How Real Estate Cash Flow Creates Freedom with Rentals, Restoration, and Smart Investing

Ayan Gonzalez (00:00)
And then when the house gets finished,

You know, that’s it. You just repeat. You go, you get an investor loan. They usually give you about 70 percent, no income verification. So you don’t even have to have financial statements or anything. So if you if you put in. 120, 130 thousand and you finish it, it’s worth maybe 180. Then you go to the bank and you say, hey, can I get my 120, 130 thousand? They’ll give it to you. You rent it out. You got to.

nice $400, $500, $800 a month positive cash flow, and then you just do it again.

Michelle Kesil (02:08)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Ayan Gonzalez, who has his own business working on insurance, mold, and other remediation for construction, as well as real estate investing. So excited to have you here today.

Ayan Gonzalez (02:34)
Thank you. Nice to be here.

Michelle Kesil (02:37)
Okay, great. So let’s dive in.

First off, for those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Ayan Gonzalez (02:46)
⁓ I have three companies. One is a handyman company where we send people out and they do miscellaneous things ⁓ from a ceiling fan installation to dishwasher repair, whatever. And I have a remediation restoration company which specializes in mold, fire, water damage, hurricane damage, wind damage, lightning strikes, anything related to insurance work.

And then the third company is a development company where I will buy a piece of property, build a house or I’ll buy a handyman or a damaged property and then I’ll restore it. And then I’ll add it to my rental portfolio, cash out the money and then repeat.

Michelle Kesil (03:36)
Awesome. In which markets do you operate in?

Ayan Gonzalez (03:40)
We’re primarily located in central Florida. ⁓ Lived in Florida most of my life. ⁓ Our area primarily is between Orlando and Tampa. We’re about 45 minutes south of Disney World. So we’re in a perfect spot where everything is growing towards us. And ⁓ all the people from up north are heading this way and we’re just here to receive them.

Michelle Kesil (04:08)
Yeah, and is that where you invest as well?

Ayan Gonzalez (04:12)
Yes, I try to farm within 30-45 minutes of our home base. I try to stay in the general area of central Florida.

Michelle Kesil (04:26)
Awesome, and how did you get into this line of work?

Ayan Gonzalez (04:30)
I started out when I was 18 years old. I had a ⁓ bad situation where I was working as an employee where the manager disrespected me and I didn’t like it. So I decided I’m never going to work for anybody. And I started out doing handyman work that progressed into drywall. Eventually that led into interior build out where we would do a Frederick’s of Hollywood, Radio Shacks, McDonald’s, Burger King build outs.

That eventually turned into general contracting, where I started doing ⁓ larger jobs, ⁓ multi-story, and I started doing housing developments. And then ⁓ that eventually led into insurance work. And it got to the point where I had 400 employees at one time.

And ⁓ I retired back in 2006. I got bored out of my mind and I came back in 2008.

And ⁓ that’s where I’ve been now, but I’ve given up the big 400 employee direction. I prefer just having eight or 10 people and keeping it simple. I’m basically retired, but I stay busy and I teach my children the business. And I mentor, I also mentor ⁓ other people.

Michelle Kesil (06:42)
Awesome. And what do you feel have been some of the main keys that allow your business to grow and run successfully?

Ayan Gonzalez (06:54)
The main thing for us is ⁓ basically we do what no one else does. That’s how we stay in business. So if you go to a job site, for example, we clean up after ourselves. ⁓ We educate the homeowner or the customer. We provide ⁓ detailed estimates. Nobody does that. Everybody gives a general number. We tell them how many feet of baseboard or how many square feet of paint or how many square feet of tile.

We basically have an open book policy with our clients. And ⁓ then we also concentrate on educating and teaching our employees to eventually open their own businesses and then move forward and do their own thing. And then that leads to relationships. And then over the years, they always come back to you and they said, hey, I got something here I can’t handle. Do you want to do it? So I would say our

Success is basically based on doing what other people don’t do. Just wear uniform, clean truck, respectful with the customer, show up when you say you’re going to show up, keep them informed. And those are things that people don’t do. So if you do them, you’re not going to have a problem. You’re going to be in demand.

Michelle Kesil (08:12)
Yeah, absolutely. And what have been some of the obstacles or challenges that you’ve overcome through your work?

Ayan Gonzalez (08:21)
The biggest obstacle I had in the very beginning was when I started out doing drywall as a drywall contractor in the eighties. And I started doing work ⁓ where I was subcontracting from general contractors. And I learned real quick that that’s not the way to go because ⁓ every Friday you have to wait for the contractor to answer the phone call and, and

have a check for you. And I learned that in this industry, the trades ⁓ within five years, about 48 % of companies fail. And within 10 years, about 85 % of companies fail. So I realized that I’m working subcontracting from all these companies that are going to fail. And they don’t know how to run their businesses. They don’t know how to handle their cash flow. And then I have to wait to get paid because of their mistakes.

So I decided I’m not doing that anymore. I’m going to be the top dog. So I decided to become the general contractor. got my license and then I started doing general. So I started controlling the cash. So when you control the cash, it makes it a lot easier. So I don’t have to wait on Fridays for a paycheck from, from, for a draw from a contractor to pay my men. I have the cash because when I do the work, I get the cash upfront from my customers.

Michelle Kesil (09:41)
And what about investing? How did you get into that?

Ayan Gonzalez (10:18)
While investing, touch commodities, gold, silver. I was into that until we had this recent ⁓ explosion. I guess we’re double tripled over the last six or eight months. And then I got out of that temporarily until it resets. ⁓ And then in real estate, basically one of the things that I did to help to keep my employees is I would buy, let’s say a handyman house for

$80,000 cash, let’s say. And it needs maybe…

50 or $60,000 worth of work. I started out where I would keep one of these houses always in my portfolio. And that way, if we ever got slow, if for some reason I didn’t have work for my men next Tuesday, I would just say, hey, go work on the house. So having that little house on reserve gave me the opportunity to keep my best guys. So I don’t have to worry about keeping my people employed.

And then when the house gets finished,

You know, that’s it. You just repeat. You go, you get an investor loan. They usually give you about 70 percent, no income verification. So you don’t even have to have financial statements or anything. So if you if you put in. 120, 130 thousand and you finish it, it’s worth maybe 180. Then you go to the bank and you say, hey, can I get my 120, 130 thousand? They’ll give it to you. You rent it out. You got to.

nice $400, $500, $800 a month positive cash flow, and then you just do it again.

then if you just do one a year or two a year, I mean, you can do as many as you want, but you just keep adding them to your portfolio. And then eventually it becomes cash flow. And cash flow is key to longevity in any industry. It’s just getting that steady check every month and then equity building and…

paying down the mortgage over the years. So you have houses that I did 30 years ago that have no mortgage now, and then you can just get a loan on it. So it becomes Monopoly. You’re basically playing Monopoly, but for real.

Michelle Kesil (12:33)
Yeah, and what have been some of the lessons that you’ve learned through investing?

Ayan Gonzalez (12:39)
The biggest lesson I personally have learned is ⁓ that everything always has a way of working itself out. ⁓ I’ve learned to resist going all in on deals and I’ve learned to be patient when something doesn’t work out. Just give it time until it works itself out and not panic. A big lesson I learned ⁓

which I kind of touched on a little bit at the very beginning is control your own money, become your own bank. You why am going to spend $5,000 on Tesla stock or something in the stock market? Why don’t I just put in my own company? I can take $5,000 and fix something, fix up a house, and I can turn it into $10,000 in a year. Why would I put it into some stock?

That’s going to give me 8 % or 15 % return when I can get infinity. If I take and I buy a handyman house and I fix it up and I get all my money back out, what’s my return on investment? Infinity. So that’s basically what I shoot for is I always shoot for deals where I make infinity, where I get my cash back and you know, just those are the criteria that I followed. You know, I stay away from high risk.

⁓ I stay away from the crowd. I usually get in when people want to get out. House is damaged, it’s destroyed. People want to get out. I get in. Gold is too expensive. Everybody’s going in and the price is climbing. I get out. Nobody wants it. The price drops. I get in. you select it. It goes back to the original thing I said. You do what no one else does.

do opposite of what everybody else does and you should do fine.

Michelle Kesil (14:36)
Yeah, absolutely. And what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Ayan Gonzalez (15:24)
In my particular case, I’m not really interested in scaling. mean, how many steaks can you eat? How many flat screen TVs can you have? How many cars can you have? You know, it comes a point that you realize it’s not really about the money. It’s about freedom, you know. So as long as I do things where it doesn’t require me to become enslaved or

Another way to put it is I don’t get into something where I’m creating a job for myself. know, I create systems, I help people do things. ⁓ And basically,

always work things out to where I don’t have to do it, where it becomes autopilot, where it runs on itself, where it’s a system where it doesn’t depend on me to make the decision. If something has to depend on me to make the decision, it’s not going to get done. I’m doing my own thing. So ⁓ I would say that that’s a key element in the way I invest or in the way I spend my time is I value my freedom more than anything else. And as long as I have freedom,

I really don’t care how much money I have. If I have the freedom to go to the beach tomorrow, or if I want to go to Disney World for the weekend, if I want to go to Japan for a week, I don’t need to have $100 million to do that. A trip to Japan, round trip, seven, eight hundred bucks, you get some nice rooms for a couple hundred bucks, and that’s it, you’re traveling the world. You don’t need to be filthy rich to get to the point where you have the freedom to be able to do that.

Michelle Kesil (17:04)
Yeah, absolutely. But are you looking to expand in real estate at all?

Ayan Gonzalez (17:11)
No, I’m not. In my case, you have to come to the conclusion, when is it enough? When’s enough enough? Is it a hundred houses? Is it a thousand houses? Is it 50,000 houses? mean, there’s always going to be the next level. You just have to decide where am I comfortable? You know, I’m comfortable with being free.

You know, you want to work to have a $50 million yacht? Wonderful. Great. I can rent a yacht for two, three days. I don’t have to own a $50 million yacht. You know, I can I can take a private jet, you know, for a day or two. I don’t need to own a $30 million jet.

You know, and when you see things in that manner, it’s like, you know, when is enough enough? There comes a point that you just have to decide for yourself what’s that for you, you know, and it could be, it could be something as simple as having your house paid off and making 30, $40,000 a year. And that’s enough. You have what you want. Well, somebody else might want to make a million dollars a year.

I’ve been there, done that, and ⁓ I find that it’s much more enjoyable when I don’t have the chest pains and the 400 employees and the lack of freedom, the lack of free time. I’m 64 years old. I value free time more than I ever did. With free time, I can spend time with my kids. I can spend time with my family. I can concentrate on other investments. I have the time to research, to verify things.

When I’m running with my head chopped off, it’s not fun. And you come to the realization, you know what? I don’t know if this is worth it. Some people come to that realization, some don’t. You know, it depends on the individual.

Michelle Kesil (19:15)
Yeah, definitely, that makes sense. Thanks for sharing your perspective. And so what are you looking forward to as far as any opportunities or things that you want to get across in your business moving forward?

Ayan Gonzalez (19:19)
Sure.

As far as opportunities, I’m keeping an eye on Cuba right now. I’m hoping that it turns into opportunities. I’m Cuban American. I came from Cuba when I was five years old. I know the history of the island and I am keeping my eyes open to it because ⁓ if that gets liberated…

And it allows ⁓ American investments. I’m going down there. I’m going to set up shop and I’m going to start building houses for people that want to go down there to retire. Just just to enjoy it. ⁓ That’s the only real thing that I’ve got as far as that I might be looking towards. ⁓ I don’t really care about crypto. I don’t care about, like I said, stocks. I’m keeping an eye on the ⁓ the monetary shift that’s going to happen. The ⁓ the reset were.

⁓ You got to make sure you have your money in the right place. So when the reset comes, you don’t get as affected. ⁓ And then other than that, I’m just enjoying life and consulting. I’m doing a lot of mentoring. I have a YouTube channel that I’m starting ⁓ in the next week or two. It’s called the Nations House Doctor. And it’s basically just going to be videos telling you how to decontaminate your house. If you have mold, how to clean it. If you have

soot from fire, how to get rid of smells, and then ⁓ do some consulting on the side. ⁓ Young people wanting to get into the industry or looking for advice on how they could ⁓ fix certain problems that they have. And I do that for free. I just do it as time permits. I can’t do it every day, but…

Every once in a while I get an email somebody asking for something and I’ll spend a half hour with them on the phone or on a Zoom call and just talk.

Michelle Kesil (21:39)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of that. And before we begin to wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect and learn more, where can people find you and connect?

Ayan Gonzalez (21:53)
Well, my channel is going to be breaking in a few days. ⁓ It’s going to be, like I said, The Nation’s House Doctor. My personal ⁓ business email is [email protected]. Our website is empmrc.com. Basically Empire Mitigation, Restoration Consulting. ⁓

You know, if somebody wants a recommendation, what’s a good book I could read to learn about this or, know, feel free to reach out and time permitting, I’m more than happy to help. I’m always willing to throw a rope to someone. I’m not going to pull them up, but I’m going to throw a rope to them so that they can pull themselves up, which is something I didn’t have when I started out. I had to figure all this out on my own. We didn’t have.

chat GPT or YouTube or cell phones or when I started out, if you wanted to learn how to do something, you had to go to the library. So today, the opportunities people have are phenomenal. Unbelievable opportunities that I see them every day, everywhere.

You just have to go out and look for it. They’re just they’re just there for the taking just depends on if the individuals willing to to do what needs to be done.

Michelle Kesil (23:25)
Perfect, well appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Ayan Gonzalez (23:30)
Sure.

Michelle Kesil (23:32)
And for the listeners that are tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We have more conversations with operators who are building real businesses and we will see you on our next episode.