Rise Above: How to Break Barriers and Thrive as a Serial Entrepreneur

Brett McCollum (00:00.801)
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Brett McCollum, and I am here today with Dominique Perea. And today we’re gonna talk about breaking barriers to become a serial entrepreneur. Guys, before we do, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 2 to 5X their businesses, allow them to build the business that they’ve always wanted, and to allow them to build the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Dominic, how are you, man?

Dominique Pereira (00:26.894)
I’m wealthy, how you doing, Brett?

Brett McCollum (00:28.807)
I am wonderful man. I am genuinely. This is gonna be one of those shows where I was we were talking pre show that I was like we’re gonna we could both talk for a bit like you’re like you’re my P I can already we don’t even know each other we just met I’m like dude he’s my people like this is great.

Dominique Pereira (00:43.95)
No, yeah, this is it go from a podcast or a whole conference or a summit, right?

Brett McCollum (00:49.153)
That’s something right? Yeah, if you’re at church, you’re gonna have an altar call at the end, right? Like that’s what I like. It’s gonna be good. Before we get too far in man, like start talking all about the things, tell people who are you man? Some history, how’d you get into reals? Like just give us some background.

Dominique Pereira (00:54.198)
I love it. Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (01:06.22)
Yeah, you mentioned Dominique Pereira, but my full name is Dominique Teca Ponsu Pereira. And that is because I was born and raised early life in Angola, Africa. I came here in early 90s through the efforts of my parents. And we were in a war torn country in Africa. And just through the education and effort that they’ve made, I was able to come here and I didn’t fully appreciate.

all that until you start growing up a little bit, start carving your own lane in life. But what happened is, and obviously September 11th, immigration became a little bit more difficult early on. And my documentation had lapsed here, so I was really undocumented growing up. And those were some challenges that started to present themselves as I was trying to get funding to get into college, didn’t apply.

or qualify for any government grants and or funding or loans, getting a driver’s license, just everything was a challenge and a barrier, but it was an opportunity. It built resilience for me. It’s like, okay, I’m getting this door closed right now, but let me ask somebody else that, let me get this, let me put, and I really persevered and did go into computer engineering and studied that just because my parents, was instilled.

Brett McCollum (02:18.049)
Mm-hmm.

Dominique Pereira (02:33.87)
that hey, education and medical life is going to take you further than presumably any other effort that you can make single-handedly. So as I was into computer engineering, I realized that you had to pay for school and I had to pay for college somehow and I couldn’t get a job really and couldn’t get grants or loans. So I started building websites and applications for companies and businesses and.

your mom and pop shop and this and that. So I started my technology company in college and it started growing from $500 a pop to $5,000. And I started realizing how companies, including government agencies, would start pushing you along and start helping getting you what you need when you start adding value to them. And all of a sudden, when I’m the cybersecurity expert, when I’m working, I started getting government contracts, ironically.

Brett McCollum (03:24.352)
Mmm.

Dominique Pereira (03:30.922)
Working with the Department of Defense working with the United States Border Patrol because I possess a skill set that they said, okay, you have this situation here that we can help you out with as long as you can help us out with this and that so that started understanding the synergy of offering value in business and Yeah, and we started growing the technology company, but unfortunately right around 2000

Brett McCollum (03:40.385)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (03:48.971)
That’s huge.

Dominique Pereira (03:56.97)
And we grew it, moved to from Philadelphia to Austin, Texas to expand the company. We were looking for a new home base and I wanted it be a technology hub. And I was feeling some type of way because even though this was still a small company, we’re doing government contracts, we’re doing private contracts. I’m not really making that much money as a de-owner though. mean, we’re just, paying for the office, I’m paying my employees, but I was looking at.

Brett McCollum (04:18.283)
Mm-hmm.

Dominique Pereira (04:24.49)
I’m talking with my bookkeeper. I’m like, man, some of these, some of our engineers are getting paid more than me. Right. I own the company. I own the equity, but I didn’t really even understand liquidity events or, or, you know, our exit strategy. So my take home pay as an owner and a founder was relatively low. And the even worse than that, what ended up happening is one of our larger clients. And at this time we were doing big company we’re working with.

Brett McCollum (04:29.473)
Mmm.

Dominique Pereira (04:54.038)
Google every Starbucks in the Northeast. We probably install the Wi-Fi for IBM We’re doing these big companies But I’ve not seen the type of money that I really was expecting and one of our larger clients You because also when you’re in you entrepreneur one thing that people don’t tell you is you can charge more You don’t realize that how to value your own service you just you know, I’m still that mindset of let me let me not

Brett McCollum (05:05.451)
Mmm.

Dominique Pereira (05:22.53)
to scare them off with the price. And one of these clients that we are working with went bankrupt. And we were so over leveraged with them. They were late on some invoices, but they would eventually pay. And then you start looking back as the owner saying, how did I let this get that far? And it’s, we’re gonna fast forward to real estate. How did I let this tenant get four months behind before I started this eviction process?

This contractor gets so far, like the money so, yeah, right? So, I realized that this was existential for my company. I’m gonna figure out a way to get out of this without losing, leverage of a hundred something thousand dollars and I could really lose my company. And we’re in Austin, Texas at the time. Or yeah, we just had moved to Austin, Texas and I decided I was listening to other ways of, you know.

Brett McCollum (05:50.793)
It translates. Yeah, for sure.

Dominique Pereira (06:18.486)
making money and leveraging whether we should buy our office space or lease it and blah, blah. And that’s what I started learning about real estate investing, whether it’s commercial, residential and the benefits of it, because we have to keep paying that rent no matter what. My client and I was like, man, at first I was resenting our landlord. I was like, I wish I was him.

Brett McCollum (06:44.833)
Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (06:47.34)
Then decided, okay, well, you know what? I’m in Austin. I’m renting here. Let me buy something. I was Airbnb-ing, actually, long-term Airbnb, just because I used to travel a lot for work. So, just nomadic in the nature of my business. I decided, let me buy a property. And because I know I still have to travel a lot, I’m just gonna Airbnb in some of the rooms. So I bought, even though it’s just me, I bought a four…

a four-bedroom home, needed some work, some paint, some stuff that even I felt that I could do and add some value to, wasn’t top of the market. based on the research that I was doing and watching you guys, watching so many other podcasts and YouTube videos, started seeing what type of value real estate investment had. So I bought that four-bedroom house in 2017.

And then I started right away, started renting out three of those bedrooms in Austin on Airbnb and then started covering my mortgage. I’m like, okay, well, let me pretend like this money is not here. Let me just put it straight to the side and use that for down payment for my next property. And then now I have two houses in this amazing market and I’m seeing the equity appreciation. I’m like, okay, I’m hooked. How do we scale this? And yeah, I got the bug. now I’m getting close to.

Brett McCollum (08:06.305)
Got the bug.

Dominique Pereira (08:12.366)
a hundred doors just over the last couple years, but some commercial properties in between then, some ended up buying a farm just to diversify the portfolio. So there’s, been a long road and a lot of journeys that have come from this, the singular path, so to speak, of financial independence.

Brett McCollum (08:38.629)
That, oh my, there’s a lot we can unwind here, right? Man, that’s incredible though, Dominique. Like that’s the power, mean, like as the entrepreneur spirit, you know, and I think, like you mentioned early on in the show of like the resilience that you may have faced early on that laid some foundation of, know, to be able to tackle that next thing, to be able to tackle that next thing, to be able to tackle that next thing.

Dominique Pereira (08:41.964)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (09:07.805)
When that happened with the technology business where the client went bankrupt and you had all these outstanding invoices, have to like, that’s one more door that’s being thrown in your face almost and you have to bounce back from it. Do you remember, you make it sound so like almost, and I know like as the owner of a company and stuff like this, when challenges hit, it’s our job as leaders to keep.

keep that level ahead to have that strong neck, right? But inside, was there any days where you’re like struggling? Like how are you feeling? That sort of thing.

Dominique Pereira (09:44.914)
yeah, I it’d be, I can probably tell you that there’s less days that I wasn’t struggling. I could probably count on one hand, like, okay, that was a good day, right? that, like, kind of, yeah, celebrate the good day. Yeah, because the reality is when you’re a entrepreneur and you’re starting out, people are buying into your vision. I have employees that are trusting your stewardship with their livelihood, right? Like they have kids, they have families and…

Brett McCollum (09:55.894)
You celebrate the good days, right? It’s like, my God, finally I had a good day.

Dominique Pereira (10:14.35)
You make the decisions to hopefully help put food on their table and they trust you and they especially when you’re a small company, they’re hoping to grow with you. And when you make a decision that jeopardizes that, it’s bigger than just your money, right? Like it’s bigger than just, okay, you almost feel like you failed even if you haven’t hit the bottom yet, right? Like it’s a slow train wreck because you don’t know how to get out.

Brett McCollum (10:31.169)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dominique Pereira (10:42.254)
You stop wanting to answer the phone because on the other end of that is just another problem. And you want to start and then you you don’t start trusting people. It’s like how do you guys you kind of didn’t allow me to if I was more focused on this we wouldn’t have gotten there but I let somebody else kind of handle that while I was focusing on this so you want to feel like maybe you have to still handle everything. So

Yes, at that time it was, it’s very easy to get into an entrepreneurial depression and the echo chamber and your own bubble. But I’ll give you one day. I don’t care. Take a Saturday, take a Sunday, do that, get in your sob, whatever. But the beginning of the week, there’s only one thing you need to start focusing on and that is a way forward. The good thing with entrepreneurship, the good thing with

Real estate is that sales solves a lot of problems Not all of them, but sales solves a lot of problems. So you need to re-evaluate Okay, what product do I have? What are the margins on it? How can I? improve this product to To give a better value proposition to somebody I have to be solving the problem and I have to have full conviction that i’m solving that problem and solving it exceptionally well now you have to

Humbly go out there and if you have to beg for business, then you have to say look we typically do this at 50,000 but our company is On a mission to get new clients like you What can I do to get your business and if you’re willing to pay me 50,000? I’ll take it but if you’re gonna pay me 20 10 Let me but let me prove to you that we’re the right business and that’s making phone calls and a lot of them and not and

throwing the notion away and this is sometimes just what you have to do as an entrepreneur. Obviously you have to stay balanced but throwing the notion away that business life is from nine to five. And maybe when things are good and hopefully that is the case so you can have some balance when things are great, it’s not even that much. But when you have a problem, yes, you have empty units that are costing you money.

Dominique Pereira (13:06.542)
Call that person at 7 p.m. and say, hey, you’re a lead. We have an apartment available. What can I do to get you in there this month? Why wait till tomorrow? Why wait? You have a leak? Call this plumber. Hey, you know what? I don’t have enough money to pay for a $5,000 fix right now, but what can I do to get you to help me? And you’ll start to understand that business

Brett McCollum (13:16.683)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (13:35.798)
Yes, it’s about money, but that’s only a subset of it. It’s about people. It’s about relationships. And if you’re being authentic, if you can express what you need, you’re going to get further. But so many of us get so in our shell, we don’t want to express when we’re in hard times. We don’t want to express when we need something and we just expect that people would know. And that’s not the case.

Brett McCollum (13:58.498)
Not the case at all. Yeah, that’s really good, So you buy this four bedroom property, you’re effectively house hacking it via Airbnb, right? Doing that. What was the, it’s 2017, how long did it take you to start building that portfolio out? Were you doing it immediately? Did you do that? Like when did that start?

Dominique Pereira (14:21.985)
Oh, yeah, immediately, immediately. Because I again, I had that quote unquote failure or near catastrophic failure with my technology business. I mean, we had talked about a runway of just a couple weeks at a point. right. Effectively, we could have I could have lost the business. And the problem with technology, if you’re a consultant, you’re a coach, you’re whatever that there’s so many are guru.

This day and age right you have all this knowledge and you work this hard whatever but you don’t really have anything tangible that you that you can leave on or or or sell Or that you built your business on right like somebody might like Dominique, but Aida we have a lot of clients because this is how I interact with them I’m very like passionate about technology and solving technology problems

Brett McCollum (15:06.401)
Mm-hmm.

Dominique Pereira (15:17.058)
But if Dominique Paredes, realized what was my business. It was me getting business, getting some whatever, but we don’t have these long-term, we don’t have a product that we’re selling month over month over month. And that was a problem for me because, and I didn’t know how to solve it, right? This time, this is before the AI revolution and whatever the case, we didn’t have a product. And I realized that if I were to quote unquote,

have to pivot directions in my business, I’d just be left with a couple computers, the laptops, the server, and an empty office. I’m like, wow, that’s, and like I said, I didn’t, wasn’t making a bunch of cash flow that I can say, well, at least I came out of here with a million dollars in positive cash or whatever. No, I had equity. Now I have equity of a failing business. And what good does that do me? So I didn’t want to find myself in that position again. And I liked the thought of real estate of

No matter what was happening, at least I have something tangible. At least I have something tangible. So as I solved the problem of my business and the business growth and the technology side, I started really investing in real estate, primarily with the income that I was getting, like I said, from my Airbnb. It was at that point, just so your audience has a notion of the type of money, it wasn’t a lot. I was making $2,500 a month.

on Airbnb from these four rooms. And now I’m like, okay, let me solve. I think I saved for six months, just that. And plus some of my secular money from technology. And then I went and got a loan for another single family home that we were gonna put out again on Airbnb and rent out. And it was amazing how fast.

That rented out. I got a check at closing Because somebody was already interested same day. So we started market. I started marketing it before closing I started marketing before closing and the day that I closed I got a check for For people that were gonna be moving moving again short term And then after that every every

Brett McCollum (17:14.859)
Right.

Brett McCollum (17:23.67)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (17:33.161)
Incredible. Yeah. And then, like, how did you grow that? Now, if you get 100 plus doors now, like, how do you how do you grow that like that quickly? Or are you? Is it a are you running a full fledged like acquisitions? Or like, how are you able to do that?

Dominique Pereira (17:49.696)
Yeah, no, and I appreciate that question where it’s almost like the most bootstrap way of growing a real estate portfolio. so after that, yeah, we just now just took that money and it became so interesting to me because the first two loans that I acquired was through traditional banks. And now I got an understanding of

bank, you know, you get two loans, but you made a hundred phone calls to understand your banking partners. But then I got linked up with, he was essentially a hard money lender and let me know, Dom, here’s some other property. Cause I wanted to start buying more fixer uppers and so forth. So the hard money lender out of Austin said, Hey, I think this market is going to blow up. You think so too. You seem knowledgeable. you know, well,

Spoken, educated, a good head on your shoulder. He let me know how much money is out there from these family accounts and people that are investing their money. And I’m like, he’s essentially saying I have this amount of money to invest with people that I believe in. You have to find the properties. And it’s the important thing about real estate and business. It’s finding the right mentorships. You have to be skeptical.

But there’s somebody that’s doing something that is going to seem like, wow, this guy’s lying to me. There is no way that he has access to that much capital. You know, like $5 million. So we started, I started, instead of buying single and duplexes, I started buying multifamily and started financing my multifamily acquisitions just through hard money.

and getting into the birth strategy of, okay, yeah, refine them out. Can you get these refied out over 12 months, over 24 months? And with the hard money lender and having a relationship and a conversation with them, I was always timid to really, I’m like, this is expensive money. This is like, I don’t really know. Some people might have some bad experiences.

Brett McCollum (19:43.659)
refining them out.

Dominique Pereira (20:08.582)
But what I started to appreciate is that they’re not as regulated as conventional banks. So somebody might tell you, hey, you know, we do 12 month loans and this and that. But if you can articulate what your vision is, what your goal is, I have this property. I know what I’ve went to all the meetups. I’ve done the courses. I’ve, you know, I’ve learned I want to put it in practice. And again, you’re not starting out with the biggest project, obviously, but I need 24 months, not 12.

Brett McCollum (20:37.067)
Right.

Dominique Pereira (20:38.704)
yeah, you just got to ask for what you want. Yeah, we can do that. We could do that. And so we started finding properties. say we, it’s just really me. And as I started growing, started saying, a lot of older people in Austin too, I have this property or I have a portfolio of properties that I can lump in to one acquisition as long as you can buy. And I was like, wow. I never knew so many people had.

Brett McCollum (21:02.389)
Right.

Dominique Pereira (21:07.022)
10 properties that I could just buy. then you start, and then the more you do it, now I’m getting called for deals. Like, Hey, there’s a small and we ended up buying a commercial multifamily in the Poconos. And then, Hey, here’s 25 units out in the Poconos. Okay. Can you flip it? All right. Then you start, okay. I don’t have a hard money lender in the Poconos. So how can I get this? Cause now I know how to math work.

Can you owner finance? How much money do I have to bring in? I, whoa, the guy said, yes, owner financing? Five years? Yeah, you gotta ask. He said owner financing, yes, for five years. And that’s how we got in. So all of a sudden my portfolio went from one to two, from two to eight, from eight to 20. Now in that, I’ll put it, and then we also have some properties.

Brett McCollum (21:44.225)
You ask. You gotta ask. Yep.

Dominique Pereira (22:06.75)
And like Louisiana some cheaper markets. these aren’t awesome is you know, the price per property is would say relatively high. So the door count isn’t always the important thing. It’s really the value and the cash flow and the equity. And depending on what your strategy is, please don’t get infatuated with somebody’s door count. Because like I said, you can buy something in a

Brett McCollum (22:21.441)
Truly. Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (22:32.462)
Ohio, guess I don’t know some some property that somebody has the strategy of having a lot of doors high cash flow, but they’re buying the property for $30,000 or something like that. So and that wasn’t necessarily our case. We I was experimenting with what works. I wanted to to find that mesh of of what worked and but buying portfolios with I guess nonconventional financing was was my my way.

Brett McCollum (23:00.255)
And you’re, yeah, and that’s, mean, it’s, just really cool. Like something clicked, right? And you’re like, I can do this, you know, like, yeah. You know, like, and then, your entrepreneurial drive that you carry just goes, yep, let’s get after it. I think that’s the secret almost, right? It’s not, I think all of us know everybody’s, you know, read a real estate book of some kind, like, you know, the quote unquote power of real estate.

Dominique Pereira (23:06.849)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (23:17.486)
Yeah!

Brett McCollum (23:30.145)
But the difference in, and I should back up to say, Dominic, you’re absolutely right. Don’t get infatuated by somebody’s door count. Because you also don’t know the debt they’re in, the stress they’re in, the vacancy rates that they’re having to deal with. You don’t know. Like it could be an absolute nightmare. However, that being said, I will say, for you to be able to go from one to two to 20 to 50 to a hundred, is a testament to actionable.

Dominique Pereira (23:41.623)
Mm-hmm.

that one.

Brett McCollum (23:59.754)
you know, like this worked, double down on this thing that works, but that’s the entrepreneurial drive, you know, that you carry and possess. And now you, I am, you said this earlier, like as a serial entrepreneur, you’re doing all these different things and now you bought a farm. Did I hear that correctly?

Dominique Pereira (24:03.34)
Yes.

Dominique Pereira (24:16.884)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. A 400 acre, we have a 400 acre organic blueberry farm, TECA farms like Dominique TECA farm Vareda. And that was for a couple of reasons. when, what I started realizing in real estate is it is a people business. There is somebody, the amazing thing about real estate is that

good or bad, there’s always somebody getting divorced. There’s always somebody unfortunately passing away. There’s always somebody that’s, that’s been in it for so long. They want to get out and they just want to make sure sometimes these are people’s babies. They’re like, who do I, even though they might no longer have a vested interest once they sell it, they want to sell it to the right person and talking to people and engaging with them and just saying, Hey, here’s what I’m looking to do. If you know somebody, boom.

Brett McCollum (25:02.464)
Mm-hmm.

Dominique Pereira (25:11.022)
and you start to get connected. But you have to really live the life. If you’re on social media, if you’re on whatever, you understand that companies, whether it’s Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, they pay millions, if not billions of dollars to market themselves and for people to know what they do, what they offer. Don’t think that you’re any different. You don’t have that budget, but if you think that anybody’s gonna care that you buy real estate without you telling them,

It won’t happen. So if you have Facebook, you have Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever, your own website, your own funnel, that’s you should be infatuated with, letting people know what you’re trying to do. With that, what ended up coming about that is, all right, I’m growing my portfolio with the issues that come along with it, right? When everything is rented out, it’s great, I love it.

When everything’s rented out and there are some leaks and tenant issues and I was like, okay, now this is kind of frustrated. But I didn’t want to. You know, so it was good growing a portfolio, but I also had other passions. also wanted this is a serial entrepreneur in me. I invested in a restaurant where we did a land deal plus the establishment and lease the, you know, the restaurant back to my own business. That’s the whole serial entrepreneur side. We ended up selling that so.

Um, then I talked to people a little bit about that information, um, if they’re interested, but I started exploring my passions with business. All right. Like I had a passion for technology. I got into technology company, had a passion for, for real estate. So I’m doing that. I don’t think that I have to wait until I’m 60 to retire and sit on hopefully a lot of money to say, now I can start doing this. Find what you love.

And then find a way to make money off of it without it being over-recumbersome and so forth. I love agriculture. I always had a small garden in Texas. There was no shortage of land. I was trying to do a land deal with somebody. They weren’t ready to sell. But like I said, it was just the relationship thing. said, okay, well, you’re not ready to sell. So what value can I bring to you? We don’t have to close the door here. Okay? So.

Dominique Pereira (27:30.264)
Well, you know, my grandfather used to do this and this is the older guy. We ended up somehow some way. We sat in on goats. I was like, all what if I, I lease it with you and we partner on this. I don’t own the land, but there’s a business opportunity here and I’ll have a right of first refusal to buy it later on. I ended up buying a couple goats and helping him, you know, really cultivate and keep his land going.

But knowing that I will have a right to buy it if this goes anywhere. But keeping that engagement open. So now I have about 200 goats there. It started with just like five or 10, but 200 goats in Texas. And I was like, I really like agriculture. I love hanging out with these goats. I love learning. And it’s just a break. So.

Brett McCollum (28:16.385)
Cool.

Dominique Pereira (28:22.338)
Texas is known for, if you go to Austin, there’s a lot of glamping out there. There’s a lot, and people will pay more to come hang out with the goats, right? Like you have to just be creative in your entrepreneurial journey. It doesn’t have to be like, okay, I have this and this is how it’s always been done. It’s like, I have goats. You want to come hang out with the goats? You want to do goat yoga? We rent goats out, we do whatever. So now people are like, can we come out? Can we glamp? Can we do this? Can we do that?

That property isn’t set up for that. We don’t I don’t have that property set up for that But it’s always been on the back of my mind So when there was an opportunity, yeah, so so that sat with me for a couple years Ashley and It last year no two years ago now there was a property that that I came across in Jersey

Brett McCollum (28:59.169)
But yeah, yeah, spread the idea.

Dominique Pereira (29:16.214)
It was larger than I was expecting, but it was just an absolute opportunity that unfortunately somebody passed away. The estate didn’t want to hold on to whatever the case that everybody had a problem that they’re trying to solve. And I presented a solution and all right. Farming doesn’t make that much money on the day to day for a lot of farmers. It’s no secret that that farming in the, in this country has been dwindling.

And so the other farmers around, they don’t want to purchase this because they just the amount of cultivation that needed to happen wouldn’t make sense. I looked at the property. said, okay, we could maybe bring in a little bit of income farming it, but we can make a lot of income glamping and agro tourism. So somebody will pay a lot more to have a wedding here and to just so.

Brett McCollum (30:04.683)
Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (30:10.118)
We bought the property 400 acres. Now we do you pick blueberries. We do something we’re setting up really for events and so forth. We’re still doing some of the infrastructure projects, but even in that. I was like, I can’t just have it sit here while we’re getting the infrastructure settled in. There’s a whole conversation that we can have about.

doing business in Jersey is way different than doing business in Texas, I’ll tell you that. So understanding local regulations, understanding state and Jersey’s heavily regulated. So we’ve had to pivot and while we’ve been waiting to get some of these permits, while we’ve been waiting to, you know, make sure that we are compliant with zoning and all of that, I don’t want to just have this property sit. So what can we offer, right? Like what can we offer? Okay.

Brett McCollum (30:39.723)
Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (31:04.086)
I can’t build my structures yet, but I’ll charge you 150 bucks to come out with your tent and just hang out. You come out. All right, I’ll charge you. Now we have guys coming out with some ATVs. We have hikers. So just getting creative and solving your problem. Don’t feel like when the door closes, there’s nothing else. So we bought the property because I understood, OK, this is a real estate play, but it’s also a value add for a potential business.

And now we’re just creating the business infrastructure behind this farm from an agro-tourism standpoint.

Brett McCollum (31:39.714)
Dude. I’m credible. It’s so cool. I know we could talk like all day with this, you know, like the, the path of entrepreneurship and what it affords like, Mike, you know, who we talked about pre-show and, you know, who runs investor fuel with us. He, he says all the time and I’ve started adopting it as well. Real estate is often the thing that leads to the thing.

Dominique Pereira (31:43.286)
Yeah

Dominique Pereira (31:47.906)
Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (32:05.13)
Yes. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (32:06.185)
You know, and, and just seeing you play that out, your whole, from the time you were, you know, young, you know, and I did this and it led me to do this. And then I did this and it led me to this. The, I, I’m remiss to say that I don’t want to say the word in, like, it’s a good thing. So, but it’s going to sound negative when business fails. Oftentimes it’s not failure because it’s leading into something else. Right.

Dominique Pereira (32:33.644)
Yes. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (32:35.577)
And had technology not had that downturn for you It doesn’t lead you to this point here, you know to where you’re doing this, you know, and just your resilience man like like seeing opportunity even in Arguably chaos You know, that’s a really special trait and I and if nobody’s told you you know, like I so appreciate you saying that and and giving that out there because

Dominique Pereira (32:53.986)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (33:05.365)
Like, it is something that we all need. You know, I would not just on Perseverance, but like everybody, like we’re gonna get life is hard.

Dominique Pereira (33:15.756)
Yeah and lessons come from failure. That’s the only way you don’t learn something because you’ve always succeeded in it. That’s an innate, if you’re fortunate enough to have that then yeah you’re one lucky person that probably doesn’t exist. But it’s like when you fail you’re like, I’m not touching that again. Or matter of fact

It’s not that I’m not touching that hot pot again. I need to go get some gloves. Don’t be scared. You learned why it hot. Dealing with New Jersey, it’s me and of course I’m structured. You have to understand how to structure LLCs and asset protection and all that. But I’m now a black farmer with a very large

Brett McCollum (33:50.453)
Right?

Dominique Pereira (34:11.672)
Property and I say very large relative to New Jersey in Texas. It’s like very small but the very fascinating thing about this is Getting around the right people Because I bought 400 acres in New Jersey which talking to forestry programs and NRCS and understanding grants They’re like wow, this is big and I’m talking about other people that are big but I was very fortunate because remember that goat guy that I did a

just hey I just happen to see an ad out for a guy leasing land and I talk to him. We ended up talking and I found out he had 2000 something acres. This is amazing right? And in Texas that’s quote unquote normal. Everything’s bigger in Texas and you meet people and I started meeting people because we

Brett McCollum (34:53.941)
Wow.

Dominique Pereira (35:06.414)
We’re doing business or my technology company. We work with high net worth individuals that own companies we work, you know Where these things might be fascinating to me, but they’re so normal to somebody else So when I’m talking now to guys there in Texas that are doing glamping or that have a 2,000 acre and I’m like, okay I’m learning I’m soaking it in I’m trying to add to like completely like yeah what? But it became so normal to me

Brett McCollum (35:18.976)
Right.

Dominique Pereira (35:35.598)
that when I decided, okay, I’m going to take this risk somewhere else, and I bought 400 acres, it was normal because I I was put myself in it. Yeah, exactly. Now the people that are coming around and saying, wow, this is a lot. No, I really, okay. Cause the guys that I was kind of getting mentored by, they, yeah, exactly. Or 50,000 or, and, and you know, they’re

Brett McCollum (35:46.367)
Yeah, he’s trying to do stuff with other people. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (35:56.005)
Cause that guy just met has 2,500 acres. uh, yeah. Yeah.

Dominique Pereira (36:05.224)
I’m talking, there’s a couple of really cool ranches in Texas that I’m giving them advice on what I would do and how I would, we have a digital marketing aspect to my technology business and I’m giving advice to somebody with 50,000 and they’re listening and they’re saying, that’s really good, we love that. So now I have maybe a false confidence that I could do it myself. And so that’s always helped.

Brett McCollum (36:19.371)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (36:29.577)
I think you’ve got the entrepreneurial like thing. is like, even if I can’t don’t know what I know who does, I’m we’re going to figure this out. Yeah, that’s incredible.

Dominique Pereira (36:37.326)
We’re going to figure it out. if a lot of, yeah, if anything, if people take anything from this is you don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to take the first step. Don’t get stuck on the analysis paralysis. Don’t get stuck on comparing yourself to somebody else’s journey because you really don’t know what’s on the other side of that. But if you get started, you might be fascinated of where it leads you.

Brett McCollum (36:46.145)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (37:04.085)
Man, like I said, we could do this all. love, it’s just a pleasure getting to know you, talking to you, like the story, the resilience, the wisdom that I’m hearing. it’s, man, how can people follow you like on your journey? They get to know you a little bit. What’s the best way for that to happen?

Dominique Pereira (37:20.652)
Yep, I have a social media platform, Ask Dom That, just because I get asked a lot of questions from people. used to, know, was in Texas, a lot of people would ask me entrepreneur questions and all that. And just, if you have a question, just ask Dom That. You can find me on all social medias under that hat.

Brett McCollum (37:40.514)
That’s incredible guys eat your and I mean this to be not to be mean but you would be a fool not to follow Dom guys Like just do it go follow him ask Dom that But guys, it’s been a great episode Dom a pleasure getting to know you and everybody take care. We’ll see you on the next one

Dominique Pereira (37:57.282)
Thanks, Rick.