From Zero to Hero: How Gonzalo Corzo Built a Real Estate Empire

John Harcar (00:01.567)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar. I’m here today with Gonzalo Corzo. And what we’re going to talk about with him, you know, besides his journey in business and real estate is, you know, really the importance of building your brand, right? Really making your mark, letting people know who you are. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers. I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business.

You know, it’s, the tools, the resources in the community to, to help scale your business to where you want to go, which in turn helps you live that life you’ve always dreamed of. so good Zalo man. Welcome to our show.

Gonzalo Corzo (00:38.742)
Yeah. Thanks man, thanks for having me.

John Harcar (00:43.007)
Yeah, I appreciate you coming on here. Excited to talk about it. I love talking about branding. I mean, let’s be honest, I love talking about all real estate. But that I like how, you know, different people come up with different solutions to their branding problems. But before we talk about all that, you know, let’s dig into you, man. Tell your audience or our audience a little bit about your experience, your your growth and your journey in business and real estate and what brought you to today.

Gonzalo Corzo (01:08.398)
Yeah, man. So I got into the game. So I’m in Jacksonville, Florida, own a company called Cash Geeks Homebuyers. I got into the game in late 2014. I had just graduated high school. My older brother is a realtor, and he completely changed his career to become a realtor. And he was getting into the – and the only reason he became a realtor is because he was getting into real estate investing.

John Harcar (01:20.863)
Mmm.

Gonzalo Corzo (01:36.256)
And he took me to a seminar when I was 18 years old, and he was like, you should do real estate. I was like, nah, it doesn’t really appease me. was going to school to be a cop. I was fresh out of high school. was in community college getting my AA in criminology and go to the seminar. Literally two weeks later, I convinced my parents to let me drop out of school, give me six months to figure out how to make real estate work.

John Harcar (01:49.277)
wow.

Gonzalo Corzo (02:05.618)
And so I got a job at a wholesale company. So I was trying to figure out wholesaling, linked up with the mentor, and it really turned into more of like an internship and then a job as a disposition manager at a wholesale company. And that’s what took me to Jacksonville, Florida. I’m originally from Bradenton, Sarasota area, right under Tampa and Florida. So.

John Harcar (02:25.064)
Okay.

Gonzalo Corzo (02:34.092)
I started doing that in 2015 and then in 2017 I left them and started my own company called Cash Geeks. In 2017 my main focus was just wholesaling. So I had a partner at the time. I partnered up with another investor that I had met. He had a lot of business experience and I had a lot of the market wholesale experience and he had more of just business management experience. I was 21. We partnered up and

We did it. We made a lot of noise, At our prime in like 2021, obviously the market was on our side and hedge funds were buying like crazy. So we, we systemized a lot, focused very heavy on systems processes, scaling. And we got to the point where we were doing 300 plus deals a year, four mill plus a year and wholesaling, strictly wholesaling. And

John Harcar (03:12.894)
Sure.

John Harcar (03:28.254)
Wow.

John Harcar (03:33.607)
incredible.

Gonzalo Corzo (03:35.31)
And then the interest rates went up in 22. And our failure was becoming solely dependent on hedge funds to buy. So our business model relied on about eight different clients. And we were only looking for inventory like shifted throughout the time. Where I was like, hey, why don’t we just keep looking for inventory for these guys? And it made it exactly. They’re paying the most. And it made it the easiest to scale because

John Harcar (03:46.334)
you

John Harcar (03:59.25)
They’re paying the most why not

Gonzalo Corzo (04:04.172)
We have the same client that can buy in 15 states. We don’t have to go to a new state or a new market and figure out the new buyers list and all this. We can just take orders in multiple states and multiple markets. And so it was awesome while it lasted. But then in 22, slowly but surely, they started changing their buy box. They turned off. And I had a machine. We had like 25 employees in office. We had like 30 VAs cold calling.

And we slowly but surely had to restructure, and that led to me and my partner at that time parting ways. And we’re still buddies today. We own rentals together. We still do deals together. I just bought a house from him a couple months ago. But we decided that we – me and him decided we don’t know what we’re going to do.

in the future, like in the near future because of the market. So I had ideas of what I wanted to do. He had ideas of what he wanted to do. So we just decided to part ways and I ended up buying him out of the company. So I kept cash geeks and at that point it was re-figuring out myself, right? What do I do? And I leaned into my network. And so I partnered up with a couple of

Not like full business partners, but just by project. I partnered up with Flippers because I knew I could find deals, and the wholesale margins were going down. And at the same time, the buyers, all the buyers, local buyers, were also trying to figure out what to do. How many projects are we going to buy? The market is slowing down. Nothing is selling. And so I felt that the best thing for me to do was to get into position where I can control the asset, where I can buy the house.

John Harcar (05:46.888)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Gonzalo Corzo (05:59.86)
And so I raised some money, some private money, friends and family, other local investors, and we started buying houses. And I partnered up with a flipper that I had known for years. He was a client of mine. had been selling him houses. And he wanted to do more deals, but needed to find deeper deals now because of the market. You need to buy deeper.

And so we did like in 20 between 2023 and 2024. We did about 30 flips 40 flips But the goal was to do more but the retail market right now It’s it’s not good, right, especially in Jacksonville, Florida Inventory is creeping up like crazy. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of competition when you go to list of houses a lot of active inventory and so

And prices rose very quickly in Jacksonville during the COVID years. And so they’re coming down kind of quickly, right? So we decided to not, me and my partner, my flipper partner, we still do deals together, but now it’s more of instead of me and him in on the deal together, I’ll find the house and just get some sort of like a JV flip fee.

And then and then I can control the house if I you know sell it to somebody else awesome Or I’ll bring it to my flip partner and we still flip them together now So that’s what my business looks like now I found I figured out that I’m really good at finding deals if I’m able to close on them and so that’s What I am doing now. I’m just buying houses from my network either through realtors or wholesalers I have a large network of wholesalers because of how big we were in the wholesale industry

John Harcar (07:26.322)
Got it.

Gonzalo Corzo (07:55.234)
We got a little bit into coaching as most people do, right? In the investment world. We got a little bit into coaching. So we had a large network of that and we had a whole JV department in my wholesale business. So if you had a deal and you wanted to sell to the hedge funds, we were the guys that had the connections to all the hedge funds. So you would just bring us deals and we would sell them for you. So when everything started slowing down, I stopped when I parted ways with my business partner.

John Harcar (08:01.16)
Right.

Gonzalo Corzo (08:25.334)
I completely stopped marketing. Cold turkey. I was scared. Yeah. And so I was scared to spend any money because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’m leaving my business partner. I have a couple of team members left from Cash Geeks and I don’t know what to do. So I’m going to cut marketing and only lean into my JV department because I can count on other wholesalers deals. Sure. The margins aren’t the best.

John Harcar (08:28.403)
Mmm, yeah, yeah, there kills it.

Gonzalo Corzo (08:52.856)
But I don’t have to spend any money while I figure things out. And so quickly I realized there was a big need for – other wholesalers were also struggling to sell their properties. But what I found was the deals were getting better because of the lack of buyers. I just had to be able to close on them. And so I realized that I can find good deals. The retail market isn’t the best.

John Harcar (09:17.214)
Mm-hmm.

Gonzalo Corzo (09:23.074)
But if I can secure the asset and close on it, then I can do whatever I want to do with it afterwards. I can wholesale it. I can wholesale it. We’ve started doing that a lot more. It’s just trash out the place, cut the grass, make it walkable, not livable, but make it so that people can at least walk the property, and then turn around and resell it. Or we have the option to completely renovate it and resell it then. And so I quickly figured out…

John Harcar (09:30.974)
I’ll tell it.

Gonzalo Corzo (09:53.058)
The key in this market is to have the cash to take down assets very quickly because there’s a lot of uncertainty and there’s a lot of last-minute people backing out of deals. Hard money is harder to get on deals. Hard money lenders are getting stricter. And so just last week on Wednesday, a wholesaler called me up and he was like, I’m supposed to have a closing on Friday. Buyer backed out. Money didn’t come in. I tried to get an extension from the seller.

John Harcar (09:59.347)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gonzalo Corzo (10:22.862)
seller doesn’t want to extend, what can you pay? And so – I got it done. Closed on Friday. And that’s because I’ve raised the private money, have the cash ready to go.

John Harcar (10:34.332)
Yeah. So is that what you’re using most of is private money versus any type of hard money or anything like that?

Gonzalo Corzo (10:41.154)
Correct. It’s just private money. Luckily, because of my local network and brand, I also have a lot of local mom and pop private lenders that have seen me go from this Dispo guy at a random wholesale company to now being one of the biggest wholesalers in Jacksonville. They trust me a lot with their money. They trust my reputation. Obviously, it’s secured by the real estate asset.

That’s how I’m mainly using my money. And the reason for that is because the way that I buy is I want to be the guy that that bails you out. Right. That’s how I find the deep deals. Right. And I know the game. So if you send me a deal, I’ll tell you straight up, listen, man, I’m probably not going to be the strongest buyer for this. Right. Like I’m going to be here, but in my wholesale experience, you can probably sell this for like 10, 15, 20 grand more. Right. Go get it. If you don’t call me and my offer is like, I’m not, I’m not a big pushy sales guy.

It’s like my offer is still going to be good. I’m not that kind of guy that’s like, hey, if you don’t take my offer today, I’m going to buy something else. I want to buy volume. So if you call me on Tuesday and say, hey, I’m ready to take your offer. You got a close tomorrow, I’m in. And so because of the way that I buy, also I buy a lot of weird situations. And so it makes it harder to get into the house. What I mean by that is because of my deal expertise of all the deals that I’ve done, I’ve done over 1,000 deals now, we’ve

John Harcar (11:41.534)
Sure, yeah.

Gonzalo Corzo (12:09.742)
We’ve dealt with squatters. We’ve dealt with city violations. We’ve dealt with fire damage properties. We’ve dealt with condemned houses. And so as a wholesaler in my career, I don’t want the buyer to back out for an issue that he can’t solve. I’m going to solve the issue and figure out how can he still close on the deal, whether it’s a title issue or whatever. And so because of that, we’ve put out hundreds if not thousands of fires.

John Harcar (12:12.318)
Hmm

John Harcar (12:24.52)
Right. Yep.

Gonzalo Corzo (12:37.152)
So because I have the certainty of how to handle those situations, I’ll buy the house with the situation. So I’ll buy houses with liens. I’ll buy houses that I just bought a house. I’ll buy side unseen. I’ll buy houses that have squatters. I’ll kick out the squatter. tell the wholesalers, don’t even got to worry about the squatter. I’ll close on it. As long as they have pictures and I can walk it. And even if I can’t walk it, as long as I have pictures, I’ll go ahead and close on it. I’ll deal with the headache.

So I’ve had people sell me fire damage stuff, condemn stuff, things that you’re not allowed to access. Like how do you access a property that says you’re not allowed to access? They don’t know, the seller doesn’t know, well I know how to go get an access pass from the city or whatever it is, right? And so leveraging my buying power to buy quickly with my deal expertise has been my…

John Harcar (13:06.386)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (13:20.71)
Right, right, right, right.

Gonzalo Corzo (13:32.366)
This is now what my business is. How can I buy properties that other investors can’t buy? They want to buy it, but they can’t because they either can’t get in or their hard-money lender needs to get inside again to approve the deal. The squad or the tenant won’t let them in. Or sometimes there’s a tenant where there’s a tenant that has – they’re on a month-to-month lease. The flipper is not going to buy it because they don’t know how to deal with that tenant. They don’t know if they’re going to how are they going to deal with this individual?

John Harcar (13:57.758)
Mm-hmm.

Gonzalo Corzo (14:02.058)
And so a lot of times buying some sort of occupancy issue I’ve noticed is really good for me. I have a house right now that has a 45 day post occupancy. The seller was only willing to do the deal if they could stay in the house for 45 days. Flippers don’t love that. Hard money lenders don’t love that. I don’t care. I’ll take it down. I’ll wait the 45 days and then sell it. Yes, we do a hold back.

John Harcar (14:20.839)
No.

John Harcar (14:24.734)
Do you do a hold back in that regard? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, it sounds like you figured out and you solved a lot of solutions. mean, what do you think have been the, you your main keys to success of, mean, it seems like you know how to pivot, you know that.

So what do you think of the things that really kept you going?

Gonzalo Corzo (14:47.042)
Yeah, I would say the things that have kept me going is…

I’ve been part of a lot of mastermind groups and that is my biggest, you know, that’s why I’m here, right? Been part of a lot of groups and that is where I get my hope for the future, if that makes sense, because I wasn’t around in 08 and I know 08 was a lot worse than what we’re going through now. And I’m in these mastermind groups with a bunch of investors who had gone through 08 and I was learning through them in this little hiccup.

John Harcar (15:08.126)
100 %

Gonzalo Corzo (15:21.688)
how to navigate, right? And so hearing people that have like, they’re on the top of the world now, knowing that, you know, in a way they lost everything. So that gave me kind of that certainty of, this is just my time to reinvent myself. You know, we always hear real estate has cycles, it’s up and downs, but when you start in 2015 and then you get COVID, like I had never experienced a down, you know, it was only up and up and then it got even better, right? And so.

John Harcar (15:47.878)
Right, right,

Gonzalo Corzo (15:53.169)
Like it it was just my like I realized this is my time to reinvent myself and Repivot and have that story of hey back in you know, 22 when the hike when the rate increased I had to pivot I had to completely reinvent myself new business model knew what you know what I mean? and so I just understood hey, this is my time now and Seeing everybody and hearing everybody how they did it when it was way worse like

John Harcar (16:05.713)
Right.

Gonzalo Corzo (16:20.494)
If they can do it, I can do it, especially with information nowadays and the groups that I’m in now. These masterminds didn’t exist back then. You couldn’t ask for advice. You couldn’t ask people for help. And so that honestly has been the biggest thing for me is I always invest in being in some part of a mastermind of some sort. And most of the time don’t get me wrong – in masterminds, there’s…

John Harcar (16:23.89)
Yeah. Yep.

John Harcar (16:30.545)
No.

Right.

John Harcar (16:42.62)
Mm-hmm.

Gonzalo Corzo (16:47.278)
The people that put them on are awesome, and they have successful businesses. But the individuals in the room are really the gold for me, right, is being able to – and I don’t got to tell you.

John Harcar (16:57.662)
100%, man, trust me.

When I, no, no, when I first started, you know, back in 2018 when I joined, I met, you know, Aaron Pimpas of Launch Control. And that was back when there was kind of in beta and that thing doubled my two X my business in three months, man. I mean, so it’s, it’s like you said, it’s the people, it’s the connections. And I, and I like how you talked about that guys at home. This is a big point. Be around people that are doing what you want to do that have been where you’ve been that can help guide you because it shortens that learning curve, you know?

Gonzalo Corzo (17:14.456)
Exactly.

John Harcar (17:30.538)
And it sounds like that you, you you see that value, you talk about the mastermind, you talk about the mentors, you know. So do you feel that without that type of guidance or those type of, you’re pursuing that type of stuff, you’d be where you’re at today?

Gonzalo Corzo (17:48.362)
Absolutely not. There’s no way. I would not be where I’m at without being part of these groups. would have… It’s very hard. It’s different when you read something in a book versus when you meet someone who’s also read the book, done everything in the book, and then shows you the results. That’s when you’re like, okay, this… Exactly. And then you’re like, this isn’t just a concept.

John Harcar (18:10.046)
And shows you the shortcut, right?

Gonzalo Corzo (18:16.17)
or like, I do what this book is saying? It’s like, no, now I have, now I can text the guy who is, who’s done, implemented and it’s like, hey, read this book, but also watch out for chapter three. Like chapter three was the most important part. Like you need to only reach out, you know, so you get those little tips and tricks. And so there’s absolutely no way I would be where I’m at or, and, and, and I could have gotten to a certain point, but there’s no way I’d be today where I’m at today.

John Harcar (18:31.422)
Mm-hmm.

Gonzalo Corzo (18:45.622)
with, you know, it was in 22. It was a Mastermind event. We were in Belize. So we were in like paradise. And this was October of 22. So everybody in the Mastermind is like losing their crap in their business, right? But we’re in Belize in this beautiful spot in the world, but it’s like the hardest time for all of us in our business. And so we’re all sharing and I’ll never forget, man.

John Harcar (19:05.106)
Yeah, right, exactly.

Gonzalo Corzo (19:15.406)
One of the guys that I was talking to we were at the pool You know talking about how both of our business how our businesses were being affected and stuff and he was and he was telling me he was like I’ve been through this three times. You know, this is your first time and so like you’re gonna you’re gonna you’re Correct. Yeah, and he was like, but I’ll never forget I wish his biggest advice was I wish I would have made harder decisions quicker

John Harcar (19:29.95)
Right, get ready for another one later down the road.

Gonzalo Corzo (19:44.014)
because you know the decisions you need to make, but it’s hard to do them. And so you take your time, you delay them, you want to wait to see what happens with the market, you want to do whatever. And he was like, exactly, correct. And he was like, make the hard decisions faster in a time like this. And that was amazing advice. And I remember calling my business partner at the time from Belize being like, yo, we got to have some talks, you know?

John Harcar (19:55.792)
You want to find the perfect time, which never comes.

John Harcar (20:13.304)
Right?

Gonzalo Corzo (20:13.326)
And so absolutely, man, being part of those groups and having connections that have not only achieved what you want to achieve but also have dealt with the downturns. I didn’t realize how valuable that was because I never had been in a little downturn. I didn’t realize how valuable that was until – like that’s when I reached out the most. That’s when I leveraged the most.

John Harcar (20:28.755)
Yeah.

John Harcar (20:34.276)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Gonzalo Corzo (20:41.398)
my connections from my masterminds. I was calling everybody like, yo, what are you doing? What are you seeing? What, you know? And so absolutely, man, there’s, I attribute, and I say this locally, right? Cause I have, I speak a lot and local engagements and stuff like that. And I became one of the top wholesalers in Jacksonville. And it was only because of the masterminds that I was being a part of, only because of the personal development and the money that I invested in myself and the connections that I made.

John Harcar (20:43.774)
Yep, 100%.

John Harcar (21:05.054)
Yeah, of course.

John Harcar (21:09.758)
I love it.

Gonzalo Corzo (21:10.968)
Yeah.

John Harcar (21:12.382)
I love it, man, I love it. Before we sign off here, you are in Jacksonville. What’s a buy box? What are you looking for? Let people know that might be in the area that wanna do business with you, what you’re looking for.

Gonzalo Corzo (21:24.674)
Yeah, I pretty much buy everything, man. The only thing that I don’t buy – so right now, obviously everything has a price, but I look for cookie-cutter comps. That’s all I’m looking for. So if I have a product, if I have a house that I’m buying and it’s in a subdivision and almost all the houses are – look exactly the same, have the same kind of stats – bedrooms, baths, square footage then I’m in. Right? So the only thing that I would say I’m not buying is

If you send me a house on two acres that’s surrounded by a subdivision, then that house has a mobile home on it. Unique properties, those are tough for me to buy, right? I don’t have predictable results. That’s all I ask for. I don’t care if it’s a 115. Like, I’ve literally flipped a 11, 500 square foot condo, but it’s because there was a bunch of one bedroom, one bath, 500 comps. So if I have predictable results, I’ll buy it.

John Harcar (21:57.338)
Unique properties, yeah.

John Harcar (22:14.686)
A bunch of other ones in the thing.

Gonzalo Corzo (22:20.31)
Right, so that’s the only thing that I don’t buy is just weird properties, multiple houses on one lot, or whatever, right? But I’ll still buy them. I’m just probably not going to be as aggressive on my offer. But I like to buy everything.

John Harcar (22:32.926)
Okay, cool.

Sweet. If there are folks that are listening that have something for you or maybe want to talk and you something you said resonated, how do they get in touch with you?

Gonzalo Corzo (22:45.026)
Yeah, they can follow me on social media, Gonzalo Corzo, real Gonzalo Corzo on Instagram. They can go to my company website, cashgeeks.com, or they can just send me an email, gonzalo at cashgeeks.com, g-o-n-z-a-l-o at cashgeeks.com.

John Harcar (23:04.211)
Guys, I hope you enjoyed this, man. And I hope you picked up some good nuggets. mean, I know I did. Gonzalo, I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing all this. Folks, reach out to him if you’re doing business in the Jacksonville area. Or if you just, like I said, you just have questions. It sounds like he’s got a very extensive career with a lot of knowledge that can help you guys out. Gonzalo, have a happy Fourth of July, man. Appreciate you spending some time with us today. And guys, we’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Gonzalo Corzo (23:27.918)
So, goodbye.

Gonzalo Corzo (23:31.552)
Hey, thanks for having me, man.