Join me as I share my journey from a college athlete with dreams of going pro to building a net worth of $300,000 by the age of 24 through real estate investing and a Millionaire by Age 30. In this episode, I discuss the challenges, lessons, and strategies that helped me scale multiple businesses, navigate tough times, and ultimately achieve financial freedom. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or seasoned investor, these insights will inspire and guide you to think smarter and work more efficiently.

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Apple Podcasts –  https://tonyjavier.com/applepodcasts

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Show Transcription:

Tony Javier (00:00):

2001, I was in college, I was in my third year of college, I believe. And so I wanted to be a professional football player, hurt my knee, ended up, you know, killing that dream. So I went back home to Wichita State University, not knowing what was gonna happen next. I switched my major to accounting and then eventually to business. And then one night I found, uh, Carleton Sheet’s, no down payment system. It was in late night infomercial. So I was intrigued. I bought the course and just started buying properties. Five months after I bought the course, I bought my first two properties. Each of them had, I think, 15 to $20,000 worth of equity when it was said and done after I was done fixing them up. Um, so created a little, I mean, think about it. How long does it take you to create 30 to $40,000 in equity in anything?

Tony Javier (00:42):

Right. Typically it takes a long time. And also was able to create, you know, nice chunks of money from buying and refinancing properties, getting cash out, and also by flipping properties and selling them. And I think it was 24 years old. I had a net worth of about $300,000, which back then, um, was pretty substantial. I mean, even now it kind of is, but of course you see people today, there’s all kinds of stuff on the internet and podcasts and software and all that kind of stuff. You can scale bit businesses much faster, but back then the internet was just starting. So, you know, you had to buy the CDs and the, and the books and go to the seminars and, you know, those kinds of things. So to scale a business was definitely much tougher back then. So that’s kind of what started the journey was, uh, was real estate.

Tony Javier (01:30):

And they, they showed the statistics of how many people start businesses and how many people fail. And the failure rate for year one is pretty high. And then year two gets higher, and three year three gets higher. And by year five, like, I think it’s like 95% of businesses. I can’t remember the exact stat, but it’s a substantial amount of businesses go outta business within five years. And so the guy said, you know, if you create one business that does really well, you’ve kind of hit the jackpot. If you can create multiple businesses that do well, you’ve really like, that’s like another, and yeah, it’s like another level of success. So I’m, I’ve been fortunate enough to, to have two businesses right now that have scaled. Um, I mean, they’re not a hundred million dollar businesses by any means, but they’re pretty substantial businesses still.

Tony Javier (02:16):

And it took a lot of, you know, pain and suffering the first 10 to 12 years for me to say, I need to do things smarter. I need to do things easier. And I made that switch. And, um, it’s just been a game changer going from working in the business as a technician, doing everything to finally stepping out as a business owner. And then recently kind of more stepping back as an investor where really I’m kind of just an investor and advisor for my companies and my team runs everything for me. I’ve always had this internal drive to be the best I possibly could be. So at six years old I was, you know, diving for balls and like, you know, something, something that six year olds didn’t do. I was running a hundred miles an hour, people called me a one man team because at six years old, what are you, you know, you don’t like, you don’t really have a lot of drive.

Tony Javier (03:05):

But for me, I just instantly wanted to be like the best. And I think part of that, it was maybe, maybe could have been some, some childhood trauma of not being seen and, you know, having seven sisters and that kind of thing. And so I had to kind of stick out. Uh, but I think, you know, I was fortunate to, to be kind of born with that, that internal drive. So that’s really what kind of kept me going through the tough times for those that are going through tough times. I did it the wrong way when I, when I went through tough times, I internalized things. I, um, I worked harder to try and get over whatever it was that I was going through. So for those that are going through tough things, the things that I would say is, and I, I heard a quote yesterday.

Tony Javier (03:43):

It was, if you wanna go fast, do it alone. If you wanna go further and longer do it with other people. With that, I, for the first 10 to 12 years, I didn’t really talk about my struggles with anybody. I didn’t go to a therapist. I didn’t go to coaches. I, I thought that if I had a problem, I needed to keep it to myself. Because if I told people that I was doing something wrong or that something was, is an issue that I would look bad, right? That people would look at me and be like, you’re a failure. You’re this, you’re that. And you know, I really respect, we have, I have a ton of real estate investor clients that, um, I get a call every once in a while, Hey, I’m struggling with something and I’ll, like, I had it happen yesterday. It was, it, it was, it was actually something else.

Tony Javier (04:28):

It, besides business, it was actually ended up being health, health stuff. But I just love when people call me and say, Hey, I have an issue and I’m able to like literally within 30 minutes change their mindset on something, right? Because of, ’cause I’ve been through so much crap, you know, and through, uh, business and life for, for 23 years, um, you know, now I could say things are, are really coasting. So people would look at what I have and be like, you’re lucky. You’re, you know, this is all great, but to get to this point or anybody who gets it to a successful point, there’s always gonna be downturns. You know, even five years ago, I, I had to let go a bunch of my staff in one of my businesses and it was really, really hard. And it took a toll on me because not only did I had to let go of a lot of staff, but I had five family members working for me.

Tony Javier (05:14):

And I had to, I had to let go of four of ’em, right? And I kept one of my family members that had been with me a long time. It was very brutal. Not only that, but people knew my business in, in the community. And so of course there was rumors going around that I was going under and all this kind of stuff. Luckily I was able to downsize, reset and then, you know, because of what I know now, was able to talk, talk through it, uh, you know, through it with people, um, you know, create a strategy, you know, all that kind of stuff. And, and our business actually is now from 2019 when we had to downsize, 2018 was a, was a peak year. We’re, we’re not doing quite as much volume, but we’re making like twice as much money as we were back in 2018, which we were doing record numbers.

Tony Javier (05:56):

So that’s another, I guess that’s another, you know, kind of thing for you is that sometimes when, when things happen to you, it’s a blessing. I was able to downsize the business and I realized that I just had way too many people on staff. And so by downsizing I was able to rightsize and now we do, uh, we do less volume with less people, but our profits have doubled over what we were doing back in 18. So it’s a much more efficient business, right? Yeah. When people say they do a hundred deals a year, I mean, it’s impressive to do a hundred deals a year is absolutely impressive, no doubt. Like you have, you have to have something that you’re doing that’s right to do a hundred deals a year. Especially we have some clients doing 200, 300 deals a year, but what do their bottom lines look like?

Tony Javier (06:40):

You know, work, balance, life look like. You know, I, I only have to work a few hours. I don’t even have to work a few hours. I probably work an hour a week on my real estate investing business. And I say that not to brag, but more just to like encourage people to think smarter and just to realize that you don’t have to work 80 hour weeks. It’s interesting, it’s, you know, back when I started this entrepreneurial journey 23 years ago for the first, and I always say the first 10 to 12 years, ’cause those were, I guess I call lesson years, working 80 hours a week. I mean, I would literally work seven days a week. I’d get up sometimes at four o’clock in the morning and work until midnight just because I thought that if I worked longer hours and I worked harder, things would just start coming.

Tony Javier (07:16):

And what I learned was, you know, eventually was you hire the right people, you put the right systems in place, you step back from your business and think about your business as opposed to just jumping in and just trying to like run around with your head cut off. That’s where the magic happens, you know? And we talked about the other day about 10 x is easier than two x, you know, the book. And the concept is basically if you think about how to 10 x your business, you can’t do that yourself. You have to figure out who can help you get there. What systems do you have to put in place? What are the things that I have to do that are much bigger than just me that have to be put in place? And when you do that, usually it’s not you that, that depend, that’s dependent on the business or that the business depends on you.

Tony Javier (08:00):

It’s the systems, it’s the people, it’s all those things that you put in place so that you can do things much higher level. Which to me is strategizing, going to masterminds and seeing what everybody else is doing in their business, having conversations, doing podcasts like this where we can have great conversations and learn from each other and then just take time off. Like, I’ve been taking a lot of time off lately. Something I haven’t done in 23 years. I’m actually, I’m working half days a lot of days, you know, and what’s interesting is I’m way happier, I’m way more focused and I’m getting way more done by working half days. It’s incredible how that works. There’s reasons that marketing doesn’t work. It’s either you’re not spending enough money, you’re not giving it enough time, you’re not doing it the right way. So meaning you, you are not doing it the right way or maybe you don’t have the right people helping you, uh, or you’re not converting the leads, meaning you’re not answering

Tony Javier (08:55):

The phone, you’re not getting out to the lead, you know, as quickly as you can. Um, I see this in so many businesses. I don’t know if this frustrates the crap outta you, but when I look up a business and I call, but when they don’t call you back or they don’t call you back for like three or four days, that drives me nuts. ’cause I’m like, because that’s one of the reasons that business owners I think fail, is they just, they don’t know how to market. And even if they do know how to market and get out there, like answer your phone or at least call back within a reasonable amount of time, there was actually a phone call I made, I did a post about this, it was probably six months ago and had that person called me back, they could have made close to a million dollars from the business that I was going to give them.

Tony Javier (09:35):

And they never called me back. And they had great reviews. They were online, they had all this huge presence. I left ’em a message, said, Hey, I’d love to talk to you. They were a local business here in San Diego. Someone I think had even maybe recommended them. And I never got a call back. And so the next person that I gave the business to will make a million dollars in a short amount of time from the business that I’m giving them. It was a business brokerage and looking to sell a business. And if you look at business brokerages, they charge high, high commissions. So that sale would have made them a million dollars. Yeah, you can have a great marketing campaign that drives business that they call you and they will do business with you. But these days a lot of people want to do research.

Tony Javier (10:19):

So they want to go online, they want to search you. So for me, I want to be everywhere. So we do from a marketing standpoint, and this actually helps with branding. Like if you search, like if you’re driving, if you’re watching tv, if you’re going online, like chances of you not seeing us in Wichita, Kansas from our, uh, from our buying business, the chances of you not seeing us in a 30 day period is very slim because we are everywhere. But if they do, they’re gonna go online. I see my TV commercial and you go to our website, you can tell that those are the same business. If you hear my radio commercial, it’s the same language as our TV commercial. If you see our Facebook page, it’s the same branding as we have on our, you know, Google business page. So making everything cohesive, and like you said, if things aren’t updated, things aren’t like there.

Tony Javier (11:05):

Like I was on something the other day and it said, COVID mask policy strictly enforced still, or something like that. I’m like, dude, why would you not take that off your website? Like, you can tell that you don’t update your stuff and that. So just little things like that. You could have everything right? But if you have like, you know, something off that, you know, makes people jump off, they’re gonna go to the next person. Just working smarter to me is just the name of the game. And you know, I, I own a bunch of businesses and I’m actually getting ready to start buying businesses. But the thing is, if people look, like, people say all the time, like, I don’t know how you do everything that you do. And my response is, it’s because I don’t do everything. I have a team that does things and if I, if I have something I wanted to put in place, it’s not, how do I do it, it’s who can I have help me do it, or who can I give it to? That’s way better, way more efficient at that thing. They can get it done way faster and way better than I can. And there’s this saying that says, if you want something done right, you do it yourself. To me, I’m the opposite. If I want something done right and fast, I give it to somebody else. ’cause my a, my a DD is all over the place. I wanna do a million things at once. So if I don’t give that to somebody else, you know, there’s very few things that are gonna get done.