Unlock Your Entrepreneurial Success: 7 Mindset Shifts You Need Now

John Harcar (00:01.316)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host John Harcar and I’m here today with Sergio Mendez and what we’re going to talk about besides his journey in business and real estate. We’re going to talk about how to really do something you love, you know, and I had a great quote from guys today. He does what he loves and he says he gets paid to eat ice cream. remember guys at investor fuel, we help real estate investors,

Service providers. I mean really all real estate entrepreneurs two to five extra business By giving tools and resources to grow the business you want to have and and live the life that you want to live So sergio, man, welcome to our show

Sergio Mendez (00:40.536)
Thank you very much, John, appreciate it.

John Harcar (00:42.586)
Yeah, super excited to have you on here. love when I hear and get a chance to talk to people about their passion and really feel that energy. It’s awesome and I’m looking forward to it. before we get into all that, tell our audience about you, your background, your experience. How you got here?

Sergio Mendez (01:01.144)
For sure. Well, thank you so much for having me. Everything started about like COVID time, right? I grew up in Peru. We moved to the US in September of 2019 and then shortly after COVID started and my mom lost her job through COVID and we needed a way to kind of make money. Cause for the first couple of months, my mom was just working on her, like living based out of her, you know, just savings that she had.

John Harcar (01:20.262)
Mm.

Sergio Mendez (01:30.824)
And at that time I was super, super young. I had never learned about business. I had no idea what it was. Like I was still in school. And that was when I found out about something called Amazon FBA. So I started doing Amazon FBA. It completely failed. Then I hopped to crypto. I hopped to so many different things.

John Harcar (01:48.134)
So people don’t know that might not know what it Amazon. What was that?

Sergio Mendez (01:52.876)
Amazon FBA, basically what it is is you buy products in China and you ship them over to Amazon and then Amazon takes care of handling it for you. So that was a complete failure. I had no idea what I was doing. So I had never done a business. I had no idea how to sell. I had no idea how to market and had no idea how to advertise. So I basically had 200 units of this like TikTok LED lights sitting there for

John Harcar (02:00.258)
OK. OK.

John Harcar (02:06.146)
Why did it fail?

Sergio Mendez (02:19.308)
like a month and just paying for warehouse space and not a single one sold. So yeah, so we had to liquidate that inventory.

John Harcar (02:24.336)
Man!

Sergio Mendez (02:28.334)
Then just you know after that I went through a period where basically that’s all the money that I had at that time and you know I had my mom give me a little bit of money and we well I lost all of it So that was very difficult to kind of think that business worked like I was at the point where it’s like Business is a scam like all these people online telling you that you can make it happen and that you just have to do something It’s it’s all a lie, right? That’s kind of what point

John Harcar (02:50.886)
Mm-hmm, right?

Sergio Mendez (02:54.094)
Yeah, then going forward from there, I tried 101 different side hustles, 101 different business models. None of them worked until one day my mom’s a real estate agent, right? She’s been doing real estate for 35 years plus, never super successful with real estate, but other than like…

John Harcar (03:07.536)
Okay.

Sergio Mendez (03:11.95)
Like all the days like in 2008 20 2010 a little bit before 2008 she was crushing it and then Comes 2008 real estate slowed down. She moved to Peru and then we came back But basically at that time she we had just moved back She had no portfolio no anything and one of her friends is like hey, I want to sell my house So she goes does the listing and pays some random dude that she found online 200 bucks to film a video for her And I was like, hey, I could have done that video for you. Just let me do it, right? So then she was like

Sure, I filmed the first video for her. She absolutely loved it Then I filmed the second video for her absolutely loved it and then we started posting videos on social media all the time about like real estate and then one time this lady saw her her Video and it was like my god. I love I love your videos. Let me list my house videos eight million dollar listing so

John Harcar (04:03.194)
Wow.

Sergio Mendez (04:04.046)
Yeah, so it was pretty cool. And then we did the listing. I filmed it. The video came insane. Got a couple thousand views on social media. And then I just got a bunch of real estate agents just hitting me up. Hey, I want to do videos with you. want to do videos with you. And then Ryan Serhant, this was maybe like three years ago now. went to his events. We did a video that went absolutely viral. It got like 10 million views. And then from there, just a bunch of real estate agents just every day on my Instagram, every day on on text messages on my website.

I love your videos. Let’s work together. Let’s do videos and that’s just how NFLUX Media started.

John Harcar (04:39.064)
Have you done videos prior to that or was it, mean, like anything professionally or was it just, Hey, I mean, I can do that.

Sergio Mendez (04:47.82)
No, so I mean I grew up doing YouTube, making silly travel videos, blog videos, but…

John Harcar (04:50.297)
Okay.

John Harcar (04:53.89)
Okay, so you have some experience, you have a little bit of shooting stuff.

Sergio Mendez (04:57.792)
Yeah, nothing crazy.

John Harcar (05:00.142)
Okay. And what, what specifically made your videos stand out? mean, like what are some of the, you know, the, fine points? Cause there might be folks on that are listening to us that, know, are wanting to, you know, learn how to do videos to might just be for their business to grow their presence and whatnot. But what do you think are some of the main things that made your stand out so much and gained so much notoriety and recognition?

Sergio Mendez (05:26.67)
100 % I mean number one would obviously be the engagement factor and like we would add always a personal touch with having the real estate agent be part of the video so if you don’t have a Wonderful listing talking about like a 10 5 6 7 million dollar home Nobody really cares about watching a video of like a 300,000 500,000 dollar home. So what we did is we found creative ways of Promoting the videos where it was engaging so we would start like here’s what? $500,000 can get you in Miami

Florida and no it’s not a shack let me show you. Walk in through the door we have a beautiful kitchen remodeled you know do this do that here’s where you can cook have friends over and it’s more like selling them the lifestyle of the home rather than like here’s a house look at how beautiful it is just more like yo like this is where you can get for five hundred thousand dollars I know it’s insane it’s Miami you didn’t think you could find this but let me show you what it is so yeah

John Harcar (06:10.747)
Yeah.

John Harcar (06:21.424)
sell them the vision, right? Sell them the perfect picture scenario.

Sergio Mendez (06:26.83)
100%. And it’s not like my videos were super crazy looking. It was actually super simple. I would film them on my phone. But what made them really good is that people found them funny because it was kind of like entertaining. And you would watch because there was a person in there. People love persons. Like they love connecting with other individuals.

John Harcar (06:45.062)
100%. And that’s, that’s, that’s 100%. Um, so now as you’re getting, okay, so now you got this video business kind of taking off, right? I mean, you’re, you’re in influx of media is kind of, kind of starting to grow. What was your mindset like of, okay, well, I didn’t do well with all these other jobs. Is this, or all the other businesses, is this going to turn out the same way? Like, how did you deal with that? It had to be some type of thoughts going on there, right?

Sergio Mendez (07:12.618)
Yeah, that’s a great question.

It was and it was really difficult because at first, you know I was making maybe like 2,000 a month like 1200 a month and I would see my friends like having jobs I like McDonald’s like making like 500 bucks more a month I’m like maybe I’m doing the wrong thing But there’s a quote that I love that is like if you’re taking the risk to live a life that you don’t want like When you’re when you’re taking the risk to start your business the risk you’re taking is the life you don’t want there’s really no risk so worst case you’re like if everything goes wrong you just go back to your

normal life doing what you were doing back in the day. That just kept me going. Whereas like I have the freedom to do whatever I want. Even if I make a thousand dollars a month, I’d rather do this than making 10,000 working for somebody else.

John Harcar (07:57.921)
yeah, mean, you always have that fallback, but if you don’t take the risk, you’re never gonna know. You know what I mean? So let’s talk about the business part of it, like the actual operations. Did you seek out anybody to help you do any of that stuff, to build it? Or was it just kinda you got into the fire and trial by air?

Sergio Mendez (08:19.82)
Yeah, just trial by error. I’m a big believer of it. The only way to really learn is just doing it yourself and putting yourself in the trenches of the business.

John Harcar (08:29.478)
Okay. And then as you’ve grown, have you done any, you know, searched out any masterminds, groups, coaches, mentors, networks, anything specific to help you grow both your knowledge and your business?

Sergio Mendez (08:44.878)
So many, mean, when I first started the business, what really helped me get past like the $5,000 a month mark when the business was going to one of Patrick Beddavid’s masterminds. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Patrick. Yeah, so I went to one of his masterminds and then that was game changing. And then after that, I went through a period where I was going to maybe like one a week for an entire year. And then that really helped me push the business really well, yeah. Well, I met Ryan Seri.

John Harcar (08:55.322)
Hmm. I’ve heard the name.

John Harcar (09:11.492)
What are you a trip? What’s that?

Sergio Mendez (09:13.678)
Sorry, I met Sirhan at one of the, like one of the main reasons why the business blew up was because I went to that Ryan Sirhan mastermind and then he did a video, because I was 16 at the time and I just asked him a question. I was like, hey, I’m 16. I just have this business. What advice do you have for me? He gave me advice. The video went viral because I was in that mastermind. So, you know, not only did I learn, but I got to meet people from the masterminds that I was going to.

John Harcar (09:40.805)
I call it the power of proximity, right? If you are in the, if you’re in that room and you’ve got the right people around you, I you just, opportunities show up. as you grew the business, what, mean, and it got bigger, were there any more challenges anymore? You know, things that you struggled with a little bit as it kept growing as it’s to where it’s at today.

Sergio Mendez (10:04.684)
Yeah, the biggest thing for me was the shift from me doing the videos to now finding videographers to do them because not everybody’s like, they’re not passionate about the work. Like a lot of people, especially in marketing, people just do it as a job. Nobody’s like wakes up is like, I’m so excited to do marketing for people today. Very little, very rare. So that was a big challenge that when we were coming up and like getting more clients for sure.

John Harcar (10:31.364)
Okay. And what do you, what do you attribute maybe your, your success to, you know, keys to success as far as, know, sustaining your growth, continually trying to reach to, to build.

Sergio Mendez (10:44.62)
Yeah, I would say leadership, then…

and being very, very analytical, keeping the emotions away from the business decisions. the end of the it all comes down to what numbers. So if you have to make a decision, or if I have to go service this client, or if I have to run ads, let’s say for example, and I’m spending $50 a day and I’m getting no leads, you have to think about it. like, if I get one lead that’s gonna pay me $2,000 to do a whole video for, like $2,000 a month to do videos for them, that’s completely worth it to me.

A lot of people are scared. like, oh my god, it’s costing me $500 to get a client. It’s like, well, you’re making $2,000 from it. Why not invest into it? So just look at the numbers more than the emotion to it. And just stick into something long enough. I’m a big believer that if you stick to something for enough time, no matter what it is, we live in a country where if you want to sell flowers, you can become a millionaire doing it if you do it for long enough.

John Harcar (11:42.983)
Yep, that’s 100 % and I love your mindset and you we’re going to talk about that in here in a little bit when we talk about kind of really doing what you love and I’m impressed with you in your experience up to this date. What is your business look like today? So is it just yourself? Do I mean, I you mentioned you have videographers. What does it look like?

Sergio Mendez (12:01.676)
Right. So right now we’ve shifted the attention from videos to more advertising now. So we help businesses and real estate agents actually generate leads, get more clients and then consulting them on sales. We have a sales course that we run them through. We have a full team, graphic designers. We work with a couple of the biggest real estate groups here in Florida. That’s kind of like where my market stands mainly. And then some in like Virginia, New York,

John Harcar (12:28.304)
Nice.

Sergio Mendez (12:31.9)
But mainly it’s just like advertising, graphic design websites, lead generation. And then obviously we have like the training side where we train them on how to run their own ads. We train them on how to make their own videos at home, like how to set up their phone, how to train the right VA’s, like virtual assistants. It’s a game changer for real estate agents and you know, helping them optimize the business.

John Harcar (12:51.215)
yeah.

So it sounds like it’s kind of like a white glove service.

Sergio Mendez (12:56.814)
Now it has become that over time yet because we would have people say like hey, can you build a website? I have no idea how to build a website, but I had YouTube and a computer and I would do it. So that’s kind of how it went growing.

John Harcar (13:08.742)
That’s so awesome and and and this whole thing is sticking into my mind the whole time we’re talking and like you just said you have YouTube in a computer right there’s so many like I’m impressed with you know, you’re at 16 doing this and how old are you now?

Sergio Mendez (13:23.02)
I’m 18 now, about to go to 19.

John Harcar (13:24.784)
my God. This is incredible that you have and it goes back and attributes to your whole story, right? Of what you told me from where you started and then where you’re at now, it’s about desire. It’s about consistency. It’s about passion. So why and what tools have you used in this short period of time in your life to accelerate yourself where a lot of people are, I mean, let’s be honest, stuck sometimes in paralysis analysis.

Sergio Mendez (13:53.934)
100%. There’s a quote, I love Mark Zuckerberg and he’s been a big inspiration for me because I’ve always wanted to be in software. And now I’m building a software that’s kind of a side, but I’m building a software for like optimizing business and caregivers. But one of the quotes he says that I really, really love is, you’re better off just doing it, taking action and then apologizing for the results later if everything goes wrong.

John Harcar (14:18.63)
Some said, I heard before, yeah, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Do it and then ask for permission is easier.

Sergio Mendez (14:23.018)
Exactly. So like, yeah.

And failure gets you closer to what you want to do. And I feel like a lot of people take advice from their family, a lot of people take advice from their parents. And in reality, it’s not good because they don’t want you to fail. They want you to succeed at everything you do. But every time you fail, you’re paying off your ignorance debt. You failing teaches you something that brings you closer to that yes. It’s like the same thing itself. Every no, it’s one step closer to a yes. So if you fail 10 times, you fail 15 times, all you need is one home run that’s going to get you

to where you want to be.

John Harcar (14:58.618)
Well, first attempt in learning, right? That’s what fail is. It’s your first attempt in learning. That’s it. And, yeah, and I love it. Yeah. The more base hits you get, soon you’re going to score, right? They might not be home runs, but you’ll hit one. So, are there any influences, any, I mean, I know you said Mark Zuckerberg and, are there any other, you know, influencers, influences, people, books, things that, you know, really help your mindset?

Sergio Mendez (15:02.094)
under the sun.

Sergio Mendez (15:23.17)
Yeah, I really like Ryan Serhant.

Ryan Serhan is great when it comes to branding. Obviously that’s kind of what I do Alex Romosi is really good. He breaks down things super super simple for people that are just starting out and people that are advanced is like in the middle where it’s like if you’re really advanced in business, you’ll understand if you’re a beginner, you’ll also understand so that’s super cool difficult to do but he does it perfectly then Gary Vee he’s great as well and just kind of like those kind of big names then couple books that I’ve read obviously you have basic Nepalese

Hill books which are great for setting up the first foundations and like more technical books like Peter Theo’s Zero to One is great for like building a startup.

John Harcar (16:05.382)
Man, mean, where you’re at in your life and your business is very impressive. Why is it so important to you to do what you love?

Sergio Mendez (16:15.694)
It’s the same thing that I was talking at the beginning where it’s like I’d rather make you know 50,000 a year than make 200,000 a year doing something that I don’t like because at the end of the day like real wealth is having the freedom to do whatever you want at whatever time you want and Your lifestyle doesn’t change that much It honestly depends on each person But I don’t think my lifestyle would change that much if I was making 100 million dollars a year compared to what I’m doing now Like I might the things I do would not be that much

And I have a lot more peace where I’m at now with the business and honestly, it’s running really really successfully But my main goal it’s not to grow it to make more money It’s just grow it because I genuinely enjoy doing it and that right there is gonna get me a lot farther than like my god I need to make a hundred million dollars a year with a business and I need to do this and into that It’s more like I enjoy the process. I enjoy the journey and the business just grows because of that

John Harcar (17:08.504)
you get paid to eat ice cream.

Sergio Mendez (17:10.894)
100 % and that’s the

John Harcar (17:12.278)
I heard that quote yesterday and I swear this guy told me I’m going to use it all the time because it’s brilliant. For me, I love what I do. I love the ability to come and talk with folks like you and learn and grow. It’s like, yeah, I’ll get paid the ice cream. That’s so cool. What industries are you serving? I know you service real estate. What other industries do you do work for?

Sergio Mendez (17:33.026)
So coaches, like info products, people that are selling information online, that’s a really big one. I love working with coaches that sell info just because it’s so easy to scale. There’s no fulfillment behind it. And if they have a good product, they have a good service, you’re helping people. A lot of people, my clients are like, man, you changed my life. I went from like 5K to like 10K a month and like a month. That’s great. I love being part of missions like that. And then another one, that’s a money printer. This is really good in terms of the money.

It’s construction companies like if you want a lot of money you work in construction for like 10 years You can exit your company for a couple million dollars just because you know There’s so much leverage on on labor like laborers. It’s not expensive Materials are not expensive compared to what you’re selling them for like you’re reselling the materials, but really where it is is labor It’s like 20 % of your cost and then you know, you’re selling a kitchen for like $50,000 It’s costing you like 10 15

You know?

John Harcar (18:33.774)
Right, right. Got it. Man, that’s so awesome. If you have any advice, what advice would you give for anybody that, you know, another 16 year old out there listening or, know, someone that wants to get into maybe, you know, doing what you do, but just getting into a business, like what, what advice do you want to give to somebody?

Sergio Mendez (18:55.822)
Yeah, so when I first started my business, was 12, it was back in 2019. What I wish I heard when I first started was, number one, surround yourself with people that are where you wanna be.

Like if, if don’t be with people that are not in the same mindset that you’re trying to be, because that’s just not going to get you anywhere. And by seeking advice from people, you’re going to hear a lot of things. Right. And what I would say is when you hang out with the right friend group, you’re not going to have to seek advice anymore because you’ll learn so much from being around them that that will be your advice. Just hearing how they speak, hearing while they talk about, we’ll get you where you want to be.

John Harcar (19:36.014)
of advisors, that’s what I like to call them, right? You’re being around those folks that, mean, if you don’t feel uncomfortable because of their intelligence versus yours, then you’re in the wrong place because you want to be with people smarter than you. That’s awesome. Where do you plan to take this business? What’s your growth path look like?

Sergio Mendez (19:38.562)
Yeah.

Sergio Mendez (19:49.998)
100%.

Sergio Mendez (19:55.374)
So basically, I mean, the goal is to grow it a couple more years and then get a good exit out of it. I’m very passionate when it comes to software. I’m working on a company called PigPup right now, which is kind of like an Expedia and Airbnb model for people that have pets. So yeah, we’re launching it on the App Store very, very soon. I can show you, but it’s super, super easy. Hopefully you can see it through the screen, but…

It allows you to have like…

John Harcar (20:26.17)
Nah, don’t think I’ll be able to see that. I’ll put it in the show notes so people can check it out if you want, or if you have like a link to it or something that you want to share.

Sergio Mendez (20:33.528)
for sure but basically what it is is you can book

Services from there you can do the payments from there like if you have a dog and you want to take it to the vet It takes you like an hour to find a good vet. Hey, can you take my dog tomorrow? No, we can’t we have a availability book for next week. No next one Whatever give me five minutes. I’m gonna put you with the the the the front desk takes forever So what we do the app is you can just check the condor you can check the schedule and you can do everything yourself from the app So where you don’t really need to rely on the business anymore

John Harcar (20:55.184)
Yeah.

John Harcar (21:07.814)
That’s really cool, man. I love your story, dude. You are far beyond where a lot of guys I know, especially, I mean, you started at 12. I was surfing and playing football at 12, How do folks get in touch with you? They want to talk to you. They want to use your services. How do they reach out to you? How do they connect?

Sergio Mendez (21:10.798)
Thank you.

Sergio Mendez (21:28.652)
Yeah, they can reach out, Sergio Mendes on Instagram, and then the only difference is that the last E on the name is gonna be a three. So Sergio Mendes, D, three Z, that would be all.

John Harcar (21:39.91)
Okay, perfect. And then I think you sent that to me. Let me make sure. Well, I have Sergio at influxmedia.agency. Is that a good email?

Sergio Mendez (21:47.266)
That’s a good email as well, Sergio at InflixMe to that agency.

John Harcar (21:50.094)
Okay, we’ll put it all in the in the show notes so folks can reach out guys. I I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did man. I mean your surgery incredible journey. Thank you for sharing all that you did guys. I hope you took some good notes because there were some good nuggets that were dropped in there and I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I did. We’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Sergio Mendez (22:10.754)
Thank you having me.