#59 Creating a Recession Proof Business and Life with Rick Melero
Rick Melero was an H.S. dropout former youth pastor, turned 20 yr real estate investing industry veteran, and leading strategist negotiator, advisor, deal maker, and mentor. Investor, developer, a lender.
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Itunes – www.TonyJavier.com/itunes
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Show Transcription:
Rick Melero: (00:00)
I needed to find an industry that could afford me that opportunity so that I could finance those endeavors. And so through a long journey, I don’t know if you want go in too much detail on that today
Tony Javier (00:08)
You teach people how to do this themselves so they can do it themselves.
Tony Javier: (00:12)
Like I said, you can turn a lot of those so-called negatives into positives.
Tony Javier: (00:19)
Welcome everybody to today’s show. As usual, we have another great guest. If you are new to the channel, please subscribe, leave, review, share this with someone you feel like would get a lot out of this. We are trying to create entrepreneurs, business leaders, and real estate investors, helping them get started and also grow their business to where it doesn’t have to work, they don’t have to work as hard and the business runs without them. That’s the purpose of this show. So without further adieu, let’s give a warm welcome to Rick Melero. Did I say your name right, Rick?
Rick Melero: (00:52)
Sure did, Tony. Thanks for having me. I’m really blessed to be here.
Tony Javier: (00:54)
All right, fantastic. I had to double-look your name. I know people mess up my name all the time. I wanna make sure I got it right. So cool. Awesome. Well, it’s good to meet someone that’s been in the business about as long as I have. I, I’m in my 21st year, I think you’re in your 2020 first year. A lot happens over 20 years, right? A lot happens even within a year in business. But let’s take people back to kind of where you started. Tell ’em a little bit about yourself and how you got into the real estate game.
Rick Melero: (01:16)
Sure, absolutely. You know, before I started real estate at that stage of my life, uh, where I was trying to figure out who I was, what my purpose in life was and kind of what I wanted to focus on as a career, I was actually in youth ministry. I was a youth pastor. And one of the things that I learned is, number one, I loved helping people and I loved making a difference in the lives of people. But I also learned that during that particular season of my life, the ministry wasn’t necessarily the most profitable endeavor so that I could actually sustain myself, let alone really have a lasting impact. And so it was during that journey that I really came to the realization that in order for me to be more productive and to make a bigger difference, which is what I really felt was the calling in my life, I needed to find an industry that could afford me that opportunity so that I could finance those endeavors.
Rick Melero: (01:58)
And so through a long journey, I don’t know if you want to go into too much detail on that today, but I basically started working for a gentleman in Tampa who was flipping properties. I first applied for a job with him and to be quite frank with you, uh, even though he liked my energy and he said that I was really aggressive and I looked hungry, he didn’t have the time to train me from scratch and had zero experience. So as I was walking out of the building defeated, I realized, wait a minute. I can either take a no and just start over again where I can turn back around and refuse. And so I made a decision that was pretty bold. I made a decision to turn back around, tell the guy, You know what, in fact I refuse, I’m gonna work for free for the next six months and then you tell me if I’m worthy of being hired or not.
Rick Melero: (02:34)
And so I ended up interning for this guy for six months. He was buying about 15 homes a month, fixing him up and then flipping him. That was pretty much his business model. Some of those he sold with financing. So I got to learn a little bit about that type of structure as well. But it was in that journey that I started understanding what it took to actually find the right deals, negotiate ’em, and ultimately what I was doing in essence was selling the contract to him. So I really started in the industry truly wholesaling properties to one guy and building a business. So like be, you know, I would say between the first two to three years I failed forward and I went from getting deals just for this one guy to ultimately doing about 30 properties a month. And so that began to generate some revenue.
Rick Melero: (03:10)
I was able to build a business model around it. And ultimately what I started learning is that I was working for tips. And so I started really again, evolving in my growth process. And so we started flipping and the rest is history. Now we’ve been involved in commercial properties, residential properties. We’re building hundreds of projects at the same time we’ve been in, uh, even in Ireland with projects. Uh, so it’s been a very awesome ride, if you will, for me. But just simply because everything that I do, it’s constantly focused on how do I improve? Can I learn from this? Can I make it better? What are my key alliances? And so just been an interesting journey. Awesome.
Tony Javier: (03:42)
So purpose. You mentioned before we hit play that you went to Ukraine and I didn’t get to dive into kind of what that was like. So tell us about your trip to Ukraine, what you did there, and kind of what the purpose behind that
Rick Melero: (03:53)
Was. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, to be honest with you, I’ve been in Ukraine now for almost seven years. And so the reality is when I first connected with the organization there, I, if I can speak freely here, I, I was going through a loll in my career. The company was doing really well. I felt very unfulfilled. And it was during this period of time of just kind of feeling like, man, something’s off, something’s missing. I did what I typically would do when I felt disconnected. I went and got on my knees before the Lord and I prayed. And I’ll never forget it, I was just reading the Bible. And as I was reading through it, there was a section in the Old Testament where they kept referencing the people of Israel and then they would go back and say, And Moses, the people of Israel and Moses.
Rick Melero: (04:30)
And so I came to this realization that days I was reading it, Who do I wanna be remembered as? Do I wanna be remembered as a general person, a group of people, or do I wanna be known as Moses as the individual who had truly a relationship with God? And so that day on my knees, I prayed and I said, God opened the next door and I will walk through it and I wanna be a blessing. And so little did I know that I was gonna open Pandora’s box . So that day I got into my office, I was just working a traditional day and one of my guys in the office says, Rick, I think you need to meet this gentleman. I’m in a meeting with him right now. The department that was dealing with this was our passive investor department. And to be honest with you, I usually don’t deal with investors from a a deal level.
Rick Melero: (05:06)
I typically deal with more institutional partners or clients that obviously are, are investing millions of dollars. But in this case, I walked into the meeting and the meeting was all about this gentleman named Sean Sullivan from a non-profit organization out of Ukraine. And he was talking to us because what he wanted to do was to invest his money somewhere that it produced cash flow so that he could take the cash flow and invest it in the ministry to make difference. And as he was talking and telling me the story about it, they were literally helping to prevent human trafficking, Ukraine, and all these amazing things. My spirit was just jumping inside. And so I looked at him and I said, Hey Sean, let me stop you real quick. Let me ask you a question. When are you going to Ukraine? And he’s like, Well, actually it’s funny you asked that cuz I’m actually gonna be there in two weeks.
Rick Melero: (05:45)
So guess who got to go to Ukraine with him those two weeks? And so that, that’s really the beginning. The genesis of our trip to Ukraine. We were involved here for years, have helped out be little did I know that the systems that we built, the properties that we purchased there, the partnerships that we established here were gonna prepare us so that we’d be available for such a time as this. And so when the war started, we were able to start creating additional resources for first and foremost food, water, shelter. I mean we had literally hundreds of people staying with us, resting for two days that we’re coming from the east. And we drove tens of thousands of people across the border to safety. And so that’s really what began the conversations of going to Ukraine. And just recently I flew to Ukraine to deliver over a million dollars worth of resources to the actual people in need. And let me tell you man, that in itself has been a life changing experience for me. And just to get to meet some incredible people that in spite of their circumstances are hopeful, they’re loving and they really are just incredible people that are
Tony Javier: (06:41)
Inspiring. That’s amazing story. You know, the, the worst thing about success, if you have success is having success and being unfulfilled. It happens with a lot of entrepreneurs, right? They want like, they want cars, the houses, the money, the businesses and all that. And I think Tony Roberts said it best, it’s like, like an astronaut. When an astronaut goes to the moon, what else is next? They like hit, they hit the mecca and then they come back and they’re like, What’s next? And they’re unfulfilled and it’s even worse than not having the success. So I think something that, you know, our listeners can gather from this is having maybe something outside of just business that drives what you do. A lot of people talk about the why, you know, you know that kind of thing for, for a lot of people it’s family. For a lot of other people it’s, you know, a charitable organization.
Tony Javier: (07:24)
But it’s kind of interesting how you said seven years ago is when you first started helping in Ukraine and it’s helped set up for what happened here this last, I think it’s been like six months or so that the wars in Ukraine have been happening. So, uh, that’s, that’s awesome that you’re able to do that and provide so much for so many people. And I bet you that the fulfillment from what you got this last six months of being able to free tens of thousands of people I think you said, or help tens of thousands of people is probably greater than any other business accomplishment you’ve had.
Rick Melero: (07:54)
100%. I agree 100% with that. Just the, the impact that you have, seeing the people eye to eye that you’ve helped save their lives, there’s nothing more valuable in my opinion than that. And I believe God designed us that way where it, it, it sounds almost counterproductive when I give, that’s when I feel blessed, right? It should be the other way around. But we were design in a way that we are fulfilled when we’re blessing to other people. And I just feel that that has helped not only fuel my company’s culture, it’s also fueled the relationships that we established with our clients because we are partnering together not only to make money, but to be good stewards of that money and be a blessing to those around us. And I think that is what brings unity and it brings a lot of productivity.
Tony Javier: (08:32)
Absolutely. There’s actually a study, I can’t remember, is it something I read in a book a long time ago. They, they studied entrepreneurs and how much money they give back to charitable charities and there was something they did where they were able to measure how much money they were able to make after they started giving. And it, it was, it was kind of mind blowing just hearing the statistics of when someone gave money to organizations, how much money, I can’t remember exactly how they measured it, but I think it’s totally true cuz there was a time, I can’t remember what, when it was, I think it was like 10 years ago where I decided to just start giving more. There was nothing calculated about it. It was just like when someone puts a GoFundMe like up, I’m, I’m like the first person to like throw some money at it, right?
Tony Javier: (09:12)
Whether I know him or not. I just, that’s just something I feel like even if it’s just, you know, a hundred bucks or something, that’s something that helps me feel more fulfilled. But once I started doing that I realized there were a lot of opportunities coming back to me so people think, well if I give, I’m giving something that I could have used for myself, but it comes back in return from either fulfillment or just the law of attraction or whatever it is that, you know, things come back to you. So I totally believe in that. Well that’s amazing. So let’s talk about some more of your business accomplishments cuz some people like to like to really kind of listen more about the business side of it cuz that’s what they’re really trying to build. So tell us over the last 20 years, um, some of the things that have led to you being in, because I mean we know this, you know, first five years most businesses are out, right? So to to be in business 20 years and have abundance and success, obviously there were some lessons learned but there were also some good things. So are there any kind of lessons that you could give our audience of what it took to get where you are now and to, to last the last 20 years?
Rick Melero: (10:14)
Absolutely. Uh, that’s a tall order. There’s a lot of lessons, a lot of bruises and a lot of struggles. I would say the number one honestly that I would challenge any entrepreneur, business owner, uh, especially if you’re getting in the real estate space, uh, there truly is a difference between active income and passive income. And I think what happens is, including myself, when I got in the industry, I wanted to build an enterprise. I wanted to build something massive. I wanted to scale an seven eight figure business. But really I didn’t have a clear definition of why I wanted to do that. And you see, I wanted the clarity later on I found out is because I wanna be able to make an impact. I wanna spend time with my family, I wanna enjoy this life that we only have once, right? And so what I have done over the years, and I’m still even more so now doing than before, is I really start saying, look, my enterprise is my active income, but how much money am I allocating from the profits to build passive income?
Rick Melero: (11:11)
And this is income where I don’t have to do anything. So I’m building a portfolio of loans and I fund and I hold and I just get paid every month I own rental properties and I’m doing more and more of building a passive portfolio. Because at the end of the day, the real key to long-term success is not about how many seven figure deals you’ve done. The real key to success is when you don’t have to do the work because your money is doing the work for you. And so I think the biggest shift for me was realizing that money was an employee. I can either work for him or he can work for me. And so it’s all about transitioning and building cash flow. That’s one of the biggest lessons that I would say has changed everything for
Tony Javier: (11:50)
Me. Yeah, absolutely. Cause you know, you, you take, I guess you’re taking what I like to talk about a little, little bit of a step further. What I like to talk about is creating businesses that run without you, which is kind of passive. So, you know, for me it’s finding people system resources to create cash and business that you don’t have to be there for it to bring abundance to you. But also for you it’s, it sounds like taking that money and then deploying it and having that money come back to you as well, which, you know, I’ve, I’ve been lucky to be able to do the last few years is create lending businesses and things like that that, um, uh, that you’re mentioning. So, so talk about passive income. So you know, there’s many different forms of passive income. What would you recommend as the number one way to create passive income?
Rick Melero: (12:35)
You know what I tell investors, uh, and and I, and this is from case studies of my own, I have clients that have, you know, been with me for years. I’ve seen them like from really tiny amounts of money that they had when they started to multimillion dollars, you know, under management. And really what it comes down to, it has a lot to do with your temperament, but it also is where are you today? Okay, that’s really where you have to start. What do I have right now as far as resource and how am I working a plan to make that work for me so that over time I build this cash flow? And so what I tell people is, if you take a look at us, our physical abilities, okay, when I was 20 years old, I could work a hundred hours a week and not sweating.
Rick Melero: (13:11)
I’m 40 now I start feeling. And so even though I’m pretty fit and I work out and I try to be productive and proactive about my health, at the end of the day, I know that when I’m 65, 70 years old, I’m not gonna have the same amount of energy and intensity that I did when I was in my twenties, right? And so that’s inevitable. So what I tell investors is look at your passive income as a portfolio investment approach that over time as you start diminishing in your physical abilities, that’s when it begins to offset. And so that the passive income begins to offset that negative side and supplements those deficiencies. And so what I’ve always told investors, look at it from the perspective of a portfolio, I use a rule of thumb that I call is called my forty forty twenty. So I have 40% of my project investments.
Rick Melero: (13:56)
I try to aim to invest in things that are appreciating. That could be a distressed property, it could be a distressed note, but it’s something that has to do with making sure that my capital is growing over time at a bigger percentage. Okay? Now the other 40% is what I call, this is the key to all success cashflow. Whether that may be notes for me notes is one of my favorites. They’re short term, they’re still performing at a reasonable return. I don’t have as much liability. I also buy rental properties. We’ve actually invested in multi-family. So what I tell investors, it just comes back to what do you have available in your, in your savings to be able to deploy. Let me give you a simple example. We have a client who worked at a non-profit organization. She probably doesn’t make more than 50 grand a year.
Rick Melero: (14:35)
So the reality is she doesn’t make a million dollars a year to be able to invest in passive income. So how could somebody like her actually make any passive income? What for her, she first needed to save money cuz she didn’t have any money. And so what she did is she paid her car off as quickly as she could and then she just kept making payments to herself until she saved enough money that she had about 30, 40 grand available in savings just by doing, she found multiple ways of leveraging, renting some of the rooms to her house to her friends so that she’d have a mortgage payment but then she would still be saving that money once she had the money. Of course, guess what happens? Her car breaks down, right? So now she’s gotta take this money and she’s thinking, well I’m gonna have to buy a brand new car and it’s gonna cost me more money.
Rick Melero: (15:12)
And then she says, Wait a minute, what if I start thinking passive income? So she took this money, invested it in a whole loan because that’s the only product that was available at the time that she was making 8% return on that money from the earnings that she was making on there. She was able to finance the purchase of her car and it pays for now her passive income is paying for her car lifestyle and the insurance is well on top of that. And so this was her way of not losing her money into a car but putting it into an asset. The income that asset produces space for the car and then she still starts saving that monthly payment. She would’ve had to pay on a brand and car anyway. And so the point I’m making in this example is that the key is finding ways from where you are to start building cashflow.
Rick Melero: (15:50)
For her it was a small mortgage for other people they might have resources to buy duplex or fourplex or maybe invest in developing some, you know, build to, to hold property strategies. But the key is 40% is growing, 40% is cash flowing. And then that opens the door to what we call 20% higher risk, high reward. Those opportunities. I’ll give you an example right now have a couple good friends of mine and we’re doing a few deals with them. They took some of their money that they had aside that they could afford a little bit more risk and they bought some short-term rental properties, they put a manager in place. Now it is a higher risk cuz it’s not a stabilized long-term income, but some of these properties are producing two, $300,000 a year. So it’s a higher risk, but the reward is fantastic. And so the whole idea here is for an investor to really consider building a portfolio rather than a business, what they wanna make sure is that they have different investment strategies working for them simultaneously.
Tony Javier: (16:42)
Yeah and you know, there’s the compound effect too, right? Like some people are like, well I, you know, where do I start and all that. We’ll start now start with something small and it compounds. So, you know, like you said, with that person paying off their car, then they took that and they started investing or saving that and then they started renting rooms in their house. Man, I’ll tell you what, I wish I could go back 20 years ago and you know, do some things differently cuz the compound effect over the last 20 years would’ve been pretty substantial. So yeah, they just starting and starting with one asset I think is the biggest thing for, for people. And just jumping in and you know, trying to figure it out. Obviously be be safe and calculated with what you’re doing, but you know, you gotta do that first deal to see, see how it goes and start compounding your, your effects. So awesome. So tell us about some of the cool deals you’re doing. It sounds like you’re doing a lot of lot of cool things. What’s the coolest project you have going on right now
Rick Melero: (17:30)
At this very moment? And we’ve definitely had some pretty crazy fun, fun projects from like, you know, we did a castle in Ireland that just paid off. But that was, that was an incredible experience. You know, I would say that one of the projects that are very cool for me right now, it’s, it’s very manila, which I think is what’s happened now is I’m realizing more and more that the right investing is boring and it should be be cuz it’s doing the work. But what we’ve been doing is capitalizing on the need for affordable housing in the market. And so we’ve been developing, right now, for example, in Florida we’re building about 30 something homes. These are all homes that we’re selling under $300,000. But what I’m doing now is I’m calculating the projects we’re building cuz I wanna keep a third of all those properties to rent long term.
Rick Melero: (18:09)
And so that’s just one of the coolest projects right now that I’m working on. Just simply because I’m learning from the mistake I made in 2013 and 14 on another portfolio of properties that we’re working on that I am like lost 12 million worth of growth as you were talking about compounding. But again, we’re pivoting learning. So that’s a really interesting project that we’re currently working on right now that’s just simple. It’s producing and uh, it’s all about building the cash flow. And the other one that’s unique is I talk about that bucket of high risk, high reward. Those singles have opened the door for something a little bit more attractive. And that is, uh, and during Covid a finance here that was working with a group out of Tul, Mexico backed out and the doors open for his capital to be a part of it.
Rick Melero: (18:50)
And so it took us a while to do our due diligence, but now we are the proud owners of some pretty exclusive real estate into New Mexico. We’re building some homes as we speak. In fact, October I get to go and inspect the projects, but um, in fact we have the Porsche house that we’re working on right now. So Porsches sending a contract with us to build a themed home in our mons in the final stages of agreeing with us to build some properties. So those are really unique, completely out of the box projects and I can’t wait to keep at least one
Tony Javier: (19:16)
Of ’em. So how do you get into those projects? Tulum, Mexico? Is it something you just like Tulum and you started looking, Did someone bring the project to you? How did you, how did you find that?
Rick Melero: (19:23)
That’s a fantastic question to be honest with you. I, I know we kind of jumped around, we do a lot. But you know, over the years I’ve learned that private lending to build cash flow was an, an incredible opportunity, number one, because it helps me deploy money at a really good rate of return. But number two, it creates opportunities that everybody else has never seen before. And so this particular lead came to us because we built a reputation in the industry of being the private lender that also does joint ventures and partnerships mm-hmm. . And so when this particular gentleman was pursuing some other options, one of his contacts said, You should probably look in his capital. These guys are the real deal and they’re good people to work with and who knows, they might buy from you, they might partner with you, meet with them, they have options. And so that introduction came to us and, uh, to be honest, nobody even knew that these opportunities were available. But again, we got the inside scoop because we were the lender. And so, you know, as we began doing our due diligence, our, our position transitioned from looking at it from a loan perspective. We bought some real estate ourselves, we did some joint venture funding. And so here we are, beautiful tool of Mexico.
Tony Javier: (20:25)
Nice. Very nice. And it’s a nice tax write off for you, right? Good vacation. Absolutely. Good stuff. What is your team look like? So, you know, to build something like you’re building, I don’t know, do you have a large team? Do you have a small team? I know people do their teams differently where, you know, they try and keep some people to keep everything in house and they want their team to do everything. Some people are doing some of the things you’re doing doing, but they’re outsourcing everything and they have a very small team. How do you structure
Rick Melero: (20:51)
Yours? You know, I, I gotta put a point there from what you said. Uh, building a team has been the most difficult task that I have ever had to deal with. Forget the deals, forget everything else. Really building a team that works in unity, that is consistent, that cares about each other has been by far my most difficult task. I will say that from what the team looked like even five years ago, it’s completely evolved and completely changed. Part of that was because of Covid. The other part of it is, again, my priority shifted and I really started realizing that what I was building was an entrepreneur and what I needed was an elite team. And so we started getting very selective about that. Uh, currently right now, the way as it stands, we have a combination of core employees that are within the office.
Rick Melero: (21:33)
I would say that’s about seven employees that are come that are able to come to the office on a, on a daily basis. Uh, but we have about 20 people total. And some of those people, believe it or not, are overseas employees that are just incredible. They fit the culture. And I’m not a firm believer before, I was never a firm believer in, hey, just send this overseas and pay these people these peanuts of money so that you can make more money. What I’ve realized over the years is that these are people just like you or me, they just happen to live somewhere else. And if you incentivize ’em correctly, and if you empower them, those people in many cases work 10 times harder than any American investor or agent or person in your team. And so we have built different departments and we’ve incorporated the right people there.
Rick Melero: (22:14)
And so within a group of 20, we’re managing our lending arm, our internal projects, our project management, our accounting, you name it. So we roughly have about 20, 20 to 22 people consistently there. Then the rest from that point forward is alliances. We do believe in alliances. We have other private lenders that bring us their, their business for us to finance. We have partnerships that we have a variety of different borrowers. And so that’s where we leveraged for the scalability. But from the core team’s perspective is it’s a, a good mix of, of different team members from different parts of the world.
Tony Javier: (22:44)
Yeah, you’re right. The first 10 years of my business building the team was so difficult. After about 10 years of trying to build different teams, I had to fire all my staff and start over. But once I figured out like the little nuts and bolts of building a team, once you figure it out, which you’re never totally gonna figure it out, right? There’s always gonna be bumps in the road. Yeah. But once you get like your core team and you get core values and you get your, your culture where, you know, kind of in the right direction and, and uh, all aligned to where they’re going in the same, going the same path, there’s nothing better because then you could do so much more. I mean, you couldn’t do a fraction of the things you’re doing if you did it by yourself. Right? You, you have to have people behind you doing that. So it is a lot of work and I think that’s maybe why a lot of businesses go out is they can’t figure that piece or they get really frustrated with that piece and trust. I don’t love that piece. I don’t love hiring, I don’t love training, I don’t love motivating. So I actually have a team that does a lot of that now, you know, I’ll, I’ll you know, do some things from a leadership standpoint, but if you don’t like building a team, then try and find other people that’ll help you build that team. Right.
Rick Melero: (23:51)
So I agree.
Tony Javier: (23:52)
All right, awesome. What else would you like to share with our listeners? Are there any other valuable lessons you’ve learned over the last 20 years? Maybe like a big mistake you made that going back you would change?
Rick Melero: (24:02)
Yeah, well I mean, again, going back to, you know, for individuals that are looking at growing their business, I really think the biggest mistake that we make when we embark on a big business, when we build an enterprise is that what we end up building is a machine that owns us. Uh, and I think that happened to me for a lot of my career. A lot of it, even though I was, you know, living the dream quote unquote and making money and doing all these things, the reality is the business on me. I didn’t own the business. And so I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes. Uh, because of that I was shortsighted and I really believe there’s gotta be balance. So lemme give you an example. In 2014, well it really started 2012, well by 13 and 14, our company had bought and sold in this area of Tampa about 400 properties.
Rick Melero: (24:43)
Bottom cleaned them, sold. I only kept about 30 of those properties. Uh, recently we did an analysis to go back and, and partially why I did it was because I wanted to keep my subs, I wanted to keep my team working and busy that I was so shortsighted. After looking into this, I realized that had I literally just taken aside a third of my profits, I would’ve kept over 130 properties worth over $12 million, most of which would’ve been completely free and clear by the way. And the cashflow revenue on that would’ve been substantially more on top of that. And so what I want people to understand is that a lot of times to feed the beast we compromise on the long term objectives. And that was one of the mistakes that I make. And so I really wanna challenge entrepreneurs and business owners to really begin to connect both your passive income strategy with your enterprise and try to do whatever you can today to get to the place that over the next 5, 7, 10, 15 years, whatever that is, you have literally freed yourself because you have that financial freedom coming in on a monthly basis.
Rick Melero: (25:42)
And the reason why this is so important to me is because now I’m bringing my kids to work on a weekly basis. I have an 11 year old daughter that’s gonna take over the business. She’s incredible. I have an eight year old son and now that I’m engaging them in the business, I’m now rethinking how do I teach them? Do I teach ’em how to work for this company or do I teach ’em how to leverage this company, be financially free and focus on their dreams? And so I really think it’s something that unfortunately we’re not proactive about and we’re not intentional about. And so what I would say is one of the biggest mistakes that I made in my career, looking back how much more wealth I would’ve amassed, how much more cash I would’ve created had I just had a balance approach to my enterprise, fueling my passive income and building an actual team that was incentivized to grow that business without.
Rick Melero: (26:28)
And, and I think those are the big pieces, but a lot of times we don’t even think about that cuz we’re too busy kind of build an enterprise for us. And that’s one of the biggest lessons that I would take back that I would want to challenge any entrepreneur. I don’t care if you’re making a hundred grand a year or if you’re making $2 million a month, month at the end of the day, does your company own you? And what are you doing proactively today to get to the place where you have passive income that outperforms your hourly rate?
Tony Javier: (26:52)
Does your 11 year old know that she’s gonna take over the company? Oh,
Rick Melero: (26:56)
. Yeah. You know, the funniest thing was, what, two years ago? Cuz I’ve been doing this now for a while, bringing them into the office. We were, I was going to a board meeting and I leave her with some, you know, some tasks and the admin team works with her. And uh, as I was running really quick to go to this appointment, I happened to look over and I see four employees standing there. My daughter’s having a team meeting , she’s having huddle and she says, I want you guys to pay close attention to what I’m about to say. So now I’m in the corner of the wall, just listen, like, what is this? And she actually says, one day my dad is gonna die and I’m gonna be your boss. you gonna do things with excellence. So when I say she’s gonna take over, I mean she’s got the perfect drive for it. And so, uh, it’s just amazing to see her grow up and flourish just because she’s being exposed to, to a lifestyle and, and really being challenged in a way that I never have when I was
Tony Javier: (27:42)
Gone. Yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s amazing. I I’m thinking of the things that I wish I would’ve learned, you know, even in my twenties, but let alone when I was 11 or eight or you know, back then that, you know, there’s so many things I wanna instill in in my kid. Cause I have a three year old that are gonna set him up. And I don’t think people think about that enough. They think about sending them to school and having them work hard, but, you know, teaching them passive income now teaching them leadership, teaching them how to create a team, I mean, gosh, can you imagine, did you grow up with that? I mean, did you grow up with that when you were younger or did you, you figured it out yourself?
Rick Melero: (28:16)
No, I’ve had to fail forward my entire career and then I just started asking myself, you know, what would I wish somebody would’ve done for me? And I’m gonna double down on that with my kids. And so I think it just boils down to me, honestly to, to just one key thing, which is, you know, your definition of success, right? For me, my definition was skewed because I was trying to prove something to someone, starting with myself. But what I tell people now that I’ve actually grown into an entrepreneur and, and a real estate investor and I’ve met with a lot of people, investors from all over the world, what I realize is real success is really thriving in balance with purpose. That’s really what the true definition of success is. What I mean by that is I cannot tell, I have a guy that I’ve worked with, he’s worth a half a billion dollars.
Rick Melero: (28:55)
I wouldn’t pay any amount of money to be in his position because I’ve seen the way his relationship with his family is so disconnected and dysfunctional. I’ve got all these clients are just amazing people, but many of them who are getting a divorce because they never maintain the relationship with your wife. And in the end, what were you earning the money to begin? So I really believe that part of those lessons in our lives should be to really invest our time in our effort into a balanced life that’s thriving in every area. That should be our scorecard, not just our
Tony Javier: (29:24)
Bank account. Yeah, absolutely. Good stuff. Well, I love the purpose. I love the drive, I love the success, I love everything that you’re doing, you know, from what I’ve seen. And I want, I’d like to see some of those other projects in Tulum and in Ireland and, and maybe get involved in those, uh, you know, stuff like that one of these days. That sounds pretty cool. So anything else you wanna share before we, uh, before we wrap up here Rick?
Rick Melero: (29:43)
You know, the only thing I would share is obviously if any, a lot of times people come back and say, look, you know, how do I incorporate my purpose and everything else? You know, I wrote a book called Investing with a Purpose. We’re not even selling the book. We actually have a website. They go to rick mala.com. They get literally just download the audio book or the pdf. The reason why I, that’s an additional resource that I like to tell people about is simply because it is difficult, especially if you’re a business owner and you’re running at a certain direction to really try to figure out, well how do I make sense of my life? How do I make sense of what I do? And in the book I put some really key components that over the years I’ve failed forward with. And it just kind of helps people to really dial in their purpose, to dial in how to identify what they should be focused on and to really start considering what are some of the strategies that they need to be implementing in order to build that passive income so that they can be truly financially free and do it with purpose.
Rick Melero: (30:32)
And so hopefully that’s an additional resource. There’s no gimmicks on the back end. Truly just our goal is to invest in the lives of people because what I’ve learned is, is that an inheritance is what you leave your family after you’re gone. A legacy is what you leave in them. And so my goal is to leave as much as possible in the lives of millions of people so that I know that the lessons that I learned weren’t wasted, they were given to others and hopefully they’re also gonna flourish and produce
Tony Javier: (30:56)
Food. Awesome. Appreciate the time, Rick. I can tell you’re a great business owner, great human being and doing a lot of great things. So honored to have you on here and, uh, to share your story. Is there anywhere else anybody can go to get ahold of you? Rick Maller is, uh, m e l e r o. Uh, any, any other, uh, resource or any other place that you would like the, uh, audience to go to get ahold of you?
Rick Melero: (31:15)
Sure. They can go to hiscapitalgroup.com. There’s a lot of free resources there from strategies, education, other, other elements. If, if they’re just trying to consider how to incorporate some just new tweaks to their business, we give a lot of those resources there as well under hiscapitalgroup.com.
Tony Javier: (31:30)
Awesome. Sounds great Rick. Well I appreciate the time again and again, congrats on your success and everything you’re doing and I look forward to catching up with you sometime again.
Rick Melero: (31:37)
Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.