not the case in Venezuela. In Venezuela, you work to live, meaning you got more time with your friends, with your family. There are more things to do. You socialize a lot more social gatherings, many friends.

People in the United States live to work. But in Venezuela, they work to live. They have more time with their friends and family, as well as doing the things they truly love. Share on X

Even though I have friends, I have amazing friends here in the United States, it’s not the same. The reason why it’s not the same, I’ll give you an example. I live in Houston, Texas. I’m in Katy, which is on the West side. Let’s say you are my friend and you live in, in the Woodlands, which is probably about an hour away from here. When do we see each other? It’s very hard.

Almost never. It’s like are we going to catch up after work, have a few glasses of wine or have a dinner? Maybe we’ll do that once a month. We’ll go on a couple’s date and have a good time or whatever. Over there, 6:00 PM comes around and you’re off to it and you don’t even have to call anybody. You just go to a certain spot and they’re all hanging out in there. The social movement is different. Venezuelans are very family and friends oriented, so they like to hang in packs if you will.

They’re communal.

It’s very communal. Yeah, that’s right. If you need help also, just pick up the phone and call somebody and say, “I need help with this, this and that.” Help is there very fast.

Sometimes, just go outside and you whistle and help just shows up. I swear it just happens like that.

I tell this story. I remember when I was growing up, I might have been, I don’t know, 8 or 9 years old. I lived in an apartment complex over there. It is like condos. You buy the apartment and you live in it. These cities grow up. They don’t grow sideways like here in Houston, for instance, which is houses or buildings.

I was in this building and it is not abnormal for a neighbor to come knock on your door and ask you for some ketchup. “You got some ketchup?” You’re like, “Yeah, I think I got some left.” If that’s what you got left over, that’s what you gave him. They’re like, “Here you are. That’s what I got left over.” “Yeah, I cooked this thing and I forgot about the ketchup and I just came over here to get it.” Instead of them going to the store and buying it, they just go knock on the door. It was okay to help the neighbor out. Try that here.

Most people don’t know who their neighbors are.

If I go knock on your door and say, “Have you got some mustard in there?” You’re going to be like, “What? What are you talking about?” That’s the kind of help I mean. People that maybe don’t have how to cover their food because the hyperinflation has completely killed the bolivar, which is the local currency. I remember when I first went back years ago, people were skinny and I’m like, “People are fit here.” No, it wasn’t that. They didn’t have enough money to eat all the meals or maybe they were just eating maybe one meal a day or they were fasting. It was imposed on them. It wasn’t like they were trying to fast for health reasons.

They weren’t doing intermittent fasting.

They were doing it, but they just didn’t know what they were doing. That sense of community and helping each other, it’s there. That’s one of the things I like about Venezuela. I started going back years ago and I’m reconnecting with all my high school friends and they’re all already with their businesses doing whatever. Some of them got jobs and it’s okay. It doesn’t matter if you have a job that pays whatever, and you are a multimillionaire guy that has these big businesses, we still get around, we drink coffee or we drink alcohol or we go have dinner and we share stories and everybody’s cool with it. I enjoy it.

Thanks for sharing that. Alright, thank you so much for that, Ric. Let’s get into some of the major topics we want to discuss.

How The Wholesaling Business Is Done

Ricardo, because you have years of wholesaling experience, why don’t you give us and our readers a total crash course on wholesaling?

When it comes to wholesaling, wholesaling has been around for ages. I think it goes back all the way to when trade was happening in between countries and continents. The wholesaler has always existed. Even Iranians were very good traders, running trades in the Middle East, buying from Asia and taking things back to Europe. They were wholesalers in a way.

Wholesaling has been around forever and forever. Regarding real estate wholesaling, again, it got popular somewhere around 2010 and up. Before that, it wasn’t that popular. Actually, if you met a wholesaler, like I started in real estate in 2008 and I started as a buy-and-hold guy by necessity because I wanted to flip, but I couldn’t flip in 2008. It was almost impossible. The economy was crashing.

It works better in an up market, not in a flat market or a down market.

I believe it always works well. You just got to buy discounted enough or deep enough to where it doesn’t matter what market you are in, you’re still going to have an exit strategy. We can talk about exit strategies later on, and that’s another thing. Wholesaling is one exit strategy. I started as a landlord wanting to be a fix and flipper, but because of the economy the way it was, I just couldn’t flip any houses. I just started stacking up on properties while I had a W-2.

Wholesale always works. No matter what market you are in, you will still have an exit strategy. Share on X

Somewhere down the line, the market shifted. 2012 came around. Now banks are loaning money. Now I can fix and flip and I can do some flips while I had a still W-2 job. I had a pretty good job in the oil and gas business. If they would’ve never fired me, I’d probably still be on that job because I loved it. I’m not a W-2 hater or anything like that. I actually tell people who got W-2s, “You guys got to go stack up on real estate because it gives you a bunch of tax advantages and appreciation and depreciation.” You guys are expert at that.

That’s how I got in. I really became a wholesaler by necessity somewhere around 2018 and ‘19, I just had gone over to Hurricane Harvey that came to Houston. I had 47 rehabs going on and I lost all my working crews. I was on the hook for about $15 million worth of loans. I had to pay $250,000 a month on interest only payments. I couldn’t finish houses because I didn’t have people. I did have money, but I don’t care how much money you got, eventually it goes down. It drops down, especially when you’re spending $250,000 a month on interest only. That’s not counting everything else.

I had to find a way to make $250,000 to stay afloat. Not to be rich, not to thrive and achieve my dreams or whatever. No, that was just to stay afloat because of everything I’ve did before, I knew I could scale things. I went ahead and started wholesaling. I had to learn a lot of things. I knew how to source my properties. I knew how to negotiate my properties. My challenge at the time was how do I disposition the properties to make a quick turnaround, a quick $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 per property so I can put the money that I need to pay my interest while I offload all this property. That’s how I got into wholesaling. I started doing yellow letters, which still work now.

The Mechanics Of Wholesaling In Real Estate

Ricardo, give us a quick understanding. Somebody who doesn’t know what wholesaling is, tell us what it you described as far as trade or what have you, but tell us what wholesaling is, the mechanics of it in real estate.

The wholesaling is a middleman. Basically, I find a property that I negotiate for a certain price, I put it under contract and then I turn around and find a buyer that I negotiate for a higher price, so I can make a spread. I just literally sell the contract.

 

You assign the contract. You never complete the sale. Is it happens in that time period between you put it under contract.

You complete the sale. We can talk about that afterwards. The basic mechanics is selling the agreement. A wholesaler is not flipping a house. It’s not wholesaling a house. I’m not. When I negotiate a property and I create an agreement with it, the agreement is what’s got value. A lot of people have a misconception. “You wholesale houses?” No, I’m wholesaling agreements. The agreement is attached to a house. Yes.

The initial agreement has to have the clause, which allows for assignment.

That is correct. You have to make sure the agreement is assignable. For instance, how do you make it un assignable? It is pretty simple. Let’s say I’m doing it under my name, which I don’t recommend anybody to do it, but to do it simple, Ricardo Rosales, LLC. By the way, as a wholesaler, you’re representing yourself. You’re not representing the seller or the buyer. It’s you. It’s you to be in business for yourself.

Do you have to have a license to be a broker?

You do not. I recommend wholesalers not to get one because when you get a license, like a real estate license or a broker’s license, now you have a fiduciary responsibility with the seller. Even the people that are agents that wholesale, they actually disclose to the seller that they’re not representing them on the transaction. They’re just representing themselves as investors. I want to make that clear. You can have a license, but you have to disclose it to the seller. In my case, I don’t have a license, so I don’t have to do any of that. I’m just representing myself.

Unpacking The Big Dot, Little Dot Method

You go find a property, put it under contract, you then go and sell this contract. Where is the marketplace? How do you create a marketplace for finding these properties? How do you create a marketplace for selling these properties?

Finding the properties, I have a method called big dot, little dot. Big dot is a large metro area, let’s say Vancouver. Maybe within Vancouver, there is a town that’s about maybe 45 minutes away that’s not in the metro area of Vancouver, but maybe has his own economy, maybe has a refinery going on in there. The blue collar. I want to find those towns because those are good towns for landlords and flippers.

I don’t want to go to the metro area for one reason, more competition. I want to go where I can fish on my own and I have my own pond. I eliminate competition that way or reduce it to a certain point. That’s the little dot. The little dot is that satellite town or city that is within a large metro area, but it’s not too far enough to where I can find a buyer in the metro area that’s willing to drive an hour away to do a project. There’s a lot of buyers that will do projects within towns like that. That’s what I’ve specialized on my flips on my wholesale deals, on my rentals. I still have rentals in towns like that.

Are you going after homes that are on the market or not on the market?

Right now, I am because the market is going down. People are listing properties and they know that the market is going down. They’re trying to get rid of them as soon as they can so they can get a better offer. I have agents calling those and making the offers that where we need to be to be able to flip it. If you try that strategy a few years ago, it wouldn’t work because the market was stable and it’s still going up. My main strategy is to call and text people in those towns. I have to skip trace, I have to pull data, the county records, get their phone numbers, their names, and then my virtual assistants, we have a system on a dialer and a SMS system. We’ll do it all from there and then they lead generate that way.

You find interested sellers and you find properties that you seem that they’re going to work out. Now do you have a database that you email these properties out to?

Before we get to that side, we got the regional focus. You’re focused on these markets 45 minutes to an hour outside of a main hub. What you do is you go there and you find properties. It doesn’t matter if it’s on market or off market. You have a system for that, which is you get the county records and you and your VA team starts contacting these individuals, “Do you want to sell your property? We’ll buy a property for the price.” The next step is you go and meet these individuals.

No, we do it all over the phone. All over the phone. Until 2018, I did it in person. I focused only in the Houston area until I saw a friend of mine doing it nationwide. I went and looked at what he was doing and I was like, “That’s it? I can do that.” I went ahead and copied his system. His name is Nick Perry, by the way. I copied his system and I started doing it by myself. It’s a paradigm shift.

If you work in different states, do you have different agreements for each state?

I’ve got one agreement for everybody. Real estate is simple. Human beings make it difficult. The more experience I gain in this business, the easier it gets because I realized that the agreements, they don’t have to be rocket science. They have to have certain clauses in there in order for you to protect yourself and protect the seller as well.

Real estate is simple. Human beings make it difficult. Share on X

You got the region, obviously you have a certain price range as well. You’re not looking at $10 million houses, you’re looking at a certain price range.

No, I don’t want that, unless I’m going to move into it. I still don’t go that high.

Difference Between Deposit And No Deposit

You find a region, you find the sellers, you have a certain profile that you go after, a certain asset type property type. The next step is you send over the contract. You go under contract. Do you put a deposit or no deposit?

I used to put a deposit. I don’t put deposits anymore.

What’s that term? What’s that runway that you have?

They call it earnest money deposit when you put something down. It can be anywhere from $10 to $1,000 to $1,500. It depends, 1% of the property as well. There are properties where you don’t really need to put a deposit. The reason is if the seller’s not asking for it, why would you do it? Many times, I got 40 contracts out. Imagine if I just did even $100 deposit. Now that’s $4,000 that I have out in a bunch of contracts. It creates an accounting nightmare, to be honest with you. $100 went out, $100 came back in. What does this $100 belong to? That’s one of the main purposes on why I don’t do deposits anymore. It’s more of an accounting thing than anything else.

You put it under a contract, there’s a period of time where there might be a deposit due. You have a week before the deposit due. You put the deposit in and then are you trying to flip it before that deposit is triggered?

No. I don’t run on desperation. I buy enough time. All my contracts are standard 90 days. I explain that to the seller. I tell the seller, “It might take me 90 days.” I have this other guy. Ava is offering me a 30-day closing.” I say, “Go with Ava.”

Do they know you’re a wholesaler or no?

They know I’m an investor.

Okay, so you don’t have to advertise that you’re a wholesaler or not.

Remember, wholesaling is one exit strategy. What if I close on it? Many times, I’ve closed on properties and then I changed my mind and then I didn’t want to flip it and sold them back.

Keeping A Database Of Clients And Their Contracts

We got a bunch of parts of the show I still want to get to. We got an understanding of the market, the property type, the agreement. The next part is now you have another contract, you have 90 days. There could be a deposit due in a few days or not. Let’s assume there is a deposit. You give 1% of the property value as a deposit. That was due seven days after you went under contract, let’s say. Now you got these two and a half months now. Go ahead, Ava.

You have these two and a half months. Do you have a database where you blast out emails and say, “Here’s the properties that I got under contract. Is anybody interested?” Do you get lots of bites right away? Talk to us about that process.

When I was doing local wholesaling, yes, I had a list of emails and names that I would blast the properties out to and they will start coming back to me with, “I want to go see it. Can you send me more pictures and all that?” Once we started going nationwide, which changed our business model completely, then that database wasn’t really good anymore because if we get a property in Greenville, South Carolina, I don’t have a database there. What do I do? I’ve got to get very creative.

Now I’ve got to find the data and find the local buyer. What we started doing at that time was Facebook, on Facebook on the local groups. We’ll go in there and we’ll say, “We have a property for investment here, who’s interested?” A lot of scammers started showing up. There was another platform that came around that was specialized for buyers.

We bought that and we started using it and it worked. Now we use InvestorBase. InvestorBase is a platform for these positions all over the country. It is amazing. You can see all the buyers in the area, their phone numbers. I can introduce you guys to the owner of it. He’s my friend. We’re in a mastermind together. I promote the heck out of InvestorBase because it’s the best thing there is out there right now.

Very inexpensive compared to a lot of the other systems that were out there. That’s what we used to find the local buyers. We just get our guys to start calling and saying, “Eva, I noticed you bought a property, 123 Main Street. Are you currently buying more?” “Sure. What do you have?” We then start disclosing details. We’re very careful with what we disclose because we don’t want a lot of people to go to that property. We want to find the right buyer for it. There are a lot of scammers out there. People that want to go around you, behind your back and they start contacting the owners. We have to vet the buyers before we put them inside of the property. My team does that for us.

There are a lot of scammers in real estate. Be sure to vet buyers before you put them inside a property. Share on X

Your buyer profile, is it a fix and flipper? Is it another wholesaler? Is it somebody who wants to move in? What’s your buyer profile?

I work with everybody. Whoever’s got my money, they’re welcome to come in. If it’s a wholesaler that has a buyer, why not? Let’s share the pie and we all get to eat together.

Any other questions before we switch to conversation?

That’s everything.

Working In Wholesaling For Over A Decade

Alright, so let’s switch the conversation a bit from wholesaling, which is something you’ve done for well over a decade, but not talk about virtual assistants and agencies and the workforce that exist in Venezuela from all places that can offer their brain power to Americans. As you said, they’re on an intermittent fast by force.

Harnessing The Virtual Assistant Power

I’m sure that you’re going to get great value for the knowledge and experience and expertise from Venezuela, where somebody can jump on a computer and really let their mind flow and learn online. There are so many learning platforms, so I’m sure there are a lot of people there. Talk to us about your agency. Talk to us about what is it that you do. Is there a particular niche that you offer services in? Give us a quick understanding there.

I’m going to start with how it started. In 2021, ‘22 when the market was ramping up and I had a huge wholesaling operation, we were doing 30 agreements a month easily, I got to about 100 employees in Venezuela. They were all virtual and they were all working in my operation. At the same time, I was coaching and mentoring new wholesalers and investors coming into the industry.

Most of them had experience already. I focused more on the experienced guys more than the inexperienced. They were looking on ways on how to scale rather than learn how to do the business. After my coaching was done and over with, they will say, “Ricardo, this is beautiful, but I need some of your guys because that’s part of your success.”

At the time I was like, “I don’t know. I trained those guys. Those are my guys. You’ve got to go find yours and train yours.” They’re like, “Why don’t you just lease one to me?” I’m like, “I don’t know anything about that business.” Little did I know, I had a VA company on my hands that I didn’t know I had. That’s how it all started.

I started quarterbacking a lot of the people that I had on my team to my students and then to other clients. Basically, they’re still running the real estate business with my people. What we become is we become your team. We call, we negotiate, we send messages, we set appointments, we receive pictures, we send contracts, agreements. Some of my influencer friends that are in the space recording podcasts and things like that, they realized my videos were good, the quality of the video was good, that I have more views that they did.

They’re like, “How are you doing this?” I said, “I have a production team that handles my videos and they do all of that and they’re all in my office over there.” They’re like, “Can you do mine?” It’s being organically growing. Now, we do 90% is real estate, although we’re branching out from the real estate industry because doctors and attorneys and plumbers and all other people need these services.

If you’re all there on social media, you need a media team. If you’re lead generating new clients, you need people to help you to do that with. In a way, what we are is in the lead generation business, as well as the video production business now. We also do real estate events. Basically, our main offers are real estate lead managers, negotiators. The other side is shifting towards media production.

Making A Real Impact Through Real Estate Conferences

Quick question for you. You talked about conferences. Explain what do you guys do within that space.

I started doing real estate conferences in 2019. The first one was called Wholescale in Life, which was how to scale a wholesaling operation to multiple deals a month. That’s where we had the likes of Pace and Jamil. They were just getting started in this whole business. I don’t know if you guys know them, but they’re amazing people. They have the biggest communities in the United States when it comes to students and programs.

We had a bunch of great people come from Phoenix, Arizona, Texas, and other areas of the country. That’s like how it took off. I had partners on that event and we went separate ways, but I liked the event production, the vibe on the stage the creating stories, sharing testimonials, the energy. I said, “I’m going to do my own conference.” I set up my first conference to be in March 2020. We all remember what happened then. I had to cancel that and literally wait until roughly, I think it was October 2020 when we did the first one.

It was a mastermind at the beginning. We had probably about 100 people only because it was high ticket. It was very expensive to get in that room. At that time, one of the guys tells me, “Ricardo, this is beautiful. Amazing great stage. Why don’t you open this up to other people?” I say, “What do you mean?” “Why don’t you open it up to like a different audience that’s not as advanced as we are so they can learn and level up with us?” I kept on thinking. I was like, “That’s not a bad idea. I just don’t know that that’s what I want.” I meditated and prayed on it. Vic is the one that actually suggested that. I said, “Victor, I’m going to do it, but I want to do it from a place of growth.” That’s how Attend Growth started.

Getting The Right Professional Support With VAs

How did your vas help with that, my friend? How did the vas support you?

They fill up our rooms. Basically, I make them cold call and get people in the room, advertising.

They get you get attendees. You get people who want to sponsor.

We got sponsors. All of our speakers are sponsors.

How about the venue? How about bookkeeping? How about other things?

Yeah, the venue, I have a company. His name is Shane. He’s a professional in the travel industry and he knows how to negotiate with hotels better than I can. Even though I know how to do it, I’d rather give it to him. It doesn’t cost me anything. He makes money on the backend from the hotel.

The main part of the support that you get from your VA team for a conference is the attendees and the guest speakers.

Yes, and building the websites and all that.

The sponsors, guest speakers. Got it. Beautiful. Okay, so now talk to us about another idea. At CPI, we utilize that. We started a company in 2019, soon after, COVID hit. This idea of going to the office wasn’t going to really work for us. Everybody’s really remote in the company, but it really helped out because you can cherry-pick the best brains around the world.

I have created a process myself that I know each country, what they’re excel at. People from India, Pakistan, what they’re good at, people from the Philippines, what they’re good at, people from Eastern Europe, what they’re good at. Eastern Europeans are very good when it comes to digital design. Building websites and what have you. The technical side. People from the Philippines are good, really, across a variety of expertise.

People from India and Pakistan is mainly for skip tracing and other data entry and what have you. I’ve created my own method, but we find these contractors through platforms, online platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. We’ve also done a direct connection to some platforms. Our social media support, which manages most of our marketing, is out of the Philippines, but we didn’t find them through these platforms. It was a direct connection. I think it was through LinkedIn I found them.

How Top Of The Line VA Works With Their Clients

The platform that publishes and edits our show is totally different, it’s a US-based platform, but most of the employees are from the Philippines. They give us a great price. Talk to us about a platform like an agency like yourself. Actually, before this, I should talk to you. I should ask you another question. When somebody hires your agency, are they hiring the talent directly or they’re hiring your agency, which hires the talent?

You can. I have one client in mine right now, he’s been with us for about four years. He hires the agency first. When he falls in love with the person, he buys them out. We have a buyout agreement where if you like the person, you can buy them out and then I’ll tell you how much we pay them and everything. That way, it carries on to you. We work out an agreement to where they make a little bit of money by moving over with you that way, they are they’re safer. They don’t feel like their job is at risk or anything like that.

Not everybody wants to move directly with somebody else. In our agency, one of our advantages for my people is, let’s say you are one of our clients and for some reason you have to cancel your service like, “Something happened, I have to cancel.” I don’t fire those guys. I keep them on the payroll. What I do is I find a new client for them or I put them to work on my stuff because I got plenty of things going on in my own end to where like, “This guy was producing for them. Now they’re going to come produce for me, no big deal.”

 

They have job security that way. A lot of the other agencies, they don’t work the same way. The moment that the client drops the contract, they’re gone because they’re like, “You’re not bringing revenue anymore. You have to go.” That’s one of the difference of working with a company like ours. On top of that, we have supervisors. We want to make sure that those guys are doing their job right.

Sometimes, if the client doesn’t tell us what we need to be looking for, then obviously, we’re not going to be able to catch things before they happen. If the client tells us, “Ricardo, these are our kpis, this is what I’m looking for, this is what you should be focusing on,” then it’s easy for us because we have supervisors for everybody.

What’s the benefit of someone coming through your agency or hiring the contractor they want on a platform like Fiverr or Upwork?

I don’t think there is right or wrong. I think with us, it’s more of a peace of mind. You pay one person and you know you’re going to have an extra layer of supervision and most of our guys are going to be trained in that arena. We still need training from the client because you may be doing things in a whole different way than what I do. There is a learning curve that happens in the first month or two that we have to adjust over to you. Once that happens, then we can pretty much make sure you are hands off. All you do is you’re getting the results that you want. With Fiverr and Upwork, you are going to have to do that. You’re going to have to supervise directly, you’re going to have to babysit.

We know that is like a full-time job. We know that.

You almost need to hire a supervisor for all of them.

You do. We recommended our marketing company to another person and they’re like, “I can’t keep up with it. I don’t have the time to oversee and babysit, to make sure that they’re doing things the right way.” Go to Ricardo’s agency. That’s the benefit.

Particularly when it comes to the services, when it comes to wholesaling, because he’s perfected that now he’s building the other infrastructure.

They trained. You don’t have to take the time to train them.

Imagine finding somebody online who has expertise in wholesaling, that they give assistance in that space. You don’t have that extra layer of support where Ricardo could jump in and advise both of them.

I’ll give you a great example. We had a client that complained that some of the ARVs that one of my guys calculated were wrong. I looked at him and I said, “I think she’s right.” I went and jumped on a call with her right away. I had never met her before. This is the first time we met. She’s been a client with us for a few months already. I gave her a whole take on the big dot, little dot that I explained to you earlier. She was like, “How come I didn’t talk to you before? I’ve been doing this all wrong from the beginning.”

I said, “Call me anytime you need me. I’m going to point you on the right direction because you are using one of my guys. I want to make sure that we’re both on the same page, but I want you to be successful as well. I don’t want you to continue to throw money away on things that are not going to pay off for you in the future.” We did that.

10 Championship Rounds Of Financial Freedom

Thank you so much for all your knowledge and expertise. Let’s get to the second segment of our show.

All right, let’s do this. It’s the ten championship rounds to Financial Freedom. We have ten questions. Are you ready, Ricardo?

I am ready.

Let’s get into it. Alright, first question. Who’s been the most influential person in your life?

I don’t think there’s one in particular. If I had to mention two, it would be my mother and my father. My father is a very ethical person. He wants to do things the right way. He always does. My mother is more of a spiritual guide to me. I have a great relationship with both of them and they both feed me in the way that I look for them. I don’t think there’s one. There’s two. It’s those two guys.

 

 

Alright, Ricardo, next question. What is the number one book you would recommend?

I got so many.

What’s your top favorite ones?

I believe everybody should start with Think and Grow Rich. It’s like personal growth 101. If somebody, a stranger came to me and wanting to better their life and they wanted to ask me what book they need to read, it’s that one. After that one is Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.

Next question, Ricardo. If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?

I was such a mess when I was a teenager, but I don’t regret anything. I will tell Ricardo when he was eighteen not to be drinking too much. That’s what I would tell Ricardo back then and to work on self-development right away.

I haven’t drunk for many years now.

Congratulations. I’ve been sober for a week, I would say.

As soon as you get back to Venezuela, there you go.

It’s intentionally. I’m fasting right now. I’m exercising twice a day. I’m doing a lot of things to change not my health because I’m very healthy but I want to look better.

Next question, Ricardo. What’s the best investment you’ve ever made?

The money you put on you and the time will compound with time and you will be able to get to places you never thought you could. That comes by investing in yourself.

That’s living the best life. I love that. What’s the worst investment you’ve ever made and what lessons did you learn from it?

 

 

Some of the investments that didn’t go right, let’s say a property or something you bought that you thought it was going to be worth X amount of dollars in the future and then it didn’t happen or materialize. Maybe when you invest in people because I invest a lot in people and some of it doesn’t pay out and then you wonder like, “I really put a lot of money into that person. What happened?”

I don’t think it’s a bad investment, I just think it’s a lesson learned. Close the chapter and move on. We all take risks and in entrepreneurship, you can go and analyze deals all day long and analyze the risk and mitigate the risk, but you never know what’s going to happen in the future that will completely turn that deal sideways. Something that look like a pot of gold turn out to be something else and then you end up losing money in large quantities.

It happened to me. The hurricane came in and I lost my cruise and I lost over $15 million in a period of three years. Investment-wise, that was amazing because I should have made $25 million. However, an event that was completely unexpected showed up and disrupted my whole way of doing business. Do I regret that? Not at all.

If I didn’t go through those situations, I couldn’t tell you about it and I couldn’t show others that are headed the same path to be careful. “I did that and because I did that. I had too many eggs in one basket. Maybe you want to diversify markets or do flips in multiple areas, just don’t do one metro area because you might get caught up in a local problem that might put you in danger.” That’s what I have to say about that.

 

 

Summarizing that, bad investment equals good lesson.

Next question. How much would you need in the bank to retire now? What’s your number?

I don’t have a number. I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I believe in staying active until I die, pretty much. To be honest with you, I haven’t done much in the last few years and I’m still living so I’m not retiring. If I wanted to, I guess I could because I have systems and processes in place so my company can continue to run. I love to be involved. I love to work with my guys. I guess retirement is something somebody invented, so you can put on the 401(k) at some point.

People should be free to do whatever they want when they want and how they want to do it. You guys just went on vacation. Do you have to ask anybody for permission? No, you just did it. To me, that’s what a retired person does. Go play golf when they want, go fish or on vacation. In my opinion, I will elect to engage and disengage as long as I want to, but I will continue to stay active until I die, because I just don’t see myself not doing anything.

To live longer, keep your body and your brain active as much as you can. Love that. All right, next question. If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be?

Zig Ziglar. Never had the chance to meet him. I listened to all his tapes. His voice is very soothing. I love the guy. He was alive not too long. I never made it a priority to go meet him. If he was alive, I would love to have dinner with him.

Next question. If you weren’t doing what you’re doing now, what would you be doing?

I’d be on the beach. I love the beach. What else could you do?

How about as far as your occupation, if you weren’t your VA company, wholesaling, was there something like in sports or music or other occupation? Not other occupation, but other things in life that you wanted to do or aspire if you weren’t?

I think I’d be a negotiator or trader of some sort. I love watches and maybe I will be buying and selling watches. I really enjoy watches and I’ve been learning more about how to do it effectively.

Wholesaling watches?

Yeah, but you need cash for those. There are no contracts in between and you got to be careful with the fake ones, so I’m learning some about that. I think that’s something I will enjoy doing. Insurance also. I like the insurance industry and life insurance and how it preserves lives, especially for mothers that are left behind from a husband that was a provider. I’ve seen that. My family’s in the insurance business and they’ve done very well. I used to work for them at some point. My dad is a financial advisor and he’s still very active and he’s helped thousands of people with life insurance. It’s very rewarding.

I was just talking to August about selling a watch. Two more questions. My favorite question, book smarts or street smarts?

I think there’s got to be a combination of both. I’ve done both. Before I adopted the habit of reading, it was the streets where I learned everything. My first flip, it was the streets. It was afterwards that I said, “I need to go and be smarter about this and educate myself a lot more.” If I knew what I know now, I will pick up a book when I was 17 or 18, talking to that younger Ricardo that you mentioned earlier. I think they both work.

Of course, book smart is not going to be enough if you don’t take action. The street smart is usually taking action. That’s why you see so many of those C students, hustlers make it big is because they’re constantly taking action. They’re not so fixed up on the books themself, but eventually, they drop down and pick up a book.

Being book smart is never enough if you do not take action. Share on X

Okay, last question, Ricardo. If you had $1 million in cash and you had to make one investment, what would it be?

Life insurance.

You borrow against it and reinvest it somewhere else.

You can do a bunch of things with it. It is a no-brainer.

Get In Touch With Ricardo

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Before you leave, just quickly tell everybody who’s reading, what’s the best way that they can reach you?

Instagram, @RicardoMRosales. You can find me on Facebook, Ricardo Rosales, you can go to AttendGrowth.com. Put your information there. Also on our YouTube channel, Ricardo Rosales. I don’t know how many videos I have in there. It goes back to 2017. Those are the easiest ways to get a hold of me. Also, Ricardo@RicardoRosales.com. That’s my personal email. I don’t handle it, so it’s my assistant who’s going to be emailing back and forth, but that’s how you can get a hold of me.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate you, guys. It was an honor, and God bless you and continue with much success.