The Emotional Roller Coaster of Business

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Jose Berlanga – Experienced Entrepreneur

 

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Entrepreneurship: Risks and Lifestyle
06:18 Entrepreneurship: The Crazy Gamble
13:44 Balancing Passion and Practicality
16:30 Balancing Professional Dress Codes
23:36 Partnering for Business Success
27:52 Business Debt and Survival Struggles
31:50 Accidental Real Estate Journey
36:58 “Successful Partnerships Require Compromise”
42:28 “Saturday Night Live Skit Memory”
49:58 Prepare for Economic Shifts
57:47 Youthful Business Risk-Taking Insight
01:00:17 Guidance Lines of Credit Explained
01:07:48 Understanding Your Business Role

Podcast Transcription:

Jose Berlanga [00:00:00]:
The biggest mistake that that some of us entrepreneurs make is that when we start making some money and we experience a handful of good years, we get very, very On, and we think that those good years are never gonna end. And instead of putting some money aside, paying paying off some debt, consolidating our operation, we continue to grow and we continue to leverage and expand recklessly.

James Kademan [00:00:31]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found In the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, calls On call extraordinary answering service, and, of course, the Business book. And today, we’re welcoming slash preparing to learn from Jose Berlanga of the McCall Media Group, and we’re talking real estate, business, and a couple of mistakes along the way. Is that safe to say, Jose?

Jose Berlanga [00:01:05]:
That’s right. How are you, James?

James Kademan [00:01:07]:
I’m doing very well. I’m doing very well. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Jose Berlanga [00:01:11]:
Part of my reinvention now, I’m starting to write. I’m already on my third book, having a blast doing In, something that I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time and finally got around to it. But, but really the my my companies, are several others and umbrella of companies, mostly real estate related. Houstonian Capital, Onyx, Land Partners, On Homes, so on and so forth. But In in the bulk of our activities are are residential single family, developments from land development, single family homes. We do a lot of multifamily and some commercial and whatnot. So real estate, I would say, is where I’m at, where where the the majority of my activities. Not to say that I haven’t In, an entrepreneur in so many other industries, which is the fun part about my my my my career that is very very versatile.

James Kademan [00:02:10]:
Nice. Tell me we talked to or you touched on a lot of stuff there, but let’s tackle a couple here. Tell me about your books. You said three books?

Jose Berlanga [00:02:18]:
Yes. This the first one is the Business of home building, which, it is not about how to build homes, but how to build a company, not only a construction company, a company that builds homes, but just a company in the real estate business. It’s very interesting. It’s I try to made it make it fun. I realized that after a decades being in this business, there wasn’t one single place where you could go and learn how to start a company in the construction business, not just the technical aspects, but everything that happens behind the scenes. So I I wrote that book. It was, it’s it’s published. It’s out there on Amazon and everywhere else.

Jose Berlanga [00:03:00]:
But but I I I didn’t do it just because I was interested in in In, publishing books. It just it was more of a cathartic process to unload all this information that I had been piling, adding up throughout my career. The second one is about land development, land investing, land speculating by the name of DIRTTICH. That is coming out

James Kademan [00:03:24]:
of the Dirt Rich?

Jose Berlanga [00:03:25]:
Yes. Yes.

James Kademan [00:03:26]:
Oh, it’s a great name. Oh, I love it.

Jose Berlanga [00:03:28]:
Yeah. And and it has a dual, meaning because it’s not necessarily rich, in in the sense of wealth, but it’s rich in your blood, in our nature, in our culture, in our history. What what it means to select a piece of land, and develop it and how everything in the world is this, multi trillion dollar industry around the world of real estate, it all begins by the proper selection of a piece of land.

James Kademan [00:04:04]:
Mhmm.

Jose Berlanga [00:04:05]:
And and and so I get a little bit deeper on the second book, that I had a lot of fun writing. And the third one is, the name is On entrepreneurship, which is dealing with the fundamentals of what it means to be an In, the risk, the lifestyle, the identity, the anxiety that an entrepreneur goes through, the life choices that one must make in order to choose that career and live that type of life. So my my whole life has In, very, very involved in entrepreneurship. I’ve I’ve owned businesses since I was 17 years old and, in many different sectors. So I I have a a passion for understanding that particular lifestyle of not, working for someone, but most of all, always living under that uncertainty of not knowing where your where where where your next payday will come from or if it will come at all. So so that is something that I hold very dear, very deep in my in in in my heart, in in in my in the history of my career.

James Kademan [00:05:25]:
Yeah. So that the On entrepreneur was it On entrepreneurship? Or what was the title?

Jose Berlanga [00:05:30]:
Quantum Entrepreneurship.

James Kademan [00:05:32]:
Alright. So that book, is that geared towards people that are On?

Jose Berlanga [00:05:36]:
Or is

James Kademan [00:05:36]:
it more of a warning for someone that’s thinking about becoming an entrepreneur?

Jose Berlanga [00:05:40]:
No. It’s it’s it’s not a although I have plenty of, cautionary tales of what what not to do, it it really allows you to understand what it truly means to be and to become an entrepreneur, to remove the emotional aspects, to remove the the romanticism about owning a business and the misconceptions. A lot of people associated with freedom, with fun, with wealth, with growth, and it’s not quite like that at least in the early stages. It’s a

James Kademan [00:06:16]:
very, very Not a guarantee?

Jose Berlanga [00:06:18]:
Correct. Correct. It has a touch of craziness, to become your own boss because you have to sacrifice and devote your time, your money, you have to invest, you have to work for a prolonged period of time without getting paid. You have to even borrow money from In, from bankers, get in debt, compromise your credit for a promise, for the hope of getting some money in return and then some In building a career out of it. So you have to be, you know, a little a little bit crazy, a little bit of a gambler, a little bit of a dreamer. So so in this book, I talk about all of the characteristics that might help you understand what it means And then make a better choice as to not only whether this is for you, but also what type of entrepreneur you are. Because within the modern world, it’s not defined as one type of identity or personality. It it’s become very, very diversified, a very broad audience that is interested in starting their own Business, and there are so many ways to go about it these days.

Jose Berlanga [00:07:32]:
So I dig into the entire world and the different classifications and the different ways in which you can identify yourself as an entrepreneur.

James Kademan [00:07:44]:
Fair. This sounds like a very interesting book. I’m not to chase it out.

Jose Berlanga [00:07:49]:
I I I it it will come out soon. And and I’m, I’m excited. At some point, I I plan to devote a little more time to doing, convey, you know, presentations and and to discuss them. Right now, it’s almost just a side project, just a fun project, while I still have a daytime job, which

James Kademan [00:08:10]:
Oh, I get it. I get it. I wrote I wrote a couple books, and those are fun, and it’s interesting. Once you get in the zone of writing, you almost impress yourself once you get in that zone. Before you get in that zone, you’re like, oh, what’s going on?

Jose Berlanga [00:08:26]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:08:27]:
But then once it’s out there, it’s out there, and don’t bank your livelihood on it.

Jose Berlanga [00:08:32]:
It and it’s amazing to complete it. It it it has it’s a great feeling to complete that project. Funny that you mentioned that that it’s it’s difficult. It’s very complicated to put all of your thoughts together. But once you get on a on on a train of thought and you get your thoughts organized, it it’s impressive how much you start putting together information about any particular subject that you know, that you under that that, that you like discussing. I was In, somewhat laughed at In, in some way because I’m very ADD, very scatterbrained. I’m not a heavy reader because I can’t focus. I’m always distracted doing 12 things at the same time.

Jose Berlanga [00:09:14]:
But I’ve so so, you know, it it was difficult to think that I could put together, the this information and come up with, with a sequence with a series of books. But I discovered, but it’s a that that it’s a different part of your brain. Mhmm. Capturing In, this is a very interesting fact. Reading, absorbing, learning is one part of your brain. Talking, communicating, unloading, writing, and and delivering messages is a different part of your brain that is more creative. And and I realized that I have more of that. You know? Imagine how interesting for for your audience, will be interesting to hear that in, you know, after close to forty years as an entrepreneur and, owned a number of businesses, I’m still learning about my myself, my skills, my strengths, my weaknesses, and you never stop learning about yourself.

Jose Berlanga [00:10:15]:
What is it that you’re good at? What is it that you like? What is it that you don’t like? And sometimes matching that information and understanding it clearly can allow you to have better chances in in succeeding with your business. I’ve I’ve made that mistake that I get very stubborn about trying to run, operate a type of business that maybe I’m not necessarily very good at. And There. And it makes it very, very difficult until you naturally begin to understand what your real talent In. And sometimes In takes decades to really get to that.

James Kademan [00:10:51]:
So true. Oh my gosh. So true. I can remember the first real business that I started. It was copy repair, printer repair. I and I chose that business because I was good at it. But it was interesting because once you get in there a couple years and you’re thinking, I don’t even really like this that much, and you’re busting tail. And I wasn’t I wasn’t really making that much money or anything like that.

James Kademan [00:11:16]:
And you realize, like, I am a rat on a wheel here, and I’m the one that built the wheel. And I just hopped on and, like

Jose Berlanga [00:11:25]:
This this is

James Kademan [00:11:26]:
took me a little while to realize, like, you can also build a different wheel and hop off this one.

Jose Berlanga [00:11:31]:
Yes. Yes. That is so true, and it happens to a lot of us. And it it’s a sign it’s a real science to understand a number of of ingredients that can help you become successful, which is to understand what you like, to understand what you’re good at, and to understand how to how to apply it in the real world In a practical way and execute those ideas. Because like you said, sometimes you may love a a certain industry or or a certain business, but you’re not very qualified or vice versa. You’re very good at something that has also happened to me, where I’m very good at certain activities. But I I dread, going to an office and doing these number of things that just put me in a bad mood. I’ve I’ve done a lot of that.

Jose Berlanga [00:12:25]:
You know, by default, I grew In the era where it was all about responsibility. It wasn’t about passion. It wasn’t about selecting what your, love for for any certain activity was. We were brought up. We were taught to survive, to support ourselves, to be responsible, to be accountable. And I did all of those without even giving it a a second, of thinking about whether this was something that I wanted to do or not. And that also took me many years. And and I feel like at this point, I don’t wanna call it a waste because I did learn a lot and I I achieved a lot of things.

Jose Berlanga [00:13:07]:
But I feel that I invested many, many years of my life working on things that didn’t make me happy, that were very, very difficult. I became good at them by default, by persistence, by repetition. But I could have done, many other things with less effort, and and and it would have been a lot more fun perhaps.

James Kademan [00:13:29]:
Yeah. Totally understand that. It’s interesting that you talked about that the responsibility side where joy or freedom or happiness, things like that weren’t even weren’t even on the table. Wasn’t even a thought.

Jose Berlanga [00:13:44]:
Nobody ever asked me, hey. What do you like doing? What what’s fun for you? What it was like, how are we going to make money? How are you gonna support yourself? Where are you going to find a a business, a career, a job? That was it. That was the previous generation that, that that many of us were were started with in in our careers. Now it’s per perhaps I’m hoping that it’s not too much to the other extreme, which in some cases it In, where the young generation is too focused on finding something that they love and that they’re passionate about. And if it’s not perfect, they don’t On touch it. They don’t wanna get near anything that it’s just not exciting. I I think it’s gotta be somewhere in the middle because there is no activity that is just all pleasure and fun, in in in passion and excitement. So so I think we definitely have to pay our dues.

Jose Berlanga [00:14:43]:
We have to work hard. We have to understand that every type of activity has a list of things that are not pleasurable. But ultimately, there there has to be something that attracts you to that particular business or industry. And and and that’s what I’m now trying to little by little identify over the years where you can blend those two and have the fun and have the passion and have the mission. But Call know that it’s not called work for no reason. I mean Fair. It that it is what it is. Making money has never been easy, and it never will be.

James Kademan [00:15:22]:
Fair. You know what’s interesting? It reminds me of when you go to an airport and you see the people that are business attire In to the point of wearing a suit and jacket on an airplane. And then you have the people that look like they’re still in their pajamas because they still have their little slippers on. And they it’s almost like I I think you’re a little too comfortable here.

Jose Berlanga [00:15:44]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:15:45]:
This is the world. This is the public. You’re going to see the rest of the world. You’re gonna have to sit by someone on the airplane. Maybe put a little bit of effort into yourself just to show that you have respect for other people.

Jose Berlanga [00:15:59]:
I do. I I come also from from, that era of formality, dressing up. I love wearing a a jacket. I love wearing a tie. Now I don’t wear it as much just because it’s, you know, it’s it’s it’s not used, as as frequently. But, but I you know, there there are different versions. Obviously, there are different mentalities. Some very successful people are extremely casual.

Jose Berlanga [00:16:30]:
Like you said, they look almost look like they’re in their pajamas, and they claim that the reason is that, they can get away with it. They’re successful. They’re the boss. They’re the owner, and they dress like that because they can. And then there’s the other, extreme of the people who work for the executive, world that that requires that that, professionalism in in the dress code and wearing a coat and tie. And then there’s somewhere in between, which is the one that I enjoy, which you nailed it. It’s called respect. It’s taking your peers seriously, your business seriously, your society, getting dressed, looking like you mean what you’re doing, and, and having that self respect, over your, your your identity and and your appearance that, a good portion of the new generation just does not care about.

Jose Berlanga [00:17:25]:
So, I I think that we’d like, again, the balance aspect, we need to find that, middle of the road where where we still care about our image without necessarily requiring to wear a suit and tie every day. But I do love it. I I love those days where people got dressed to get in an airplane. And, now, for example, one of my favorite, places my wife and I love Las Vegas. Oh. And I remember it back when people got dressed to go to shows, to go to events, to and now it’s, it’s an extremely casual, almost looks like people are going to the beach. It’s a little disappointing in in in my opinion, but that’s where some of the trends are are headed.

James Kademan [00:18:14]:
Yeah. You know what’s In? You mentioned the jacket and stuff like that because I just recently started wearing a jacket more often. And it’s interesting the shift in your mind when you wear a jacket versus just when you’re more casual, whether it’s just t shirt or a collared shirt alone or something like that. I it reminds me of Bill Burr. When Bill Burr puts on his jacket, and he’s like, I feel like I wanna take over some stuff.

Jose Berlanga [00:18:39]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:18:40]:
Like, it’s a it almost puts you in a mindset of the On, let’s do this In of mindset versus just, you know what? I’ve earned the right to be casual kind of thing. It’s Yes. Yes. Mindset. Not necessarily good or bad, but there’s a In

Jose Berlanga [00:18:57]:
may feel important. It makes you feel like you’re on a mission to discover, to to learn, to achieve things. I think it’s part of the psychological aspect of success to get dressed and get ready and to look your best and to be your best. As they say, you know the best version of yourself, and and part of it is to to take care of your, your image. At least that’s my opinion. I’m I’m sure everybody has their their own way of looking at it these days, but to me, it’s still important.

James Kademan [00:19:31]:
Fair. I love it. Jose, let’s talk about your businesses when you first started. You said you started your first business when you’re 17?

Jose Berlanga [00:19:39]:
Yes. Yes. It it was, an an exporting, company in the oil and gas business machinery for the oil and gas. The the industry was very, very different. Latin American countries didn’t have ways of maintaining their plants, their factories. They needed a a a US Representative that spoke English, that knew how to find parts and, In in all of the needs machinery for for the maintenance of their of their companies On plans or their manufacturing facilities. And, and I had a lot of contacts because my father was in that business. We work together.

Jose Berlanga [00:20:25]:
Very few people know the the details of that story in that company. He had been in that business for a long time, but he couldn’t really operate in The US very well because he didn’t speak English. And so I became that link between some of those clients, in Mexico and Latin America and The US manufacturers and distributors that that provided these services In this, this equipment. So that that’s how the business started, and it grew very fast. It did very well. There was very little information. There was no Internet. There was no way for people to locate some of these, things that were required for the maintenance of their manufacturing facilities.

Jose Berlanga [00:21:13]:
Eventually that industry became obsolete because of information, because exclusive distributorships and all the factories began to open, offices in the different, major metropolitan areas in in Central And South America. So that’s that’s where you pivot. You adjust. But I thought I was going to retire out of that business. It became very successful very quickly. And, and it was, one of the first perhaps my my first major failure in the business world, which was extremely painful. I thought I would continue in that industry for many years to come. So when it failed, it In was a very difficult time.

Jose Berlanga [00:22:00]:
I was still very young. I was still in my early twenties. But but that’s all I knew. And and it felt like it was the end of the world when when when my company collapsed.

James Kademan [00:22:11]:
So you were you the one that realized that there’s potential here, or did your dad say, hey. This is a thing. Jump on that ship kinda thing.

Jose Berlanga [00:22:19]:
No. It it was a it was a combination of efforts. Mhmm. He was more specific to certain products. For example, valves and piping, which he was very, very, experienced in. And I kind of, when I started doing my research here in The US and talking to distributors and manufacturers, In in Mexico, they began to inquire about other products. Hey. You’re in The US.

Jose Berlanga [00:22:49]:
Do you mind helping me find this motor, this transformers, this electrical panels? I need wiring for this machine. I have, you know, this reactor is down because it’s missing these parts. Can you help me? So we started expanding. I started making friends. I was a very social, very, outgoing, type of personality that started visiting, clients and making friends. Where before you know it, we I I was selling from, industrial batteries, transformers. I was selling industrial, tires, heavy machinery, and we started diversifying because of that. So so it was kind of a mutual effort.

Jose Berlanga [00:23:36]:
I had some strengths. This is something I always talk about starting a business that it makes a lot of sense to partner with someone who has other skills where you can balance each other. And and in today’s difficult business environment and competitive world, it’s hard to be good at everything, and it’s hard to do everything yourself. I I try In at most of my successful Business. They happen to be where I partner with someone who who had some skills that I lacked. You know, if I was good in putting the business together, they were very technically trained, or or I was good in the marketing, but they were very good in organizing systems and so on and so forth. And you can diversify the the, spread the responsibilities and go further faster when you partner with the right team. So so that’s that’s In, my trajectory In in I I have to admit that in in in, my successful experiments in the business world, I have had the right partner that we trusted each other, that we work well each other, and that we complemented each other in in in different talents and skills.

James Kademan [00:24:54]:
That is cool. I’m just trying to imagine me working at some huge oil thing, and the 17 year old kid comes up to me, and he’s gonna sell me the part that’s gonna keep our plant moving. I’m just pastoring. How what was the reaction? Did anybody say, like, no. No. No. We need somebody, I don’t know, older to help us out there.

Jose Berlanga [00:25:17]:
Well, yes. In some in some respects, I I had some of those, issues, laugh lack of, self confidence when I showed up in in the to some of these meetings In in some of these sales calls. But I, I I did have other attributes like the one we were talking about. I was always very well dressed. I loved wearing a tie, a suit. I was well spoken. I was very accountable, very punctual, reliable. I would always say what I did and did what I said, and people started to realize In no matter what the age was, I I was, delivering.

Jose Berlanga [00:26:02]:
And most of all, they weren’t too worried about my h or or or or or anything else other than the fact that I could find them the parts to get their machines going. They had nothing to lose. Imagine In you have a multimillion dollar reactor that’s sitting there not producing because you’re missing a some some panel that’s a couple of thousand dollars, and you can’t find it. I mean, you don’t care who brings it to you.

James Kademan [00:26:33]:
No. If two year old shows up or a monkey shows up, I don’t care.

Jose Berlanga [00:26:36]:
Yes. Yes.

James Kademan [00:26:37]:
We gotta get that thing done.

Jose Berlanga [00:26:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And at that and at that, age, of course, you’re very persistent. I did a lot of calls, a lot of visits. I I tried very hard to find some of these clients, and and, and it and it worked until it didn’t. Of course, economic shifts, currency exchanges, hit us very hard.

James Kademan [00:26:58]:
Okay.

Jose Berlanga [00:26:59]:
So, yeah, that that also In

James Kademan [00:27:00]:
would think what was that part. Okay. So when was the moment where you realized, like, oh, things aren’t gonna go so hot as I anticipated?

Jose Berlanga [00:27:09]:
Yeah. It it was a perfect storm On that per on that first business. It it was, several things. One, more competitors, more technology, more information began to to flourish, to to show up in in that market. But most importantly, devaluations. We had a few devaluations where we were selling in dollars, and they were paying us in pesos or at least they were exchanging their pesos prior to paying us. So when there was a devaluation, their cost would go up and make it very difficult for them to pay the Call. So they began to delay payments little by and in The US, you cannot delay payments to your vendors.

Jose Berlanga [00:27:52]:
So I go and buy and I had to pay right there. And if my client started delaying thirty, sixty, ninety days little by little, I was stretching myself thin where before you know it, we we couldn’t pay our bills and it put us out of business. So be I I think it would and and, of course, then there’s also cycles in some of these industries where they’re just going through a difficult economic cycle where they don’t have that much that they can buy or their budgets are very limited for that particular year. So so little by little, we couldn’t afford paying all of the bills on time without getting paid on time by our by our clients. And, and it wasn’t, that that wasn’t as overnight as what I’ve experienced in the real estate world, but it was relatively quickly when when that business started falling behind and eventually, I I had to realize that, this was not going to continue for very much longer. And it’s very hard. I In doesn’t matter what age you are. A question that I’m asked very often, what did you feel? What did you do to get back on your feet? How did you even go about looking for another opportunity? But when you find yourself in that situation of desperation, and the stress to continue making a living, if some some people, go into a denial phase and some people go into survival mode.

Jose Berlanga [00:29:27]:
And I chose a survival mode to start talking to friends and other business owners and see how I could help. And and before you know it, I was partnering in other other deals faster faster than I anticipated. I thought it was going to be harder than I thought. But but it wasn’t my first failure, by the way. It it it I I mean, I I failed in a number of other Business, a a couple of dozen. Let’s just call it without some work well, some didn’t. In some, I invested some money that I lost, In some, I participated. I’ve realized to narrow it down and and perhaps to just get to the important point.

Jose Berlanga [00:30:11]:
I’ve noticed in my career that when I invest money and let it run on its own by a group of individuals that I don’t understand what they’re doing, I tend to lose the money. But when I put a lot of work and very little money and I build the business with blood, sweat, and tears, as they say, they tend to do better than when I delegate them and just invest in things that I don’t understand, at least that’s been my luck. So so so I’ve I’ve done better whenever I I start something from the ground up and I run it and I operate it. I I think the fact that I I refuse to fail and I put so much time and passion into things, I give it just a better probability of success. And and Call when you have a very specific mission and objective and you understand what you want out of your business and and how to differentiate your business from other competitors, when you devote enough time in the yearly stages of designing the concept, and and you’re not just doing it to make a profit, which a lot of entrepreneurs do that. They think, hey. I’m gonna start this business. I need to make money, and this seems like a good opportunity to make money.

Jose Berlanga [00:31:33]:
It doesn’t always that work that way. It it it there’s there has to be more than just a desire to make money.

James Kademan [00:31:41]:
Fair. Totally fair. Yeah. Thousand times over. How did you end up shifting from the oil and gas industry to real estate?

Jose Berlanga [00:31:50]:
Well, it it it was years later. As I mentioned before that, I was In, involved in several other Business, whether I partner with someone and help them kind of grow the business, invested in some things, this and that and the other. But Adventures, we started a construction company, which was a residential construction company with my brother, my brother and I, which we became amazing partners because he graduated as an architect. So he had the technical skill, the construction, the design, and I came in more as the investor In and the administrator of the business with a with a financial background, with a business background. And between the two of us, we started a very small, home building company that Draw, to a to a very interesting size. And and that, although I had done a couple of real estate transactions prior to that, this was really the entry into the world of of real estate, which I I’ve never left thirty years later. I’m still doing a a lot of a lot of real estate. But but it was almost by accident, being being that my my brother wanted to build homes, and I didn’t necessarily, want or need to be in that industry.

Jose Berlanga [00:33:19]:
I I was more of an entrepreneur type of personality, but he was more into a very specific desire to build homes. That’s what he wanted to do. So I I like the idea and and and we we started our business. And with a lot of effort and a lot of sacrifice, it it worked. Over the years, we built it. But, but it but it didn’t, happen overnight, and it certainly didn’t start making money right away.

James Kademan [00:33:50]:
Alright. Was it tough working with a a relative? I mean, brother’s close relative. Yes. So working with that person as a partnership, were there any challenges with that?

Jose Berlanga [00:34:02]:
No. The challenges were the opposite of what most people experience. My brother and I had a level of love, respect, and care for each other that the problem was that we would rarely verbalize what we wanted. I was always trying to do what he wanted, the way that he envisioned the Business, and follow his dreams and his objectives, and he was doing the same with me. So in, in this business, which we managed together for twenty years, little over twenty years, we never had one single argument or discussion or disagreement, and we made and lost millions, tens of millions of dollars, borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars, never had the slightest disagreement. We had a high level of respect for each other’s, participations in this Business. And and we weren’t doing it in in a selfish way where, hey. I just want more of this or more or less.

Jose Berlanga [00:35:09]:
We we had full trust, the which is what I recommend in partnerships that if if the care and the attention and the respect and the trust is not mutual, be very careful. Very much like a marriage. You have to know upfront who you’re dealing with, who you’re, partnering with. And if you share those values, which by the way, you don’t necessarily have to share the exact same vision or mission because different entrepreneurs get in business for different reasons. Some want to expand. Some just love the technical aspects. Some of them just like working, and and everyone has a different reasoning, different objective. Some some business owners want to expand in in in achieve multi market strategies, and some others just wanna stay at a at a certain size and so on and so forth.

Jose Berlanga [00:36:19]:
You can work those out In and and manage those with your partners. Having a similar mission is very important. But the number one is to have similar ethics, similar aspirations, and respect for your business and for each other. If you have those fundamental ones, you can fix the other ones. So, that

James Kademan [00:36:47]:
In weird because you’re talking about culture essentially of the of the business and the relationship that you have with your with your partner that you’re gonna be In these huge decisions with.

Jose Berlanga [00:36:58]:
And and it’s tough, and you have to compromise very much like parents do in, perhaps in your technique to to to to to educating your children. You know, one parent may think this is a way, another parent may but at some point, you have to compromise and agree and respect each other and follow each other. At some point, come come to terms with what route you’re gonna take and stick to that. And when you have a good partner that’s willing to listen and willing to compromise and that’s just not about him or her, it it works well. So so you have to be very, very careful in selecting one that that at least is open minded, and and and that it’s not just very, very, focused on an area of the business that you necessarily don’t have a, a big interest in. So I I’ve been very, very lucky in in having good partners, Call. The the majority of of the deals that I’ve that I’ve had, I’ve worked with very reasonable people, people that are, not not only savvy, but but, they they wanna help. They wanna contribute.

Jose Berlanga [00:38:10]:
They they wanna do the right thing. When it all comes down to the world of business, it’s all about trying to contribute to society and doing the best you can for, for your product, for your employees, for your company. So, you know, if if you follow those those rules, normally, it’s, you’re gonna get further along and faster if if you have good partners.

James Kademan [00:38:38]:
Fair. Totally fair. Tell me, it sounds like the majority of businesses that you’ve started that you’ve had mostly partnerships. Is it safe to say?

Jose Berlanga [00:38:48]:
Yes. Yes. And and, yeah, there’s been a few Business small entities, obviously, investment entities that I own.

James Kademan [00:38:57]:
Mhmm.

Jose Berlanga [00:38:59]:
And I still do where I buy investments, where I where I hold assets and so on. But most of the companies that had some, operation attached to it that required employees In management, distribution, warehouses, so on and so forth, I’ve had partners.

James Kademan [00:39:19]:
Alright.

Jose Berlanga [00:39:20]:
Yes. I I I it wasn’t necessarily by design. It was by default. That’s just the way, it occurred. And and I’ll I’ll admit to something. I’ll confess part of why that has happened. I’m I’m one of Jose, entrepreneurs that is very, very good at identifying his or her strengths, but mostly his weaknesses and flaws. In the world of business, I am not necessarily the technical or the creative or the vision guy, and I know that.

Jose Berlanga [00:39:57]:
I understand that. Businesses have been brought to me by people who understand that I’m very good at organization, finances, financial engineering, making the most out of our our our, capital and our resources, building businesses, I’m good at that. But knowing necessarily where we’re going, what product to select, what market to select, that that never I’m not the kind of guy who invents things. I’ve done it. I’ve even patented some things, and I’ve started a couple of, startups, but it it was very difficult. I’ve had a lot of ideas, and I’ve realized at the end of the day that that wasn’t my forte. My forte, my strength was to partner with people who had a very technical ability to to deliver a product, but I had the ability to make it happen. Some some people have that product or that idea or that invention, but they don’t know how to put it together and take it to market or build it or turn it into an actual company.

Jose Berlanga [00:41:05]:
And, and and that’s how I’ve In, lucky enough to have those opportunities and to recognize that that’s my part.

James Kademan [00:41:14]:
That’s cool. That’s super clever right there. I’ve meet a lot of people that are the idea people, but as far as implementation goes

Jose Berlanga [00:41:23]:
Yeah. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:41:24]:
The prayer.

Jose Berlanga [00:41:25]:
And a lot of a lot of In, make the mistake of thinking that because they have some technical background Draw because they know one sector of the business, it’s enough to be successful, and it’s not. This is something I repeat over and over. You cannot be successful just by, being able to repair a car, let’s say. Oh, I’m gonna open a a a repair shop because I know how to repair Calls or I’m, I know how to cook, so I’m gonna open a restaurant. There’s a lot more. There’s purchasing. There’s distribution. There’s dealing with clients.

Jose Berlanga [00:42:01]:
There’s accounting. There’s cash flow. There’s legal. There’s when if you don’t know those aspects of the business and you don’t realize that you need to spend time on them, you have a you have a big chance, and probability to fail. And that’s how a lot of them fail because they don’t devote time to the other areas of the business. They’re not even fully aware of them. So that is something that happens fairly frequently.

James Kademan [00:42:28]:
That’s, you remind me of a Saturday night live skit that somebody introduced me to. I think it’s a little bit older one, but it was I think it’s called That’s the Game. And it’s got these two drug dealer guys, and the one guy is gonna, is holding a gun to the the main boss. And he’s like, we’re taking over your territory kinda thing. And the guy’s like, okay. And he’s, and the guy with the gun is like, where do you get your shipments from? And and then the guy that’s got the gun on him goes like, you gotta figure out this and that and this and that and this and that.

Jose Berlanga [00:43:02]:
Yeah. And the

James Kademan [00:43:03]:
guy with the gun is like, yeah. I don’t wanna do any of that.

Jose Berlanga [00:43:06]:
By by the time it was all said and done, he he changed his mind.

James Kademan [00:43:10]:
Yeah. He’s like, no. No. No. No. No. You have it.

Jose Berlanga [00:43:12]:
Yeah. So Oh, yeah. Yeah. You have to be not an expert. I Call say this. You don’t have to be an attorney or a marketing genius or an operations or distributor, of of, high level, but you do have to know the basics, the fundamentals, and you do have to know what are all the different activities that your business requires in order to succeed.

James Kademan [00:43:37]:
Mhmm.

Jose Berlanga [00:43:37]:
And not all Business owners are fully aware of that, at least in the early stages.

James Kademan [00:43:44]:
No. I would argue most are not. I can tell you, I teach a business planning class, and I taught a lot more pre pandemic when more stuff was in person. And there was a woman that wanted to start a donut shop, and we started talking about strengths and weaknesses. And she’s like, I’m not a morning person. And I was like,

Jose Berlanga [00:44:04]:
I don’t

James Kademan [00:44:05]:
know if you know when they make doughnuts, but

Jose Berlanga [00:44:07]:
It’s not in the afternoon.

James Kademan [00:44:09]:
Yeah. It’s not three in the afternoon, man. Yeah. Another another person that was gonna have a retail store. So what are you what are your hours gonna be? Because we’re putting together a business plan. And she said 9AM to 9PM, seven days a week. And I’m like, great. How many employees you’re gonna have? And she said, oh, I’m not gonna have any employees.

James Kademan [00:44:28]:
And I’m like, you just built a prison for yourself right there. Because then outside of the twelve hours a day, you still gotta do the paperwork and the ordering and the inventory and all that other stuff. Like, that sounds like a terrible business to be in.

Jose Berlanga [00:44:43]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:44:43]:
But up here, I wanna own a store because I have all that freedom, and it’s fun, and I like store things or whatever.

Jose Berlanga [00:44:51]:
Absolutely. Yeah. We don’t interest that until we get into it, and we were there was a lot more involved in in in On operating your business. And and and many of them, the worst part is they neglect it. They let they let the bookkeeping, the administrative, the hiring, the, you know, the organizing of of your operation. And before you know it, it’s a snowball effect, and and it’s too late to repair it, to fix it. And and Business collapse that way. So yeah.

Jose Berlanga [00:45:24]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:45:25]:
I had a coaching client that I told him, man, you gotta get your stuff to a bookkeeper. Get your pay your paperwork is a mess. It’s months behind. I’m like, just take it to your accountant, whatever. Get this stuff organized. And he’s like, okay. And then we meet with him once a month for the next few months and be like, hey. Did you send your stuff to a bookkeeper? Did you find a bookkeeper? Send it to your accountant.

James Kademan [00:45:49]:
Did you get your paperwork organized? Didn’t have time. You know? I called, didn’t get an answer, blah blah blah. Anyways, after months of this, I’m like, this isn’t getting better. You’re not taking care of it. You gotta find someone to take care of it. What’s going on? And after digging, I realized he was embarrassed. He was embarrassed to take his shoebox of paperwork essentially to his accountant. And I had to remind him, accountants exist because people like him and me and probably half the other entrepreneurs in the world, we’re not that good at paperwork.

James Kademan [00:46:22]:
Yeah. We gotta hire people to do this. This is not the first shoebox that your account has just seen. So just bite the bullet, pay the guy, and get it organized, and just move on with your life. Do what you’re good at. But it’s interesting that that embarrassment was what was stopping him from actually doing the right thing, which, coincidentally or ironically, I suppose, is just gonna make it worse.

Jose Berlanga [00:46:47]:
The longer you wait, the worse it gets. Yeah. Call

James Kademan [00:46:50]:
the monster when it’s small. Right?

Jose Berlanga [00:46:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. That is, very, very important. And without information, you can’t run a business without understanding that accounting.

James Kademan [00:47:02]:
Mhmm.

Jose Berlanga [00:47:03]:
You don’t know if you’re making money or losing money or why.

James Kademan [00:47:07]:
No idea. No idea. Tell me about, navigating tough markets because you’ve been doing this for decades. And you’ve seen, like, this little bit of roller coaster that’s going on recently with the stock markets and tariffs, blah blah blah.

Jose Berlanga [00:47:19]:
Wow. Yes.

James Kademan [00:47:20]:
But, real estate stuff, I’m thinking 02/2008, ‘2 thousand ’12. There was a rocky time. 02/2001, we had.com. We had y2k. And you were even in the were you in the eighties in real estate when that whole

Jose Berlanga [00:47:37]:
No. No. No. But I had a a I I was too young, but friends had lost everything, and friends of my family who who lost everything in in not only real estate, but in the oil and gas business

James Kademan [00:47:48]:
Okay.

Jose Berlanga [00:47:49]:
Region.

James Kademan [00:47:49]:
Because I mean, there are cycles. There’s definitely Calls, good times, bad times. So tell me about just navigating those tough markets.

Jose Berlanga [00:47:58]:
First first of all, my my biggest lesson in navigating difficult markets was watching people lose their businesses. Even before I was in business, watching those horror stories of wealthy families of successful entrepreneurs go broke caused a very, very big impact on me. Obviously, not enough because I I did my own, failing and and losing businesses. That was lack of experience, of course. What what helped me is that I started very young, so I had time to recover. I had time to start all over and perfect, my systems and and the logic behind these businesses. But the the I’ve been in very cyclical businesses. Again, energy, oil, and gas.

Jose Berlanga [00:48:53]:
I’ve restaurants and, cafes where where at some point, the competition flooded the market In and we were overleveraged. The the number of other ones, including real estate, where you need to borrow money in order to make money. And when the market slows down and it catches you with a lot of debt, it’s devastating to your business. So what I, it it’s impossible to prevent altogether and to avoid. But but what I tell, young entrepreneurs is to be aware that it’s coming. Just always be prepared and know that at some point, the cycle is going to shift and it’s gonna change. Don’t get too comfortable. The biggest mistake that that some of us entrepreneurs make is that when we start making some money and we experience a handful of good years, we get very, very On, and we think that those good years are never gonna end.

Jose Berlanga [00:49:58]:
And instead of putting some money aside, paying paying off some debt, consolidating our operation, we continue to grow and we continue to leverage and expand recklessly. So if you happen to get to that point where you’re stabilizing your business and making a little bit of money, start getting organized and know that, at some point, it the that there’s going to be some kind of a shift in the market, and you have to be prepared for it with some reserves, with a contingency plan. So that’s my number one recommendation is don’t be in an in denial. Know that at some point In most businesses, except the ones where you’re really innovating, systems, software, technology where there’s very little competition, or or that it’s recession proof, let’s say, that you you can get away with, with with avoiding all of these contingency plans. You need other ones. That’s a whole another but but in the, general picture of of the average business, it’s just a matter of time before the economy changes and before your sales drop and your profitability is, Authentic, and you have to start reconstructing, rebuilding the way that you do things. So that that would be the the the number one recommendation.

James Kademan [00:51:34]:
Right on. Did you tell me about the leveraging with real estate? Because if you’re building individual family homes, were you building them to sell or to rent out?

Jose Berlanga [00:51:46]:
In, to sell. Everything we we built was to sell. But in our industry, let’s just say you wanna build a house just for round numbers. You wanna build a million dollar house. And between your, land cost and your construction cost, your total cost is gonna be, $800,000, and you plan to sell it for a million dollars. The bank is not going to lend you all $800,000. They’re gonna want equity. Let’s say they’ll lend you 600.

Jose Berlanga [00:52:22]:
So you have to put your own money down to complete the project, to start the project and build a project. So you put $200,000 in the deal. The bank will in the form of Draw, Call start releasing money for you to complete your project until it’s done. And here’s where the problem begins. As you start making money, we had those famous Draw hundred thousand dollars of equity in a hundred projects. Okay? We started putting equity, which is skin in the game, our portion of the money required to start the project times many developments. So you have a web of your money involved and invested in an array of developments of all kinds, price points, neighborhoods, designs, so on and so forth. And when the economy slows down and houses don’t sell, all of the sudden, most of your capital is not liquid.

Jose Berlanga [00:53:28]:
It’s attached to these properties. So you may be rich on paper, or if you can’t sell the house and get your equity back plus hopefully a profit, which incidentally when things slow down, there is no profit. You’re just happy to get your equity back to pay for bills and so on and so forth. But now you have to get your money back to pay other bills and overhead and so on and so forth. So so so you start getting in trouble very easy because once you finish these projects, remember that a big portion of the cost is the carrying cost, property taxes, maintenance, interest that you have to pay to your to to your banks. And when you’re not selling it, a lot of cash is going out the door to to support the debt and no income. That’s what happened to us. And it happens again very frequently.

Jose Berlanga [00:54:22]:
It it it has happened to us more than one time, a handful of times, different levels of debt, different levels of, size, of our operation, but it’s just something that In very difficult to avoid. So what you need to try to do is to always have enough cash flow to support your organization for as many months as possible if you don’t have any sales. That’s what yeah. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:54:52]:
So did you ever come up with an equation or something like that to know we can handle this percentage of debt versus this percentage of what we’re investing in or something to to give you a little bit of a understanding of worst case In. Though I don’t I understand you don’t know, like, pandemic.

Jose Berlanga [00:55:12]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:55:13]:
Tough to tough to anticipate that. This whole stuff that’s happening now, arguments could be made on both sides whether you could anticipate it or know what was gonna be this extreme.

Jose Berlanga [00:55:24]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:55:24]:
I mean and then all the like, every time there’s a bad day, arguments could be made like, ah, we should have expected that, but hindsight’s twenty twenty. So did you ever come up with some like, hey. We’re overleveraged here right now. It’s Call. But if a bad day happens, we’re gonna be in a little bit of a Call? Or did you ever or do you just look at each project individually and say, we’re good?

Jose Berlanga [00:55:46]:
No. No. I don’t look at each project individually. I look at my company as as as a a chess board, and I have to protect the In. If if I have to give away a few houses just to get cash in the door and I I don’t, operate the company by focusing on one property but on on on everything as a whole. And I do have a formula. I will admit that In a guesstimate. Sure.

Jose Berlanga [00:56:14]:
Because nobody knows when things are gonna turn, how bad In gonna get, and for how long. So anything that anyone can provide or bring to the table to prevent chaos is simply a guess. So the more when you have good years, the more money you put aside or the more equity you put in the deal, the safer you are. Imagine that during 02/1967, companies were leveraging seven, eight time banks were leveraging 10 plus times their equity. So for what for every dollar they had in their balance sheet, they could borrow 10. So for us, every million we brought in, we could borrow five or six, seven sometimes million, which was crazy. That doesn’t exist now. Banks have learned their lesson.

Jose Berlanga [00:57:08]:
You know, now now we may borrow two to one or three to one In some developments where we’re excessively cautious, and we rather bring more equity and have low leverage. And but my my formula getting back to your question, I normally like to have six months, preferably up to a year, of cash flow to support my operation, my overhead, and my developments carrying cost in the event that I don’t have a single Call in a year. It’s very hard to attain because when you’re growing, you don’t have that choice.

James Kademan [00:57:47]:
Right.

Jose Berlanga [00:57:47]:
I mean but at the same time, the newer and the younger you are in business, the more speculative you can get and the more risk you can take on because you have less to lose. You’re young, you have nothing to lose, and you have nothing to gain if you don’t take that gamble. But the more you start making building a company and equity and making money, the the more you have to Jose In the more you have to start being cautious as to how you run each one of these transactions. Now with that being said, you know, I’ve seen cycles where it got pretty bad for two or three months where the market was uncertain, interest rates went up, nobody was looking at homes, and the market got, went went into a panic. And we went into a panic, but it started correcting itself. It was a small correction of sixty days, ninety days, all the way to three to four years, which is the biggest one. That one, no one was ready for in in in February. ’10, all the way to, by by 02/2011, things began to stabilize in some markets.

Jose Berlanga [00:58:57]:
And if you were able to to make it through, when when the cycle turned, we made a lot of money, but we barely made In. Thanks to the fact that we had a lot of equity, and we had been very responsible through the good years. But but we we lost a ton of money just supporting the company through those years.

James Kademan [00:59:20]:
I bet. I bet. That’s the I think that’s the challenge with real estate. I imagine any other big ticket stuff

Jose Berlanga [00:59:26]:
Yeah. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:59:27]:
You’ll be able to afford to maintain that and survive the storm. But once you make it out through the storm, as long as you make it out through the storm

Jose Berlanga [00:59:34]:
Yeah. You’re golden. Very, very many different business models. I also have to add, mine was a single entity, with with no investors. It was just our in house capital that we grew, like like a pyramid. Other other developers and and, other builders compartmentalize their projects where they do this project under this umbrella, this firm with one investor that brings in capital, and then they borrow money against that project and so On. And so they separate them with different investors, different lenders. And if they all fall apart, well, they obviously, they have the support of the investors that get Authentic.

Jose Berlanga [01:00:17]:
Or maybe one doesn’t do well, but the other one does well and you can spread the risk somehow. We had everything under one bucket because, that that’s the way their operation was. We we had big lines of credit called guidance lines of credit, which are, amazing. Once you start building, if if you can get to that level where we were, a guidance line of credit gives you a certain dollar amount from a lender where you make the decisions on what to buy, what to build. Once you approve, a certain amount, the the lender that means that you’ve proven yourself as a developer, and the and the lender gives you the freedom to make those internal decisions. All they need is an appraisal. But in order for a builder or developer to get to the level where where they have, guidance lines of certain number of millions of dollars per line of credit, you you have to have quite a bit of experience. In in most cases, lenders, with Call builders and and investors, they go On a case by case.

Jose Berlanga [01:01:27]:
You bring them a Draw. They examine it. They appraise it. They look at it. They tell you how much equity you need to bring in and move forward. With us, it’s one approval per institution. Hey. Here’s $10,000,000.

Jose Berlanga [01:01:41]:
Here’s $15,000,000. 20 In depending on and we utilize them as we see fit. It’s a huge responsibility because you have personal guarantees attached to those loans.

James Kademan [01:01:57]:
Wow.

Jose Berlanga [01:01:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. But they give you the freedom to select what you wanna build, your price point, the areas, the designs, the value of the home. All of those things, they they know that you know your business.

James Kademan [01:02:12]:
Alright. But I’m thinking In guarantee on a $50,000,000 loan. That’s not a pill that everyone’s willing to swallow.

Jose Berlanga [01:02:19]:
No. No. You have to know very well what you’re getting into and be very comfortable with the product, be very comfortable with the market, with the amount of equity that you contribute In and have have a very good plan of attack. Yeah. Because it’s not just one. Once you start adding all those lines of credit in a bad market, you you may be and that that’s how, fortunes are lost. Mhmm. You be because at some point, you know, you may be a hundred worth a hundred million dollars on paper, but it’s all distributed amongst projects.

Jose Berlanga [01:02:54]:
And and the moment the whole thing collapses, the bank steps in, takes over, and your equity has a first money to to evaporate. So, there’s been many, many people who are very wealthy on paper. And when the market changes, their wealth, disappears very quickly. So you just have to watch the how much you you get into and how fast, so so that you protect yourself against those those, again, those famous cycles.

James Kademan [01:03:31]:
Yeah. It’s interesting because I wrote a blog around pandemic time for restaurants I thought it was just kind of a cheering for them for them to survive. And I think it was titled anyone but you. Because the idea is if they they would fold, someone’s gonna get a deal In that restaurant, a hell of a deal On that restaurant. And the person that’s gonna get that deal is gonna be anyone but the person that previously owned it that got foreclosed on or whatever. Yeah. So it’s anyone but you. So just make it through the storm, and you’ll be fine.

James Kademan [01:04:03]:
But if you don’t, you’re gonna regret it because there’s gonna be someone else that gets the hood, the oven, the stuff for Yes. Whatever, pennies on the dollar kind of thing.

Jose Berlanga [01:04:13]:
And that’s what you don’t On you don’t wanna get to that point where you have to liquidate things and let someone else have all the fun after. Yeah. And lose your credit. That’s the biggest one because in the business world, you can lose money. I’ve lost everything multiple times, but I kept I always this is something that that that, every business owner needs to understand. And you can make money again. Money comes and goes. But your credibility, your credit, and your history as an entrepreneur remains in record for life.

Jose Berlanga [01:04:52]:
If you are get involved in a bankruptcy, if you file for chapter 11 or for, chapter seven, but any any of those official filings, they stay with you or if you get foreclosed. So I’ve, been very, very careful to protect Jose, and I’ll just use my money to pay off, the loans and take and make everybody whole because it allows you to live to see another day and start another business. Yeah. You’re gonna have to start from scratch, and it’s extremely painful. But your record remains clean. Mhmm. That’s what you wanna watch watch out for.

James Kademan [01:05:34]:
Fair. Fair. Jose, we don’t have a ton of time left, but I did wanna ask you. You had something mentioned here about hands on versus hands off leadership. Can you discuss that a little bit?

Jose Berlanga [01:05:47]:
Sure. Sure. The the the the famous, decision or or or state of mind that that an entrepreneur is in their desire to hand the to pass on the responsibilities of the business and delegate them versus holding on to a lot of the activities. There are different level comfort levels in every entrepreneur, and there are different models. Some are easy to delegate because the activities are very repetitive. They’re where it doesn’t leave that much to the imagination of your team. One of the things that I’ve found over the years is that there are responsibilities that require a lot of decision making, a lot of thinking, a lot of problem solving, and you have to be very careful as to how you allocate those responsibilities. There are others that are more repetitive, Purchasing, accounting, operations, construction.

Jose Berlanga [01:06:49]:
There’s whatever it may be, those are very easy. You train the right people. You select the right people, and and you let them run with those activities. But there are a few that may cost the well-being of of your business or wrong acquisition, borrowing the wrong amount for the wrong deal. Jose, I tend to get very, very involved. And the bigger the company, the more management layers you can add to your organization, to allow them to to make those decisions. I have been, to to me, it’s been so difficult to build my businesses and and, my my career has been so challenging that I’m not the best as, handing out responsibilities very easily. I’m a little bit of a control freak in certain aspects of the business because it’s been too painful to get here.

Jose Berlanga [01:07:48]:
I I keep my eye on on my cash flow on on the big ticket items, and perhaps I allocate a lot of the rest of the responsibilities. But you have to understand the point of this conversation is that you have to understand what kind of operator you are, what comfort level you have in distributing responsibilities, but Calls what type of business model you wanna have. Do you wanna have the type of business where you’re so involved on the day to day because you feel comfortable, because you enjoy it, because this is your baby and you wanna keep it that way? Or are you the one who likes to create systems, procedures, a process, a very well established team so that the business begins to run on its own without your participation and eventually even be able to sell it or, or pass it on to to a a a board of directors or or hire people to run it for you. The best the the biggest and and most important step is to identify what you want out of that business and how do you want it to operate so that you can design it according to those needs. Because what happens is sometimes you want one thing, but you design it for something else. I’ve made that mistake where I thought in in my sick mind and my confused mind that I was building a business when I was In fact building a practice. I was building a comp a a business that revolved around me. All of the decisions, all of the acquisitions, all of the signatures, all of the approvals required me.

Jose Berlanga [01:09:41]:
And I wasn’t building a bit if I wasn’t there, the business didn’t operate. Like the surgeons

James Kademan [01:09:46]:
You essentially built a job.

Jose Berlanga [01:09:48]:
I I build a job, a very lucrative job for myself that drove me In, that never gave me an a day off or an hour off or a moment away. Even on vacation, I was on my computer and on the phone trying to do everything, and I didn’t realize that that’s what I was building until I actually got there. And many entrepreneurs make that mistake that they’re trying to build everything and monitor everything, forgetting that little by little, they need to start building those systems, checks and balances so that things can continue to move forward even without their presence. So that that needs to be well thought of in the early stages of the business.

James Kademan [01:10:33]:
Fair. Totally fair. I do wanna ask you one more thing about the what was the dirt book that you had? The second one you

Jose Berlanga [01:10:39]:
mentioned? Dirt Rich.

James Kademan [01:10:41]:
Dirt Rich.

Jose Berlanga [01:10:42]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [01:10:43]:
And you were mentioning that that was about picking locations to invest or to build. Is that right?

Jose Berlanga [01:10:50]:
Yeah. Yeah. The the the heart of this book, although the the the title is fun, dirt rich, it’s not necessarily about how to build wealth. It there’s a catchy there there’s a story behind the title that’s in the book. But it’s it’s specifically about land investing, land speculating, land development. It has a little bit of everything, a little bit of history, a little bit of how to step by step. It has a little bit of theory and fun, information as to how real estate and everything in the world of real estate begins with a proper selection of a piece of land. All this the the cities that we enjoy, all the, communities, the neighborhoods that we live In, how do they start? How do they select where to put the school In the malls and the streets and the utilities and and combine the amount of residential, multifamily, commercial, In.

Jose Berlanga [01:11:57]:
How were these things, the office space? Why are some things located where they are In what is the proper distribution? All of these things that we take for granted we’re designed for us by people who understand the science of urban development. And I talk a little bit about it in very general fun, In, very, very easy to read so that, it allows you to think because it’s not a complicated book. It’s not nothing that anyone will find technical. It’ll just make you think things that perhaps you never thought of that occur in order for us to enjoy the cities that we live in? Why do some of them grow faster than others? Why are some of them better kept, better maintained, in restricted versus On In the zoning, all of those things that will just make you think a little bit different, about this resource that that we all enjoy.

James Kademan [01:13:05]:
Very cool. And that book is out, you said?

Jose Berlanga [01:13:09]:
Derberich is coming out in the next couple of weeks.

James Kademan [01:13:12]:
Gotcha. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. Well, Jose, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Jose Berlanga [01:13:19]:
Thank you, James. I’ve enjoyed it, and hope we can do this again soon.

James Kademan [01:13:23]:
Yeah. Absolutely. You shared a lot of information. I love having people that have years of experience versus just a a year few months of experience because, I’m approaching twenty years as an entrepreneur, but it sounds like you’re you’re beyond that and have experienced even more and more diverse, businesses, I would say. So it’s great.

Jose Berlanga [01:13:49]:
A lot.

James Kademan [01:13:50]:
It’s fun to learn a lot.

Jose Berlanga [01:13:51]:
I’ve taken a lot of punches.

James Kademan [01:13:53]:
Yeah. Definitely. That’s fair. It’s not, it’s not always easy. That is for sure.

Jose Berlanga [01:14:00]:
Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Well, it’s been great, be being here with you. Thank you so much for having me in your show.

James Kademan [01:14:07]:
Yeah. Awesome. I appreciate it. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and reception services for service businesses across the country on the web at https://callsoncall.com. And of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur In all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening or watching this on On web, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a big old thumbs up, subscribe, and of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those that may be a little new to the game and they don’t know exactly the ride that they are in for. We’d like to thank your On wonderful listeners as well as our guest, Jose Berlanga.

James Kademan [01:14:58]:
Jose, where can people find you?

Jose Berlanga [01:15:00]:
Joseberlanga.com. I’m I’m easy to find. If you just, Google my name, you’ll find some some fun videos and and and basic information about me.

James Kademan [01:15:12]:
Nice. Easy enough. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night at the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.