From Debt To Discipline

What does it take to turn near-collapse into a foundation for long-term wins? Carlos Beruff joins us to unpack the real mechanics behind “going all in,” from scrappy weekend sales hacks to calmly unwinding $20 million in debt without filing bankruptcy. His story moves beyond highlight reels: a blown margin on early builds, a makeshift plan involving people sleeping outside a lender to secure 8 percent mortgages, then a deliberate pivot to distinctive product, market share, and, later, radical patience.

We walk through the decisions that protected him when cycles snapped. Carlos breaks down why he sold aggressively in 2004–2005 when prices were absurd, sat on cash for four years, and then bought deeply from 2009 to 2012. He explains the discipline that underpins that patience: a six-month working-capital rule, only borrowing for assets that can pay you back, and cutting small daily leaks that stall compounding. Expect tough-love financial wisdom—stop financing depreciating toys, save even when it hurts, and let your money work while you build skills and options.

Beyond money, Carlos shares the habits and values that keep him steady. He trains six days a week, designs projects with taste and utility, and credits mentors and partners over any myth of being “self-made.” Gratitude for the opportunities in the United States is a constant theme, as is a quiet but firm spiritual growth. If you’re starting out, you’ll leave with a practical roadmap: write down every expense, strip what doesn’t serve you, build your reserves, and aim for first base every day. Home runs arrive to those who can stay in the game. Subscribe, share this conversation with someone who needs the push, and leave a review telling us the one money rule you’re taking forward.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Recording Started

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:00

Hey, what's going on, guys? I got a special guest here today. We have Carlos Baruf. He's a self-made entrepreneur, real estate developer who has built over$1 billion in residential and commercial projects across Florida. He's the founder of Mendelin Home, and he has served the state in major leadership roles, including the Florida Constitution Revision Commission. Carlos is known for his bold decision making, resilience, and commitment to building both communities and leaders. Carlos, thank you so much for coming on. We're excited to have you on hashtag clocked in. The first question is you said that everyone gets multiple shots in life. Why do you think so many people fail to recognize these opportunities when they come?

SPEAKER_00: 1:46

It's twofold. Some of it is just they see the opportunity, but they make they fear making the jump. And that is at least one of the reasons that I see people highly successful, financially successful people, because to me, the define a human being is not defined by their financial success. I mean, there's some wonderful, wonderful fathers and husbands and brothers who don't have huge financial uh balance sheets at the end of their lives. And then there's others who do. The people that do will typically find an opportunity and they'll they'll look at it and they will commit to it with a hundred percent of their energy, and that there's no way out. So if you if you miss, you're gonna have to fall on the ground, hit your face, and get up and start figuring out all over again. And that's that's very tough for people to deal with that kind of risk.

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

Well, it's a completely different framework that a lot of us are get the job, do the work, and move on. Like it's a completely different mindset. So for you, what when did you make that first major risk in your life or take that jump?

SPEAKER_00: 2:57

When I started the company, I'll tell you the whole story because it you can put it in perspective. I'm a 20 at that time, I was let's see, 26 years old. I was working with uh I had a partner who built houses. I was the sales and finance guy, and we had bought 22 lots, and I had not I kept my job because I needed the salary to pay my bills and didn't want to strain the company, and I really didn't have to be in the field because my building partner was handling the details of day-to-day of building this the three the six houses that we'd sold to two investors, three to three to each of them. So we start building these houses, we hire a salesperson, nice young man. We put him in the field. Six well, three months later, he hasn't sold a house yet. Okay, and I'm going, you know, things are beginning to get a little little pushy there. And then we find out that my my building partner, God bless her soul, had made an honest mistake and left out the trust systems in the houses, which we were gonna make twelve thousand dollars a house. Now we're gonna make six thousand a house because we left the trusses out, which were six thousand dollars. So now things are really bad, and we're running out of we're running out of room. So I go into the sales office on a Friday, um and I sit myself down, and there was a particular at that particular time in the in in the world, which was 19 uh 1984, it was very difficult to get single single digit interest rates. And there was a program that was offering eight percent interest rates. It was a a federal program with bonds or grants or something, and and I sold the next six people that walked through the door over a three-day period, sold them each a house. Wow, every one of them. But here's how I did it I guaranteed them they would get the eight percent interest rate because how I did that, but the now it's first come, first serve, and there was a limited amount of funds. So I literally hired people to sleep from Friday to Monday outside the mortgage company's door and feed them pizzas and bring them water and so forth. And then on Monday morning, the person who had actually bought the house shows up and takes their spot in the line. So out of the six houses I sold that weekend, five of them actually got built and closed. But thinking outside the box, I had to find people, pay them to sit in that line from Friday night till Monday morning, okay, and take a pizza and so forth. They could take breaks because they have to go home and take showers and so forth. And that's how basically I went from almost not being able to pull it off to being able to pull it off. But I was all in.

SPEAKER_01: 5:52

That is all in because what people don't realize is we think we always have to do it ourselves, but there's so many times in our life where we can bring in other people, and it truly makes the experience so much better, too. Because these people appreciate it, you appreciate it, and you just have to understand negotiations.

SPEAKER_00: 6:10

Yeah, I mean, the the people that I hired were you know appreciative of the extra. I I don't I don't remember, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't be telling you the truth. I don't remember what I paid them, but you know, it was enough that they did what they had to do to spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday sleeping outside. It unfortunately the area that they had to be that they were waiting in was undercover, uh, and it was a good it was a decent time of the year. It was March or April, so the the weather was quite pleasant, but still, that's it's a commitment to spend three nights on a concrete.

SPEAKER_01: 6:41

Also, to pull out the people at last minute, meaning like I have to find these people, I have to bring them in, I have to lock in these deals. It's not an easy task. And when you're building out houses, you don't think you're gonna have to go hire people for that activity.

SPEAKER_00: 6:56

No, that was the so once we got that and we had the backlog, then we started selling, and we got a 24-month loan from a bank. He ended up being my banker for 30 years. Uh, literally, uh, he lent me$120,000 to buy the 22 lots with a 24-month term, and we paid him off in 10 months. Oh wow, that's incredible. Yeah, it's not too bad. But uh then you start rolling and you start continuing to do things, and before you know it, we're building in 1986, we're the largest home builder in Manatee County, which didn't say a lot because Manatee County was about this big. So it was it wasn't like a big bragging point. We were just young guys doing some strange stuff, our our architectural stuff was unique. We had um purple trim around a house with gray accents, so it was unique. We built we did the first um peekaboo shower where we cut a piece of glass in the shower so you could be looking in on your wife when she's taking a shower, you know. Just little things that made us a little different. Uh yeah, and and and we got market share and uh we were successful, and that went along pretty well till uh 2000, no, 1991-92 is when we got in trouble. There wasn't I'm I'm old, I'm 67. Okay, so so there was a thing called the Resolution Trust Corporation that was set up by the government when the federal then the savings and loan crisis occurred in the late 80s, early 90s, and that crushed us. Not always the other thing that I've learned from people who are successful is we take blame for the stupidity that was the decisions that we made. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 8:47

You gotta be fully account, you gotta be fully accountable for that and realizing that how do you how do you keep going? Because that's the hardest part, is most people would feel a failure and be like, I'm done, I gotta change up.

SPEAKER_00: 9:01

Um well, I'm 32 years old now. Now I'm fast forward, I'm 32 years old. I got 20 million dollars worth of debt. I have a financial statement that says I'm worth 5 million bucks on paper, and you know, you know, you you're you're stupid, you're young, you're stupid, you're talking, you know. 12 million of the 20 million dollars was a shopping center that had partners in it, wasn't all by myself. We had five or six different partners, and the economy went against us. Again, we ran, we did not run the business very smartly, we didn't have capital reserves we should have had. So now banks are coming after us. I'm playing, I'm I'm thinking about bankruptcy, talking to bankruptcy attorneys. But but I have one conversation with my father who I used to talk to two or three year times a week when he was alive, and he said, if you file bankruptcy, I'll never talk to you again. And my father was serious as a heart attack. I go, Man, I like talking to my dad. You know, I gotta figure this one out. I gotta figure this out. So I did. We unraveled$20 million worth of debt, took us about four years, and then I got back on my feet. It was great lessons. I hope everybody learns these kinds of lessons if they have to have them at all in their late 20s, early 30s, because you have the stamina to get back up. And uh I didn't file bankruptcy, like I said, personally or corporately. Took care of my customers and over a period of time took care of most of the people that worked with us by making you know payment arrangements. But I wanted to stay, I had a job opportunity in Arizona, and I said, you know, if I leave this town with my tail between my legs, not my idea of fun. Yeah. So I said, I'm gonna stick it out and work my way out of this mess and take care of the people. Uh now they didn't get paid 100 cents on the dollar, but they got paid, you know, 80 cents on the dollar, whatever agreements we'd make with the especially the small guys. A couple banks took a couple licks of their own volition because they did some stupid stuff. And I crawled out of that mess and learned that the only thing that matters when the economy goes bad in my business is cash. Lots of cash.

SPEAKER_01: 11:17

Yeah, because then it becomes 2008 where you get a shopping spree, and people have no idea. So, so what change for your framework? Like, I'm 29 right now, so like what was that framework change for going forward? Is it like we keep 10% reserves? Do we keep 30%? Like, how do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00: 11:37

Somewhere in that period of time, and I don't can't pinpoint the year anymore, but so I wrote an article, I were reading an article about Bill Gates, and Bill Gates thought that his idea of success would be when he had six months of a working capital that he could pay all Microsoft's bills if he sold if if no income came in. I said, Well, that seems like he's a pretty bright guy.

SPEAKER_01: 11:58

Yeah, I'll follow that up.

SPEAKER_00: 12:01

Yeah, it's a good starting point. So that was my first my goal coming out of that mess. And and I I lived by that goal, and then in 2004, late 2004, 2000, and early 2005, the craziness. I call it the craziness, okay, because this all businesses create these bubbles, and that was a crazy time for the bubble for our business. People were just offering us stupid amounts of money for land. And I sold. I sold almost a lot of things that I owned and accumulated by then. So I'm 30. What how old am I then? I'm 2008. I am 2008, I'm 20, 30, 40, yeah, I'm 40 years old or 50. No, I'm for I'm 50 years old.

SPEAKER_01: 12:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:54

I'm 50 years old. And I sell and I've accumulated roughly in about a little over 20 million dollars in after tax capital. Okay. Wow. So now instead of being in 20 million dollars in debt, I'm 20 million dollars plus after tax. Um I've made a pretty good switch there that in that 14-year-15-year period. And to most people, you know, you sit there, I I would kid people. I say, well, now I can you know go to the Bahamas and drink margaritas the rest of my life, and go on, well, that's not, I would never do that because I can enjoy what I do too much. So I so I got back into the in back into the market, back into the real estate market in 2009. You hit the nail on the head earlier in this podcast where you said you in 2008, 2009 is when the real money gets made when things are really bad. But you gotta have the money to take advantage of those opportunities. So we scaled that opportunity and bought a bunch, a lot of real estate between 2009 and 2012.

SPEAKER_01: 14:01

And that is the so during so during 2004 and 2005, that's when the money that's when you sold it.

SPEAKER_00: 14:10

It was it was the market was stupid. The the money made no sense. The stuff I was selling I thought was worth ten dollars, they were paying me 40 for it.

SPEAKER_01: 14:19

So at that point, so then for those four you literally waited four years to see an hour.

SPEAKER_00: 14:25

I stayed lost, I thought I had to scale the business back down because I still had inventory and stuff. I waited, yes. The answer is I waited for four years.

SPEAKER_01: 14:34

That's a lot of the reason I I want people to understand that is because that's a lot of patience, and people want to uh it's instant gratification at this point. They're like, I need to know, I need to get the result today, or I'm quitting. And it's like you're seeing it takes so much time to repair yourself for these types of things.

SPEAKER_00: 14:52

You have to have control, you have to have this. It's it's it's a word called discipline. You have to be very disciplined, uh, and not jump into the thing and say, okay, well, that makes still don't make it doesn't make sense. Like it is right now, markets are a little difficult. I know things are difficult because people ask me to borrow money. When people ask me to borrow money, then I know that things are difficult. Okay. They're not getting traditional loans from traditional banks, and they're coming to me. So, but it hasn't the the the real estate has not collapsed like it did in 2008, nine, and ten. Because people are not over-leveraged like they were then, and banks were not in the business like they they're not in the business today like they were then. So, and bank failures didn't occur like it didn't during the Great Recession. And I don't anticipate that will happen in real estate in Sarasota County or Manatee County or anywhere in the country, to be honest with you. Um, there's some softness in the in the office markets because the office has changed, but you know, JP Morgan just opening up their new three billion dollar building in downtown Manhattan, they have confidence. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful building that hopefully someday I will visit. But so so, yes, you you have to have discipline. Discipline is is a is something that most people have a hard time wrapping their hands around. But I would completely agree.

SPEAKER_01: 16:21

I do I do coaching with a lot of people, and a lot of financial issues come down to just not being able to keep control of, hey, we shouldn't overspend here. Hey, we should keep more than we spend. Like people are constantly having these challenges. So, what financial tips would you give to people listening that are kind of on their growth journey? Because obviously there's a component of like you want to risk more when you're younger because you try to capture more return, but at the same time, you want to be it's it's an interesting dynamic.

SPEAKER_00: 16:53

Well, one of the things that I've seen young people, I've always been a saver my whole life. Yes, even when I got in trouble on$20 million, that my mentality was always save money. Um, so I I people that finance cars, you shouldn't finance uh things long term that are depreciating assets that and and that will not make you money. I mean, I happen to have be a car guy, so I love nice cars and I have a bunch of, okay. But only because I can write a check for them, okay? And I realize I'll enjoy I'll enjoy them and they'll be worth a lot less than I paid for them, but it's okay because I gave myself the pleasure of enjoying the car. But when I was a young man your age and younger, I would buy you know nice used cars and I'd pay them off in 12 or 18 months because you can't make any money on a car 99% of the time. So, my part of my advice to people who are listening, who care to listen, is that only borrow money if it could make you money. If what you're borrowing the money to do has an as a distinct possibility of making you more money than what you borrowed and the cost of borrowing that money and all of the things that are pertinent to borrowing money, otherwise, don't borrow money. Okay, be disciplined enough to save your money and then buy what the hell you want when you have the money and not give the bank six, eight, ten percent interest. It's nuts.

SPEAKER_01: 18:24

Uh, the amount of people who literally could change their life drastically by lowering their car payment or just getting them a random car that they're like, hey, I don't love it, but it I can afford it, and then just lowering the house pay because their fixed expenses are so high, it's such a challenge for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00: 18:42

Yeah, another another thing that I try to tell young people is I said, Look, and then this week, well, I don't have enough money to save. That's not true. You always have money. I I'll give you a firm example. I won't mention any name. So I have a friend that lives in Michigan, and she's struggling, God bless her. This is a few years back, and she's struggling and she can make ends meet. And I'm trying to give her some advice. I said, Look, um, and then she tells me she's having, you know, she stops at Starbucks every day. Well, she starts at Starbucks every day and spends six bucks, six days, six or seven days a week, you know, four weeks a month. I'm going, that's real money. I mean, that's that's real money. You can pay a lot, you can pay your half your rent with that much money or a quarter of your rent, whatever it was, and you can make the coffee at home and do it for 10 cents on the dollar, but you're spending in Starbucks. So people lose track of that. And then people that buy it now in more modern social, you know, the the uh social media stuff that people do, where they have these apps that are getting paid$7.99 a month,$8 a month for this. I can tell you, there isn't an app that Carl Sproof pays for. If it ain't free, I ain't getting it. And I can afford any app I want, okay. Yeah, the mindset the$7.99 a month adds up. Okay. The frappuccino or cappuccino or latte that you're getting in the Starbucks adds up. Take the money and save your money until you can accumulate some money so you can invest that money. You can never make enough money unless your your money is working for you.

SPEAKER_01: 20:16

Yeah, no, absolutely. I I have a client of mine where he he was making good money in his job, and then he started to realize he's like, wait, I made more in investments. And I'm like, and he's like, I'm like, you have a side business, you have your investments. And people don't realize that shift because they always think I have to work for my money. When in reality, if you have enough capital, you can always start creating more and more money, and you don't always have to work the conventional way of I need a paycheck or I need this.

SPEAKER_00: 20:55

It's just a simple book. I mean, it's one of many, but I'm not a big guy, I'm not a big person on reading a bunch of self-help books. It's just not my it's not how I've gotten here, okay? I don't have anything against them, but that's one, that's one in particular. That's the one book that I read because it was so simple. I read it after I knew everything that was in the book. There wasn't anything new to me, but I read it because I can't remember somebody told me to read it 25, 30 years ago. But I said, this is a good book for a beginner to understand how a person, any person, any person can become financially well off and independent on their own. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 21:33

And do you believe that's possible today for Americans?

SPEAKER_00: 21:36

I do, I absolutely do. Um, I I grew up in a uh a three-bedroom converted garage with a hot uh two-top the heat, whatever they call those burners, and a bathroom that I shared with my my brother, my sister, my two cousins and me, five kids, my grandmother, my aunt, and my and my mother. So eight of us in a converted three-car garage with two years. Oh my god. Okay, so I know that this country, if you work hard and and aren't afraid to work hard, and you're dependable and you do what you say, there's opportunities out there for people who are who are who are not afraid of work and are at least decent human beings and do what they say and don't try to make up answers they don't know the answers to. The other thing is never somebody asks you a question. If you don't know the answer, just be big enough to say, I don't know. I'll go find out for you.

SPEAKER_01: 22:36

Okay, yeah. No, absolutely, because there's so many people who think they have to have this facade and think they have to prove to everyone that they know everything. And the truth is most of us don't know a whole lot. Like we know a lot about a little things, but it's hard to do that for a lot of people. So with my podcast guests, I've been doing this and it's been received very well. So I have five pillars with Edwards Consulting. And the first one is mental health. So what's your mental health like today, Carlos? The reason I'm asking is because if it's regardless of the score, I just want to know why. Just because it gives everyone on that's listening here an insight into like, wow, Carlos is 67, he's financially independent, and he has a good, I'm assuming a good mental health, but uh like why does he have a good one? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:29

Well, your mental health, I've always had good mental health. Some of it more stressful moments in my life than others. At this point in my life, you know, my biggest challenge is where am I going on vacation next? I tell people, I said, people every once in a while I'll say something. I said, I said, look, anybody that complains about my life is an idiot. And I've been called a lot of things, but an idiot is not one of them. Okay. I'm just to the point where it's I I do what I like. Um I'm a person who am not artistic, but I love the creative process. So, for example, we've we're gonna be building an airplane hangar at the airport, and the the and I wanted something specific. The building where people are coming to get to wait to get on their plane to go somewhere. Yeah, I wanted it to be distinctive. It's you know, I want it to be elegant. So the first time the first drive they say, I'm going, this doesn't do anything for me. This is I can't tell you what I want, but I can tell you that I want a little bit of this and I want a portaco share. So when people are driving up with their cars and it's storming in in the rainy months in the in the summer, they're not getting wet. So lo and behold, the guy sends me this beautiful thing. I go, it he nailed it. He nailed the design. It's cool, it's elegant. I know when things are right. I can't come up with the the idea. I can direct people until I get something that I know I like. Okay, but I can't create it myself. But I come to work, work is not the word we should use. I come to have fun every day. Now, some days I play the game and I lose. Okay, but some days I win, and some days you get on base, and some days you don't. That's another old thing that I've said for years. Is that I get up every morning to get the first base, I don't get up in the morning to hit home runs. Because if you're in the game long enough, the home runs will come. The guy that gets up in the morning to get the home run is the guy who never gets around the bases. I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_01: 25:38

I think it's amazing. Now, your physical health on a one to ten. How do how do you feel about your physical health?

SPEAKER_00: 25:44

Uh, I'm about a nine, I'm about 10 pounds heavier than I should be. I'm 174 pounds and I should be 165 or so pounds. But I'm in I'm in better shape than I was 10 years ago. I take really good care of myself because I have young children and I want to make sure I'm around here to see them become you know productive young adults.

SPEAKER_01: 26:02

What what do you do for your physical health? I love that you have a good why for your physical health because a lot of people don't have that why. So that why is very uh powerful.

SPEAKER_00: 26:12

Oh, it's very important. Uh I I work out six days a week, uh, two days with a personal trainer and and four days on my own. I have the convenience that we have. When I built the building, I'm in that we it's our offices, there's a gym in the in the building. So just go downstairs and go to the gym and then meet the personal trainer there. And then I'm also fortunate that I have a gym at my house.

SPEAKER_01: 26:34

So that uh just for everyone listening, that that creates ease of access. So the restriction isn't as hard as I gotta go drive 25 minutes. So if you're not going to the gym, it might be because it's really hard to get to. If you make it as easy as possible, you'll do it more frequently.

SPEAKER_00: 26:51

Yeah, but but see, now the the opposite of that is my wife who does this thing called Tracy Anderson, and she's been doing it for I don't know, seven years now, since 2018. And she can take a and do her exercise anywhere in the world. She doesn't need anything. She, I mean, and and believe me, my wife is a uh a fanatic about this stuff, and she's really good at it. I'm happy for her because I'm going, look, you stayed in shape is a good thing for me. No argument there.

SPEAKER_01: 27:20

That's awesome. No, but that but it's good to be empowered by the physical fitness because it's so important for us. And then when did I know the truth? Yeah, you guys give you energy, it gives you energy. It really does. Um, one of the big ones for you, I know, is like community service and philanthropy. A lot the reason I do it is because I think it's a really important pillar. And a lot of people just don't know how to get involved, they don't understand. Fuck.

SPEAKER_00: 27:49

This is the way I look at it. If you are born in the United States of America, you have won the lottery. Now, what you do with the money is your business. Either you you take the money and you multiply that money, or you don't. But you have won the lottery the day you were born in the United States of America, and that's how I feel every day of my life. Okay. So I take that and I, you know, I with that mindset is how I live my life. Because there's people, many people as we know, want to want to come to this country and don't have that privilege.

SPEAKER_01: 28:22

Um, I literally got a bar. I had a I was in um where Florence got a haircut, and they're like, Oh, you're from the US. And I'm like, Yeah. And they're like, Oh, you're barber. That's his dream. His dream is to go to the US. But they're like, it's so hard, so challenging, so all these things. And we have so many Americans who just take it for granted.

SPEAKER_00: 28:47

Like, oh my goodness, it's just it's just bizarre. And I'm and I'm born in America. My my parents, of course, were from Cuba, and my sister and brother were actually born in Havana. But those people that do not recognize what this country is, God bless them, they they they haven't been exposed. It's not their fault. I I don't, I don't, you know, it's just if they saw what I've seen in my travels and my lifetime and the conditions and some of the opportunities that they that don't exist anywhere else in the world but the United States, they would look at it, they would never, they would never be happy as seeing an American blood flag burn. Never.

SPEAKER_01: 29:26

Yeah, no, you're you're you're spot off. It's funny because most Americans never travel more than like 20 miles outside of their home. Like, if you look at the statistics, it's it's pretty crazy. A lot of them don't have passports, but you're absolutely right. The more you travel, the more you realize, like what we got it pretty good. Like, regardless of who's running office, regardless of what's going on, the constitution is really what guided it to be this incredible country.

SPEAKER_00: 29:54

Absolutely. I mean, you the things that that we say about some people say about our president or other politicians in this country, and nothing happens to them. Well, you can't say that in Russia, you can't say that in China, you know, because you're not gonna be around very long.

SPEAKER_01: 30:10

Okay, even even the top people, yeah. I mean, you look at the top people, they just disappear in China. Like, what is what happened to that channel? Well, he just disappeared. The guy who ran Alibaba, like that is one of the top companies in the world, and he just he went away for a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: 30:26

Well, yeah, Jack Ma.

SPEAKER_01: 30:29

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 30:30

And then uh really created this who created a huge business and created a lot of opportunity and made a lot of Chinese very, very, very wealthy. And when he went to do his bank financing unit, they said, No, we don't think we want you in the banking business, basically is what happened then. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 30:46

It's it's insane. I mean, you do something like that, it helps so many people, and they just take it away from you. Relationships. How how do you think about relationships? Do you have any tips?

SPEAKER_00: 30:57

Relationships. You know, I stopped using not that I ever used it much, but people say I'm self-made, you know. But the reality is that most people, even the Bill Gates of the world, the Elon Musk, and yes, their drive and their energy has made them by far, no question. But along the way, there's always people that help you or mentor you for because you either did something right, they had confidence in you. But there's very rare to have a really truly there, might be, but that I'm not aware of really a self-made person. We are all a product of a bunch of people along our lives that helped us at certain particular turns that we had to make that got us to where we are. And obviously, some people just do better than others, but but it's any one of people that you call financially successful has had mentors or people along the way that gave them opportunities that they turned into bigger opportunities.

SPEAKER_01: 31:59

Yeah, absolutely. And and people don't realize that it's the mentorship, it's the business partners, it's the customers who are purchasing the product. Like it all happens. Like you have to have relationships there, and no one does it on their own. Um, yeah, and then the last one, spirituality. How do you how do you feel about spirituality?

SPEAKER_00: 32:20

Well, as a as a person who hasn't been who was raised Catholic and has not been the most spiritual person in the world his whole life, I have grown spiritually considerably over the last 15 years. Really? I met my wife on we went on our first date um about 18 years ago. And she's a tremendous lady. And at the end of the day, I I converted to baptism, uh, to Baptist, excuse me. Uh and it's a it's an important aspect of our life. Uh we don't I don't wear it on my on my you know, on my shoulder, yeah, of course. On my arm, because I think everybody should have a right to their own feelings about spiritual spirituality. Um, but I think if if you believe in something bigger than yourself or bigger than all of us, it's a it makes for a better world. Okay. Uh it gives you something to to to know that there is a being out there that has got all of us in his hands in one way or another.

SPEAKER_01: 33:34

Absolutely. And knowing that we're all connected, you know what I mean? No, knowing that we're all unified. And it doesn't really matter about the religion or any of that, but it's this idea that we're all we're all together. Um Carlos, you're you're incredible.

SPEAKER_00: 33:50

I don't know about that, but I'm just an old white-haired guy that likes to work.

SPEAKER_01: 33:56

Well, I mean, you've shared a lot of knowledge. Is there any tips that you would give to someone who's beginning on their journey?

SPEAKER_00: 34:05

I think if you're really beginning on your journey, is the simple most important thing is to uh uh accumulate some capital that you can invest. And you've got to look at your sit down like when I did when I went broke in 1992, 93, and I sat down in bed and didn't want to get out of bed, and and I had a legal pattern. I started writing down all the money I spent, and I realized I was spending money on a bunch of stupid stuff that wasn't necessary, and I could live significantly you know uh well below what I was spending, but I had to cut out all of the little extras that add up that you just take for granted, and you have to take that money and stick it into a savings account because the opportunity will come to everyone, and then again, doesn't mean that the opportunity comes and you invest and you and you make it. Sometimes you'll fail. I've lost many, many millions of dollars in my life, many millions, lost, gone. But another thing I gave you advice, you and anybody that listens to this thing is once you lose money, you put it in the rearview mirror. Don't think about it, figure out what you learned from it and go forward. Do not for one minute take a step back. Never, never step back. If you lost the money, don't fret about it, don't agonize over it. It's gone. Go figure out how to get back on your feet and do it all over again.

SPEAKER_01: 35:32

I love that. I love that. Carlos, where can people learn more about you? Learn more about your company.

SPEAKER_00: 35:38

Well, I don't do any of this. You're the only social media I've ever done in my life. Oh, really? That's incredible. You are the only thing I've ever done in my life because you were so diligent about calling me. I said, I owe this poor guy. But I'm not a social media, I don't do Instagram, I don't do Facebook, I don't do none of that stuff. Not that I think there's anything wrong with it. I just am a very relatively private person. And now I've given you 35 minutes of my private life.

SPEAKER_01: 36:10

Well, if you guys like Carlos and you want to support Carlos in any way, just pass on the lessons that he's given to us today. I think this is absolutely amazing. Thank you, Carlos, for the time.

SPEAKER_00: 36:22

Thank you. Enjoy your trip and safe travels.