From Firefighter to Real Estate Mogul: Rafael Cortez’s Journey

Rafael Cortez on the REsimpli Podcast described his amazing path from fireman to real estate investor. Hosted by CEO and founder of REsimpli, Sharad Mehta, Rafael demonstrates how tenacious change and will yield success on the personal and professional levels.

Rafael Cortez started his business repairing and remodeling homes in 2009; in 2012 he went wholesale. His military discipline and tenacity in firefighting guided him in running a transportation business. His biggest career change was in real estate.

Rafael’s real estate interest developed as he sought options for reinvested transportation funds. The large assignment fees wholesalers paid prompted him to focus on wholesale. Once he chose this path, he more wisely used his skills and interests.

Rafael thought about how business executives may handle a big wholesale learning curve. He initially worked solo but later joined Sean Terry’s team, which significantly shortened his learning curve. Although Sean Terry’s own efforts were successful, his ascent improved considerably with the wonderful assistance and insights his colleagues provided. This team helped him to lower his learning curve and flourish all around. Rafael’s wholesale business is presently operating in four states and twenty counties; it exhibits wise expansion and flexibility.

“Lifestyle entrepreneur Rafael,” he says, stressing financial success happiness, and work-life balance. From his vantage point, personal well-being and stress management should complement one another. Understanding that real success combines financial success with a meaningful way of life, Rafael progressively focused on quality of life and personal fulfillment instead of survival. Rafael wants relationships and to transform people’s lives, not just provide money. He said that financial prosperity is defined by leisure and kindness for others.

Matching jobs to talents allows him to reduce turnover and increase job satisfaction. Success, he went on, calls for perseverance, endurance, and relentless labor. Rafael thinks that competence is very essential, but long-term success mostly rests on dedication and well-defined goals.

Rafael works with guitar, gym, and camping in turn. These interests enable him to organize his life and his career. Maxwell Maltz’s popular book Psycho-cybernetics transformed his conception of worth and success. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s variety and originality, Rafael longs could spend a day with him.

Stressing Rafael’s ideas and coaching programs, Instagram (@RafaelCortezCEO) and Reiwhalesaling.com clarify for us professional success, strategic growth, and personal contentment.

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Transcript:

Sharad Mehta  0:03  

Perfect. All right. Well, let’s get started. 123, hey guys. This is Sharad with REsimpli, host of the REsimpli podcast, bringing you an amazing guest, Rafael Cortez on REsimpli podcast. Rafael, welcome to you the podcast. How are you good? Good,

Rafael Cortez  0:20  

good. Thank you for having me. Man,

Sharad Mehta  0:21  

absolutely, man. Thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. Before we get into the details, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? What kind of investing do you do, and how long have you been an investor for? Um,

Rafael Cortez  0:36  

I’m out of Phoenix, Arizona, so I I’ve been here. I got into real estate in 2009 I guess. Let me start there. But got into real estate flipping, fixing, flipping in 2009 and then I did a couple of deals, and then I started getting to wholesaling. So I started wholesaling around 2012 and, I mean, I just never looked back. So it’s one of the biggest things that I do now. I’m a real estate broker as well. I’m a Business psychologist, so I have a practice where I consult coaching and and and different verticals and different businesses. So and then I own my my fix and flip and wholesaling company, right? So I own three different businesses, two of them are in real estate, like I mentioned, and, and, yeah, man, it’s most of the stuff, though, like I want to say that a good 80% of the stuff that I do in the space of real estate is going to be in the wholesaling space. Got it.

Sharad Mehta  1:31  

So you start in 2009 with flipping, and then 2012 you got into wholesaling. Right, right. Yeah.

Rafael Cortez  1:40  

11 inch, 12 ish. So

Sharad Mehta  1:42  

what were you doing before that? Did you always have some inclination towards real estate? No,

Rafael Cortez  1:48  

I, actually, I started as a firefighter. So I used to be a firefighter in in Yuma, and this is when I when I turned 19, I became a firefighter. Did that for a few years, and then in the interim, I started looking at different just business opportunities. So I ended up launching my first business a couple years later, and that’s when I left the fire department, but that business was in transportation. So this is early 2006 2007 and so I did that for for a couple of years, put put together some cash, and I wanted to deploy it and just kind of reinvest it somewhere else, right? And, I mean, I knew how to swing a hammer, so I went, you know, I figured, I’m going to do a, you know, flip projects, because I used to work construction when I was in high school and college and that sort of thing. So it just kind of, it seemed like the, the obvious thing, because that’s what I knew. And and, I mean, I went right into fixing and flipping while they still had the other business. And so I was doing both at the same time. And so, I mean, that worked out for for a while. And then, I mean, I just figured out there’s easier ways than than actually being out there doing the entire, you know, fix and flip process.

Sharad Mehta  3:00  

Yeah, I mean, you, you started out at the right time, like, 2009 imagine, like the house prices were at their lowest. It had been in a long time, but right the selling was that not been an easy process around that time. Like, easy, you know, thing to do, so you flip for about three years, and then, like, what happened? Are you still working at the firefighter, you know, while flipping houses? And then, how did the transition to wholesaling happen?

Rafael Cortez  3:27  

No, so when, when I launched the my transportation business, I left the fire department, so I was growing that business, right? So, so I was doing both. I was, I was the business owner of that transportation company. And then I was, I started, you know, playing around with real estate investments and fixing and flipping. So I was doing both simultaneously for a while, until I sold the transportation business. And then went, you know, all in, into, into the real estate space. At that point, I read down a couple of wholesale, you know, deals. And, I mean, I figured, like, Man, this is the thing that I want to learn. I want to I want to dive deeper into this. I still fix and flip, but I cherry pick the stuff that I do. So I’m not a volume fix and flipper hotel type stuff, you know, cosmetic rehabs and that sort of thing. So I cherry pick the deals. And because I’m direct to seller, I have the opportunity to do that and still make, you know, big spread. So

Sharad Mehta  4:23  

got it, and then, so in 2012 you started wholesaling, and then you basically, kind of started scaling that, and then you only go ahead,

Rafael Cortez  4:33  

yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s correct, so yeah. And I did it by myself for for a long time, I think, longer than I should have. And I started. I actually started as an acquisitions guy for for Sean Terry, and I mean, that pushed me in the right direction, really. I mean, I I cut the learning curve, I mean, quite a bit through that experience. So did that for for for a while, and then I branched off. Um, on my own, and, you know, started working on my deals and doing my own thing there,

Sharad Mehta  5:04  

right? So fee are you, and you’re doing everything in Phoenix, yeah,

Rafael Cortez  5:08  

at the time, yes. Now I’m national, so primarily marketing 20 counties throughout the country, okay? And, but we, I mean, we do deals all over the place. We get deals just random areas and just because of the systems and the processes that have in place. I mean, we’re able to take pretty much any market and dive into it. So

Sharad Mehta  5:29  

okay, how many states are you said, 20 counties. But how many states?

Rafael Cortez  5:32  

It’s four, four states. So primarily we’re doing Florida, Arizona, of course, Nevada, Indianapolis. Just some Cali,

Sharad Mehta  5:44  

okay,

Rafael Cortez  5:45  

some some in California. But, I mean, the crazy thing is, like, a lot of stuff that we’re doing right now is PPC, pay per click, so we get leads coming in, but they’re like, we get a lot of stuff in New York, you know, just different areas of, you know, Atlanta, you know, deals there for some reason, even, even if we’re not marketing those specific areas because we’re online, people see the website pop up when they’re traveling or they’re in the area, and they just, you know, we get random deals all over the place, but intentionally, we market in 20 counties in those states, All

Sharad Mehta  6:17  

right, and then, so what was it about flippay that You didn’t enjoy and made you kind of look at wholesaling. Was it the were you doing all the work for the first, like, two, three years? Were you doing all the work on these flips yourself? Or did you have a crew working on these?

Rafael Cortez  6:30  

Yeah, no. I mean, I ended up having a, you know, a crew to come in and help me out and everything. But, I mean, I was actively in there, so I would go in and, okay, let’s remodel the kitchen. Now, I’d be, you know, taking down the walls, and then, you know, facing the kitchen, the cabinets and all that stuff. So I was doing, you know, some of the work myself. And then I realized after the first flip that I needed to move faster. So I started paying for, you know, for contractors to come in and then do the thing. I mean, now I have, you know, the contractors come in, they do everything. Now I partner up with, with, with other people, when it’s big flips, when it’s smaller flips, I get my myself to come in and then do the work, right? So I don’t, I don’t actively go in there and swing the hammer. I mean, it’s been a long time, so the last time I did that, but, but it’s, you know, at first you don’t know what you don’t know, like you don’t know, there’s easier ways of making stuff, you know, happen, right? So that’s, what I that’s what I was doing. And it worked. I mean, it worked well, you know, for for the time being, but I feel like it’s, it’s once you see, just kind of like, the the light, per se, okay, like, wow, this, this opportunity, this other thing, allows me to do a lot more, doesn’t kill me. On the time, doesn’t kill me, you know, on the stress levels and all that stuff, like, like, this other thing, I mean, you becomes almost like a natural path. You know what? I mean, that’s what it was for me, really. So,

Sharad Mehta  7:49  

did you get introduced to wholesaling through Shante? Is that kind of how it happened for you? No,

Rafael Cortez  7:55  

so, so wholesaling was no. The funny thing is that my first three properties I brought, I bought from wholesalers, and, and, and, I mean, I didn’t, I didn’t know how to read a settlement statement or anything like that, right? So I was completely fresh. And first three deals, so, so I think it was the second or third deal that I saw, I actually noticed. And I saw assignment fee, $18,000 right? So assignment fee, and then I saw the company name. So the guy that brought me the property is like, Hey, dude, what’s this assignment fee thing? He goes, Oh, that’s what you paid me for the property. And on that deal, I think I made like a 12 or $13,000 profit, I think, at the end of it. So the the seller made more money than me. It’s, I did a shit. I mean, it was totally on me. I spent way more than I needed to spend on the rehab. It took longer. Holding costs were, were, you know, I mean, they took a bite out of it too. So I could have done more, but I just didn’t have the skill set yet, right? So, I told him, like, assignment, if he like, that’s what I paid you for the property is like, yeah, yeah, market deal. That’s, that’s, that was my fee. So when I sold you the contract, that’s what I made. Like, man, that’s very interesting. I mean, I want to show me how to do that. How do I do that? Right? He goes, Well, listen to a couple of podcasts. He teed me up in the, you know, the right direction. Todd toback was one of the, I think was the first podcast that I, that I listened to Todd toback. He’s out of San Diego. Great dude. He had Sean Terry in his podcast. So I figured out, or I found out, that Sean Terry was Maricopa County. So we, you know, we ended up signing up for, I ended up signing up for his email list, and then, you know, eventually connecting with them. So, yeah, it’s kind of like one thing leads to another, right? When you’re in the path and you’re looking for opportunity, like you’ll find it because you’re receptive to that kind of stuff happened. So, so, yeah, that’s what. Turning me on into wholesaling. And then I was like, I gotta figure this out. Because, I mean, obviously they’re not making bad money, right? Yeah. And I wasn’t making great money at flips. I wasn’t that, you know, that good, you know, at the time, either. So, so actually, on the first flip, man, I ended up belly, no, like belly flat. I made, I think, about 1800 bucks in that flip, just bucks on a full rehab that I before ever to finish it. So by the time I sat down with the math, it felt really good, because I got a big check right when I closed, it’s like, oh yeah, I killed it. And then I went back and did the math. I was like, Dude, my profit was like, 1800 bucks. So anyways, like there’s, there’s a lot of stuff that happens as as you’re cutting the, you know, the your teeth into, into a new industry, right? So I did that. I did that for a while, and then I started, I lean into wholesaling. I started cold calling. I started, you know, doing, you know, taking the the steps. I listened to his to Sean’s podcast, and like, just listening to to a couple, you know, some of the information out there, and applying, actually taking action on that stuff, I started closing. So I closed a couple of deals. By the time I I ended up working with, with Sean. Sean, yeah, so,

Sharad Mehta  11:16  

I mean, so, so the first flip you made 1800 and third clip, you made 1200 So, you want, like, Absolutely, I mean, you were, you’re making money. You were not losing money. And then you had a transportation business on this side, also at this time. But what was it about, you know, that was

Rafael Cortez  11:32  

my primary business at the time, so, right? So, so I was side gaining, you know, fixing and flipping, and then the whole real estate thing, right? But

Sharad Mehta  11:40  

you only made, like, you know, 1800 on the first. You don’t know how much weight on the second, but the third, you made, like, 12,000 but what was it like? What was your mindset, where you have this business, transportation business, you’re running that and this side gig, and you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna sell my primary business, and I’m gonna just double down on the real estate business. Like, what was that mindset? What was that mindset? What was that decision process? My

Rafael Cortez  12:03  

i At that point, I mean, I knew that I didn’t like the transportation industry. To me, I’m, I’m a, I’m a lifestyle entrepreneur. It’s, it’s got to fit, like, with, with the type of life that I want to live, the type of freedom that I want to have, right? Yeah, the type of results that I want to get, they very much go hand in hand with the amount of stress that I that I choose to to adopt, right? And I feel like every time we we’re doing something new, we’re adopting a new level of stress. So if you’re game for that, you know, it’s totally fine, you know, roll with it. But to me, it’s like, man, transportation is, is? It’s high stress. There’s a lot of moving parts. The margins are not that great, like, there’s got to be a better way. So, and I was already mentally checked out from that, it was still feeding me. I mean, I did really good. I grew the company from no vehicles, because I built it from the ground up to a good size fleet. And, I mean, at the end of it, I had a, you know, 40 plus employees. So it grew to a good, healthy size right before I sold the the the business, and, and, and to me, it was, it was finding out, you know, finding something else that that I could lean into. And I don’t think I would have gone super hard on just, you know, fixing and flipping. But I did find wholesaling, and I’m, I’m very much everything I believe in, systems and processes. If you can automate and delegate something like you have the ability to take back your time, right? And that’s what, that’s what I was able to do, to apply to a degree on the transportation business. So it’s like, Man, if I can apply some of those principles on, on, on the wholesale side, and automate some of some of these, you know, the tasky stuff, right? Get really dialed in on the SOPs for, for the lead generation campaigns and the acquisitions process. This will process, I started understanding things that at a, you know, from a, from a, from a biz ops standpoint, it’s, this is doable. Like, I think I can lean into this and then turn this into a machine, right? So that was my whole thing, right? Just more of a longer play than than, Oh, I want to make a deal and then move on to the next deal and move on to,

Sharad Mehta  14:16  

like, yeah, no, but you were thinking about it the right way. And you said that you sold your transportation business because you’re a lifetime a lifestyle entrepreneur, and you don’t want to be in that. Like, what is a lifestyle entrepreneur?

Rafael Cortez  14:31  

I mean, I call it that, right? I mean, I don’t know if that’s the right term, but it’s, it’s like, how do you define it? Yeah, lifestyle is more important than the numbers on on the bank, for example, if I’m going to make, I don’t know if I make, you know, 5 million on something, but it’s going to ask me to, you know, work 23 hours a day. I don’t care how great it looks if it’s 10 million, you know, maybe the next, you know, best thing since sliced bread. But it’s going to, it’s going to force me to to be, you know, there 23 hours a day for the next, you know, five years, I feel like I’m. Least I’m losing five years of my life right for that. So, so it’s, it’s not a fit for me either. There’s, you know, I feel like we all have that magic number that that we got to hit, to be, to be, you know, happy and stable and prosperous, right to be to feel like we’re thriving. So I have that anything above that. It’s a cherry on top. Not that I’m complacent, you know, with the amount of money that I make, but I don’t let that defined the stuff that I’m not, you know, okay, this is you get to a point where you’re when you’re out of survival state, then you start to pick and choose, like, man, like, now, that’s too much. It’s too much brain damage. I mean, it’s not in alignment, it’s a good opportunity, but it’s not, you know, in alignment with the type of stress and life and headaches that I want to have at this time. You know what I mean. So I feel like putting that in in first position, as opposed to, oh, and that looks like a lot of profit to me, that’s more important, right, right? And I want to spend time with the family. I want to spend time with my friends. I want to be able to take vacations. I want to have that time freedom, and I want to have a bunch of cash, right? That’s going to shape that. And to me, having a counterbalance between the two creates a good a good life approach.

Sharad Mehta  16:18  

Were you always had this mindset, or did that evolve over the time period?

Rafael Cortez  16:24  

No, it definitely evolved it i So if I go to the early days when I was, you know, trying to bootstrapping everything, and very much bootstrap entrepreneur, meaning, you know, there’s, you put in the sweat equity, right? To build something from ground up. So it’s, I don’t come from a wealthy family. I grew up in a mobile home, and to me, so everything, everything was, was like a benchmark, right? So, okay, I hit this, this number. Now I feel like I’m like for the I feel like for the first half of my career as an entrepreneur, I was, I was trying to get out of that survival state, out of that survival mode, and, and, and it’s crazy, man, because what we’re doing is chasing the dollar. And it’s to me, it wasn’t coming from a space of greed. It was coming from a space of like, Man, I just want to have enough money in the bank account to feed my family, you know, pay the mortgage, pay the car, and survive, right? So that’s what it was coming from. What happened to me is, is I started doing really good on the transportation business. I grew that and started making money and and I was no longer in a, you know, survival state financially. But my mindset was I was still operating under that, you know, survival mode. And then it was like, I started to realize, like, Man, I’m still working, you know, a lot longer than, than I need to for, for the type of joy that I want to that I want to have in life. So I was, I was, I got burned out when I was in my mid 20s, meaning that I didn’t want to go to work, I didn’t want to show up to the office, just because of all the time I was spending there. It’s like, Man, this is not me. This is, you know, I’m not that type of guy that’s not excited about what they’re doing. I’ve always been excited since I was, since I can remember, and and that, I mean, that was a collateral damage from, from from spending too much time in a space that wasn’t in alignment with the type of life that I wanted, because I was operating under that survival mode mentality. So, so getting out of it, I started to realize and line up, right? So my priorities, you know, being family, being time and quality time with the people I love. I mean, that became, you know, one of the biggest things. So my relationships, I started nurturing my relationships again. And, of course, operating and having results, right, continuing results. You know, at that point, the crazy thing is, or that I found, is that the happier that we we like, the happier the energy we carry, the the more the more profits we have. So money is a byproduct of how we are doing, how, you know, what, what kind of energy we’re putting out into the world, right? And that’s across the board, through relationships, through impact, through, you know, being a ripple effect in somebody else’s life. In a positive way, money becomes a byproduct of us, you know, operating under that, under the under that, that type of energy and and it took me a while to just register that, but it truly is that way. So, so I realized, like, Man, if I, if I, if I just focus on, on the stuff that matters to me, and start picking my priorities that way, right? And I get my focus off of that dollar amount, and I and I just like, okay, to be happy. I want to make I want to make an impact. I want to have a ripple effect in somebody else’s life. I want to contribute, right? And that’s going on. The money comes in automatically. Why? Because the byproduct you doing good in the world. So, so it just completely. Gave me a shift in perspective when it came to how I saw the world, financially, how I saw my time, you know, as far as how much, you know, value it has, and, and, yeah, so So to, I guess that’s a long answer to your question, but to, to sum it up, it’s, it’s definitely, it was definitely a transition period for me to grow out of that, you know, scarcity mentality into, into this other space. Was like, man, we can just, we can create and thrive through, through flow, right? Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  20:32  

no. Man, absolutely incredible answer. Thank you for sharing that. And you mentioned, like, a big part of why you’re doing what you’re doing is human. You want to make an impact, right? Yeah, tell me a little bit about that. Like, how do you want to make an impact? How do, you know, make this world a better place? Is that for your family? Is it for your employees? Like, what does that mean to

Rafael Cortez  20:49  

you? The answer is, because, why not so? So it’s, it’s not necessarily just, you know, I see a lot of people lean into the the employees and the family, or I want to have, you know, my kids, I’m doing this for my kids, but at the end of the day, like I think we all have, when you find purpose, you find a gift, you find something that’s going to wake you up in the morning. It’s going to give you that fire in your belly to, you know, keep going out out there and contributing. So I sat, I mean, I gave this a lot, a lot a lot of time, and thought, right? Like, what’s I started thinking about my process, like, what’s my my my purpose? What’s my purpose in life? Right? What am I here for? So, you know, I realized I came out of that survival state mentality, and now I’m just, you know, okay, I’m operating, but you know, for the sake of what I know I can live, you know, we’re solid there. Like, the lifestyle that I have is, you know, thankfully we, you know, it’s, I can’t complain, right? And, and doing well, you know, financially better than, than, than I could imagine. I mean, that was one thing. So it’s like a check, check, you know, checkbox, right? And as you’re going through it, like, you ask yourself, like, Okay, what? So what’s next? So the thing is, when, when I, when I was placing value, or, I guess, benchmarks of advancing in outside factors, meaning, okay, I want to hit that. You know, I want to hit a mill, two mil, three mil, four mil, five mil. And you know that goal was met, like the fire was gone. Like, oh shit. Okay, now I gotta, I just gotta put another number, and then you hit that number, and then okay, like the fire is gone again. So it’s kind of like you’re, you’re forcing yourself to rekindle it. So what I did is, when I started looking inwards and and like thinking about, Okay, what’s, what’s something that I want to do that, I know it’s just going to wake me up and and, you know, have me want to move forward every single day. I started thinking about myself when I was 1920, years old, and I was trying to come up with this business plan in my head, right about the transportation business that I wanted to build. I didn’t know anything about business. I didn’t know anything about, you know, the the I just didn’t know what I didn’t know, right? And I, I went to a lot of people, I wasn’t really getting clear cut answers. So I wasn’t, I wasn’t feeling, you know, inspired or empowered. And I started thinking, like, Man, I want to, I want to inspire entrepreneurship. And but I did that for so I focused on inspiring for a while, and like, no people get inspired, and then they walk away, and then they forget the inspiration. They’ll see something else, you know, and then it’s like, it’s like a shower. You stink the next day. You can do it again. And then, okay, cool. I want to motivate people to take actions like, Okay, same thing, you go to a seminar, you get motivated and whatnot. A week afterwards, the motivation dwindles, right? So, so one thing, just kind of, you know, kept evolving into something else, something else, something else. And I landed on empowering entrepreneurship. I was like, okay, that that makes a dent when you empower, empower somebody you know, to follow their own dreams, to to believe in this, in themselves, to pursue their own goals. I mean, now, man, it’s like you’re going back to the book, and you mean, you give a man a fish and you feed them for a day, but you teach them and a fish and you feed them for a lifetime, right? So my whole purpose became empowering entrepreneurship, and I focus on that every single day, like I have, I have a very good team. You know, my wholesaling business, but every single day I’m empowering them. So I’m empowering my team, right, to perform do better. They come in and then they, they, I mean, they honestly, like they, they come, come up with stuff that sometimes I don’t even register, because they’re empowered to operate that way. I do the same thing in my brokerage, empowering agent. I do the same thing in my NCO polls, which is the consulting and education business, right? I’m empowering entrepreneurship. So everything I do throughout the day, even this podcast, is empowering entrepreneurship in one way or another. And I feel like, when you’re when you’re walking in that direction, right, it’s, it’s hard to miss, like, because everything you know you’re doing throughout the day is pointing towards. Common factor, and that common factor is going to generate revenue, which a lot of times, if we’re in survival mode, like that’s the one thing that we focus on.

Sharad Mehta  25:08  

Yeah, man, great answer. So you said, you you also have this consulting business. You said your business psychologist, right? Tell me. Okay, tell me more about that. So,

Rafael Cortez  25:21  

Organizational Psychology is the practice of people and systems. Basically, the way, I mean, the way I explain it is, somebody has, you know, they want to go see a psychologist. They sit down at the couch and they tell them, you know, their problems and kind of, you know, work through them, right? I do the same thing on a business setting. So usually what I do is I’ll come in, sit down with the board. We look at the operations, the onboarding, the hiring, the standard operating procedures that are in place, and I fine tune, meaning I get rid of the excess. I fine tune. Sometimes we move around seats and based on behavioral competencies that people have, like we’re all wired psychologically. We’re wired with some natural tendencies, and then we have a lot of learned behaviors, right? So, so when we start defining what the strengths are, the natural strengths, people tend to stay way longer. So your attrition rate goes way down in terms of people, you know, turnover when somebody is mentally, I guess, wired to to do a type of task, right for a long period, think, think, for example, somebody who’s people oriented, right? If you put somebody who’s, you know, very much people oriented, and you stick them in a in a cubicle where they have no outside contact, right? And they’re doing spreadsheets all the like, they’re going to last that gig for maybe three months, because they may have, you know, the, the acuity. So it’s got nothing to do with being smart or or not. They have the, you know, the the the IQ, is there, the ability to do it? Is there everything else is there? They just, they’re not wired. Why? Because they’re people. They’re people, persons, right, right? So, so what happens when we’re adapting behaviors? The more we adapt to a certain task, the more stress that we have at the end of the day. So that’s why sometimes we get home like we’re super tired, because we looked at the computer and then the person next to us, they did the same thing all day long, and they still have all kinds of energy at the end, their mental wiring is, it’s a strength, or whatever that task is. So anyways, a lot of, a lot of what happens in Biz Ops is, I mean, it really comes down to to even before the onboarding and and the hiring of employees, and that’s some of the stuff that I think we overlook a lot. So anyways, that’s part of what I do as an organizational psychologist, is figuring out the strengths of the people and then fine tuning the systems and the processes of the business so they can they can mesh together and work. And

Sharad Mehta  27:54  

are you doing this just in real estate or just across different industries? No, I

Rafael Cortez  27:59  

do. I do it across different verticals, I mean, but my, my the coaching that I do for one on one students and group coaching and that sort of thing is in real estate. But on my practice, I have clients that are in different verticals as well. So

Sharad Mehta  28:15  

how do you find out someone’s strength? Are you having them? Take desk analysis. Are you having them take PI index? Like, what are you how do you confidently find out someone’s strength? So,

Rafael Cortez  28:28  

yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s so many different assessments out there. I built some myself as well. But the at the end of the day, like, it doesn’t matter what assessment you’re using, I think it more importantly, it’s having the awareness of the people that you onboard, that you bring on. You know, what kind of, what kind of profile are they as you’re working with them? So one, one of the things that I see a lot of a lot of business owners do is like, they’ll hire based on competencies, and then they just stash that thing on the on the archive, and never, you know, look at it again. But it gives you insights. It gives you insights on how to deal with people’s stress. It gives you insights on how to place people you know after the fact. You after that. You know the hiring, the right seats and the right busses, right? But I mean, when you’re going through it, like you can if you’re going to have a shift, for example, in the in the company, or something’s going to change, and you have some insight as to how people react and operate, like you’re going to, you’re going to start to to, to call it pre planning, right? Okay, like this is going to hit this, this person in a whole separate way. So I, I feel like one of the most common fallbacks is, or defaults is not using the assessments once we get them in through the door. I love disk. Disk is simple. I mean, it’s easy to interpret. It doesn’t have like, you know, you have, you have subsets of disk. But I think if you understand how to recognize, you know, each one of the the the behavioral profile. Else, and you can, you can have some context as to how to mix them up. Like you’re going to have more than enough information, you know, then you need to figure out how somebody processes info, right? So disk is great for me. The other ones, I mean, I feel like they can get a little confusing. And we’re not boxes, man, we’re like, we’re dynamic beings. So we’re changing all the time. Depending on what setting you’re in, your behavioral tendencies are going to change. We’re I mean, we’re adapting all the time. I mean, you’re adapting right now to the podcast, right? The the demeanor, the energy and the person that you are is very different than when you get home and when you’re watching your favorite show and just chilling on the couch, right? It’s the way that you respond, the way that your body language, you know, is happening, is different than we’re at a work setting, so we’re always adjusting. It’s the same thing that happens when, when you have all these, you know, different boxes and profiles, I think, I mean, I think they nailed it, but, but you don’t have to go to on it to really have a good sense of what the strengths in somebody are. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  31:06  

no, absolutely. Man, you said it. People sometimes just try to force themselves into a box because they think, Oh, my DISC profile was this, but that’s not the case here. I mean, you could be a different person in when you’re with your family, versus how you show up, you know, when you’re at work. So, and you said you also have a coaching program where you do one on one coaching, and also a group coaching. And just the nature of the industry we’re in real estate, wholesaling or investing, you know, there’s a very high failure rate, right? Majority of the people never actually end up doing to use. My first question to you is, is everyone cut out to can anyone be a real estate investor? But there’s some people that need to look back and say, This is not for me.

Rafael Cortez  31:52  

I think that’s, I mean, that’s a conversation, you know, like everybody’s going to have with their own selves. I think everybody can do it. It’s not rocket science. It’s not one of those things that that, oh my god, this is my IQ has to be, you know, 140 to hit, you know, no, it’s, it’s doable. It’s, it’s nuts and bolts. It’s a process, you know, that you can go through, and it’s very, I mean, people have walked in a million, you know, a million times the same path, right? We see a lot of people getting rich just off of real estate. So, so I think everybody can do it to answer that question. Now, the conversation, I feel like, like that people have to be honest about, is like, do I really want this, right? Is this in that lifestyle, that that I want to, you know, that I want to create, you are going to have to, you know, go through the trench work. You’re going to have to dig in. There’s going to be a lot of rejection. Because what it’s, you know, that’s what entrepreneurship is. It’s not the easiest thing. People love the concept or the idea of being an entrepreneur, right? But until it becomes time to do entrepreneur stuff, and then, oh, it’s tough. I don’t know if I’m going to get paid this Friday. Oh, it’s been, it’s been, you know, it’s been a month, and I haven’t closed the deal yet, and I’ve, you know, oh, I called 50 people, and they all said no. So it’s, it’s about tenacity. It really becomes, that becomes, you know, that simply, how tenacious Are you? When you make up your mind, you just start walking that path. It only becomes a matter of time before it works. It’s and I feel like people just don’t give it enough time for it to work. And that’s, that’s where we see the attrition, when you have, when you’re cutting the the line, cutting to the front of the line, and cutting the learning curve. I mean, you’re, you’re buying time, right? That otherwise you would have spent doing, you know, the elbow, you know, the elbow grease work where, where you have to figure out stuff on your own. And I like, and don’t get me wrong, like people do fall off, you know, all kinds of, you know, coaching programs and everything. But at the end of the day, I feel like they may be coming in with a misconception of, oh, this is going to be easy, you know, it’s overnight thing. But no, nothing. Nothing in entrepreneurship is overnight. So I think everybody can do it. You just gotta, you know, I guess, you know, man up. You know, when the time comes, you know, because things do get they get tough. I mean, we talk to sellers, for example, in wholesaling, we talk to sellers all the time. And I mean, sometimes they’re not the nicest people, right? We are cold calling for leads. We’re trying to generate business and and there’s going to be a lot of rejection. So it’s one of those things that you start to build the muscle, just like going to the gym. So the same thing, yeah, yeah.

Sharad Mehta  34:31  

So when you are coaching your student, you know, what is it that you notice separates a successful student from a one who doesn’t, you know, reach their potential.

Rafael Cortez  34:44  

I’m gonna give you the, the most generic answer possible, I think. But it really is, truly is consistency. Man. It’s people just doing the reps. You know, there’s no magic pill. There’s no and talk to anybody who’s who’s done it. Talk to anybody in any of the. You know, influencers out there who are, who are actually doing deals. It’s just consistency. It’s, you know, hitting the, you know, those conversations every single day. It’s making sure that your your lead generation process, whatever that may be, is consistent. So it’s staying on top of that stuff. One thing, one thing that, that, that I see happen is, you know, people will, for example, they’ll go out there, they’ll go all gun ho that, you know, for the first couple months to get a contract, get it through a pipeline that gets really, really focused on on selling that one deal, that the consistency drops on the lead generation. And now, when they sell that deal, they have money in their pocket. They go do something crazy, buy a watch, Rolex or whatever, right? Instead of, you know, putting it back into that engine, that’s going to create consistency. So, so a lot of it is, I think it’s, it’s self control, but it really comes down to that consistency of doing the actual actions, you know, that you’re supposed to be doing, as opposed to to just getting, you know, going off of the feeling, or whatever it is that you feel that day. Oh, I don’t, I feel like picking up the phone. I don’t feel like, you know, like in running the comp, so I don’t feel like, you know, dropping, you know, money on the marketing campaign this week. No, it’s just stay consistent, even when it looks loom, the consistency, consistency is what’s going to get you out of it. Yeah.

Sharad Mehta  36:19  

100% Rafael, I 100% agree with that. That’s the That’s the word I like to pick for people that are successful versus the ones that are not successful. Is the consistency. People come to us all the time. Hey, which marketing challenge should I use? Say the one that you can stick with the longest? That’s the one that’s the one that’s going to work at the end of the day, everything works, but it’s the one that you can stick with the longest. People you know we have invested that are doing 2530 plus deals a month. They’re not doing anything crazy, like you said, there’s no secret form of there’s no secret sauce. They’re just doing it at a higher scale. But they’re consistent. They’re consistently doing the same thing over and over again. It’s like going to a gym. You want to lose weight consistently go to the gym, consistently eat healthy at your similar time, before you do that. And if you you know up your scale, you’re going, instead of three days a week, you’re going to the gym six, seven days a week. And you, like, really lean into eating healthy. You’re going to lose much faster than somebody else. But I wanted to personally, man, so how do you get someone, how do you get someone to be consistent, like, is it something that it comes down to, do they do they want it bad enough? Does it come down to that, you know, where, if their Why is big enough, they’ll figure out the how and they want?

Rafael Cortez  37:34  

I think so. I mean, there’s a few things that fall under that category. I think so. Yeah, if you want it bad enough, right? You’re going to figure out a way that’s one thing, or, you know, that’s one way to go about it. And I feel like, yeah, tenacity might be there for for, you know, some individuals, but not everybody’s wired like that. Again, some people was like, Man, I really, really want this. I just have no idea where to start. And I’m not, you know, for example, we go back to this profiles, right? If you have somebody who’s a high D or a high driver that that whole, no, you can’t do it, thing registers at a way lower, you know, scale than if you’re a high s, for example, you know, no, you can do it. It’s going to be more of a, you know, can impact you and create more uncertainty and insecurity, right? So, so behaviorally, we have different thresholds to cross, right? We have different challenges that we’re going to take on. So it’s not just about, I want to bad enough. You may want to bad enough, but maybe the the confidence is not there yet, right? And that wall may be too thick for you. So when, when it comes to that kind of stuff, I think clarity becomes the path. So it’s about having clarity on, on one, where you want to get to, and then two, the stuff and the steps that you need to take to get to that place, right? So, so if you have that and you mix, you know, throw it in, mix it in with tenacity and just blind faith, because you’re taking the you’re taking the actions it, I mean, it’s, it becomes a no brainer. It really is. So, you know, it’s part of that, you know, part of the consistency process, right? But when you go to the gym, you know, for the first week you don’t see anything, the second week you may not see anything. Doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening underneath, right? Your muscles are building, uh, you’re losing body fat, your body, your body composition is changing. So there’s a lot of things that are happening in that you know at that time, same thing in business, your mental wiring is changing. You have new neurons that are connecting. You’re getting experience as you go through it. You’re getting thicker skin as you’re going through the conversations, right? So I can tell you for a fact, right, that the person I am now is not the same person that I was a year ago. I gained a lot of experiences then, even from the year prior and the year prior. So we keep evolving as beings, and that’s a constant thing. So to think that you know what we know now is the end all be all. That’s what we’re afraid because we don’t have all the answers in. And we can’t succeed because of that. It’s crazy, because we’re going to be growing along with the business. So I think, well, that clicks in, and then you have the clarity of what steps to take and where do you want to go, that that makes it a lot easier to follow than than it’s just like, Oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pound through this wall with my forehead. Yeah, figure this out, right? Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  40:20  

absolutely, man, great, great answer on the like, the gym analogy, like, the first week is going to be tough, but every day after that, it’s going to get a little bit easier. But then, let’s say you go from like, you know, 200 pounds to have 666, pack up. And if someone were to ask you, okay, what day was the most important? Like, every day was important. Like, it just like every every day was important, like, you couldn’t have gotten to the process. You couldn’t have gotten to the end result if you didn’t do the work every single day. You cannot say, oh, it happened on day 182 you know, it’s like, the same thing on investing, like, every day that you work in, come in, make calls, follow up, do those things. Every day is helping you get to the goal. You cannot say, Oh, this day, you know, maybe the day you get the offer accepted, you get a contract, you make money. What’s the most about? No, it’s it was all the work that you did and before that, it all led you up to making that money. Yeah, it compounds. Man Rafael, this has been absolutely incredible. Man, thank you so much for your time. My final three questions for you. You got so much going on, and you’re a lifestyle entrepreneur. What is it that you do for fun?

Rafael Cortez  41:30  

I do a lot of things for fun. Again, going back to the lifestyle, I love going out camping. This weekend, we were going out to the beach and disconnecting. I have regular lunches with my friends, you know, throughout the week and that, you know. So I’m always resetting and and just snapping out of the the, you know, the work, work, work, work, work mentality. It’s pretty much how I was wired I used to be. But, yeah, I mean, I go to the gym every day. I work out a lot. I play guitar. So you see my guitar back. Whenever I’m getting over overwhelmed, even here at the office, I’ll just grab the guitar and start playing around for a little bit. So I take a mental vacation. Every chance I get just keeps me sane. Man, yeah,

Sharad Mehta  42:11  

yeah. Is there one book that you look back and you say that’s had the biggest impact on your life? It could be a personal book, business book, or one of each.

Rafael Cortez  42:22  

Yeah, I can give you. I mean, I have a whole library, but, but I guess one of the most important books I’ve read psycho cybernetics, Maxwell, Maltz,

Sharad Mehta  42:31  

yeah, psycho biggest takeaway from a guy,

Rafael Cortez  42:35  

it’s self image. Again, it’s how you see yourself, and how can you rewire your thinking, because that’s where it all starts. Yeah, if you’re looking for acceptance, if you’re looking for success, if you’re looking for whatever it is that you’re looking for, it’s going to start with you. You can’t shift that, that appreciation of yourself. You can’t shift anything around you. So that book was, was a, I feel like one of the first books that planted the seed, and it’s a very old book. They had new versions come up and everything so, so, but the books that turned me on into into studying psychology, like,

Sharad Mehta  43:10  

it’s a great, absolutely great book. I feel like if it had a different title, if it had a different mode, relatable title, it would, it would be a much bigger, like, more, you know, like, talked about book, yeah. Final question for you, if you could spend a day with anyone, dead or alive, who would you want to spend the day with, and why

Rafael Cortez  43:34  

I’d go, Da Vinci.

Sharad Mehta  43:36  

Da Vinci. Why is, I

Rafael Cortez  43:39  

mean, the guy was just all over the place. I mean, he was creating weapons of, you know, mass destruction for the times he was a creator of Arts. I mean, he had this, this outside of box, thinking that. I mean, it’s just incredible. I’m a, I’m a big fan like his notebooks and everything. Just his thought process was, was pretty was pretty wild, and to do that at the time that he was doing it. I mean, that’s just, I mean, it’s in itself. It’s impressive, right? So yeah, thank

Sharad Mehta  44:10  

you, Rafael for sharing that. So anyone listening to this, once you connect with you learn more about your journey or about like your coaching program. What’s the best way for them to do that? I’m

Rafael Cortez  44:19  

pretty active on social media. So if you want to touch base, just shoot me a DM on Instagram. Rafael Cortez CEO, yeah, I’m pretty active there, so yeah, I mean, that’d be the best place. If you want to find out about the coaching program, you can go to rei wholeselling.com that’s Rei wholesaling.com and yeah,

Sharad Mehta  44:39  

we’ll put links to all of that in the show notes. Rafael, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know how busy you are. So really appreciate your time. Thank you,

Rafael Cortez  44:46  

my pleasure, man. Thanks for the invite. Thanks applause.