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Show Summary
Ralph Rivera, a seasoned real estate investor and former NYC property manager, shares his journey from managing 10,000 units to flipping homes and building a rental portfolio. He candidly discusses early mistakes—like chasing deal quantity over profitability—which led to financial strain. Eventually, he shifted focus to sustainability and legacy, combining strategic flips with rental properties to build long-term cash flow and financial freedom. Deeply motivated by family and legacy, Ralph emphasizes the importance of learning from failure, staying grounded, and creating generational opportunities. Now in his 60s, he finds joy in seeing his grandchildren understand and engage in his work, hoping they build on the foundation he’s laid.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Ralph Rivera (00:00)
I was always chasing the number of deals, never a dollar amount. So instead of saying I want to make a quarter of a million dollars a a hundred thousand dollars a year, 50,000 dollars a year, I always said I want to do 12 deals. And in chasing that number, I made many, many.bad decisions and mistakes because I was chasing a number and I don’t like to miss what I say I’m gonna do. And that put me in, like I said, in positions houses didn’t sell. Some took nine months to sell, then you’re carrying five houses, you’re bleeding money everywhere, contractors aren’t showing up. I’m a one man show. I had eight houses at one time. It took me eight hours just to get to my eight houses just to check on them.
Brett McCollum (02:10)
at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 5x their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the life they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Ralph, how are you?Ralph Rivera (02:24)
Very good Brett, thanks for having me on. It was great chatting with you a little bit before.Brett McCollum (02:29)
Yeah, man, it’sbeen great getting to know you a little bit. I’m excited to kind of, you know, see what we can draw out. I mean, we kind of made that joke pre-show like that. I said, like, I think you might forget more than I’ll ever learn. I’m definitely excited to kind of delve into that with you. Thank you. Tell us a little bit. Give us some history. Who’s Ralph? How’d you get in real estate? You know, that sort of thing.
Ralph Rivera (02:45)
Thank you.Ralph is a father of three and a grandfather assumed to be number seven. big family guy. Everybody lives close. Everybody comes to my house. Everybody lives close to my house. Dude, it’s, ⁓ my sense is I’m having a problem. You’re not being recorded.
Brett McCollum (03:13)
We’re good on my end.Ralph Rivera (03:15)
Yeah, I know what that…cut me off.
Can you see me? I’ll just keep going. guess.
Brett McCollum (03:22)
Yeah, we’re good.It’s going
we’re going to go. made a mark on it and I’ll just tell our edit team to pick it back up. So I would just resay Ralph say, you know, father, you know and grandfather start there.
Ralph Rivera (03:38)
I’m a father of three, a grandfather assumed to be seven grandchildren, a family guy, all my family lives close, kids come here every day, my wife watches my grandchildren, so pretty close to me, which is awesome. My career, I was a property manager in New York City. At the peak of my career, I managed 139 buildings, 10,000 units. So yeah, it was a big to do.It was the day of the Blackberries and all I did was go off on my nightstand all night. You couldn’t sleep. It was a big job.
Brett McCollum (04:15)
I bet man that was when was that? year was that?Ralph Rivera (04:20)
I was from about 2009 to like 2015.Brett McCollum (04:25)
Wow, wow, yeah. That’s kind of, I mean, the stories, I you could probably share. With that kind of volume, I bet there’s some doozies in there, huh? ⁓Ralph Rivera (04:37)
Yeah, there’s some that are, some are sad and some are, I mean, like things that you wouldn’t believe, like people stealing your tub and going ice, you know, going snowboarding with them down a main avenue in Manhattan with a cast iron tub that they’ve robbed from your apartment. dude, yeah.Brett McCollum (04:53)
No. That’swild. Yeah.
Ralph Rivera (04:59)
I’ve seen,and on the other side, I’ve seen jumpers, I’ve seen, I’ve had people commit suicide that I had walked in on in apartments. It’s been, it’s a big ride. You know, there’s a lot of variables.
Brett McCollum (05:59)
And I’d imagine too, though, there’s a lot of good that you saw too,Ralph Rivera (06:03)
yeah, I mean it’s fun, like I said, it’s fun. You see some people who are just, you know, I have met over my career, I’ve met some really, really great people, you know, working with them and tenants, you know, you have some people, you know, I’m an old school guy. So back in the day when I was coming up, there was the older school guys and they were, you know, the suits and ties and you know, that whole, know, debonair thing about them, which is pretty cool. I liked it.Brett McCollum (06:29)
Yeah,that’s really cool. you said you’ve got ⁓ seven grandkids. Is that correct?
Ralph Rivera (06:36)
I have six now, the seventh is on the way.Brett McCollum (06:38)
Sevenon the way, that’s it.
Ralph Rivera (06:40)
Five boys, right now it’s five boys and one girl, but my daughter’s gonna have another girl.Brett McCollum (06:45)
Very,I can see the joy in your eyes on that one. So we live, we have four kids, my wife and I have four kids and my in-laws are five minutes one way, my sister-in-law is three minutes the other way. I mean it’s having our family around us like that, it’s a special thing and I was really excited to hear you say that, everybody’s kind of close, like that’s really cool. I’m happy to hear that.
Ralph Rivera (06:49)
Another princess.Yeah, we enjoy it. As kids, unfortunately, I lost my father at a young age. ⁓ And that made it even more important for me. My father was murdered in a stickup in the city. when you’re young, when you’re 20 years old, you think you know everything, then something like that happens. You hate the world for a while, then you kind of snap out of it.
and realize what’s really, really important.
Brett McCollum (07:42)
And you’vegot, mean, and that’s it for your family. these are, it’s your, it’s like, that’s amazing.
Ralph Rivera (07:49)
thing Ido now is legacy. know, hey listen, it helps me, don’t get me wrong, I have built like everybody else and all of that, but the real people who are gonna reap what I have done is gonna be my children and grandchildren, which for me is what this is all about. You know, because…
Listen, you know, back in the day, and I keep saying that, but we had really not much. had great, you know, great family life. I never knew we didn’t have money until we got older. When you start to realize the things around you, but I always knew I was loved. had great parents, great, you know, grandparents and everything like that. So for me, you know, once I started to build this, this was more like, okay, we didn’t really have much. And what I have already has, you know, you know, circumscribed anything that…
I even imagined that I would have to be honest with you. So it’s really cool.
Brett McCollum (08:39)
Yeah,and that’s, I mean, I think that’s the most like you hear a lot of people like, what is your why? You know, it’s kind of cliche almost in the entrepreneurial circles, like you got to find your why, what’s your purpose and everything like that. But honestly, when I hear you say that I really can genuinely feel that that connection for you. You know, that like it’s not it’s my family. But when you say the word, it’s my it’s legacy. That means something.
Ralph Rivera (09:05)
Yeah, you know it’s…The good part is, and you know I say this because sometimes you know, listen I’m older, I’m 64 years old and I got, you know, the youngest one right now is nine months and the oldest one that my wife watches is five. We actually have these kids running around the house screaming, you’re trying to work and it’s kind of tough and you get upset once in while but when you go to a family outing or you go someplace where there’s a bunch of people and the first people that come running to you, your grandchildren, because they see you and they’re like, ah, papa, and they come running, the feeling is just…
it’s off the charts.
Brett McCollum (09:38)
That’sreally special. Well, I want to ask you some questions because you mentioned that at 10,000 units that you were ⁓ managing at one point. Yeah. How did you get into property management and then how does it evolve to 10,000 units?
Ralph Rivera (09:58)
I originally started,is my story, my story. I started out parking cars for an owner operator, who somebody who had built buildings in Manhattan.
I wound up parking his cars before you know it I wound up running all his parking facilities in Manhattan then from there I got promoted to an assistant GM of running all his buildings in the city We had about nine buildings at the time then from that point He wound up it was the big craze was co-op and he wanted to build a hotel He couldn’t really get mortgaged. So what he did is he co-op his buildings and he wound up building this hotel cash So I wound up I was working for this gentleman
And then before you know it, I wound up becoming the general manager and that was my title for a while. He passes away and another family member steps in. We kind of don’t see eye to eye and I had been working for the company for a very long time. I had a different…
view of what it was like and they had a different view of what they wanted it to be. So someone else who had worked with me in the past had went to another company, called me on the phone and said, listen, dude, I need you. I know what you can do. So I wind up going to this other company and we wind up, it was a little bit different. It’s almost like flipping apartment buildings. We would go in there, he’d buy 400 units. We’d put security systems in, paint the buildings, canopies, redo the facade, do a lot of stuff and then resell.
So that evolved into, you know, in the interim we wound up with about 10,000 units, 139 buildings across Queens, Manhattan, and Long Island. So and then I wound up, that’s how I wound up managing it.
Brett McCollum (12:16)
Yeah, that’s incredible. ⁓Ralph Rivera (12:20)
I’m the old success story. You worked one guy hard your whole life. I’m not a college graduate, not all that stuff. And I just put my head down and just worked.Brett McCollum (12:31)
I thinkthat’s a lost thing almost today, And I wish it weren’t. I wish it weren’t. Because I think there’s something that speaks volumes for being able to stay in one place and have that loyalty to stay there. And ideally, it comes from the top down. Because I would imagine that the gentleman that passed probably treated you very well.
Ralph Rivera (12:36)
Yeah.Um, actually, I don’t
best guys ever to work for. He was self-made, right? So he actually started on a demo crew and then he bought, he speculated, he spec built houses and then it was snowballed into what he had. So he actually had the vision quest and he was the one who developed everything. So he knew, you know, I would go to him a couple of times when I was running the garages and stuff and it was minor money compared to what he, you know, his developments and stuff. And he was like, no dude, that door’s open.
for a reason. Every diamond here is mine. You come, you talk to me, that’s why the door’s open.
Brett McCollum (13:32)
Andthat’s why you stay, right? Like that’s the beautiful thing. Let me ask you this. This is a random question, because I do want to get into your, what you’re doing today with flips and stuff like that. But before you ever started doing that, do you think possibly, and I don’t know, I’m speculating a question here. Tell me if I’m wrong. Do you think potentially that maybe this man’s vision helped shape some vision for what you’re doing now?
Ralph Rivera (13:58)
I… Listen.Like every kid growing up wanted to be like Donald Trump because he was out in the forefront. My guy was more successful than the Trumps and he was quiet, right? Old school, don’t want anybody speaking, you because the old mentality was that we don’t want to get sued. So it’s like keep everything under the radar. It was 100 % what this gentleman did that showed me to say, you know, I watched him with his buildings. watched, you know, I was privy to the financials because I was a GM at the time. So I got to see.
how ⁓ when you own property and you have certain ability to move things around and management fees and all that kind of stuff and how he laid it he laid out the blueprint for what I needed to do and I saw that and he was and he was really good to me I mean back back then it was company cars, expense accounts you know all that stuff he treated you like gold
Brett McCollum (14:42)
Right.Yeah, and that’s that’s special because I mean without that you almost argue like where am I at today? Right, like
I mean we all have I think if we look back ⁓ Whether it be good or bad, you know the things that happen to us happen for not to us but for us
Ralph Rivera (15:52)
Yeah, you know, and it’s funny because you say that because when things go wrong or things don’t work out the way you want, the first thing to say is, know, why is this happening to me? Right. You know, why have I been such a bad person that I deserve to be buried under this? And then you realize, you know what, that may have stopped me from doing something even dumber, you know, it cost me more or hurting me or putting somebody in harm’s way. You just never know. You just never know. So now itBrett McCollum (16:19)
That’s makesit the beauty of hindsight, right? Like you don’t know until sometimes when you look back and you get to see man this really was meant for my good, this really was meant, you know, or you can take the opposite effect and just live in negativity and just the rest of your life sucks. You know, there’s so many people that fall into that trap I feel like.
Ralph Rivera (16:39)
Listen, I started out on my own because I pretty much, I didn’t get fired, but I pretty much got fired. Right? And that gave me the catalyst to say, you know what, I’m in my 50s. If this happens at 60, 65, what am I gonna do? I gotta go begging somebody for a job or something. I said, know what, if I’m gonna take the shot, if I’m gonna crash and burn, let’s do it now. And I was lucky enough to have the support of my wife, which was awesome because.You know her exact words where you’ve been taking care of me since we’ve been together. So I have no doubt that you’ll continue to do that. So do what you need to do.
Brett McCollum (17:17)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a mark of a good man there, Ralph. I wanted, that’s a good seg, like segue for us here. So you do that. You’ve been running that year and you know, give her ballpark. long ago was it when you kind of start in the, did you start with fix and flip? Did you start with rental? What’d you do first?Ralph Rivera (17:38)
fixing flips because I started back in like 2009 I started looking into it that was like everybody else of course junkie do this do that you know goes to the seminar that and I I and I putched around and then I bought my first flip I made the mistake of making a ton of money on it and thinking that okay anytime I need some money you know I got my job anytime I need some money I’ll go find the house and I’ll flip it and I’ll make you know six figures and of course that’s not trueSo, you know, that was reality for me. So I kind of hacked around a little bit and then I wound up selling the flipping and all that kind of stuff. Then I wound up leaving the job quote unquote and I decided to turn it into a business. And that’s when I started. I didn’t really want to do rentals because I didn’t want to deal with tenants.
because I had had, I thought it was rough. Listen, I loved my job when I was doing it. It was different every day. There was different challenges. I learned so much. I mean, I met so many people, but it was actually pretty cool. But at the time it was like, okay, if I could take a break, if I could buy a house, fix it and sell it and don’t have to talk to them. After I sell it, I’m fine with that. I started doing that in the beginning and my whole goal at the time was to flip four houses a year, get 25,000 a house and you make a hundred thousand dollars and life is good.
I mean, I was making more than that my corporate job, but I just figured without all the traveling and the added expenses and blah, blah, it would be good. ⁓ One thing that I didn’t count on, which obviously when you don’t know what you’re doing, is that you don’t make $25,000 January 1st. Sometimes you may do those four houses, you may get that $100,000, but that may be December 10th. ⁓ So you’ve got a whole year of living that you have to pay for.
that if you don’t have a deal, you you wind up being in the April. And after a while of, after chasing, and then I started flipping houses, then I wanted to do one a month. And then when I started to do that and figured, okay, after about six months, I’ll have six houses. And the first one that I bought should sell. It’s the six month in, you know, if it’s a six month turnaround time, close to close. And then what happens, then I’ll have, you know, 20, 30, $40,000 a month coming in. So I’ll just snowball it and I’ll run.
Yeah, then the first house doesn’t sell until eight months. So now you’re carrying two additional houses. And then after that, you wind up saying, okay, this house should have sold it doesn’t then you lose money on this house. And then all of a sudden you’re contracted, don’t show up and you have three houses with nobody in there and you’re paying mortgages on.
Brett McCollum (20:16)
I think every flipper goes, like, you’re speaking my language,Ralph Rivera (20:22)
Well, you know, the funny part is what I learned out of experiences, I no longer, I always did this and I don’t know why, I don’t know why, and know a lot of people do the same thing.I was always chasing the number of deals, never a dollar amount. So instead of saying I want to make a quarter of a million dollars a a hundred thousand dollars a year, 50,000 dollars a year, I always said I want to do 12 deals. And in chasing that number, I made many, many.
bad decisions and mistakes because I was chasing a number and I don’t like to miss what I say I’m gonna do. And that put me in, like I said, in positions houses didn’t sell. Some took nine months to sell, then you’re carrying five houses, you’re bleeding money everywhere, contractors aren’t showing up. I’m a one man show. I had eight houses at one time. It took me eight hours just to get to my eight houses just to check on them.
Then you gotta worry about paying hard money loans. You gotta pay private lenders, you gotta pay the insurance, you gotta make sure the lights are on, you gotta shut the water off.
You gotta make sure appliances are being delivered. You gotta make sure it’s so it became a disaster, right? I mean, I got through it. I lost some money. You know, I took a beating and then I turned around and said, okay, how do I level this off? And the first thing I started to do was I said, okay, let me start with flips. Let me start with how much money I want to make a year. What do I need to do? How was this going to be? How am I going to supplement the income? And lo and behold, somebody called me while I was in the middle of flips and said, listen, Ralph,
I got a friend. Now this was, this person used to do the inspections for all my hard money loans. She was an appraiser. Over the years she got to know me because she said, Ralph, you’re one of the only guys that when you show up at the property, you have a check in your hand, you give me my money, I don’t have to chase it. you tell me you’re gonna do something, you do it. She said, so dude, you know, you’re just a pleasure to deal with. So we developed a friendship. She had a friend who was selling a property out in an area that’s in a good rental area around here. Calls me on the phone and said, Ralph, listen, I got a…
Brett McCollum (21:55)
Okay.Ralph Rivera (22:18)
They want to retire, they want to get out, they want go to Virginia. And they got this house, it’s got a cottage on it, so it’s actually two units and blah, blah. And I’m like, I don’t know if I really want to do that, if I want to get into the rental game. I said, but let me go take a look at the house. I go look at it, and at the time, ⁓ West Virginia University was renting the house because they were doing a fire island study. So I had a corporate people renting the front, and in the cottage we had a couple.I look at the rent roll, ba ba ba, make a long story short, I’m not sure whether I’m gonna buy it or not. And this is how, and this was in early, like I’m gonna say, I think I have this property now about nine years. So they wanted 185, I said, oh, you’re crazy, I’ll give you 178. And they said, why? Because that’s what I think it’s worth. We agree on it. And then I’m not sure if I really wanna buy it. So I go to my attorney who’s a friend of mine who lends me money. We’ve grown into, our families know each other.
And I go to the guy and listen, you know what? Somebody called me, bop, bop, bop, and I got this rental property. I’m not sure if I really want to do it. And I tell him all the particulars. He goes, dude, if you don’t buy it, I’m buying it. So I said, really? He goes, Ralph, it’s a deal. Stop looking at one thing, look at the other. I said, OK. I said, but I have no money. He lent me all the money, gave me 100 % financing. So my friend lent me the money. That’s how I started with my first rental on my own.
And it wound up even with hard money rates, I was cash flowing a lot of money. Wow. I refinanced out into a regular, you know, the SCR loan. I wound up making a ton. And I said, you know what? This could level out my ups and downs with my flip. So if I don’t make the $50,000 or $25,000 in the first quarter of the year, I could sustain myself and I don’t have to worry about chasing something and making these mistakes again. And it grew from
Brett McCollum (24:09)
Right.Ralph Rivera (24:12)
Then when I was looking at houses, I looked at it for both ways. Can I fix and flip and burl this? Can I hold it? What’s going on? So we wound up at a point where I wound up in less than five years, I wound up with 10 units and you know, then COVID hit. Now I look like a genius because the equity on here in New York, it’s crazy. I mean, I make a ton of money on it. And now I got, like I said, I got a ton of equity and I got great cashflow because New York rents are very expensive.Brett McCollum (24:40)
and you got peace of mind in while you’re dealing with your flips.Ralph Rivera (24:44)
⁓ Right now if I don’t do a flip I don’t have to worry about paying my bills. My bills are paid. So that gives you great comfort and covers a lot of sins because it makes me make a decision solely based on the merits of the deal. Not that I don’t if I don’t take this money and roll it over I’m gonna lose it because the guy’s gonna lend it to somebody else or you know that type of stuff and then all of people don’t see me buying they’re not gonna sell to me and I’m you know that whole persona that you get caught up in.when you want to scale, everybody gets this thing, I got scale, got this scale, you got this scale. I just want to make more money. I don’t care if I do two houses. Listen, that’s how I’m looking at it because before I chased the wrong thing.
Brett McCollum (25:25)
I’drather do the right deals than chase volume.
Ralph Rivera (25:28)
100 % and I learned that the hard way.Brett McCollum (25:31)
Yeah, I think a lot of us do. You know, we were talking pre show about that too, a little bit. I think a lot of us, for whatever reason, as entrepreneurs, you know, we get things are, it’s funny, like you mentioned, like the first house you did, like almost set you up for not failure, but like set you up for like, man, it isn’t always going to be like this, you know? And I think that’s a lot of us that we see early success or we do things, you know, and we start going down a path that may not be the most responsible thing, but you’re ignorant.You didn’t know better. It wasn’t like you were like, I know, but I’m going to go do it anyway. ⁓ but then it’s like, ⁓ there was a, there’s a best practice here that I didn’t know about. And you can’t learn until you go through the stuff. Yeah. So I mean, you’re speaking all of our language, Ralph. ⁓ we all, if you’ve been in the business more than, you know, a few minutes, you know, you’re learning something, you know? and if you haven’t learned something yet, guys, if you’re listening to this, rewind this back, re-listen to that, what Ralph is saying. Cause
It’s not saying that you’re gonna like screw up or things like, but like that’s a part of life in a cycle of businesses that you’re gonna have to learn and evolve and grow. And I think that’s what you said Ralph is you learned, you evolved, you grew.
Ralph Rivera (26:45)
Yeah, I mean…Listen, if you’re going to be good at anything, right? No matter what it is. It’s like I try to explain people. Some people think there’s like some sneak to this, you all you flip houses, you just listen. It’s just like your job. The first day you went in and you didn’t know what you were doing, right? Then they trained you to what you had learned and you learned and then you grew. And then when you were learning your process, you know, I could do this a little better if we just made this tweak to this. It’s the same. It’s just work. It’s work and paying attention to what’s going on and read the signs that are around you. There are people who done
it for years and years right there’s a lot of people I met I know local people that are doing 200 deals a year yeah right so and I’m like okay you know I don’t want 200 I don’t I want me all right because I see what he goes through right he has over a hundred rentals he does he flips 200 houses he’s on podcasts he’s everywhere it’s awesome don’t get me wrong but that’s not my vision my vision is okay if I can make
Brett McCollum (27:30)
eitherRalph Rivera (27:46)
mid six figures, I’m good. It’s more than I’ll ever need. Listen, my rentals right now are basically covering my living expenses, right? I still work a job because at night, right now I need medical benefits and all that, so I’m gonna pay through the nose in New York, it’s crazy expensive. But the bottom line is, you know, I’m over here, I’m solid, and if I flip…two, three, four houses a year, five houses a year and make myself two, $300,000. I mean, damn. First of all, I don’t think I’d spend it. I’d probably help my children and community and donate time and donate money and stuff. But I mean, it’s awesome to just even have that thought in your mind saying, okay, listen, I’m already taken care of. So I can help my kid buy a house or I can help my nephew.
start a business, so can help my son do something to get him involved. So now he understands that daddy’s buying six unit buildings and five unit buildings out of state that are cash flowing three, $4,000 a month. Wow, look at this. And I can elevate. For me, it was always looking at it one way. My parents did the best they could to elevate us. My parents didn’t graduate high school. They were hardworking people. I mean, they were awesome.
So my job was to make my life better in honoring them. And I’m hoping that my children make their life better because I gave them, now there’s so much education and so many things available, right? Sometimes too much because you get lost in the noise, but there’s so much available and I was able to reap the benefit of some of the things that I was able to learn that my parents never had access to. So now I’ve given my children and my grandchildren a foundation and say, okay, listen, you have this.
And in my mind, I’m envisioning it being better, right? That they make me look like I’m some kind of guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing. That’s what I want them to make me look like. Like some, I didn’t know what I was doing. Look what we can do, Dad. Look, you know, look what we got. And for me, that’s what it’s all about. So this way you elevate your family. You’re able to do better things for your family and your family’s able to do better things for the people around them. And that’s, think, what a lot of people miss, right? It’s not all about me making money and look how good I am.
It’s all about what, once you’re solid and you’re secure in a way, it changes how you look at the world. It changes how you look at things, right? When you’re not all tied up and, and scrambling to make a dollar because you got to pay your bills. And I’ve been not that I’m not going to because I’ve been there. I’ve been there for a very long time. I’ve had success late in life, not early in life. mean, early in life I did. I made good money. I worked at corporations. I had a good life, but I was.
I was trapped in that rat race because I made six figures, I was able to buy the brand new cars, the house, but I was trapped. Right? So now I’m not trapped anymore. I work a job because I need medical benefits and it’s five minutes from my house. So at night, a few days a week, I help a buddy out who owns a plant, I run it, I did it when I was a kid, not a big deal. Right? So I have way more freedom than I’ve ever had because I was able to accomplish
Brett McCollum (30:43)
Right.Ralph Rivera (31:05)
Simple things. Listen, I own 10 units. Now it may sound like a lot to somebody who’s got not one, but if you started out at 30 years old or 32 years old and you bought one, one a year for 10 years at 40 years old, you have 10 properties, right? That are bringing you money and that first one is 10 years into it. So your cash flow and that’s probably going to be monster compared to what happened when you first started. Because I remember the first record I had that I bought in Florida and sold.I was making, when things were tight, I would get that my profit was $800 a month. When that $800 came in, it was like I hit the lottery because I needed money for gas, I needed help. I had grocery money. I was like, wow. Because at one time I was living, I was scraping. So I’m saying, okay, I hope one day this is eight grand. One day it’s, and then before you know it, you keep your head down and say, okay, where are you starting? You start planning things out. And you start the bed. Not everything’s gotta be grandiose.
You know, listen, you flip one house, you get that bug, and you know you can do it, and you know it’s real, forget about it. It’s like a drug. It’s like a drug. You know, listen, I’m 64 years old. I’m driving four hours away, buying six unit buildings, two unit buildings, 10 unit, I don’t care. You know, it’s just, you know, once you’re into it, and if it’s really for you, the sky’s the limit. I mean, and you can make money so many ways. You can rent.
can flip, you can buy notes and sell. And you know, there’s just so many variables in this.
Brett McCollum (32:38)
Andwhat you’re doing too, it’s, you know, it’s like, I keep coming back to that, the word legacy that you used earlier, you know, ⁓ not just in legacy of what you own, that’s going to be passed down, but also what you’re teaching your family to come behind you with, you know, and may, and if it’s their vision too, we don’t know. I mean, you can’t know. I hope that I can teach my kids that too. ⁓ but at least they have the tools and the belt.
that dad taught them, that grandfather taught them, so that they can continue, not just the legacy, but to grow the legacy for their kids and their children’s children, so on and so forth. I think that’s really, what you’re doing is it’s an inspiration to a lot of us. Yes, you’re a little older than I am, but ⁓ that is the thing that I look at and go, man.
Ralph Rivera (33:33)
day.Brett McCollum (33:37)
That’s my goal too, right? Is to be able to do what you’re doing for your family. ⁓Ralph Rivera (33:41)
And you started way younger than I did, right? I started at 55. No, but I’m just saying.Brett McCollum (33:46)
Yeah, I’m not 55. I’m almost40 though, so I’m gonna an end on it.
Ralph Rivera (33:53)
You got light years to go, right? You got plenty of time, which is awesome, right? That you’re involved in all of this. Listen, like I said, for me, my family, like when I was down and out, my brother and everybody kind of jumped in and helped me keep me going. So I look at that and that’s an important thing, right? Because when somebody gives their resources, their time, their help, their inspiration, you know, they’re there for you when you fall.You know, the only way to honor that is to be successful at what they helped you, right, accomplish. So that’s how I look at it. And my grandchildren have been at my rehab projects. Yeah. You know, yeah, they’ve been in there. Absolutely. Yeah. They grab a paintbrush, they paint on the wall. get, you know, all the people working out like, my God. But I let them do it. Listen, you know, this is this is what Papa does. This is where Papa goes. This is how Papa takes you to the park.
we go out, we go to dinner, and we go here, and we go to Chuck E. Cheese or whatever, this is because of this. Right. So they know.
Brett McCollum (34:53)
Yeah, that’s amazing. man, this has been a great show. ⁓ Ralph, if people want to connect with you in some way, what’s the best way for them to… Is it social media? What’s the best way to do that?Ralph Rivera (35:04)
I’m on social media on Facebook, Ralph Rivera. ⁓ You can find me there. can actually, if you want, can email me at Ralph at 2rproperty.com. Like I said, I’m out on social media. I’m not a giant in it. I’m not really big with that, but I do go out on it ⁓ and I do follow some other people. That’s how I met Mike and all that.So yeah, mean, and I’m, listen, I’m willing to help. I’m an easy guy. I have no magical powers. It’s just work. And also I have this experience as you can tell by the gray, you’re missing an air. Is that, I just been through it before. That’s all. So it makes me look smarter, but I’m not.
Brett McCollum (35:54)
I think that’s just a sign of wisdom, right? As you’ve been through something and you can share the experience. So, ⁓ man, like I said, Ralph, this has been great. And guys, encourage you to connect with Ralph, email him, find him on social media, reach out. ⁓ But guys, this has been a great episode. Ralph, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you. And I look forward to talking to you again soon. All right. Take care, everybody.
