Mauricio Umansky, CEO and founder of The Agency, join "Forbes Talks" to discuss his life before building The Agency and becoming a reality TV star.
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00:00 Mauricio Umansky went from a college dropout to the CEO and founder of the agency, star
00:06 of Buying Beverly Hills, and most recently, contestant of Dancing with the Stars.
00:11 Here's how his journey began.
00:16 I'm your host, Rosemary Miller, here with Mauricio Umansky, the CEO and founder of the
00:22 agency and author of The Dealmaker.
00:25 Thank you so much for joining me today.
00:27 It's a pleasure to be here, Rosemary.
00:28 This is exciting.
00:29 Absolutely.
00:30 So, Mauricio, is there anything else you'd like to add?
00:33 Well, to what?
00:35 To that title.
00:36 To that title.
00:37 Well, I mean, you know, I don't know.
00:39 We can always add, you know, Dancer of the Year, Entrepreneur.
00:44 I don't know.
00:45 I think we'll leave it at that.
00:46 We'll leave it at that.
00:47 Yeah.
00:48 All right.
00:49 That's not what you told me before the camera started rolling.
00:50 Incredible human, amazing man.
00:51 Yeah, like, you know, we'll, yeah, we'll leave it at that.
00:52 Throw it out there.
00:53 We'll just throw it out there.
00:54 We could just, accolades and accolades, you know.
00:58 Well, Mauricio.
00:59 Let's leave it at that for now.
01:01 I want to start at the beginning.
01:02 Yeah.
01:03 Take me all the way back.
01:04 Who is Mauricio Umansky?
01:06 Wow, that's a big question, you know, right off the bat.
01:11 You know, I was born in Mexico City, moved to the United States when I was six years
01:16 old.
01:17 I was born with a blood disease, which is very important.
01:18 It's part of my book.
01:19 It's in my first chapter that was a terminal disease that I was lucky enough to be cured.
01:23 And the reason that's so important is just because of the way that my mindset is in terms
01:27 of living, really enjoying every single day and every single moment of life, carpe diem,
01:32 and really being, feeling like I'm lucky to be alive.
01:37 And you know, fast forward to, you know, to the U.S. and, you know, obviously later on
01:43 in life, I'm married with four beautiful daughters.
01:50 And you know, I've been an entrepreneur pretty much all my life since I started a business.
01:57 I dropped out of college in order to start, you know, working.
02:01 I started to work for my father selling peace goods, which for some people that don't know
02:05 what peace goods are, that's textiles, that's fabric for the fashion industry.
02:10 And then through that process, I actually began kind of my first entrepreneurial experience,
02:16 which was to start a clothing line called 90265, which was the Malibu zip code.
02:22 And I actually didn't start it.
02:23 I actually purchased it as it was already starting, and then I helped expand it and
02:29 create it and all of that stuff, which was the Malibu zip code.
02:33 We did well with that, made a lot of mistakes.
02:35 I was young.
02:36 We made a lot of mistakes, a lot of production mistakes, a lot of things.
02:39 Ultimately, ended up selling it, went through our first bankruptcy during that time.
02:45 And, you know, failures always create experiences.
02:49 You can't just, I mean, some people can't just always have successes, but some of the,
02:54 you know, I think most incredible entrepreneurs have had many failures before they've ever
02:58 done something incredible.
03:00 And I have certainly had my share of failures.
03:02 You know, cut to then getting called by one of the largest fashion houses in Los Angeles
03:08 at the time and asked me to start a division to basically knock off my clothing line, 90265,
03:14 and start something for them.
03:17 That did not work.
03:18 They wanted me to start doing that with woven textiles, and my clothing line was about knits.
03:23 Again, I don't know if that makes any sense to you, but that was pretty much impossible
03:28 to knock it off when you're using completely different fabrics.
03:32 And that led to a very important and memorable moment in my life, which was getting fired
03:40 from that job.
03:42 I was 26 years old.
03:44 I had just gotten married.
03:45 It was 1996.
03:46 I had just gotten married.
03:47 I was with my wife, Kyle.
03:50 We had just given birth to my daughter, Alexia, our second daughter, and I was out of a job,
03:57 and I didn't have any money, and I was broke.
04:00 I came home.
04:01 I was bawling, crying, my eyeballs out.
04:04 My wife could not have been more supportive and said to me, "This is an opportunity.
04:10 Let's go.
04:11 You know, you've always wanted to get into real estate.
04:12 I'll support you.
04:13 We'll get our real estate licenses together."
04:16 We made it a date night.
04:17 We went to Santa Monica College at the time, which was a junior college in Los Angeles,
04:23 and we made it a date night.
04:24 We went out and did it every week and ultimately got our real estate licenses together.
04:30 And then that's when my new career path started, which is being in real estate and just doing,
04:38 you know, obviously some incredible things.
04:39 But through that career path, I made a promise to myself that I would never have a lesser
04:44 year in terms of production than the previous year.
04:48 >> Rosemary Seale.
04:49 Let me stop you right there.
04:50 >> Yeah, please, Rosemary.
04:51 Stop me.
04:52 Sorry.
04:53 I can go on forever, as you can tell, so you stop me.
04:55 >> I want to go back to that transition from moving to Mexico to the United States.
05:02 You were young.
05:03 How did you identify yourself growing up?
05:06 Did you identify more as, what, I'm Mexican.
05:09 Did you hang out with Mexican kids or were you trying to merge into the American culture
05:15 more so?
05:16 >> That's a great question.
05:17 I'm actually a Mexican Jew.
05:20 And when we moved to the United States, I did go to a public school for I think it was
05:26 one or two years, I don't recall.
05:28 And then my parents put me into a Jewish private school.
05:33 And so I was hanging out with a bunch of Jews.
05:38 And I identified as a Mexican American Jew.
05:41 >> That's a lot of labels.
05:42 >> So I've been able to identify as everything and anything.
05:47 And I love Mexico.
05:48 I'm a proud Mexican.
05:49 I'm a proud American.
05:50 And I'm a proud Jew.
05:51 >> And what was high school like for you?
05:54 >> High school was kind of cool.
05:56 It was pretty awesome.
05:58 I like to be an athlete.
06:00 I was not into, in high school I was not that into girls.
06:03 I was not that into school.
06:04 I was not a very academic guy.
06:05 I was into athletics.
06:07 I played every sport.
06:09 Football, baseball, tennis.
06:12 I was on the teams.
06:13 You know, I was on the varsity football team.
06:15 I was also a snow skier at the time.
06:18 We had a home in Vail, Colorado at the time.
06:21 And I used to ski a lot.
06:22 I tried to make the Olympic team.
06:25 I was unable to make the Olympic team.
06:27 But I did compete and went around the world competing in snow skiing, slalom and giant
06:33 slalom for one year.
06:35 And that was pretty awesome.
06:36 >> If you had made it, do you think that would be your life today?
06:40 An Olympian?
06:41 >> Who knows?
06:42 I mean, I don't know if I, you know, you can never, you know, one of the things that I
06:47 have learned is that you can never go backwards and wonder, you know, what if or what could
06:51 have been.
06:52 You know, the only thing that's in our control is what can be and what is today.
06:57 And what can we do tomorrow.
06:59 Whatever happened yesterday happened.
07:01 And you know, we can choose to formulate ourselves as to our history and to what has happened
07:07 in our history.
07:08 Or we can choose to be ourselves as to what we can control today and what we can do tomorrow.
07:14 And I choose the latter.
07:15 So I've never really gone backwards and wondered what, you know, what could have been.
07:19 >> Well, I know we're in the back right now.
07:21 We're at high school.
07:22 >> I'm good with that.
07:23 I can still talk about it.
07:24 You can't ignore history.
07:26 Let's be clear.
07:27 You can't ignore history.
07:28 It's important.
07:29 But you know, to wonder and to have it shape your life and shape your personality is a
07:33 totally different story.
07:34 >> I see.
07:35 I see.
07:36 We only have one life.
07:37 We've got to live it as is.
07:38 >> We've got to live it.
07:39 >> Well, Mauricio, so you're in high school.
07:43 Did you even see yourself, did you always see yourself going to college or were you
07:47 always thinking I'm a businessman?
07:48 I'm a businessman in the back of the--
07:51 >> High school I wasn't thinking about that, to be quite honest with you.
07:54 I was just thinking about having fun.
07:56 I wanted to have fun.
07:57 I wanted to be in athletics and I'd like to have fun and I'd like to be in athletics.
08:02 I was not a partier but I did like to have fun.
08:04 >> But you knew you were going to college.
08:06 >> I knew I was supposed to go to college.
08:10 >> OK.
08:11 >> Right?
08:12 And I knew I was going to go to college but I didn't get very good grades so I wasn't
08:15 100% sure I was going to college.
08:18 But yes, but I ended up-- actually after graduating high school, I think I went to college for
08:23 one year.
08:24 I went to junior college for one year if I remember correctly and then I actually left
08:28 with my cousin and with a whole bunch of friends and this was a really important year.
08:32 We actually left and we ended up going to a kibbutz in Israel and we spent seven months
08:36 in the kibbutz in Israel which we volunteered at and worked at.
08:39 We went to three different kibbutz.
08:41 >> How did y'all make this decision?
08:43 >> So as a Jew, it is very common to make aliyah and to go to Israel particularly as
08:50 a Mexican Jew, not so much Americans but most places in the world other than the US.
08:56 Actually after high school, when you're 18, 19 years old, you actually go to Israel and
09:01 you spend a year there and it's a very common thing.
09:04 And so we did that.
09:05 It was very common.
09:06 We did that.
09:07 We went to three different kibbutz.
09:08 I had some amazing jobs volunteering.
09:10 I worked in a hen house where I caged 26,000 chickens in one night and that was a heck
09:17 of an experience.
09:18 When you look at those shows and you say what are the worst jobs you've ever had or what
09:21 are the worst jobs you can have, I got to tell you something, 26,000 chickens one night
09:28 is a really disgusting, intense job.
09:32 You do not want that job.
09:33 >> I believe it.
09:34 I believe it.
09:36 And that built character I imagine.
09:38 >> All of that built tremendous amount of character, tremendous amount of street wisdom.
09:43 You know, after doing that for seven months, I went to go travel Europe for six months
09:49 on a URail pass and literally, you know, we would -- my father gave us -- my father and
09:55 his father gave us each $5,000 and they said return when you're finished with the money.
10:01 And we made $5,000 last for 13 months.
10:05 So yeah, you can imagine we were working on $30 a day budgets, volunteering and it was
10:12 pretty awesome.
10:13 I mean, we did buy a URail pass and sometimes we would just go to the train station and
10:18 look at the board and be like, well, where can we sleep tonight?
10:21 What's an eight-hour train ride?
10:23 And we'd look at it, jump on the train at 11 p.m. and go to Helsinki and that -- arrive
10:29 the next day in Helsinki so that we could save money on a hotel.
10:32 >> And after this, did you decide, okay, am I going back to school or was this the end
10:36 of school?
10:37 >> No, that was the beginning.
10:38 That was the wisdom and tremendous wisdom.
10:40 Then I went back to school.
10:41 >> You went back to school.
10:42 >> I went back to school.
10:43 I went back for one year.
10:44 Again, Santa Monica College, junior college.
10:48 I did study, which is very important, so I'm not telling people not to study.
10:52 While I was in college and those two years that I did college, I actually finished my
10:55 two years of college, the only classes I took were business classes.
10:59 So I did do business law, business law two, accounting, economics.
11:03 I did not do bullshit classes.
11:04 I did not do photography and astronomy.
11:09 >> That's my whole major you're talking about, but okay.
11:11 >> No, my point is for business, right?
11:14 By the way, I actually did do astronomy, so I actually just lied, and I actually did do
11:17 photography, so whatever.
11:21 But I really made it a point to the classes that I took were what I wanted to do.
11:26 And at this point, I wanted to get into business.
11:28 >> At this point, you wanted to get into business.
11:29 >> At this point, I wanted to get into business.
11:31 >> What made you realize that you wanted to get into business?
11:35 >> I wanted to make money.
11:37 I wanted to make money.
11:38 I wanted to control my own destiny.
11:40 As I was doing this, and this is what's very important, as I was doing this, my father
11:44 called me up and said to me, "Mauricio, there was a recession.
11:53 There was a very bad recession at that time, and my father had made a gamble on going long
12:01 on cotton.
12:02 Cotton went down, dropped tremendously in price, and we had a major problem."
12:08 He called me up and he goes, "Mauricio, we're out of money.
12:13 You got to figure out.
12:14 You got to make a decision now.
12:16 I'm no longer paying for you to fuck around," pardon my language, "but to screw around.
12:22 And you've either got to go to college and take it seriously and get a ton, and I will
12:26 figure out how to take care of that, or time to get to work, but no longer playtime."
12:33 I told my dad, and that was a great thing that he said to me, and I said to my dad,
12:36 I said, "Give me the weekend to think about it."
12:39 I called him up on Monday and I said, "I'm ready to go to work."
12:43 The weekend?
12:44 Yeah.
12:45 It took you one weekend to come up with that huge decision, that life-changing decision.
12:49 What happened over the weekend?
12:51 Yeah, I don't recall, but I just knew that that was what I wanted to do, and I knew that
12:56 I was not going to take school seriously, and it was just not something that I was going
13:00 to take seriously, and I felt that I had the foundation, and I wanted to get to work.
13:04 I wanted to go make money, and I knew that my strength was, I always knew that my strength
13:10 was sales, and I think that's super important for people to understand, is really what is
13:14 your strength, and what is your passion.
13:16 And how did you know that that was your strength?
13:19 I just knew it because I knew how to, my mother, I grew up with a mother who was a psychologist,
13:23 and going to school as a psychologist, and I really learned a lot from her in terms of
13:28 how to read people and how to read a room.
13:29 I learned a lot from my father in terms of how to sell, and if you could combine the
13:33 psychology on how to read people and how to read a room and how to understand that, and
13:36 you know how to sell, and you can combine those two, you can be an incredible salesperson.
13:41 So a nine to five never crossed your mind?
13:43 Nine to five never crossed my mind.
13:44 That was not my gig.
13:46 So how did you, okay, decide, I'm going to be a businessman, I know how to make money,
13:51 but how did you actually go get the money?
13:53 Yeah, well, I went to go work for my father, and he gave me, you know, we were selling
14:00 textiles, and he had a bunch of salespeople that were working for him, and I got all the
14:08 bad accounts, or the accounts that the other salespeople didn't want, which I guess were
14:13 the bad accounts.
14:17 And quickly I ended up becoming one of his top salesperson, with the bad accounts.
14:23 And you were how old?
14:24 I was twenty, I guess three, twenty-two.
14:27 Twenty-two.
14:28 No, probably even younger.
14:29 And how old was everybody else?
14:31 Oh, in their thirties, forties.
14:32 Been doing this for years.
14:33 Established forever, yeah.
14:34 Yes.
14:35 Yeah, I was probably twenty-two years old, maybe not even that, because I did two years
14:39 of college, I did a year in Israel, so you know, graduate eighteen, nineteen, yeah, twenty-oneish.
14:44 Twenty-one, twenty-two.
14:45 Twenty-one years old.
14:46 Yeah.
14:47 And you're beating out all the thirty, forty-year-olds.
14:50 Oh yeah.
14:51 Beating them out quickly.
14:52 Quickly.
14:53 Quickly.
14:54 Quickly became one of his top salespersons.
14:59 What challenges did you face?
15:00 Were they jealous of you?
15:02 You were a hundred percent nepotism, you know, some jealousy, and I was like, guys, and I
15:07 was twenty-one years old, but I was a very confident kid.
15:10 My parents raised me with tremendous confidence, and I give them all of the credit in the world
15:16 for giving me that confidence.
15:17 So even though I was twenty-one years old, I did not look up at my peers, and I was scared
15:21 of them.
15:22 I was twenty-one years old, and I looked up at my peers, and I felt like I belonged there
15:25 with them.
15:26 I always felt like I belonged there with them.
15:28 And I looked at them all, and I said, guys, these are all the accounts that none of you
15:31 guys wanted.
15:32 Let's trade accounts.
15:33 I want your accounts.
15:34 You've got better accounts than me.
15:35 You've got bigger accounts, better accounts.
15:38 I want those.
15:39 And sure enough, I started gaining some of the ones that they weren't selling, and I
15:43 was learning everybody that was the big manufacturers in the city, and I knew how big they were,
15:49 and I was studying how big they were, and I was studying who they were and what they
15:51 were doing, and I started gaining some of those accounts, and I started to sell more,
15:55 tell more, and sell more, and sell more.
15:57 And so when did you leave your father's business?
16:00 So we started, we then bought the 90265 clothing line.
16:04 I found it.
16:05 I was selling them peace goods.
16:06 I was selling them textiles.
16:07 They were having some issues.
16:08 I really liked the line.
16:09 I came to my father, and I said, hey, Dad, I really like this line.
16:12 I'd like to buy it.
16:14 I'd like to help them grow it, keep the people, and we can support them.
16:19 They're buying our fabric, right?
16:22 And so it'll be an easy way to finance them.
16:25 It'll be an easy way to get this whole thing going.
16:27 We bought the company, and we grew that company.
16:30 I think they were doing $300,000 of sales that year.
16:33 We bought that company, and I kind of took over the operations of that company and took
16:37 over the sales of that company, and within two years, we grew that company from $300,000
16:43 in sales to $30 million in sales.
16:45 Mauricio, you're saying this like it's easy.
16:48 Yeah, it was an incredible thing.
16:51 Do you hear yourself?
16:52 You're like, yeah, I just did this.
16:53 I did this.
16:54 I did the sales.
16:55 I took over.
16:56 I did the sales.
16:57 And we did it.
16:58 Yeah.
16:59 Give us some steps.
17:00 How does someone do this?
17:01 How does someone make those bold moves in their life?
17:04 So a lot of it just, you know, it's you got to be in the right place.
17:10 You have to understand that that right place is there, because a lot of us are at the right
17:14 place, and we happen to be in the right.
17:17 We just don't know what, we just don't see it.
17:19 We don't see that right place.
17:20 And then when that door opens, a lot of us are scared to walk into the door and to walk
17:25 into the room and then take advantage and then grab the bull by the horns and then,
17:29 you know, do what you need to do.
17:31 And all of these things, they sound easy.
17:34 And they are easy if you take the steps.
17:38 The steps being identifying the opportunity.
17:43 From identification of the opportunity, opening the door.
17:48 From opening the door, having certainty to go inside the room.
17:52 Okay?
17:53 From being inside the room, having certainty and the understanding to now start executing
17:58 on the plan that while you open the door and you're doing your due diligence, you've created
18:03 a business plan, right?
18:04 That moment between one and the other.
18:06 But you can never have, the doubt, the doubt in any business, the doubt in yourself, the
18:11 doubt in all of those things has to occur during due diligence.
18:14 Okay?
18:15 Once you have passed the due diligence moment and you know that that is something that you
18:18 want, that's when you have to have 100% certainty in that.
18:23 And you can never, ever redoubt yourself.
18:25 Okay?
18:26 And if you don't doubt yourself and you go for it with 100% certainty, you will accomplish
18:30 the mission.
18:31 And if you have no fear, you have to have no fear, you have to have confidence, you
18:35 have to have certainty.
18:36 And then you have to execute.
18:38 And all of these things, yes, they sound easy.
18:40 And you know what?
18:41 They're not, but they are.
18:43 And they are because if you have no choice but to execute, and that is the only choice
18:47 that you give yourself and you manifest that, you actually have the ability to execute.
18:51 Because if you wake up every single day and your choice is only to execute and to finish
18:56 and to sell, and that is the only choice in your head, you will get it done.
19:01 And everybody that makes that decision can get it done.
19:04 This is not unique to me.
19:05 Execute.
19:06 Make the choice to get it done.
19:12 You have the clothing line.
19:14 Was this the turning point that you realized, "I'm making it in life.
19:19 I'm doing this"?
19:21 Yeah I was having a lot of fun during that time.
19:23 And I was a young man, probably 23 years old, 24 years old, with a clothing line and running
19:30 fashion shows and all kinds of fun stuff.
19:34 And just having a really good time.
19:37 Probably around 25 years old is when I met my wife Kyle.
19:41 I met her at a nightclub.
19:43 Fell in love with her right away.
19:45 Right away?
19:46 Tell me about that.
19:47 Yeah, I just fell in love with her right away.
19:49 It was a summer.
19:50 It was World Cup, so what was that, 1994?
19:54 Yeah, it was the World Cup, summer '94.
19:58 And yeah, met her at a nightclub and just fell in love with her.
20:02 She looked exactly like Demi Moore.
20:04 I grew up infatuated with Demi Moore.
20:08 Then I was actually told that she was Demi Moore's sister.
20:10 And then I was like, "Oh my God.
20:12 I mean, if I can't have Demi, let's have the sister for sure."
20:21 Absolutely gorgeous, beautiful woman.
20:22 Fell in love with her right away.
20:24 And yeah, I asked her out on a date the next day.
20:28 I think I was leaving to Acapulco.
20:30 I came back a week later.
20:31 I asked her out on a date.
20:34 And we went out for lunch.
20:35 I asked her to lunch, not to dinner.
20:37 Because for me, it was very important that if you liked somebody, if you asked them on
20:42 a day date, if you just wanted to take somebody to bed, you asked them on a night date.
20:47 That was my philosophy.
20:48 Okay, young 25-year-old Marie.
20:49 So yeah, so I asked her on a date, went with her.
20:56 And we fell in love day one.
20:58 I mean, we really just fell in love with each other.
21:00 And yeah.
21:01 Yeah.
21:02 That's 25.
21:03 That's 25.
21:04 This is 25.
21:05 Yeah.
21:06 Keep us going.
21:07 What's next?
21:08 We started dating.
21:14 My God, what is next?
21:17 During all of this time, it all started kind of happening.
21:19 The 90265, the clothing line kind of fell apart.
21:22 I was making a lot of production errors.
21:24 I was selling a lot, but I was not able to deliver the goods.
21:26 So I was having to take back a bunch of goods that I was delivering.
21:31 And this is a little bit before everything came crumbling down at 26.
21:36 Yeah.
21:37 I'm at 25.
21:39 Things are good.
21:40 You're on top of the world.
21:41 Things are good.
21:42 I'm running my own business.
21:43 I'm 25 years old.
21:44 I'm in love.
21:45 I'm making some money, particularly for a 25-year-old.
21:48 I'm making a lot of money for a 25-year-old.
21:51 Not a lot of money for today, but for a 25-year-old.
21:54 You're the man at 25.
21:55 You're the man.
21:56 I'll do it just fine.
21:57 And yeah, then all of a sudden, I made a bunch of production errors.
22:04 That started to kind of crash down on me.
22:06 I ended up, one of the buyers for 902, one of the buyers that used to buy, Macy's, she
22:12 was the buyer at Macy's, and she used to buy my goods, said to me, "Mauricio, you have
22:17 no idea what you're doing, but you've got a good product and you really know how to
22:20 sell.
22:21 Why don't you just sell your company?"
22:22 And I was like, "Sell my company?
22:24 I can actually sell a company?
22:26 No clue that I could do that."
22:28 She goes, "Yeah, sell your company."
22:29 I'm like, "All right."
22:30 Ended up selling the company.
22:35 Didn't make a lot of money because I didn't know how to sell a company.
22:40 - What were the mistakes you made?
22:42 - Well, again, I wasn't producing goods, so the P&Ls didn't look good.
22:46 I didn't sell the blue sky.
22:47 I sold the P&L.
22:51 Knowing today that when you have a brand and a label, which we've created now with the
22:56 agency, there's a lot more value in the intellectual property and the brand and the label and all
23:02 of that stuff than I had anticipated.
23:04 When I sold the company, I only really sold the P&L.
23:08 The P&L had losses, so I sold it for nothing.
23:14 I didn't realize that I had an important asset on my hands.
23:19 But you live and learn.
23:21 You make mistakes.
23:22 I believe in learning from your mistakes as much as you've got to learn from your achievements.
23:26 The failures are as important as the achievements.
23:32 Then I went to go work for the people that bought my brand, my line.
23:38 I worked for them for a little while.
23:40 I didn't really like that job.
23:41 - What's that like, working for the people who bought your brand?
23:45 - Yeah, it was weird, and that's why I didn't like the job.
23:47 - I imagine.
23:48 - It was super weird.
23:49 I didn't like it.
23:50 I didn't like it at all.
23:51 Good people.
23:52 I just didn't like the job.
23:56 And then the largest company in California at the time called me up and said, "We want
24:06 to hire you, and we want you to start a division that knocks off 90265, the company you had,
24:12 and we want to create something similar to that."
24:14 We created a line called Sank on Sank, which was the French, the Club Sank on Sank, so
24:22 it was based from that.
24:24 It was a great brand, a great label.
24:27 I created that, and I went to go work for them.
24:32 But again, we were in a heavy recession, and they said to me, "Mauricio, we only have credit
24:37 lines to buy woven goods.
24:39 We do not have any credit lines to buy knit goods."
24:42 And I was like, "Well, gee, you asked me to copy my own company, and now you want me
24:46 to start it with wovens?
24:48 This is a knit company.
24:49 I cannot do that.
24:51 It doesn't work."
24:53 But I went for it.
24:54 It was a job.
24:55 I needed it at this point.
24:56 I had sold the company.
24:57 I had spent my commissions and all that stuff and what have you, whatever small savings I
25:03 had, and I needed the job, and I went for it.
25:06 It was the largest clothing company.
25:10 I think it was at one point the largest employer in Los Angeles.
25:16 I enjoyed getting that opportunity to work for a big company and understanding the way
25:21 that they managed all of their operations and their HR and the way that the company
25:28 operated.
25:29 I enjoyed learning from that.
25:30 That was your takeaway from a 9-to-5.
25:32 That was my takeaway, exactly.
25:33 Okay.
25:34 So you've got to have takeaways in everything, right?
25:37 I got a chance to see how that big structure operates, and I liked that.
25:42 I did like that a lot.
25:45 And from that structure, how are you using that today?
25:48 What did you bring?
25:49 I pulled a lot of that for today, and I've used a lot of that structure today, and I
25:53 learned how to run a company.
25:55 From that 9-to-5, I taught you how to run a company.
26:01 Please elaborate.
26:03 Just watching the operations, your COO, the chain of command, the org chart, who reports
26:09 to who, how do you report, how do you create an efficient, scalable model.
26:15 All of those type of things are the stuff that I learned from being there.
26:18 I was the division head, so I was kind of high up on the org chart.
26:23 I don't remember who I reported to.
26:25 SVP, I don't remember who I reported to, but the person I was reporting to was one
26:31 step down from the CEO, right?
26:34 So I guess I was on the third ladder of the org chart.
26:39 But it was just a great, great experience to really understand how to operate a company
26:44 properly and the importance of understanding what's important, how to create divisions
26:53 and have proper P&Ls and expectations.
26:56 We call them ROCs, quarterly ROCs.
26:59 Our quarterly ROCs is what we call them now, which is basically like what are our goals
27:04 that we want to set for the quarter, what's the most important things, right?
27:08 We have a meeting every quarter, every month I should say, and we check in on our quarterly
27:16 ROCs.
27:17 Are they still the right ones?
27:18 Are we still succeeding?
27:19 Are we winning?
27:20 Are we failing?
27:21 We check in on a weekly basis.
27:22 Are we winning?
27:23 Are we failing?
27:24 And that way we know exactly that the entire company and those quarterly ROCs are then
27:28 passed on to the entire company so that the entire company from the top to the bottom
27:33 understand what we're all trying to do, right?
27:36 This is the five core things that are the most important things that we need to accomplish
27:40 this quarter.
27:41 The entire company knows that, right?
27:44 There's a bunch of other things that each division needs to handle and smaller, more
27:48 important stuff, et cetera, et cetera.
27:49 But as a company, as a whole, we have five important things that the entire company knows
27:56 that we have to accomplish those five things this quarter.
27:59 And are we winning or are we failing at those things?
28:02 And then we can look at the next quarter and decide whether we change the ROCs or we don't
28:05 change the ROCs or we failed, we won, et cetera, et cetera.
28:10 And we're at the point right before things start crumbling down.
28:14 Yeah, I mean, we're right there.
28:17 Basically then all of a sudden, boom, 1996, right before Christmas, again, recession.
28:23 1995, if you remember, was probably one of the worst recessions.
28:27 And if you look at the real estate world, which I am in today, there was actually just
28:32 a quick little side note.
28:33 There was a report that just came out today, this year, the mortgage applications were
28:39 lower than 1995, which was the lowest mortgage application ever in history since, you know,
28:46 whatever, maybe the 30s or whatever it is.
28:48 What does that mean?
28:49 That the market's slow.
28:50 So this is not a good time to buy.
28:53 That's not necessarily true.
28:54 When the market's slow, there could be opportunities.
28:57 So we can get into that in a moment if you want.
28:59 But yeah, there's always opportunities.
29:02 I actually think that being a contrarian is probably one of the best opportunities in
29:05 the world.
29:06 So when nobody's buying, you buy.
29:10 When nobody's selling, you sell.
29:13 And being a contrarian can be a really great way of making money.
29:16 So most of the money is made on the buy.
29:18 And if you can buy properly and you can afford to buy, usually what happens in recessions
29:23 is the prices go down.
29:26 And so when the prices go down, you can buy.
29:29 Right now we happen to be in an interesting moment, which is that prices are dropping.
29:34 They're not dropping as much as they should, in my opinion, and interest rates are a bit
29:37 high.
29:38 So affordability is difficult because interest rates are high.
29:41 But that doesn't mean you're not making a good buy.
29:44 So if you can afford to buy something cash, for argument's sake, or with a very low mortgage,
29:48 and you can actually create that affordability, you actually might see some really great appreciation
29:52 in some of these investments that are out there right now.
29:54 And I actually think there's some really great opportunities out there.
29:56 I've started to finally start looking at opportunities.
29:58 I've been personally on the sideline for a period of time, and now I'm starting to look
30:03 at potentially starting to buy again.
30:05 So that's kind of where I'm at.
30:07 I think there's some good opportunities out there right now, if you can afford them.
30:12 The worst mistake that you can make as real estate is overextend yourself and be forced
30:17 to sell something from outside sources.
30:20 What I mean by outside sources, I mean a bank with a gun at your head telling you, "I want
30:25 to get paid back the loan that you can't afford to pay me, and therefore you have to sell
30:28 now.
30:29 Now the sale is not under your control."
30:31 If you can control the outcome of the sale of your real estate, if you bought well, you
30:35 will never lose money.
30:36 If you bought well, you will never lose money.
30:41 What are the three pieces of advice you would give to someone who wants to do what you're
30:46 doing, who wants to be a business owner, own a major real estate broker, or even just be
30:54 big in the entertainment world?
30:56 Yeah, look, at the end of the day, I think you have to find your passion and really understand
31:01 what your passion is.
31:05 And then you've got to dare to dream.
31:07 And then once you dare to dream, then you've got to manifest it.
31:14 You've got to create your mindset.
31:15 And then you just, honestly, I mean it just sounds so simple, but you've just got to go
31:18 for it.
31:21 It's literally that simple.
31:24 And in all of those, in that simplicity, there's a lot of complication in the middle of that.
31:31 But at the end of the day, if you can maintain it that simple, you can actually get things
31:36 accomplished.
31:37 The reason we don't accomplish things ourselves, the reason humans, people, don't accomplish
31:41 things is because we complicate them in our mind.
31:44 And that complication, that turning and creating and this and that and all of that stuff, that's
31:50 what makes it impossible to get things accomplished.
31:53 You can simplify things and have a vision and know what you're wanting to, what your
31:58 vision is and have certainty towards that vision.
32:00 And you go out, you wake up every morning, you manifest it and you execute it, you will
32:05 accomplish your mission.
32:07 Execution.
32:08 That's the word.
32:09 That's the word for the day.
32:10 Thank you so much for joining me today, Mauricio.
32:13 Thank you so much, Rosemary.
32:14 Thank you.
32:15 [END]