Transforming Your Career: Lessons from a Tech Entrepreneur Turned Landlord

Stephen Schmidt (00:02.563)
Welcome back to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs. It’s your host back again, Stephen Schmidt, and I’ve got a real treat for you guys today. If you’re joining us for the second, third or hundredth time, welcome back. And if you’re joining us for the first time, welcome to the show. You’re going to probably find this on your regular docket when it comes to your podcast listening, because I got a ton of value that we’re going to be bringing to you today with the mind of Adrian Gonzalez in the studio. So.

Please welcome him, even though he’s not gonna hear your claps, because obviously we did this and then you’re hearing it 30 days from now. But either way, we’re gonna pretend that we’re a live podcast right now. So let him hear some noise, you know what I’m saying? Just remember before we get started, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate entrepreneurs, service providers, and real estate professionals, two to five X their businesses, which allows them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed up.

And as I’ve got Adrian here in the studio today, we’re going to be talking about fusing entrepreneurship and leadership and how that applies to you and what he’s got going on in this space. So with that being said, Adrian, welcome to the show today, brother.

Adrian Gonzalez (01:09.486)
Awesome to be here. Thank you for having me, Stephen.

Stephen Schmidt (01:11.813)
Man, super glad to have you here. So before we kind of get into today’s topic, you’ve got a long background in tech. didn’t say it in your intro, but you’ve been able to really almost build the the American dream. I would say what most people’s idea of it is now today of being a very successful professional, but also buying real estate on the side and then expanding upon that knowledge that you started with. before we kind of get into all that, can you just share a little bit about yourself, Adrian, how you got here?

Adrian Gonzalez (01:42.069)
Absolutely, Steven. So my background, like you said, is it all began in technology. I went to college to study computer engineering, which is a little bit more of a fusion between hardware and computer science and software. And then just like life, I figured out what worked for me, what didn’t work for me, what was I good at, what did I enjoy, and landed on becoming a software engineer in technology. This, of course, set me on a path of

Being pretty well positioned to grow in my career, make good money, the key thing with that is I was always very intentional of leaving below my means. So as I progressed from my first two second year career, year in my career, I realized that I was starting to save up substantial amount of money and putting things in the stock market stopped being interesting for me. And around this time, I was out in California and I said,

Wait a second, I’m looking around and I see all of these pretty, you know, beaten down homes, down for a million, million and a quarter, you know, per square footage and upwards of, you know, 300 plus dollars. And I said, well, back home where my parents currently live and have lived in Georgia, you know, we could get something sub a hundred dollars and that’d be really good, really good homes. So all of that kind of led me to say, can I balance my career?

set out to start buying my first home with the intention of experimenting with a notion of starting to become a landlord. And I did a thing that I learned about called house hacking. And the rest, you and I can talk a little more about it. We can unpack it. But now I’m really proud of myself to say that I’ve acquired and self-managed eight properties while still being able to a career in tech. And that requires a lot of…

frameworks and mechanisms to be able to still balance all of those responsibilities.

Stephen Schmidt (03:31.089)
100%. mean, working full time and then also building the portfolio that you’ve built while not necessarily being thousands of dollars yet, right? It still takes a lot to manage, especially if your strategy is buy and hold. So let me ask you, why is it that you decided to pursue more buy and hold and being a landlord versus just doing a few deals here and there, trying to get a big check and get out? What about the buy and hold made you excited to do it?

Adrian Gonzalez (04:00.846)
phenomenal question. It all stems to why did you begin to do venture into real estate? And for me, eight years ago, it wasn’t to replace my full-time job. It was actually to be able to augment the potential of building wealth. Because in my full-time job, I was already making some pretty good, quote unquote, cash flow, know, money in the pocket.

But what I realized is, wait a second, a lot of that money just gets eaten up by taxes or it isn’t growing as much. And if I lose my job, there’s that, I got to start over. And so what I found in real estate is being able to just not actually sprint to the finish line. I didn’t want to get to 20 doors, 100 doors. That wasn’t ever my goal. I kind of said, I’m going to take it step by step. I’ll buy one, then buy two and three and kind of see where things go.

And you know by doing so you not only get advantages of the tax benefits not only do you still get advantage of appreciation But you know any money on the side in terms of that cash flow helps you be able to acquire the next property and right now I am thinking about what’s next at eight doors eight properties The next thing and I’m thinking about is how do we tap into commercial? And I do have a business partner over the course of the years that I became that I’ve been doing business with in their last two properties

And so now I’m at that point where after crawling with just one home, figuring it out, starting to walk and doing multiple, I’m ready to run. And that’s the part where now I’m ready to scale out, but I decided to take my time through it.

Stephen Schmidt (05:34.489)
Now let me ask you this, that’s a big jump going from single family, maybe some smaller multifamilies. Do you own apartments right now? Any multifamily? Are you going straight from single family homes straight to commercial?

Adrian Gonzalez (05:46.627)
We’re going to likely go into a apartment complex, minimum 10 unit plus. Right now what I own is a duplex and that’s the closest thing to a non-single family. But I think the reason that we’re well positioned to succeed in commercial is my business partner has experience in the commercial space. We’ve got connections and relationships there. What I bring to the table is that rigor that I had to build to operate my own business in terms of learning how to market, how to do renter screening.

renter onboarding, maintenance requests, renter offboarding. And of course, once you get to an apartment complex, you don’t want to do all of that. But once you hire a property manager, I’ve always found it very important to understand what you’re hiring for. And the experience I’ve been able to build up in these last eight years are going to be able to allow us to be able to find that property management firm that’s going to help us continue growing.

Stephen Schmidt (06:38.833)
Yeah, 100%. That’s good info, because anytime somebody says, you know, it’s like real estate, right? Like there’s so much that goes into real estate that somebody could say multifamily and they mean one thing and someone could say multifamily means something completely different. So when you say commercial real estate, that could all the way be to a $10 million industrial complex, you know, a 10-door unit property. So I’m glad we clarified on that for anybody listening that might be like, man, how do I do that? You know, how do I go into big buildings?

doesn’t necessarily mean that, just means the size and how many units you gotta get before it’s classified that way. So Adrian, tell me this, know, one of the things that I’m picking out of our conversation from the things that you’ve said, and one of the things I like to personally say, which I’m sure I stole from someone at some point along my self-education journey, is you don’t ever end up actually achieving your dreams and rising to the level of your dreams and goals, you actually fall to the levels of your habits and systems. And so,

With that being said, you sound very systematized and you sound like you’ve had processes that you’ve put in place, SOPs maybe even to be able to actually manage having a full-time job in tech, manage all the people that you do for that job, but then also your portfolio. So tell me a little bit about how important systems have been to your success over the last eight years.

Adrian Gonzalez (07:56.983)
immensely without being able to step back from just executing to be able to look at the landscape of exactly what you mentioned. What are the operations I’m doing? Where are the systems that I’m doing? Who are the individuals involved in all of this? If you just simply focus on executing, you’re never going to be able to scale that out. And so I’ll give some examples because I didn’t know I was going to have to do this. But once I got to do properties for me to go from two to three and then so on to eight,

I had to master being able to replicate everything I’m doing consistently and just rinse and repeat. And so, for example, the very first thing I realized, learned probably after home number three was the way I market homes has to be fully efficient. then the moment I buy that house and it’s fully, fully empty, that is the perfect time to make sure that you’re able to capture the pictures, capture video, and be able to upload that. In this case, I use Google Drive so that anytime I talk to renter,

that are looking to a far place to rent, I already have a description of the home, saved somewhere that I can just simply either copy or paste or send them that link to, as well as other marketing material. And what I do is, you I take those long video tours and I break them down into also one minute sections. And the reason I do that is platforms like Facebook Marketplace, which I almost exclusively use for my rentals, you’re allowed to actually upload.

an ad or post of your property. And in addition to images, you can include a one minute video. And there’s nothing more that’s going to differentiate you in this market than a renter being able to look and say, I can see the entire house in this one minute video. And of course, I require a little bit of editing, which I also had to learn how to do. But that’s one example. The same thing I can talk about renter screening and having to create templates for lease agreements, some for cosigners, others for not cosigners.

how to be able to do things like renter onboarding when it comes to you know, whether you will have the renter create their own utilities accounts or whether like me I use my own utilities but I build them I charge my renters the portion and so I have a place in Google Drive where I systematically the moment a renter comes in they get access to the utilities they get access to the Google home nest account they get access to a suite of calendar invites that tells them

Adrian Gonzalez (10:17.804)
when the renewal decision is due, when they have to move out by. And so everything is so systematic and that allows me to be able to just not worry about one-offs and it’s all just follow the process and be able to continue scaling that out.

Stephen Schmidt (10:32.111)
Hmm now it sounds like you’re talking about a lot of stuff here How do you keep your operational costs low when you’ve got so much work in there?

Adrian Gonzalez (10:40.514)
Surprising if I look at my operational costs, they’re pretty already near zero. I’ve always tried to say the things I want to charge for the things that I just frankly never want to do and there are certain things that I don’t mind doing and so all of my marketing for example, it’s free. It’s right out of Facebook Marketplace. I don’t have a formal PM property manager that’s doing the tours and the showing so

I kind of schedule all of that around my day to day with my renters. Typically I tell them like, I can only do after 5 p.m. or I can do weekends. And so off of that, I’m saving a ton on my profit margins by not having to hire that out. But what I’ve come to realize is certain things like after probably home number three, between one and three, I was mowing all the lawns too. Like I was really, when I started this business of mine, I said, I every penny.

I needed to save money so I can buy home number two home number three, but after number three I said I can’t keep owning all these lawns So something like saying, you know what at fifty or sixty dollars a month Whatever it may be hiring someone to do that is a hundred percent worth the time to allow me to continue scaling and the same thing can be said in terms of my contractors if Something goes wrong and one of my properties if it’s not urgent if it’s not critical My renter can still you know be comfortable

I’m going to try my best to be able to schedule that in my day to day for me to fix it, saving me hundreds of dollars in repair fees. But if it’s something critical, like literally just two days ago, I had an HVAC. My renter said, hey, I got water coming through my bathroom exhaust, my bathroom fan. And I told her like, go ahead and please just turn off the HVAC. It’s more unlikely either that or we’ve got a leak in the roof. And yeah, it turned out she sent me some pictures. It was definitely the HVAC leaking to the condenser pump. And I said,

There’s just no way I got time for this. So those are the moments where I go, have a team of contractors that give me a pretty good price given that they know that they basically can always work on my properties and we send someone out there to make sure it gets taken care of quickly.

Stephen Schmidt (12:45.105)
Now what happens when something happens at 1130 at night? You got a pipe bus and toilets going haywire. Then what? Are you handling that yourself too?

Adrian Gonzalez (12:54.678)
Yeah, it’s funny you asked that. That is always every single early real estate investor slash landlord’s nightmare, I do handle those, but you’d be amazed that I’ve only probably had a couple of those situations happen. And the reason for that is I take care of the homes almost as if I lived in them. So I do very rigorous due diligence anytime I buy a home to make sure that all of the piping looks good, all the appliances are well installed.

A lot of times I’ll redo a lot of the piping myself just to make sure that I feel that it’s well done and that it wasn’t done by a flipper. And so really the only times I’ve had something at 11 p.m. that requires my immediate attention are things like that HVAC, in this case a flooding or something like that, but running toilets, that’s not a big issue. And so I typically don’t have a lot of those situations come up, but…

We’ll see as I continue growing, that continues being a hassle then absolutely that’s the time to get a property manager to give you that sanity and that peace of mind that you can sleep well at night. Because at the end of the day that’s why we’re doing this, right? We want to buy back that time. But I’ve always been of a belief that I got to grind out while I’m young and then after that I’ll be able to take advantage of the dividends.

Stephen Schmidt (14:16.657)
And so at what point, what rank do you have to hit, level, whatever you want to put on it before you’ll be comfortable with doing that.

Adrian Gonzalez (14:27.694)
I think we’re there now. I think the last two homes, you asked some of my friends and my connections, the last two homes I’ve said, I’m at the last one, I think I’ve hit the scale that I can do to operate myself. But then I go in and buy another one. I find a great deal. I’m like, I gotta buy it. It’s a no brainer. It’s in perfect neighborhood, close to a good university. I can rent it out to college students and I buy another one. But now at eight, there’s no doubt in my mind I’ve hit that scale.

So right now what I’m in the motions of doing this year is finding a property manager that can do pieces of what I no longer want to do and there are certain things that I really do prioritize I want to be involved in things like actually vetting on my renters and being able to make those decisions are really important to me, but anything that has to do with maintenance requests doing showings Those are the immediate areas. I’m gonna be looking forward for someone to be able to come in and support

Stephen Schmidt (15:22.757)
Yeah, totally. And so when do you think you’ll end up making decisions on that? Before you close on your next big deal or are you like using that as the next step of the process you can kind of free up more of your time to start looking to do more acquisitions?

Adrian Gonzalez (15:39.907)
I think the time is now. I’ve started really being intentional of no longer looking for another property until I do find a good property manager to save me the time to now start being able to look for the next bigger, larger deal. And then there’s also some time that I need to look into to start finding investors. The first six homes I did all by myself, just out of pockets.

a typical 30-year conventional, convention loan. And then I started seeing interest rates go up. I found a business partner. We were able to buy a couple of properties by putting 50 % down, really make it work for us. But I think after, you know, kind of moving forward, what we’re looking at, we absolutely need to start investing time, necessarily maintaining the properties we have now, not necessarily buying other ones, but we really want to start getting out there and starting to build relationships and hopefully find a pool of investors I want to go in and…

by a larger complex with us.

Stephen Schmidt (16:38.001)
Okay, almost like syndicating.

Adrian Gonzalez (16:41.002)
very potentially very likely to syndicate.

Stephen Schmidt (16:43.793)
Okay, cool man. So, let me ask you this, if you were to give advice to anybody that’s getting started in buy and hold, what would you tell them to do?

Adrian Gonzalez (16:56.686)
So great question. So there’s two ways of getting into doing something new as an entrepreneur, right? Like there’s the infamous, you just dive right into the deep end, you either drown and you’re done or you end up learning how to swim. But then there’s my way of doing it. And I think my way works for individuals that are not afraid to still do it when there’s uncertainty or when they realize there’s a lot of work. They just dive into the deep end, works really well for individuals that just simply they’re like, you know what, I just gotta do all the work that’s never gonna happen.

My personality was always, I like to be intentional. I like to have some awareness of what I know, what I don’t know, and then make an intentional decision to go in. So my advice for people interested in doing what I did is first and foremost, do your homework. Learn from what others have done, specifically others that have long-lasting success in this space. For me, the two people that I, the very first two people that I started really listening to, one was Graham Stephan, and then the other one was Dave Ramsey.

And they kind of just taught me the foundations of what it looks like to be financially ready to not necessarily just buy a home, but invest in a home with the intention of making it into a rental and moving forward to other properties. But also, you know, exactly what makes a good investment. It’s not always just about the cash flow. There’s a lot of other things that go into that. But, you know, once you have that awareness, you haven’t bought a home yet. Like I never bought a home before I started doing this.

getting awareness of what the home buying process looks like. What are the things that you really gotta keep a lookout for? What are the things where you gotta go in with maybe a team, whether it be a realtor, an inspector, et cetera, et cetera. The more you’re aware of that process, the better you’re gonna be able to start getting into this line of work. And I think the other really important thing that helped me a lot was really being intentional of saying, if you’re actually gonna do this and start becoming a landlord, you gotta understand the legal ramifications of

and really shield yourself, understand when do I need to create an LLC, understand how to make sure that the property is to code so that if anything happens, you’re not liable for it. So there’s just so much, right? And every dimension of that, I had to take time to really feel comfortable enough to then be able to take that leap of faith. So, and then I think the last piece of this dimension is tax benefits and preparation. Sure, right? You can always hire someone to do your taxes. And that’s actually the first thing I did when I bought my first home. I hire an accountant.

Adrian Gonzalez (19:19.148)
I looked at all the forms they did and I said, you know what? I can do this. I have all the documentation I just gave the individual. It’s the same forms that they’re using. I understand all the way of doing itemizations and deductions for repairs and renovations. So it’s just, the more you know, the better. Before you delegate, I’d really encourage people to learn as much as you can. And I think it’s going to position you well to then after that, be able to continue scaling.

Stephen Schmidt (19:46.065)
Mm-hmm. 100%. Now…

If you had to go back to the beginning, knowing what you know now, what would you do different and what would you do the same?

Adrian Gonzalez (20:00.365)
You know, it’s interesting, right? Cause I’m about to contradict myself, I think. The one thing I would do different would be to probably trust myself after the second home. When I bought my first one and I house hacked it, which meant I started getting renters while I lived in it. And then I bought the second one. I moved out and moved into that one because if you’re a primary resident of the home you’re buying, you’re to get a much better interest rate. so.

Stephen Schmidt (20:05.082)
Hahaha

Adrian Gonzalez (20:27.278)
I did that for, think the first three, homes. I actually moved into a home. I rented it out, moved out, made the other one a full rental, rinse and repeat. And so I would actually repeat that. If you’re at a point in your life where you can do that. And I tell this to all my renters are early in their 20s, some of them, you know, 19. Like that, that is a very viable way to get into home ownership, house hacking. So that’s the one piece I would absolutely do to repeat the same way again. But the thing I would do different is to not shy at.

you know, once I do maybe two, the first two to just really pedal to the metal. There were moments when I bought between the time about home three and four, I think I came across two or three properties and I had the finances to be able to buy them. said, no, no, no, I’m just going to focus on doing one a year. I want to be cautious. you know, in this, in that time, that’s when we were seeing deals at like interest rates, 30 year conventional for like 2.3, 2.5, even at the threes. And I was like,

Man, I obviously was fortunate that I timed getting into this business when I did, because I’ve got many homes underneath the 4 % interest rate. But boy, could I have gotten three, four more without an issue.

Stephen Schmidt (21:38.725)
Yeah, for sure. Now, what were you doing to find these deals? I think the hardest part in real estate as an investor, in my opinion, from what I’ve witnessed is finding the deals and hiring contractors. That seems to be the two hardest things to do. Unless you’re trying to get financing with really bad credit and no experience, that’s kind of hard to do too, but not impossible. But how do you find your deals? Are you…

finding these on the market? you finding, do you have a wholesaler that’s sending them to you, fix and flipper that you work with? Like what is your process?

Adrian Gonzalez (22:15.918)
Great question. I’m relatively just, I’m really vanilla on my process, honestly. So when I first got into this, the very first thing I said is I have to make a decision. What’s my market going to be? Is it section eight housing? it, you know, homes really close to a university, really close to a university? Is it going to be homes close to, you know, Metro Atlanta area in the city where, you know, you’ve got full-time early working professionals, you know, working there?

And I immediately, the first decision I made was I wanted to buy homes in really good school districts such that I could get the best of all the world. I wanted something that if I wanted was close to a university that I could rent to students. I wanted something that in the future if I wanted to sell, a family would want to buy like that. And so once I knew that and I became familiar with my area.

I basically set out a, I would say a 15 to 20 mile radius of where I really want to focus in on. And I just made my criteria. I knew that I wanted at least a three bedroom, at least a two bathroom. I needed it back then at a certain price below the median, at going price, because that’s usually what I like to buy. like to buy homes below the median based in the area you’re buying. And then after I did all the lists of all my hard requirements,

It’s just a matter of being able to move very quickly. So it took me a little bit of time to make this, to get this really smooth. But, you know, at the very, the very first two homes, yes, I just focused on the realtor, you know, got pre-approved, went through the whole motions, found a home, put in an offer, sometimes put in escalation clauses, because when I started doing this, the market was absolutely insane. You’d see 20, 30 offers on a home. But that didn’t deter me. And I worked with my realtor to say, hey, we got to put an escalation clause in.

I’ll run the numbers, I’ll know what’s the maximum I can put in, and that’s just where I’ll put that clause at. But now where I’m at is I’ll see, if I see a home on my search criteria, I come up, within a single day, I can go out there and I can already put in an offer. Sometimes I don’t even look at the properties anymore, frankly, because I’ve got so much experience doing this, but I’ll put in an offer, I’ll go under due diligence.

Adrian Gonzalez (24:30.914)
within a matter of a day or two, we’ve got the inspector, I know very well going out there. I’ve already got contractors lined up if I need to get quotes for just about anything. So I’m able to come in and in a lot of ways just moves quick enough where I’m able to tell the seller, hey, like this is what we found. This is what’s gonna cost to make it livable. And by the way, like you’re in a market right now where you’re not getting 15 offers. So if I back out of this, you’re probably gonna be on a market for a while.

I’ve done pretty good just negotiating, reading the environment and being able to just rely on what comes on the zillas of the world and other public sources of information.

Stephen Schmidt (25:14.257)
Absolutely. Now, one of the other things that you mentioned in the beginning was another passion that you’ve been discovering recently is mentorship and talking about what’s made you successful to others so that way other people can achieve success within the real estate space as well. How important was mentorship to you when you got started and who were some of those people that you followed early on or maybe hired even as like a business coach or did you not? And you’ve been kind of putting that off. Tell us a little bit about that.

Adrian Gonzalez (25:43.951)
Yeah, to me mentorship means the world for me now as a mentor, it’s basically the reward I’m able to get when I talk to someone and I’m able to just share any piece of wisdom and that could be a homeowner that has an issue with their house and I can, through my YouTube channel where I really am using that as a platform to share everything from finance to real estate to DIY do-it-yourself projects.

Just being able to interact with people and helping them be the best that they can be is something that to me is invaluable. I can’t put a price on it, right? I mean, I can continue being incredibly successful in the stock market and in real estate in my career. And I feel great doing that. I feel rewarded. But every time I’ve had a chance to get someone to say, hey, you know what? Thanks to you, I was able to buy my first home.

All I need is one person to say that. It’s made my entire day. And thankfully, think one of my renters was one of the first one, the first renter I’ve had just about a month ago. She bought her first home. She was living in my duplex for I think the last three years and was living in the previous owner. And I came in and she told me, hey, Adrian, I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I might be here just a year, two years, but my goal is to buy a house. And immediately I kind of just said,

Just let me know when you’re ready. Like I want you to buy a house. I don’t want you to rent from me forever. So really I get joy from just seeing people accomplish their dreams. So yeah, to me, being able to invest time in YouTube and just show everything that’s helped me get to where I’m at, it may not apply for everyone and that’s okay. But if one individual finds it and it helps them out, I know that I’m having impact outside of just in my own sort.

Stephen Schmidt (27:36.923)
Yeah, 100%. Who mentors you now? Like who do you turn to to look for help now?

Adrian Gonzalez (27:43.119)
You know, that’s a great question. My entire career, there was one regret is that I was never intentional reaching for mentors. I was never intentional for finding coaches. But I was always hungry for learning from others. You know, but that’s, I’m starting to want to change that because you can only get so far by doing what I’ve done. And I’ve gotten pretty damn far. Sorry for cussing. It’s after five somewhere, but.

Stephen Schmidt (28:08.849)
100%. No, you’re good.

Adrian Gonzalez (28:13.272)
But yeah, you can only get so far without really having someone to partner up with and lean on heavily. So right now, what I’d be looking to do is find someone in precisely in real estate that’s doing 10 times the size that I’m doing. And if I have any opportunity to go underneath their wing, I would take that in a heartbeat. And when I have someone now, like this isn’t real estate related, but it happened about a month ago, right now in the tech sector, it’s a very difficult time.

know, AI has disrupted every single aspect of our industry and so many people coming out of college, no matter if they’re very, very good college institutions, you know, high caliber folks are struggling to find jobs. And so this individual reached out to me, we’re LinkedIn, went to the same school I went to Georgia Tech and said, Hey, I’m graduating. If you’ve got 10 minutes, I just love to pick your brain. Cause you’re working with this really successful company. And five years ago, said, no, I don’t have the time. I’m too busy. I got other things that can make me money.

without in a heartbeat I said absolutely. So we talked gave him some advice and I said you know what like this kid’s doing it right. I never would have had that courage when I was in stage to do this so I know he’s gonna be successful and I hope that he is but yeah definitely encourage people to to not shy from it like use the platform we’ve got whether it’s Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever just reach out you never know who’s actually gonna say yeah let’s talk a little.

Stephen Schmidt (29:40.113)
Right. Or even, you know, shameless plug, but that’s why places like Investor Fuel exist, right? Because it’s a community of entrepreneurs that are further ahead than others that are all working together to ultimately level everybody up. So even joining a mastermind, as long as it’s a vetted one and it’s going to actually get you the things that you need, that’s also something people should really highly consider. I’ve spent personally tens of thousands of dollars of my own money on various masterminds over the last four or five years. And I can tell you that even from my perspective, having mentors

and having people further ahead than me has never let me down.

Adrian Gonzalez (30:16.43)
you have to invest in yourself. That’s such a great point. even things like just recently Dave Ramsey was in Atlanta here at the Fox Theater and with no brainer, said, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna see if I can just get, even if I can ask the managers one question backstage, it’d be worth any price of admission. And so yeah, you gotta invest in yourself, masterminds, conference, absolutely. That would take place.

Stephen Schmidt (30:37.413)
Did you do it? What’d you ask him?

Adrian Gonzalez (30:41.516)
Well, for him, I asked him precisely where I’m at right now. I was very open. told him, tech career for 10 years, real estate for eight years, own and self-manage eight properties, passion for educating people on just life and journey, but focused on real estate finance. And I asked him, how did you do it, Dave? How did you go from real estate to then creating an entire institution the way you do? What advice would you give someone like me?

And I caught him off guard, think, because he was with Dr. John Delaney and Dave was like, that’s a really good question. So he had to kind of wait a little bit and John came in and said really good, you know, he gave me such great advice. He was like, listen, your number one thing, you got two things you got to think about. Number one, you got to be authentic. Never change who you are. And actually, think that resonates so well because like a lot of people wanting to go viral, like they’ll just do whatever and they’ll not be themselves. I have no interest in that. But

Yeah, being authentic, delivering true messages that you believe in. And then Dave came in and basically reiterated that and said, he reminded me that be careful when you’re educating people, because the moment you’re sharing advice and someone else is listening to the advice, if you’re not 100 % sure on what you’re telling them to do, and it doesn’t turn out to be the right advice for them to take on, you’re negatively impacting someone’s life. And that hit me home pretty well.

kind of just said, okay, know, this really does matter.

Stephen Schmidt (32:11.985)
Yeah, 100%. Well, Adrian, what I would tell you is, is that if you’re going to give advice, I’ve got a pretty good tape for MC impression. Oh, man. That’s so great. I love it. Well, Adrian, thanks so much for being here, man. I really appreciate you taking some time out of your day and hopping on and recording a show with us. We’re excited to get this posted out.

Adrian Gonzalez (32:17.742)
You nailed it. That’s exactly the way he did it.

Stephen Schmidt (32:38.243)
If anyone wants to learn more about you what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Adrian Gonzalez (32:43.616)
Number one source is going to be my YouTube channel AG squared funny name about that name not a lot of people know it but hopefully now a lot more do so my full legal name is Adrian Gonzalez Gonzalez, and I’m a nerd I’m a nerd. That’s what I am so I said it has to be AG squared so check out my channel and Yeah, like listen whether you’re an existing homeowner whether you’re someone wanting to get into real estate whether you’re someone wanting to get out of You know a financial situation

Stephen Schmidt (32:56.785)
No, it’s not.

Adrian Gonzalez (33:13.518)
I love talking about all that. reach out to me. Happy to have just a one-on-one, you know, on the YouTube call or something like that or on Discord. But yeah, I definitely look for, you know, thank you, Steven, for the time here. This was a joy and thank you so much for everything you do.

Stephen Schmidt (33:31.449)
You bet, Adrian. I’m glad you shared that about the AG squared thing because I read that on your bio and I was like, I wonder where he gets the squared from. That’s such an amazing story. Well, everyone, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and if you got as much value from it as I did, I know you did and we will see y’all on the next episode. Thanks again, Adrian, for being here.

Adrian Gonzalez (33:51.459)
Thank you, Stephen. Take care.