March 20, 2025 • 32 mins
A billion dollar business born from a $5,000 line of credit seems hard to believe, but so are a lot of Damian Maldonado’s achievements. The co-founder and CEO of American Financing, one of the major national mortgage companies, started selling candy and Avon products door-to-door when he was just 10 years old to help provide for his family. While he didn’t go to college, he was steadfast in his pursuit of learning and his humble origins taught him the value of bootstrapping and determination. He sits down with Bob to talk about developing his aptitude for marketing at a young age, his approach to company culture, and his advice for up-and-coming entrepreneurs.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I've even tried to pay people employees in past, like
here's one hundred dollars read this book. You know how
many have done that zero? So it's one of those
things you can't teach motivation.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hi'm Bob Hitman, and welcome to this episode of Math
and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing. Today, we
have a self made entrepreneur grew up in poverty, skipped
the formal education, and eventually built his own billion dollar
business from just five thousand dollars in startup capital. He's
the co founder and CEO of American Financing, one of
(00:40):
the major national mortgage companies. He's Damian Maldonado. Damien was
born in Manhattan to a single mom of four. He
grew up poor, as he says, his family was on
food stamps even in the good times, and he has
interesting thoughts on what that taught him and we'll explore
that today. Although American Financing is in Colorado, Damien has
(01:01):
moved to Puerto Rico and widened his aperture to hospitality,
movies and more. He's a newly minted pilot family man
dog owner and a fun and curious guy. Damien Welcome,
Thanks Bob, thanks for having me before we dig in today.
I want to do you in sixty seconds. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Do you prefer caps or dogs?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Dogs?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Early riser or night out?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Early riser?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
West Coast or East Coast?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Oh? Tough one? East Coast?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Colorado or Puerto Rico?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Puerto Rico City or country city? Copa, PEPSI, coke, rock
and roll or country rock and roll, Books or movies, books,
crip or eat out, eat out call or text call.
It's about to get harder. All time favorite music artist
Bob Marley. First job, door to door, Avon and Candy Sells.
(01:56):
Smartest person you know Richard Branson, childhood hero maybe Tom Cruise.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Favorite sport to watch kitesurfing. Technology you can't live without?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I got, say, the iPhone?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Favorite holiday summer trips with the kids. Last one, what's
something you can't live without my kids?
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Great answer? Okay, let's start with the less obvious. Flying.
I've been a pilot for over fifty years in love
aviation and you just got your pilot's license. What motivated
you to do that and how did it happen?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well? I haven't quite finished it. I'm still working progress.
But being able to do a little island hopping from
Puerto Rico to the bbi's Saint Martin, Saint Bart's all
that sounds amazing because we're so close to so many islands.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Being up in the air, having that kind of freedom,
has it changed your perspective on the world.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I mean, there's nothing like flying, true freedom, being able
to go from a place at the drop of a dime.
I don't think there's anything more freedom than that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
What have you learned from flying that you can apply
to your business?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I mean you have to be a very focused, dedicated
and on top of your game, zero space for mistakes.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Before we turn to your business, I want to set
the stage by going back in time to your childhood.
Clearly this formed so much of who you are. Can
you paint that picture for us, the time and the place.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
So early childhood? You know, I was born in New York,
Puerto Rican descent. My parents we lived here until they
got the worse, till I was seven. My dad never
left puert Rico, and then my mom went to Colorado,
so we were raised there, went to high school there.
We started our business there. Early on, my mom worked
at the FBI as a secretary, raising four boys on
a thirty thousand dollars income. Then she lost her job
(03:40):
at one point, and when the up being homeless for
four or five months, living in shelters, and at the
time I was only ten or eleven. You know, we
were sleeping with the homeless people in rooms of like
eight or so people. So that you really look at
your life really different at that point. So that taught
me a lot of lessons that I wanted to make
money and for me me a big thing that changed
(04:01):
my childhood. My brother Oliver, he got me a lot,
a lot of job for my first job selling door
to door candy on Avon and I got a job
at Toys r US.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
How old were you when you started those jobs.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I must have been ten or eleven. And you'd go
in these cars, they drop you off in some neighborhood.
They give you a box, and then they meet you
at a certain place. It's kind of scary. You go
at a night, knock on the door. It was both
of us. He was a couple of years older me,
so he must have been twelve or thirteen. I used
then small and then we'd do a presentation to tell
you what you what to say and just small and
look cute and ask for the order. So that was
(04:32):
kind of my first sales job. And then of course
we did newspapers when we were that age and my
mom would wake up early we do the papers. And
that was interesting because back then you have to collect
the money from the customers and build door to door
and say hey, it's time to pay your bill. So
learning how to deliver the product and then collect the
money that was an adventure. So it was a family event.
It was all of us rolling up papers at six am,
(04:54):
five am and then doing that until you go to
school seven days a week. Wow, but that taught you
a lot. I taught you how to work and get
up early and do those types of things, which is,
you know, the staple of any business person who want
to succeed. But then you got a job at Toys
r US as a cashier in a stocker for twenty
five an hour. I remember that worked my way up
to as a manager. Then started marketing health and finness
(05:15):
clouds and that's kind of where I got my experience
of sales and marketing.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
So you did not do a formal education did not
What did you miss with a formal education? And what
did you gain by not having a formal education? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Good question. I always saw my friends doing all these
fun parties and that looked really fun, and I thought, man,
if I could go to college, I would be able
to go to all these parties. I mean that one
I thought for sure. As far as education wise, I
think what I learned not going was a little bit different.
This marketing company I worked at when I was eighteen,
right out of high school. So if you Bob, if
(05:49):
you in the gym in Manhattan, we'd go and market
it and we saw memberships five hundred to a thousand
memberships in one to two months. We'd have a call center,
they'd call people's schedule appointment, we had a presentation, we
sell a membership, two membership, the gym would service somebody.
It was a two year contract and basically I did
it in thirty states and then five different countries, Australia
and New Zealand, England, the Scotland. That was my sales
(06:11):
and marketing experience. So we'd open up an office and
close it down in thirty to forty five days. And
that taught me all the numbers, like what was the
cost per lead? What was the projections? And that's how
I learned my fills and marketing experience. And I don't
know if college teaches that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
And when you were doing all that, what did you
imagine your future?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Was? Well a book in my growing as a businessman
was Antony. I was awakening a giant within. That was
the first time I was like, Wow, you control your
brain and I could do whatever I want and I
could do whatever I focus on. So that book was
the first thing that I started believing on myself. And
then once I started doing sales, I put those things together.
So if you know how to do cells and you
can control your brain and you could go whichever direction
(06:50):
you want, then that's magic. So at that time I
was like, whoa, I'm going to be a billionaire. I
figured out to formulaze. Have to work hard, figure out
a system and duplicate it kind of what we did.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Here. You are a young kid trying to help your family,
worried about you know, your day to day living. How
did you discover Tony Robbins? How did that book land
on you?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Again? I hade a lot of credit to my brother Oliver.
He was an entrepreneur all his life and I'm like, even
doing the avon ceales and door to door candy, I
never done anything like that. And so he's like three
years older than me. So he suggested I read that book.
And once I read that book, it's a heavy duty book.
I highly suggest it to people. If you do that book,
it will change your life. And also not just do
the book, but do the exercises in it. Sometimes people
(07:32):
do books and read them and they don't actually apply it,
and in that case, it's not going to work. I
remember one of my first first class flights of my
life when I was young. I must have spend twenty
years old or twenty one years old, and this guy
is like asking, does that book really work? And I'm
like thinking enough for you, I mean, because already you're
thinking it's not going to work, and for me it
worked really well.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
So how to growing up without much shape you? What
are the lessons you took from that?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It made me appreciate money and look at very differently.
I'm not a big I mean probably for average person,
I guess I'm a big spender, but not necessarily scorging.
I really respect money, and I really look at the
bottom line. What's my cost per lead, what's her profit margin?
I really focus on a profit margin. A lot of companies,
you know, one of these questions like would you rather
have five hundred million dollar business doing ten percent or
(08:20):
one hundred million dollars business doing fifty percent margins? You know,
I've picked a small one, less risk, higher margins, and
you can scale that better. And I've seen a lot
of companies too that raise money, they don't really look
at that bottom line still carefully, especially when you're working
with other people's money, and that we've bootstrapped the whole
thing the whole time. We've never borrowed a dying from anyone,
so it's always been something that I've hired to myself,
is really focused on those profit margins. And maybe it
(08:42):
would have been bigger though if we borrowed money. I've
seen a lot of companies that have done that and
done really well. But I think being brought up a
little bit more humbly. You know, I have no debt,
making sure that our books are really clean. On our
balance she's really clean. I'm a little bit risk adverse,
so I don't know if that's a positive or negative.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
You know, it's interesting body's life. I talked to who's
had success. There's one sort of improbable jump. It's the
big jump. And I know you were talking about some
of the sales jobs you had. I knew you did
yard work, you did janitorial work, and suddenly you get
into mortgages. How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So that was a big jump because I was marketing.
I was just finishing up a promotion in Glasgow in Scotland.
But I was a little burnt out. It must have
been eighteen nineteen years old, maybe nineteen twenty. But I
had like fifteen thousand dollars saved up in the bank.
And I'm like, well, I'm rich. I'm going to go
to La or New York. I fear out my life
and see what I'm going to do next. But my
brother picked me up at the airport and he's like, hey,
(09:41):
I got your job. You start on Monday at this
mortgage company. And I'm like, mortgages. I don't know anthy
about mortgages. I want to go explore. I'm young. I
want to go figure something out to have money in
the bank. He's like, no, I put my neck out
for you. You got to start here. I started out
on Monday, and there was this company doing one twenty
five mortgages back in the day, those twenty five percent
overap reveals, which was part of the Ridge Melton or
part of the reason they say this company was only
(10:03):
doing these postcards. That was the only type of advertising
they were doing. So I go from doing radio, telemarketing
and all these other phones. I pitched to your CEO
and I go, hey, I learned all these marketing techniques.
Will you pay me sixty thousand dollars a year, let
me run your call center, let me do all this.
He agreed, and it worked really well. That was an
average of four to five thousand dollars per client at
(10:23):
the time, which coming from a world of nineteen dollars
a month for two year contracts. I'm like, whoa. So
we put the same exact techniques that we did marketing
health and fitness clubs and the mortgages. You need a
lot less customers. And that was kind of the you know,
we're doing the math and I used love Excel and
you plug in some numbers and very quickly you're like, wow,
this is a this is an incredible business.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
You started there. How did you go from working for
somebody in mortgages to your own company? I guess the
word is you used five thousand dollars to startup capital
to get it started.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
So that company I mentioned that was the one doing
a one twenty five, they ended up going out of business.
Wall Street stopped buying that paper, so it put us
in steach o like we needed to figure out what
to do. So we went on our own and back
then we started as a broker, which means, you know,
you close under somebody else's name, kind of by necessity,
and what we learned we put into effect, and then
slowly they're started building our reputation, our repertoire as far
(11:14):
as becoming a banker and then hedging loans and things
that nature and getting more sophisticated with it, which we
kind of wanted to do. Anyways, by the company closing down,
I don't mind working out a company, And I think
this is something I tell people because nowadays everybody wants
to be then entrepreneur, but obviously there's a high failure
rate of that. If you find the right company that
you could work at and help that company become bigger
and better. You're probably better off in some cases, at
(11:38):
least for many years than that extra risk that was
a necessity. But I really enjoy building companies. It's one
of my favorite things to do.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
You started local and you moved national? Why and how?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, local is when you first started any business. Local
is the best way, you know, start leaning me or
you know, if you could go get money. A lot
of people go and raise money. That's also a great approach.
But I think if you start local and you figure
out your market and you figure out how to scale
that it takes a lot of risk from going national.
So for us in our industry is very it wasn't
back then, but it's very regulated. Though. You have to
get a Colorado license in this case, and then you
(12:12):
have to get another license. But national is the only
way to go. I mean America, where obviously is from
my opinion on an entrepreneur basis the best country in
the world. And if it works in Colorado, it'll work
in California. It works in California, it's gonna work in Florida.
So scaling, I mean, every market's different, so you have
to adapt to each market. But by being able to
do successfully in one you know, you hit the whole country,
but you have to be set up for that, and
(12:33):
that's a different animal.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
So I got to know you because you were such
a big user of radio to build your business. How
did you discover the power of radio and give us
a clue about how you use it?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
What was crazy? When we first started our company, we
used to do outbound tall marketing because that's the world
I came from. So I know how to set up
call centers and that world is really good. But I've
never as a consumer. I hate getting tallmarketing calls right
as I'm sure we all do. So I didn't love
doing that because this used a tough business on your employees,
and also customers don't like that, and it's kind of
(13:06):
a forceful sell. I don't like high pressure cells. Call
turners are very hig pressure. Especially abound telemarkets is high pressure.
So my old mentor, actually his name is Dave Simpson.
He used to work at the National Finish Corporation. I
called him and I was like, looking for marketing ideas,
and he goes, you know what could be interesting is radio?
I go, really, I don't know. He goes, I found
this guy in Denver. His name is Mike Rosen and
he's on a fifty KOA. They just lost one of
(13:29):
their companies, so they have a slot for a financial
company and do you want it? And I'm like, well,
how much is it? He's like three hundred and fifty
dollars for a sixty second spot. I'm like what that
is so expensive? And I couldn't believe the cost at
the time. Back then, I was paying the tall markets
ten dollars an hour, so I'm like, that's thirty five
hours for a week. Let's say call it day generated
twenty leads. So I'm like, well, is this radio spot
(13:51):
going to generate me twenty leads? And what it did
was it generated maybe, I don't know, somewhere around five
or six. And I was like, oh, that's not that great.
But then after we saw our conversion ratios and the
loan amounts. Once we saw the numbers, we literally switched
from outbound tell marketing to inbound call center in one
month and got rid of all the call center activities
(14:11):
and we just went straight to radio and we just
did the math reverse engineered it. It was an amazing
experience because I didn't think that was going to work
that well, and the loan amounts were better, the quality
was better, and especially with micros AND's endorsement.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
So what did marketers not understand about radio?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I think from my experience and talking to a lot
of people, you'll do a two or three month program
instead of like doing annually. I think the consistency of
being out every day, I think is really important. Which
I don't think a lot of marketers understand that.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
You don't build a business like you did without great management.
What are your core beliefs about running a great company?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Now? Have the right people is essential, and sometimes you
outgrow them and you have to maybe either replace them
or demote them, or sometimes it can be promoted. But
it's all about the team. I mean, a business to
me is nothing but having the right team. If you
don't have that, you can't grow a business. I've heard
these companies where they go, you know, we don't even
do any marketing, and all I hear is like, wow,
you're staying small, and I imagine that you're doing most
(15:09):
of the work. And I think, to build a great business,
and you know there's small business that aren't great, but
if you really want to grow it, you have to
hire a team. I mean you have to be able
to trust those teams. And a lot of times my
salespeople or my mortgage consultants are they could do it
much better than I could, and I'm much I rather that,
you know, I haven't done it in many years. Customer
service is our main focus. Always do what's right for
(15:31):
the customer. The team second, because if you don't have
the customers, you don't have a team.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
So the corollary with this talk a little bit about
company culture. What does it do for you? How do
you build it, how do you use it?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I think culture is very important. I read a
lot of books, and I still read a lot of books.
One of the companies I really Enmires virgin The culture
is extremely strong, and I read his books and I
learned how he did it, and then I put my
own little magic into it. Zappo's is a great company.
You know. I've taken my manage been teamed there three
times to go see how they do it. They show
you around how it works, and they've been voted one
(16:05):
of the best companies work for nationally many years in
a row. I've met Tony Heish and he has a
book called delivering happiness. I think learning from what a
lot of companies do and implementing it for your own
company is very important. But it's everything. It's you know,
you're spending more time with your coworkers sometimes and your
own family. So I want people to want to come
in and work. You know, with this new COVID and
(16:26):
this hybrid model, we're doing three days a week at
the office, we were less than that. I prefer being
in the office all the time, but I do believe
a lot of work life balance. But I think having
people wanting to come in to do the work rather
than you know, when we first started the business in
ninety nine, if somebody was late, I'd be watching that,
and I was a little bit too strict, and I
think that was old school culture. Were now like, you
(16:48):
show up half an hour late, hour late, just work
the extra hour, just somehow make it up, and as
long as you're in your numbers, we're good. Those are
the things that I think are really important to give.
The teams nowadays expect to have both life balance, and
I agree with that, but also very much into the
customer service and hitting your numbers. We don't have good
customer service if you're not hitting your numbers, you're going
to go out of business.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So you've hired great people. How do you look for people?
In any words of wisdom on the interview process.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I really focused on people that are hungry. I love experience,
but if you have a great experience but you have
bad attitude, it's not the right fit. If somebody is
negative and it's not looking for a solution based you know,
I've had people that complain, but you know, what's the solution?
How do we fix it? And do you want to
be part of the solution. If you just want to
complain and not help solve the problem, that's that's a
real problem. So I think in life, in personal relationships
(17:37):
and in business relationships, you always have to be focused
on how to fix every single problem. And we find
people all over the place, indeed online people that leave
end up coming back to American Financing. We really pride
ourselves in that we've been voted one of the best
places to work in Colorado many years in a row.
And it's our goal to want people that want to
be there. And then you know, if somebody doesn't want
to be there, hey, let's talk about it. Part as friends,
(17:58):
because we don't know what's your future looks like, and
maybe you want to be back, maybe you don't, but
we always want to have a really good relationship with
people that are there or that are no longer there.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
More of Math and Magic right after this quick break.
Welcome back to Math and Magic. Let's hear more from
my conversation with Damian Maldonado. You built an amazing business,
but there were certainly big bumps in the road along
the way. The recent high interest rates, i know, had
(18:29):
a huge negative impact on the mortgage business in general.
How did you navigate that adversity and how do you
navigate all those mumps in the road.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, that was extremely challenging. I mean the whole industry
as a whole when rates went up historic speed, it's
never happened before. Went from you know, three percent all
the way to seven and seven plus even eight percent,
So the whole market fell ninety percent. So we had
to do layoffs about ninety percent of our people, which
was really devastating people that have been working there for
(18:59):
over ten years and even longer. It was very, very tough.
But if you don't survive, then the whole company goes out.
Of business. So when you get into that mode, which
I hate to say it is kind of survival mode,
and I think, you know, mentally, it's really draining because
you have to keep yourself going while you're doing these layoffs,
and so it was it was a challenge. But then
we focused on our numbers, and before we did that,
(19:20):
we tried to put the pedal on the gas and
try to market and do all the things that we
know how to do, and that didn't work, so we
ended up taking some pretty big losses the last couple
of years. It was really challenging, but you know, focusing
on writing out the storms sort of speak is what
we did. And now rates recently gone down, so we're
back to hiring mode. A lot of the people that
were there before are coming back, which is bringing a
lot of great energy. They're excited to be there. The
(19:42):
team that was there already is like, we're getting back
to we call it AFC two point zero.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
We were talking about your moved Puerto Rico. It's got
great weather, terrific tax benefits, but I doubt that's why
you moved. What was your motivation?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
So I moved to Puerto Rico for kite Turfin, so
where it goes very windy. Ten months are the year
is wendy, so perfect conditions for kitesurfing. And that was
the goal, is the kite surfing. As a matter of fact,
I didn't move here for taxis at all. After you know,
talking to all my friends and everybody's talking about it,
I ended up going that route, but it was a
year and a half after I got here. It's two
(20:16):
and a half three hour flight to Miami, so it's
still close, and we got direct flights there everywhere. And
the culture is very nice. I mean, the people are nice,
they want to get to know you. It's a really
great place to live. But I came for that. And
now we're building businesses here and we're starting to do
some of our mortgage operations here. We're building quite a
few different things here. It's a great place to be.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I gotta sort of taken a side here. What got
you so interested in kite surfing?
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Well, I was in a well actually two thousand and eight,
me and my kid's mom. We're not one no longer together,
but we ended up getting the second home in Miami.
I'm in the voting Palace over there. In twenty third
in Collins and I'm looking out the back and I
see some of that kitesurf from the beach and I'm like,
what is that? And that was the first time I
saw it, But then once I started kiding, and it's
(21:02):
just it's very meditative. You could, you know, fie on
the water, you could do amazing tricks, you could jump
really high. It's a great sport. You could really clear
your brain. And I highly recommend it for anybody that's
interested in any sport water sports, skiing, snowboarding. I love
sports in general, but doing kay surfings is a whole
different animal.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So your Puerto Rican background, that's clearly important to you.
How has that culture influenced your own company's culture management?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Well, Puerto Rico, so I've been back for six years.
I came here to open up kay surfing schools. We
bought a little boutique hotel, Nuna Uno. It's a little
bit challenging to do business in Puerto Rico, or very challenges,
very political, it's hard to get permits. We basically took
that same things that we learned from all the other
businesses and we put it here. So in restaurants, for instance,
you have a really good GM or a really good chef,
(21:47):
And in our case, we went up with a really
good GM to make sure that they're taking care of
the quality of the food. But same principles apply, having
a really good team, focusing on the customer service, and
adding a lot of value.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
You're doing some TV movie, podcasts production. Tell us a
little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
So we're building a media company. So I've met quite
a few people doing movies here, like Malin Akerman, and
she did three movies while I was here, and I
learned about there's great tax credits for that. You have
forty percent tax credit if you're filling from out of state,
and then sixty percent of used Puerto Rican staff. That's
a great benefit in itself. Plus is a great place
to film. So the studios are going to be ready
(22:24):
for movies, projects that I think are cool that I
maybe want to invest in, maybe not, I don't know.
But we have space for about forty people in rooms
where they could just come with their team and film,
and then also podcasts. We love that space. We love radio,
We love podcasts.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
You travel a lot. Why travel? What does it do
for you?
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, traveling makes you look at the world with
a very different perspective. You know, I recently went to
India last year, and when you go to India, it
gives you a respect for the world, how the world lives,
and how lucky we are to be in America. But also,
you know a lot of people in India were very
happy and didn't have much, and that I really get
an appreciation for that.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Let's talk about that story. You've got a great story.
Sure a lot of kids look at it at you
and say, I want to do that. What advice do
you have for kids from circumstances like you grew up
in who dream of having what you have.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I always have the same advice, which is really simple.
I mean, read books. I always recommend three books, and
these ones and Disorder you go, Awakening Giant Within, then
Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which you know, is a very
simple book on how to look at money and then
think and grow rich. And then from there there's a
lot of others. But if you start with the base
(23:38):
like that, and I wish they taught that in college
or high school, it would be amazing. Teaches you about
positive thinking about how to be motivated. So if you
start with the base like that, and you actually apply it.
I guarantee you're going to be successful the challenges. You know,
I've even tried to pay people employees and past like
here's one hundred dollars read this book. You know how
many have done that? Zero? So one of those things
(24:00):
you can't teach motivation. And I have had some people
do it and they've become successful. And I'm not saying
those because of those books. I'm saying they were already
going to be successful because they would read the books.
And I don't think you need college. I don't think
you need any of that. If you google any subject
you want, you're going to find a person that did that,
and it's been there, done that, read their biography, ideally
autobiography and the amount of information you know gained from that,
(24:21):
and do it like you're starting it. Do it like
you're going to college. That is your college. And I
guarantee success. If you read and you apply what you learn,
and you keep reading and you keep learning by that,
you're going to find a mentor latch onto that person.
Ask a lot of questions, and you're going to find
another and it just gets you down this path that
when I love this line when the student's ready to teach,
you will appear. The way you get ready is by
(24:43):
having the knowledge to even know what question is to ask?
Speaker 3 (24:46):
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who are at
that stage where they've been building the company and building it,
they're still trying to bring it across the finish line?
What advice helps them?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I think main thing is, you know, really watch expenses.
If you could bootstrap it, bootstrap it, and once you
have your systems down, then maybe go ask for many
if you have to at all. I started accompanying with
five thousand dollars credit card. Me, me and my co
partner started with five thousand credit We never had to
use the credit card that was our backup. But I
got paid five hundred dollars a week if we had
the money, and she got paid nothing for years. So
(25:21):
we really bootstrapped it, and a lot of times our
employees were making more money than us. It takes a
lot of tenacity or a lot of guts to say, okay,
well geez, I'm gonna ride this out. I remember one
of my good friends, carry Hacker, came in with a
check of twenty thousand dollars. He's like, look, at my
commission for this month, and at the time, I'm making,
you know, two thousand dollars a month, so he was
(25:42):
ten x and what I was making. I was like, jeez,
I should just go get a job. You know, that
pops in your head and I'm like, no, We're doing
this for the long run. But you can't help to
think that. But we made our company into a billion
dollar operation, and that had I gave up, that wouldn't
have happened. But that didn't happen for years. It took
a long time to make the first million dollars. And
when I say million dollars, I'm talking a million dollars growths.
(26:03):
A lot of people use that term really loosely, like
what is what is making a million dollars? It's not
making it yourself net or is it your company? Because
when your company first makes a million dollars, you take
out your expenses, you might only have forty thousand dollars net,
and that is your first million technically, right, But you
only made forty fifty thousand dollars. And that's a great
accomplishment because if you could do that, then do ten
(26:23):
now ten million, and now was four hundred thousand if
you have those kind of margins. But then you figure
out how you work on your margins and just stay
lean and mean and tweak and tweak.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
So what advice do you have about navigating work life
balance You mentioned it earlier, or maybe even work life integration,
depending on how you look at it.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Well, I've changed my mind on some things. When I
first started becoming successful and making good money. I read
you know, this four Hour work Week, which you know,
it's a great book, but I don't suggest it or
recommend it anymore because it kind of got me a
little bit lazy. And those things work right if especially
if you're successful. Yeah, you could automate some things. Yeah,
but I think this hunger that the reason like Elon
(27:03):
Musk and the Mark Zuckerberg's of the world, and they
don't have to work right. They could retire a long
time ago, but guess what, they haven't because they get
conspired by it and they didn't take their foot off
the gas at all, and they're innovating and doing amazing things.
So I think just not getting too comfortable, which can
happen with success. And a lot of people say, oh,
do your passion, Well, that's great, advice, but whatever, your
(27:25):
passion doesn't pay. And they everybody said, oh, you can
figure out how to make money in your passion. I
don't believe that. I first say, first figured out how
are you going to make the best ROI, and then
implement your passion.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
If you could go back in time, what advice would
you give your eighteen year old self.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Oh, my eighteen year old self, I would say, read
a lot of books, which I did, read a lot
of books. Work really hard and don't stop. And when
you do get successful, stay focused on your families, Stay
focused on making sure that you keep what's most important,
and don't get distracted by the money, which I think
can happen to people you stay and humble and learning
(28:01):
from the mentors, the people that you really admire. Look
what they do. Use that as a learning tool as
someone you want people you admire do that. And also
your circle. Make sure you're surrounding yourself with the right people.
Some of my best friends are my team members, and
because we have the same visions and we work together,
and we work hard, and it's fun to make money
and grow businesses with your friends. That's more fun actually
than most things in life.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
I think Math and Magic is about exploring both sides
of business and marketing, the analytical and the creative side.
We end each episode with our guests giving a shout
out to their personal favorites for the greats on both
sides of the equation. So who gets your nod for
the best math oriented business person? Someone who sees it
(28:43):
through the numbers.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
So one of my first mentors, I know he's not
the best industry or anything like that, but he started
a company call is Dave Since and started a company
called National Fitness Corporation. That's where I learned how to
do myself as in marketing. He did this production sheet
that I still kind of use now as very sophisticated now,
but back in the day was just how many leads,
how many customers you got, what was your conversion ratio?
And how do that? How many you ended up becoming
(29:05):
a cell? And then you do matts. For instance, on
a week, if you had seven days of cells, add
those up divided by seven time jab by seven industry
projection and you could do the same for by four
weeks or whatever. That little formula right there has been
a big reason why we've been successful in all of
our businesses. That math equation was amazing for me, and
there was many others, but to me, that's business, one
(29:26):
on one.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Who gets the nod for the best creative the power
of an idea.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You know, I would have to say from examples I've heard,
is Steve Jobs, I mean, to me, would be the
most magical magician. In two thousand and seven when he
introduced the iPhone, that was magical and he ended up
disrupting many industries. But now we can't even walk out
of our doors without somebody staring at a screen. And
it's for better or for worse, and it's an amazing innovation,
(29:52):
but we are stuck to our screens like nothing else.
So that was a very magical thing that he did,
and at the time it was revolutionary, is still a
revolutionary and it became the standard. So I really admire
what he did in industry. Is an amazing businessman and
that's something that changed the world.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Damien, You've got an amazing and inspiring story, and the
good news is you still got so much ahead of you.
Thanks for sharing it with us today. Here are a
few things I picked up for my conversation with Damien. One,
don't get too comfortable with success. Even when you're on
top of your company or your industry, you shouldn't take
(30:27):
your foot off the pedal. There's always room for improvement
and innovation. Plus, you never know when the economy could
take a downturn, and honing your survival instincts is essential. Two.
Education could take many forms. Just because Damien didn't go
to college doesn't mean he didn't seek out knowledge and lessons.
There's so much to be gleaned from books and mentors.
(30:48):
That is, as long as your mind is open to
the idea that they have something valuable to teach you.
And absorbing information isn't enough. Need to be adamant about
applying it to your life and your leadership. Three. Being
risk adverse doesn't mean you can't grow. In today's world,
risk take is often applauded for the big payoffs, but
(31:08):
Damien's humble origins led him to take a bootstrapping approach
to business. He's living proof that's sticking to your own
financial means doesn't have to limit what your business is
capable of. Instead, being conservative can help you perfect your
business wobble at a local level. Then when you're ready
to expand, you do it. Right, I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks
(31:29):
for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is created and hosted
by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sydney Rosenblum for booking
and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
The Math and Magic team is Jessica Crimechitch and Baheed Fraser.
Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etour. Until
(31:56):
next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I've even tried to pay people employees in past, like
here's one hundred dollars read this book. You know how
many have done that zero? So it's one of those
things you can't teach motivation.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hi'm Bob Hitman, and welcome to this episode of Math
and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing. Today, we
have a self made entrepreneur grew up in poverty, skipped
the formal education, and eventually built his own billion dollar
business from just five thousand dollars in startup capital. He's
the co founder and CEO of American Financing, one of
(00:40):
the major national mortgage companies. He's Damian Maldonado. Damien was
born in Manhattan to a single mom of four. He
grew up poor, as he says, his family was on
food stamps even in the good times, and he has
interesting thoughts on what that taught him and we'll explore
that today. Although American Financing is in Colorado, Damien has
(01:01):
moved to Puerto Rico and widened his aperture to hospitality,
movies and more. He's a newly minted pilot family man
dog owner and a fun and curious guy. Damien Welcome,
Thanks Bob, thanks for having me before we dig in today.
I want to do you in sixty seconds. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Do you prefer caps or dogs?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Dogs?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Early riser or night out?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Early riser?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
West Coast or East Coast?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Oh? Tough one? East Coast?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Colorado or Puerto Rico?
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Puerto Rico City or country city? Copa, PEPSI, coke, rock
and roll or country rock and roll, Books or movies, books,
crip or eat out, eat out call or text call.
It's about to get harder. All time favorite music artist
Bob Marley. First job, door to door, Avon and Candy Sells.
(01:56):
Smartest person you know Richard Branson, childhood hero maybe Tom Cruise.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Favorite sport to watch kitesurfing. Technology you can't live without?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I got, say, the iPhone?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Favorite holiday summer trips with the kids. Last one, what's
something you can't live without my kids?
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Great answer? Okay, let's start with the less obvious. Flying.
I've been a pilot for over fifty years in love
aviation and you just got your pilot's license. What motivated
you to do that and how did it happen?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well? I haven't quite finished it. I'm still working progress.
But being able to do a little island hopping from
Puerto Rico to the bbi's Saint Martin, Saint Bart's all
that sounds amazing because we're so close to so many islands.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Being up in the air, having that kind of freedom,
has it changed your perspective on the world.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I mean, there's nothing like flying, true freedom, being able
to go from a place at the drop of a dime.
I don't think there's anything more freedom than that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
What have you learned from flying that you can apply
to your business?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I mean you have to be a very focused, dedicated
and on top of your game, zero space for mistakes.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Before we turn to your business, I want to set
the stage by going back in time to your childhood.
Clearly this formed so much of who you are. Can
you paint that picture for us, the time and the place.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
So early childhood? You know, I was born in New York,
Puerto Rican descent. My parents we lived here until they
got the worse, till I was seven. My dad never
left puert Rico, and then my mom went to Colorado,
so we were raised there, went to high school there.
We started our business there. Early on, my mom worked
at the FBI as a secretary, raising four boys on
a thirty thousand dollars income. Then she lost her job
(03:40):
at one point, and when the up being homeless for
four or five months, living in shelters, and at the
time I was only ten or eleven. You know, we
were sleeping with the homeless people in rooms of like
eight or so people. So that you really look at
your life really different at that point. So that taught
me a lot of lessons that I wanted to make
money and for me me a big thing that changed
(04:01):
my childhood. My brother Oliver, he got me a lot,
a lot of job for my first job selling door
to door candy on Avon and I got a job
at Toys r US.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
How old were you when you started those jobs.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I must have been ten or eleven. And you'd go
in these cars, they drop you off in some neighborhood.
They give you a box, and then they meet you
at a certain place. It's kind of scary. You go
at a night, knock on the door. It was both
of us. He was a couple of years older me,
so he must have been twelve or thirteen. I used
then small and then we'd do a presentation to tell
you what you what to say and just small and
look cute and ask for the order. So that was
(04:32):
kind of my first sales job. And then of course
we did newspapers when we were that age and my
mom would wake up early we do the papers. And
that was interesting because back then you have to collect
the money from the customers and build door to door
and say hey, it's time to pay your bill. So
learning how to deliver the product and then collect the
money that was an adventure. So it was a family event.
It was all of us rolling up papers at six am,
(04:54):
five am and then doing that until you go to
school seven days a week. Wow, but that taught you
a lot. I taught you how to work and get
up early and do those types of things, which is,
you know, the staple of any business person who want
to succeed. But then you got a job at Toys
r US as a cashier in a stocker for twenty
five an hour. I remember that worked my way up
to as a manager. Then started marketing health and finness
(05:15):
clouds and that's kind of where I got my experience
of sales and marketing.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
So you did not do a formal education did not
What did you miss with a formal education? And what
did you gain by not having a formal education? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Good question. I always saw my friends doing all these
fun parties and that looked really fun, and I thought, man,
if I could go to college, I would be able
to go to all these parties. I mean that one
I thought for sure. As far as education wise, I
think what I learned not going was a little bit different.
This marketing company I worked at when I was eighteen,
right out of high school. So if you Bob, if
(05:49):
you in the gym in Manhattan, we'd go and market
it and we saw memberships five hundred to a thousand
memberships in one to two months. We'd have a call center,
they'd call people's schedule appointment, we had a presentation, we
sell a membership, two membership, the gym would service somebody.
It was a two year contract and basically I did
it in thirty states and then five different countries, Australia
and New Zealand, England, the Scotland. That was my sales
(06:11):
and marketing experience. So we'd open up an office and
close it down in thirty to forty five days. And
that taught me all the numbers, like what was the
cost per lead? What was the projections? And that's how
I learned my fills and marketing experience. And I don't
know if college teaches that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
And when you were doing all that, what did you
imagine your future?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Was? Well a book in my growing as a businessman
was Antony. I was awakening a giant within. That was
the first time I was like, Wow, you control your
brain and I could do whatever I want and I
could do whatever I focus on. So that book was
the first thing that I started believing on myself. And
then once I started doing sales, I put those things together.
So if you know how to do cells and you
can control your brain and you could go whichever direction
(06:50):
you want, then that's magic. So at that time I
was like, whoa, I'm going to be a billionaire. I
figured out to formulaze. Have to work hard, figure out
a system and duplicate it kind of what we did.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Here. You are a young kid trying to help your family,
worried about you know, your day to day living. How
did you discover Tony Robbins? How did that book land
on you?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Again? I hade a lot of credit to my brother Oliver.
He was an entrepreneur all his life and I'm like, even
doing the avon ceales and door to door candy, I
never done anything like that. And so he's like three
years older than me. So he suggested I read that book.
And once I read that book, it's a heavy duty book.
I highly suggest it to people. If you do that book,
it will change your life. And also not just do
the book, but do the exercises in it. Sometimes people
(07:32):
do books and read them and they don't actually apply it,
and in that case, it's not going to work. I
remember one of my first first class flights of my
life when I was young. I must have spend twenty
years old or twenty one years old, and this guy
is like asking, does that book really work? And I'm
like thinking enough for you, I mean, because already you're
thinking it's not going to work, and for me it
worked really well.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
So how to growing up without much shape you? What
are the lessons you took from that?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It made me appreciate money and look at very differently.
I'm not a big I mean probably for average person,
I guess I'm a big spender, but not necessarily scorging.
I really respect money, and I really look at the
bottom line. What's my cost per lead, what's her profit margin?
I really focus on a profit margin. A lot of companies,
you know, one of these questions like would you rather
have five hundred million dollar business doing ten percent or
(08:20):
one hundred million dollars business doing fifty percent margins? You know,
I've picked a small one, less risk, higher margins, and
you can scale that better. And I've seen a lot
of companies too that raise money, they don't really look
at that bottom line still carefully, especially when you're working
with other people's money, and that we've bootstrapped the whole
thing the whole time. We've never borrowed a dying from anyone,
so it's always been something that I've hired to myself,
is really focused on those profit margins. And maybe it
(08:42):
would have been bigger though if we borrowed money. I've
seen a lot of companies that have done that and
done really well. But I think being brought up a
little bit more humbly. You know, I have no debt,
making sure that our books are really clean. On our
balance she's really clean. I'm a little bit risk adverse,
so I don't know if that's a positive or negative.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
You know, it's interesting body's life. I talked to who's
had success. There's one sort of improbable jump. It's the
big jump. And I know you were talking about some
of the sales jobs you had. I knew you did
yard work, you did janitorial work, and suddenly you get
into mortgages. How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So that was a big jump because I was marketing.
I was just finishing up a promotion in Glasgow in Scotland.
But I was a little burnt out. It must have
been eighteen nineteen years old, maybe nineteen twenty. But I
had like fifteen thousand dollars saved up in the bank.
And I'm like, well, I'm rich. I'm going to go
to La or New York. I fear out my life
and see what I'm going to do next. But my
brother picked me up at the airport and he's like, hey,
(09:41):
I got your job. You start on Monday at this
mortgage company. And I'm like, mortgages. I don't know anthy
about mortgages. I want to go explore. I'm young. I
want to go figure something out to have money in
the bank. He's like, no, I put my neck out
for you. You got to start here. I started out
on Monday, and there was this company doing one twenty
five mortgages back in the day, those twenty five percent
overap reveals, which was part of the Ridge Melton or
part of the reason they say this company was only
(10:03):
doing these postcards. That was the only type of advertising
they were doing. So I go from doing radio, telemarketing
and all these other phones. I pitched to your CEO
and I go, hey, I learned all these marketing techniques.
Will you pay me sixty thousand dollars a year, let
me run your call center, let me do all this.
He agreed, and it worked really well. That was an
average of four to five thousand dollars per client at
(10:23):
the time, which coming from a world of nineteen dollars
a month for two year contracts. I'm like, whoa. So
we put the same exact techniques that we did marketing
health and fitness clubs and the mortgages. You need a
lot less customers. And that was kind of the you know,
we're doing the math and I used love Excel and
you plug in some numbers and very quickly you're like, wow,
this is a this is an incredible business.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
You started there. How did you go from working for
somebody in mortgages to your own company? I guess the
word is you used five thousand dollars to startup capital
to get it started.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
So that company I mentioned that was the one doing
a one twenty five, they ended up going out of business.
Wall Street stopped buying that paper, so it put us
in steach o like we needed to figure out what
to do. So we went on our own and back
then we started as a broker, which means, you know,
you close under somebody else's name, kind of by necessity,
and what we learned we put into effect, and then
slowly they're started building our reputation, our repertoire as far
(11:14):
as becoming a banker and then hedging loans and things
that nature and getting more sophisticated with it, which we
kind of wanted to do. Anyways, by the company closing down,
I don't mind working out a company, And I think
this is something I tell people because nowadays everybody wants
to be then entrepreneur, but obviously there's a high failure
rate of that. If you find the right company that
you could work at and help that company become bigger
and better. You're probably better off in some cases, at
(11:38):
least for many years than that extra risk that was
a necessity. But I really enjoy building companies. It's one
of my favorite things to do.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
You started local and you moved national? Why and how?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, local is when you first started any business. Local
is the best way, you know, start leaning me or
you know, if you could go get money. A lot
of people go and raise money. That's also a great approach.
But I think if you start local and you figure
out your market and you figure out how to scale
that it takes a lot of risk from going national.
So for us in our industry is very it wasn't
back then, but it's very regulated. Though. You have to
get a Colorado license in this case, and then you
(12:12):
have to get another license. But national is the only
way to go. I mean America, where obviously is from
my opinion on an entrepreneur basis the best country in
the world. And if it works in Colorado, it'll work
in California. It works in California, it's gonna work in Florida.
So scaling, I mean, every market's different, so you have
to adapt to each market. But by being able to
do successfully in one you know, you hit the whole country,
but you have to be set up for that, and
(12:33):
that's a different animal.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
So I got to know you because you were such
a big user of radio to build your business. How
did you discover the power of radio and give us
a clue about how you use it?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
What was crazy? When we first started our company, we
used to do outbound tall marketing because that's the world
I came from. So I know how to set up
call centers and that world is really good. But I've
never as a consumer. I hate getting tallmarketing calls right
as I'm sure we all do. So I didn't love
doing that because this used a tough business on your employees,
and also customers don't like that, and it's kind of
(13:06):
a forceful sell. I don't like high pressure cells. Call
turners are very hig pressure. Especially abound telemarkets is high pressure.
So my old mentor, actually his name is Dave Simpson.
He used to work at the National Finish Corporation. I
called him and I was like, looking for marketing ideas,
and he goes, you know what could be interesting is radio?
I go, really, I don't know. He goes, I found
this guy in Denver. His name is Mike Rosen and
he's on a fifty KOA. They just lost one of
(13:29):
their companies, so they have a slot for a financial
company and do you want it? And I'm like, well,
how much is it? He's like three hundred and fifty
dollars for a sixty second spot. I'm like what that
is so expensive? And I couldn't believe the cost at
the time. Back then, I was paying the tall markets
ten dollars an hour, so I'm like, that's thirty five
hours for a week. Let's say call it day generated
twenty leads. So I'm like, well, is this radio spot
(13:51):
going to generate me twenty leads? And what it did
was it generated maybe, I don't know, somewhere around five
or six. And I was like, oh, that's not that great.
But then after we saw our conversion ratios and the
loan amounts. Once we saw the numbers, we literally switched
from outbound tell marketing to inbound call center in one
month and got rid of all the call center activities
(14:11):
and we just went straight to radio and we just
did the math reverse engineered it. It was an amazing
experience because I didn't think that was going to work
that well, and the loan amounts were better, the quality
was better, and especially with micros AND's endorsement.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
So what did marketers not understand about radio?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I think from my experience and talking to a lot
of people, you'll do a two or three month program
instead of like doing annually. I think the consistency of
being out every day, I think is really important. Which
I don't think a lot of marketers understand that.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
You don't build a business like you did without great management.
What are your core beliefs about running a great company?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Now? Have the right people is essential, and sometimes you
outgrow them and you have to maybe either replace them
or demote them, or sometimes it can be promoted. But
it's all about the team. I mean, a business to
me is nothing but having the right team. If you
don't have that, you can't grow a business. I've heard
these companies where they go, you know, we don't even
do any marketing, and all I hear is like, wow,
you're staying small, and I imagine that you're doing most
(15:09):
of the work. And I think, to build a great business,
and you know there's small business that aren't great, but
if you really want to grow it, you have to
hire a team. I mean you have to be able
to trust those teams. And a lot of times my
salespeople or my mortgage consultants are they could do it
much better than I could, and I'm much I rather that,
you know, I haven't done it in many years. Customer
service is our main focus. Always do what's right for
(15:31):
the customer. The team second, because if you don't have
the customers, you don't have a team.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
So the corollary with this talk a little bit about
company culture. What does it do for you? How do
you build it, how do you use it?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I think culture is very important. I read a
lot of books, and I still read a lot of books.
One of the companies I really Enmires virgin The culture
is extremely strong, and I read his books and I
learned how he did it, and then I put my
own little magic into it. Zappo's is a great company.
You know. I've taken my manage been teamed there three
times to go see how they do it. They show
you around how it works, and they've been voted one
(16:05):
of the best companies work for nationally many years in
a row. I've met Tony Heish and he has a
book called delivering happiness. I think learning from what a
lot of companies do and implementing it for your own
company is very important. But it's everything. It's you know,
you're spending more time with your coworkers sometimes and your
own family. So I want people to want to come
in and work. You know, with this new COVID and
(16:26):
this hybrid model, we're doing three days a week at
the office, we were less than that. I prefer being
in the office all the time, but I do believe
a lot of work life balance. But I think having
people wanting to come in to do the work rather
than you know, when we first started the business in
ninety nine, if somebody was late, I'd be watching that,
and I was a little bit too strict, and I
think that was old school culture. Were now like, you
(16:48):
show up half an hour late, hour late, just work
the extra hour, just somehow make it up, and as
long as you're in your numbers, we're good. Those are
the things that I think are really important to give.
The teams nowadays expect to have both life balance, and
I agree with that, but also very much into the
customer service and hitting your numbers. We don't have good
customer service if you're not hitting your numbers, you're going
to go out of business.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So you've hired great people. How do you look for people?
In any words of wisdom on the interview process.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I really focused on people that are hungry. I love experience,
but if you have a great experience but you have
bad attitude, it's not the right fit. If somebody is
negative and it's not looking for a solution based you know,
I've had people that complain, but you know, what's the solution?
How do we fix it? And do you want to
be part of the solution. If you just want to
complain and not help solve the problem, that's that's a
real problem. So I think in life, in personal relationships
(17:37):
and in business relationships, you always have to be focused
on how to fix every single problem. And we find
people all over the place, indeed online people that leave
end up coming back to American Financing. We really pride
ourselves in that we've been voted one of the best
places to work in Colorado many years in a row.
And it's our goal to want people that want to
be there. And then you know, if somebody doesn't want
to be there, hey, let's talk about it. Part as friends,
(17:58):
because we don't know what's your future looks like, and
maybe you want to be back, maybe you don't, but
we always want to have a really good relationship with
people that are there or that are no longer there.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
More of Math and Magic right after this quick break.
Welcome back to Math and Magic. Let's hear more from
my conversation with Damian Maldonado. You built an amazing business,
but there were certainly big bumps in the road along
the way. The recent high interest rates, i know, had
(18:29):
a huge negative impact on the mortgage business in general.
How did you navigate that adversity and how do you
navigate all those mumps in the road.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, that was extremely challenging. I mean the whole industry
as a whole when rates went up historic speed, it's
never happened before. Went from you know, three percent all
the way to seven and seven plus even eight percent,
So the whole market fell ninety percent. So we had
to do layoffs about ninety percent of our people, which
was really devastating people that have been working there for
(18:59):
over ten years and even longer. It was very, very tough.
But if you don't survive, then the whole company goes out.
Of business. So when you get into that mode, which
I hate to say it is kind of survival mode,
and I think, you know, mentally, it's really draining because
you have to keep yourself going while you're doing these layoffs,
and so it was it was a challenge. But then
we focused on our numbers, and before we did that,
(19:20):
we tried to put the pedal on the gas and
try to market and do all the things that we
know how to do, and that didn't work, so we
ended up taking some pretty big losses the last couple
of years. It was really challenging, but you know, focusing
on writing out the storms sort of speak is what
we did. And now rates recently gone down, so we're
back to hiring mode. A lot of the people that
were there before are coming back, which is bringing a
lot of great energy. They're excited to be there. The
(19:42):
team that was there already is like, we're getting back
to we call it AFC two point zero.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
We were talking about your moved Puerto Rico. It's got
great weather, terrific tax benefits, but I doubt that's why
you moved. What was your motivation?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
So I moved to Puerto Rico for kite Turfin, so
where it goes very windy. Ten months are the year
is wendy, so perfect conditions for kitesurfing. And that was
the goal, is the kite surfing. As a matter of fact,
I didn't move here for taxis at all. After you know,
talking to all my friends and everybody's talking about it,
I ended up going that route, but it was a
year and a half after I got here. It's two
(20:16):
and a half three hour flight to Miami, so it's
still close, and we got direct flights there everywhere. And
the culture is very nice. I mean, the people are nice,
they want to get to know you. It's a really
great place to live. But I came for that. And
now we're building businesses here and we're starting to do
some of our mortgage operations here. We're building quite a
few different things here. It's a great place to be.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
I gotta sort of taken a side here. What got
you so interested in kite surfing?
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Well, I was in a well actually two thousand and eight,
me and my kid's mom. We're not one no longer together,
but we ended up getting the second home in Miami.
I'm in the voting Palace over there. In twenty third
in Collins and I'm looking out the back and I
see some of that kitesurf from the beach and I'm like,
what is that? And that was the first time I
saw it, But then once I started kiding, and it's
(21:02):
just it's very meditative. You could, you know, fie on
the water, you could do amazing tricks, you could jump
really high. It's a great sport. You could really clear
your brain. And I highly recommend it for anybody that's
interested in any sport water sports, skiing, snowboarding. I love
sports in general, but doing kay surfings is a whole
different animal.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So your Puerto Rican background, that's clearly important to you.
How has that culture influenced your own company's culture management?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Well, Puerto Rico, so I've been back for six years.
I came here to open up kay surfing schools. We
bought a little boutique hotel, Nuna Uno. It's a little
bit challenging to do business in Puerto Rico, or very challenges,
very political, it's hard to get permits. We basically took
that same things that we learned from all the other
businesses and we put it here. So in restaurants, for instance,
you have a really good GM or a really good chef,
(21:47):
And in our case, we went up with a really
good GM to make sure that they're taking care of
the quality of the food. But same principles apply, having
a really good team, focusing on the customer service, and
adding a lot of value.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
You're doing some TV movie, podcasts production. Tell us a
little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
So we're building a media company. So I've met quite
a few people doing movies here, like Malin Akerman, and
she did three movies while I was here, and I
learned about there's great tax credits for that. You have
forty percent tax credit if you're filling from out of state,
and then sixty percent of used Puerto Rican staff. That's
a great benefit in itself. Plus is a great place
to film. So the studios are going to be ready
(22:24):
for movies, projects that I think are cool that I
maybe want to invest in, maybe not, I don't know.
But we have space for about forty people in rooms
where they could just come with their team and film,
and then also podcasts. We love that space. We love radio,
We love podcasts.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
You travel a lot. Why travel? What does it do
for you?
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, traveling makes you look at the world with
a very different perspective. You know, I recently went to
India last year, and when you go to India, it
gives you a respect for the world, how the world lives,
and how lucky we are to be in America. But also,
you know a lot of people in India were very
happy and didn't have much, and that I really get
an appreciation for that.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Let's talk about that story. You've got a great story.
Sure a lot of kids look at it at you
and say, I want to do that. What advice do
you have for kids from circumstances like you grew up
in who dream of having what you have.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I always have the same advice, which is really simple.
I mean, read books. I always recommend three books, and
these ones and Disorder you go, Awakening Giant Within, then
Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which you know, is a very
simple book on how to look at money and then
think and grow rich. And then from there there's a
lot of others. But if you start with the base
(23:38):
like that, and I wish they taught that in college
or high school, it would be amazing. Teaches you about
positive thinking about how to be motivated. So if you
start with the base like that, and you actually apply it.
I guarantee you're going to be successful the challenges. You know,
I've even tried to pay people employees and past like
here's one hundred dollars read this book. You know how
many have done that? Zero? So one of those things
(24:00):
you can't teach motivation. And I have had some people
do it and they've become successful. And I'm not saying
those because of those books. I'm saying they were already
going to be successful because they would read the books.
And I don't think you need college. I don't think
you need any of that. If you google any subject
you want, you're going to find a person that did that,
and it's been there, done that, read their biography, ideally
autobiography and the amount of information you know gained from that,
(24:21):
and do it like you're starting it. Do it like
you're going to college. That is your college. And I
guarantee success. If you read and you apply what you learn,
and you keep reading and you keep learning by that,
you're going to find a mentor latch onto that person.
Ask a lot of questions, and you're going to find
another and it just gets you down this path that
when I love this line when the student's ready to teach,
you will appear. The way you get ready is by
(24:43):
having the knowledge to even know what question is to ask?
Speaker 3 (24:46):
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who are at
that stage where they've been building the company and building it,
they're still trying to bring it across the finish line?
What advice helps them?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I think main thing is, you know, really watch expenses.
If you could bootstrap it, bootstrap it, and once you
have your systems down, then maybe go ask for many
if you have to at all. I started accompanying with
five thousand dollars credit card. Me, me and my co
partner started with five thousand credit We never had to
use the credit card that was our backup. But I
got paid five hundred dollars a week if we had
the money, and she got paid nothing for years. So
(25:21):
we really bootstrapped it, and a lot of times our
employees were making more money than us. It takes a
lot of tenacity or a lot of guts to say, okay,
well geez, I'm gonna ride this out. I remember one
of my good friends, carry Hacker, came in with a
check of twenty thousand dollars. He's like, look, at my
commission for this month, and at the time, I'm making,
you know, two thousand dollars a month, so he was
(25:42):
ten x and what I was making. I was like, jeez,
I should just go get a job. You know, that
pops in your head and I'm like, no, We're doing
this for the long run. But you can't help to
think that. But we made our company into a billion
dollar operation, and that had I gave up, that wouldn't
have happened. But that didn't happen for years. It took
a long time to make the first million dollars. And
when I say million dollars, I'm talking a million dollars growths.
(26:03):
A lot of people use that term really loosely, like
what is what is making a million dollars? It's not
making it yourself net or is it your company? Because
when your company first makes a million dollars, you take
out your expenses, you might only have forty thousand dollars net,
and that is your first million technically, right, But you
only made forty fifty thousand dollars. And that's a great
accomplishment because if you could do that, then do ten
(26:23):
now ten million, and now was four hundred thousand if
you have those kind of margins. But then you figure
out how you work on your margins and just stay
lean and mean and tweak and tweak.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
So what advice do you have about navigating work life
balance You mentioned it earlier, or maybe even work life integration,
depending on how you look at it.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Well, I've changed my mind on some things. When I
first started becoming successful and making good money. I read
you know, this four Hour work Week, which you know,
it's a great book, but I don't suggest it or
recommend it anymore because it kind of got me a
little bit lazy. And those things work right if especially
if you're successful. Yeah, you could automate some things. Yeah,
but I think this hunger that the reason like Elon
(27:03):
Musk and the Mark Zuckerberg's of the world, and they
don't have to work right. They could retire a long
time ago, but guess what, they haven't because they get
conspired by it and they didn't take their foot off
the gas at all, and they're innovating and doing amazing things.
So I think just not getting too comfortable, which can
happen with success. And a lot of people say, oh,
do your passion, Well, that's great, advice, but whatever, your
(27:25):
passion doesn't pay. And they everybody said, oh, you can
figure out how to make money in your passion. I
don't believe that. I first say, first figured out how
are you going to make the best ROI, and then
implement your passion.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
If you could go back in time, what advice would
you give your eighteen year old self.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Oh, my eighteen year old self, I would say, read
a lot of books, which I did, read a lot
of books. Work really hard and don't stop. And when
you do get successful, stay focused on your families, Stay
focused on making sure that you keep what's most important,
and don't get distracted by the money, which I think
can happen to people you stay and humble and learning
(28:01):
from the mentors, the people that you really admire. Look
what they do. Use that as a learning tool as
someone you want people you admire do that. And also
your circle. Make sure you're surrounding yourself with the right people.
Some of my best friends are my team members, and
because we have the same visions and we work together,
and we work hard, and it's fun to make money
and grow businesses with your friends. That's more fun actually
than most things in life.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
I think Math and Magic is about exploring both sides
of business and marketing, the analytical and the creative side.
We end each episode with our guests giving a shout
out to their personal favorites for the greats on both
sides of the equation. So who gets your nod for
the best math oriented business person? Someone who sees it
(28:43):
through the numbers.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
So one of my first mentors, I know he's not
the best industry or anything like that, but he started
a company call is Dave Since and started a company
called National Fitness Corporation. That's where I learned how to
do myself as in marketing. He did this production sheet
that I still kind of use now as very sophisticated now,
but back in the day was just how many leads,
how many customers you got, what was your conversion ratio?
And how do that? How many you ended up becoming
(29:05):
a cell? And then you do matts. For instance, on
a week, if you had seven days of cells, add
those up divided by seven time jab by seven industry
projection and you could do the same for by four
weeks or whatever. That little formula right there has been
a big reason why we've been successful in all of
our businesses. That math equation was amazing for me, and
there was many others, but to me, that's business, one
(29:26):
on one.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Who gets the nod for the best creative the power
of an idea.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You know, I would have to say from examples I've heard,
is Steve Jobs, I mean, to me, would be the
most magical magician. In two thousand and seven when he
introduced the iPhone, that was magical and he ended up
disrupting many industries. But now we can't even walk out
of our doors without somebody staring at a screen. And
it's for better or for worse, and it's an amazing innovation,
(29:52):
but we are stuck to our screens like nothing else.
So that was a very magical thing that he did,
and at the time it was revolutionary, is still a
revolutionary and it became the standard. So I really admire
what he did in industry. Is an amazing businessman and
that's something that changed the world.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Damien, You've got an amazing and inspiring story, and the
good news is you still got so much ahead of you.
Thanks for sharing it with us today. Here are a
few things I picked up for my conversation with Damien. One,
don't get too comfortable with success. Even when you're on
top of your company or your industry, you shouldn't take
(30:27):
your foot off the pedal. There's always room for improvement
and innovation. Plus, you never know when the economy could
take a downturn, and honing your survival instincts is essential. Two.
Education could take many forms. Just because Damien didn't go
to college doesn't mean he didn't seek out knowledge and lessons.
There's so much to be gleaned from books and mentors.
(30:48):
That is, as long as your mind is open to
the idea that they have something valuable to teach you.
And absorbing information isn't enough. Need to be adamant about
applying it to your life and your leadership. Three. Being
risk adverse doesn't mean you can't grow. In today's world,
risk take is often applauded for the big payoffs, but
(31:08):
Damien's humble origins led him to take a bootstrapping approach
to business. He's living proof that's sticking to your own
financial means doesn't have to limit what your business is
capable of. Instead, being conservative can help you perfect your
business wobble at a local level. Then when you're ready
to expand, you do it. Right, I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks
(31:29):
for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is created and hosted
by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sydney Rosenblum for booking
and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
The Math and Magic team is Jessica Crimechitch and Baheed Fraser.
Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etour. Until
(31:56):
next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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