$147 Million Exit Gone Wrong: Eric Cline Reveals How He Lost Everything and Rebuilt His Life

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We jumped into the timeshare exit space.

First company we ever started, built it up to where I had over 150 W-2 employees in my office.

We were doing 34 million a year.

We were netting 12 on that.

My wife and I own 67% of the business.

That's 8 million a year.

Now, my dear friend, Doc, he goes, Have you ever thought about selling this thing?

No clue what he was talking about.

I didn't know you could sell a base thing.

And then we started getting offers in.

We had offers from 147 million to 92 million.

I'm like, how the hell did we build something?

I want to get closer to God.

It's always been something that has been very confusing to me without any shadow of a doubt.

A guy like me without something out there looking over me doesn't make it at this table.

Hey guys, and welcome back to the Level Up Podcast.

This is Paul Alex, and today we have another phenomenal guest.

He goes by the name of Eric Klein, guys.

Eric Klein is with me.

He went from hitting rock bomb to building and selling multi-million dollar businesses, guys.

Yes, it's about to be another one.

And he's trained thousands in real estate sales and mindset.

And he's the founder of Run It Remote and the Refuse to Lose brand, guys.

We're going to dig deep into his story.

He has a phenomenal story, dude.

I've been following him for quite a while.

He's part of Andy Elliott's Brotherhood.

I mean,

that's our connect right there.

And I can't wait to tell you guys more about Eric.

Eric, welcome to the show, brother.

Thank you.

Appreciate you for having us out here.

Thanks for coming out like bright and early, dude.

Yeah, yeah.

From Fort Lauderdale, the Miami traffic is insane.

It's on another level, dude.

Dude, when I first moved here, like two years ago, man,

I come from California.

So I was like, there's no way it can be LA traffic.

And dude, it's horrible.

It's comparable.

Yeah, bro.

It is actually way worse.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, right?

And I ended up buying a home like 30 minutes away in the sticks, bro, because I want to land, right?

Of course.

I didn't want to be in Brickle.

And

dude, hour and a half traffic now.

Yeah.

But it is what it it is yeah man it's it's great dude so so eric let's dive deep into what you currently do right now let the public know um what is it that you do right now awesome so i am in the real estate space uh primarily the wholesale industry real estate acquisitions i do flip homes i do have rental properties it i don't talk a lot about about about that part of it because my partners handle all that yeah um and then i have a call center run at remote remote out of Pakistan,

which is

I'd probably say the biggest company I have right now.

We have over 500 employees in that office, 15,000 square feet.

We service the real estate industry, home services, and a couple off

like hard money lenders and an insurance guy.

We offer VA services.

And it's that company here over the next 12, 24 months, we're really getting focused on growing and scaling that out.

Okay.

And is that a business that you've been in for quite a while now?

I have had that company for just over two years.

Two years.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And when did you start your entrepreneurial journey?

I was

a year and a half out of treatment.

Went into treatment at 28 years old.

So I was 30.

I'm 44.

So I've been in,

I've been, I've been writing my own check for 14 years.

I love that, dude.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's admirable, dude.

I'm, uh, I'm in the game myself for a little bit over five years, and I still wake up and I, and I tell my wife, dude, I'm just like, dude, it's such a blessing to be able to work for yourself.

Yeah.

And it goes by fast, bro.

Super fast.

Right?

It goes by super fast.

And I tell people this all the time.

It's just like the next five years will be here next year.

Yeah.

Right.

So when you're talking about, you know, dude, next 24, 48, you know, months, I'm like, bro, it's going to fly by, bro.

And I've been through it, man.

In the 14

years,

I've had some really high highs.

Yeah.

And I've gotten kicked in the nuts hard.

Yeah.

With

like 2019, the very first company I ever started in

2019, after having it for about seven-ish years, we were getting ready to go through a pretty sizable exit, over $100 million,

and ended up losing it all, like literally overnight.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's from going from the halfway house to that, obviously there's a lot to the story we can talk about, but it's like I made the decision, me and my wife in 2000, the end of 2011, going into 2012, no, the end of 2011, we made the decision we were, we were going to be an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

And everyone in our family, at least a good good portion of them, thought we were nuts.

My wife was eight months pregnant.

I had our daughter, which was nine.

We had maybe 10, 11,000, 12,000 bucks in the bank, renting a home

in a fourth bedroom in a basement.

We were like, you know what?

Let's go give this thing a shot.

You know, like a lot of us go through the self-doubt,

the people close to us just trying to protect us.

And we ended up saying, yeah.

And dude, it has been a hell of a run.

Like when I say

it's been amazing, just building a life by design.

Yeah.

By design.

Not a lot of people can

bet on themselves the way some of us do and

build a life where you get to do what you want with who you want, when you want.

And it's just, man, I'm 44 and it keeps getting better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It It keeps getting better.

Dude,

it's very unique you say that because

I get asked, I mean, like you came in the office, you see a bunch of young guys in here.

And I'm like the senior citizen here, dude.

I'm 37.

And

I don't feel like I'm the senior citizen, right?

I actually feel like I outperform them in the gym and just mindset.

And then coming in here early, dude, at 5 a.m.

And I'm just like, yeah, like, you know, the energy, right?

So when you see that, I can relate to that so much because as I get older, dude, I get wiser.

Of course.

And I start reflecting back to when we were younger, dude.

Yeah.

And we start thinking back, damn,

if I would have just pivoted just a little bit more, we would have been a little bit more farther, right?

Of course.

So before,

right before you got into the entrepreneurial journey with your wife, how long have you been married now?

We have been together 16 years

and

we have been married, will be 14 years, man.

Phenomenal, dude.

Yeah.

Phenomenal.

Most people think a year is a long now.

Yeah, she's my day one.

She was with me before

any amount of success, even a small level of it.

Yeah.

Three days before I was walking out of a treatment center, they would load us up in buses and bring us over to outside meetings.

And it was literally three days.

I was getting ready to get out.

I got put on a plane from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale.

I was in a treatment center for 60 days.

And three days before, she walks into this meeting.

And she walks through the door.

She had like this

light around her.

No bullshit.

It's like, you got kids, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

You can't explain the love of a kid until you have a kid.

So I couldn't explain what I saw unless you were there and you saw it with me.

She walks through this door and she had a light, an aura around her, and she came straight up to me.

And this was three days.

I was broke, broken, helpless, hopeless,

homeless, like literally everything.

And she walks up, sits down, and we have a conversation.

I have $8 to my name, not knowing if I'm going to go back to Chicago or am I going to go into a halfway house.

How old were you?

I was 28.

28.

28 years old, from 13 to 28, heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Crack cocaine was the one that brought me to to my knees.

Smoked crack for six years of that 13.

It was rough.

It was rough, man.

I didn't.

My journey has not been luck.

It's been hard work and not

giving up and showing up every single day and just putting in the fucking work, dude.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She comes up to me, we have a conversation, and

she's been with me ever since.

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So

I get let out of a treatment center the first date we ever go on.

She comes and picks me up.

I have no license.

My license is revoked in two states.

By the time I was 22, 23 years old, I had four DUIs, driving on suspended.

You know, I was a train wreck.

And

she saw something in me.

And I always say it's like she was the one person

that would look at me and say, you know what, there's more to your story.

Like, I believe in you.

And it was the first

person that consistently told me that they believed in me.

And all I, because I didn't believe in myself,

I'd let so many people down, all my family members, meet, like the one that really mattered was I let myself down for years.

And when she just continually said, I believe in you, I believe in you, you can do this, you can do this.

It's like she brainwashed me to believe that, well, and I know she really believed in me, but then it was like, damn, maybe if she believes in me, I'll start believing in myself.

Yeah.

And

yeah, dude, it's been phenomenal.

She's your needle mover, dude.

I'm a big believer in words.

They're so powerful.

The words, what we see, who we're around in our environment.

You know, when you say life by design,

the first time I ever heard that was when I was in Arizona with around Andy's crew and all that.

And

I'm such a big believer in saying that, dude.

Life by design, because we have control of our life, you know?

And coming from different backgrounds, meeting a ton of different entrepreneurs and just...

business owners and just people in general, dude.

Everybody has their seasons.

Yeah.

Right.

And I think it's the experiences that you've gone through that's made you the man you are today, brother.

Because if you didn't go through all those seasons, the heartache, you know, the issues with the addiction, you probably wouldn't have been able to push that addicting attitude towards your work and your purpose.

Of course.

You know, now you have kids and you have a beautiful wife, you're living the life by design, brother.

And that's a powerful thing, dude.

It is.

Because I lost myself in the sauce when I was...

even back in law enforcement, dude.

It was a toxic mentality.

You're dealing with toxic people all the time.

And I'm not talking about the people I'm arresting.

I'm talking about my coworkers, bro.

Sure.

You know, you're living that life and shit, sleeping three hours.

And, you know, I was a single guy.

And I was dealing with women.

And like, I was just lost in the sauce myself, dude.

Of course.

Where it got to the point where I ended up getting a DY.

I ended up going ahead and drinking, blacked out drinking, getting into bar fights and shit.

And dude, it's just like, where am I?

Oh, I lost myself, man.

So at the end of the day, I'm a big believer.

I'm a big believer in that, dude.

Like, everybody has an addiction.

You just don't know what your addiction is.

Most people think when you call yourself an addict, it's usually with something bad like drugs or alcohol.

But you could, dude, you could be addicted to sex, you could be addicted to

what feels good, you could be addicted to work, you could be addicted to so many other things.

Yeah, it's just being able to control that addiction to the right thing.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I've been addicted to everything.

Yeah.

Like when I say I'm an addict, I'm an addict through and through.

Yeah.

But it's where do I focus my energy

to make sure whatever I am going to be addicted to,

it's not going to kill me.

It's not going to hurt my family.

It's not going to ruin my relationships.

Yeah, I mean, I've been addicted to drugs, alcohol, porn, women, you name it.

I've been money, like I've been addicted to all of it.

Going and buying clothes, dude, there's been times where I'll leave a mall after dropping $20,000, $30,000 on a shopping spree.

I see it, brother.

We're in Miami.

And I leave there like I just left the dope house.

So I've been addicted to everything.

But now,

I don't want to say I'm addicted to it, but I am

on a

I'm now on this journey, dude.

I'm 44 years old.

I have cracked the code to where as long as I don't put drugs or alcohol in my system,

I will never go broke again a day in my life.

Yes.

I've cracked the code.

I understand

enough about business, scaling, building teams, systems to where

I'm going to be okay as long as I don't put the sauce in my body again.

Well, it's always like a way to say, brother, is

if you were to lose everything again,

and I give you 60 days, you'd be able to come out probably with a million dollars already.

I guarantee it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guarantee it.

I've proven it time and time again.

And I mean, I see it.

I see it through your socials.

I see it when I talk to you.

I see the level of confidence that you have.

It's the aura, dude.

Yeah.

You know, and you have the life experience.

You know, first thing I talk to when I talk to business owners, I talk to another person who says they're going to do something, man.

It's just, you can tell, okay, what have you been through, man?

What's your life experience, right?

You've been through the shits.

Have you built a business?

Have you lost it again?

Have you been sued?

Have you done this?

And you've been through it all, dude.

So I know that you can easily lose it and then build it again.

So

you build up a phenomenal company up to

you're about to exit 100 million

in 2019.

And then what ends up happening, dude, that you're about to lose it all or you do lose it all.

What's next on my chapter, dude?

Dude, it was.

so I went from working in a call center, learning how to sell stuff over the phone.

Yeah.

And I realized you can sell just about anything over the phone.

You really can.

And I got really good at it.

So my wife and I went and any business we've ever had, someone's actually just brought the idea to us.

I didn't think of them.

It's not like I've thought of all these amazing business models.

I love that, dude.

Yeah.

Like someone was like, hey, there's this really cool business model.

I'm like, who's in that industry?

Let me hear some recordings.

How much money are they making?

Cool.

I can go do that.

Yeah.

Every business I've ever had, I knew a guy that knew a guy that said, hey, you'd probably be really good at this.

And I was like, all right, I'm going to go do it.

So we jumped into the timeshare exit space.

I was in that industry for 10 years.

Built it up to where I had in Fort Lauderdale, had over 150 W-2 employees in my office.

Over 100 of them were on the phones.

We were doing 30, just north of 34 million a year.

We were netting 12 on that.

My wife and I own 67% of the business.

That's 8 million a year.

That was at the peak of it, right?

Right when we were getting sued.

So my wife and I went to go buy a home in Fort Lauderdale in the Seven Isles.

We were getting ready to get a loan.

for the house for a mortgage 7 million bucks and uh it's crazy i just went by that house yesterday dude that thing's worth 15 million now crazy on inflation word what in the hell

yeah

uh

if i would have held on to that one um

so we went to go get a mortgage and the banker which is now my dear friend don

he he was like brother what do you do for work and i'm like i own a timeshare exit company didn't think anything of it yeah first company we ever started

you know having a blast thinking like life is amazing, which it was.

And he goes, have you ever thought about selling this thing?

I was like, I had no clue what he was talking about.

I didn't know you could sell a business.

I really did it.

I was that naive to it.

I had no clue businesses sold.

I love hearing stories like this, but also from a perspective of somebody who just takes imperfect action.

Literally, you're like, dude, you're like me.

People are like, dude, how did you figure out how to build this and this and this and this?

I was just like, dude, I just did it.

I just moved.

Yeah.

That's it.

Some directions were good.

Some directions were wrong, but I just kept moving.

You live and learn.

Yes.

You live and learn.

You take it as a lesson, right?

Yeah, lesson every time.

I love it.

So he says, hey, let me look at your model.

He looked at it, brought an M ⁇ A guy in.

They looked at it and they're like, holy smokes, you guys got a cash cow in your hands.

Super profitable.

And they're like, they start talking EBITDA and all this stuff.

And I was like,

what is even going on?

Yeah.

They had private equity firms flying in.

We were going out to dinner and me and my wife literally were like, how the hell did we get at these tables?

Like, is this real?

Are they messing with us?

The whole time, we almost didn't believe what was going on.

And then we started getting offers in.

And the very first offer that came in, we took the five best, the M ⁇ A company took the five best offers.

They flew them in.

They looked at our facility in Fort Lauderdale.

So we had offers from 147 million to 92 million

for 100% of the business.

And again, I'm like, how the hell

did we build something like this?

How did we get here?

Like literally pinching ourselves.

So we structured the company, set up all these trusts and got all the paperwork ready.

It took about six months to get everything

ready to sell.

And Eric, let me ask you this question.

And this is just from me to you brother just as because you've been in the game longer than me dude and with me i'm such a student of the game no matter where i'm at in life right and um my question is who do you even go to when you're at that stage dude they're offering you 147 million and you got to learn how to like structure it or like where did you even get advice do you mentor at that time or don okay my good friend don weir which is out of uh fort lauderdale

don yeah he owns a um

wealth financial company.

He manages people money.

A lot of athletes he manages.

Got it, gotcha.

And very, very big entrepreneurs.

But he was helping us.

He put us in contact with a law firm that could structure trusts because when you get all that kind of money, you need to be protected.

I don't know anything.

I can't talk about it today because

I had people doing it for us because I didn't get it.

But lawyers were structuring the trusts.

They set up certain accounts for asset protection protection and all this stuff.

Cause like literally for us, we went, I went from the crack house to a call center to saying I was going to be an entrepreneur.

And seven years later, which it went like that,

we're talking about a massive exit.

And there was a wise man once told me, his name is

Jordan Zimmerman, the first billionaire I ever knew.

Zimmerman advertisement.

He's right off, I think, 95.

You can see his building.

He was like, Eric, he goes, things can come to an end.

Just be cautious on the way you spend money.

Because, again, dope house, penthouse, making millions.

When you make millions, you start spending like you're making millions.

And I hadn't, I never had anybody around me that talked about finances.

Yeah.

You know, not that my parents, they just, they didn't have a ton of money.

They weren't dead broke.

But you were at a different level, dude.

Different level.

Different level.

Way different level.

Yeah, and they can't give you advice.

They can't.

And that's what I tell about my parents.

They come from, they're immigrants.

yeah, they come from Peru, Mexico, they worked very hard, they lived their version of the American dream.

Back to the AI day, I'm the first bloodline breaker, brother.

Yeah, man, you know what I'm saying, for sure, yeah, yeah, me too, yeah.

Um, and so we we structured everything.

Uh, we ended up going the deal we ended up going with 147, they dropped out.

They thought there were going to be some lawsuits coming down the pipe, and they were like, nah, we don't, we don't think this is an industry we want to be in.

So we were selling 51% of the company, We were retaining 49%.

We were selling 51% for 54 million.

I had to stay on for two years, and then we were going to do a second sale after the two years.

So it would ultimately have been a nine-figure exit.

That's why I always say nine-figure exit.

The first one was for $54 million, but I was still going to own almost 50% of the company.

which it was a cash cow at the time.

And they did all their due diligence.

Paperwork was all done.

We were waiting to close the deal.

And we ended up getting, which I can't name the two timeshare developers just because of my settlement, but

two of the largest timeshare developers in the world, publicly traded, multi-billion dollar companies.

We know they got a help hold of our book when we sent it out to all the private equity firms and they knew we were going to be exiting.

They ended up suing us, my companies personally, and then me and my wife personally.

So they sued our companies and then me and my wife and uh

we we got some poor advice from a a lawyer paid him a hundred and fifty thousand dollars as soon as the first lawsuit came we we like panicked of course we didn't know what to do of course so we started googling literally just googling uh

uh bankruptcy attorneys because we were told by someone if you file a chapter 11 on the company no one else can sue you because we got one lawsuit 30 days later we got another lawsuit and we're like holy shit this is like this is scary we literally panicked was it the first time you were getting sued ever ever at this level at that level yeah i mean i've been sued by employees and something and you're like i could take care of that but not at this level no dude it was scary yeah um

they they were bringing in i mean dude i was on the channel five news in orlando uh the the two developers were trying to make a big scene out of so

you were on the news for the lawsuit?

Dude,

there was a lawyer with boards behind him with all my companies talking about me and my wife.

And we're taking down the timeshare exit kings of the industry, and we won't settle for them breaking or interfering with our contracts.

Like it was bad.

Damn, brother, it sounded like they were trying to take you down.

Like it was like a Rico case or something with the feds.

Yeah, so

we didn't do anything wrong, but

they were making a statement with us.

Right.

So we will go and stroke a $150,000 check to a bankruptcy attorney.

He

files a chapter 11.

And our attorneys that were fighting the case for us, they're like, you made a big mistake doing that.

They put a trustee, they appointed a trustee to the company.

I had to stand in front of 140, 150 employees in my cafeteria.

And with a

stroke of a conversation, I had to let them all go.

And it happened literally overnight.

And I went,

we fought that lawsuit for two and a half years.

A lot of people are like, well, what did you do wrong?

I didn't do anything wrong.

I could sue you right now and you would have to fight me.

You'd have to defend yourself against my claims.

100%.

That's how it works.

That's how it works.

So when you have

you.

Yeah.

It drains you.

It drained our bank account.

It drained

our revenue stream because that shut off overnight.

Of course.

was

robbing me of our family.

Like, my family was being drugged through the mud.

Me and my wife were on the verge of getting a divorce.

I was either days, seconds, minutes away from going and using drugs again.

Didn't know what to do.

I was lost.

I was lost.

I was panicking.

In the last 30 days, and that was a two and a half year lawsuit.

Couldn't start another business up.

My legal bill for 30 days at the end end was a half a million bucks for a month.

Wow.

And I told my wife, I'm like, they're going to get the money, whether they get it in the lawsuit or we settle.

They're getting the money.

I said, so let's just settle this shit.

And we made the decision.

I told her, I said, let's settle it.

If we got to go back to zero.

And this is where I was like, all right, it's time to go do this again.

Build another company.

And Eric, this is now two years later.

So from 2022, 2021.

21 okay so right after covet basically yeah yeah yeah we we settled it cost us it was either six or seven million

which is a shot in the nut yeah

and uh

no income stream i told my wife and that's where i found the wholesale real estate industry

and i didn't never look at it as real estate i looked at it at the model um real estate just so happens to be the conversation piece of the lead.

But I was looking at the actual model of it.

The service.

Yeah, yeah.

I told my wife, I said, give us a year and a half.

Let's settle this.

Let's get 100% of our attention back.

And I said, give me a year and a half.

I'll get all this shit back for you.

And I

literally put the blinders on, dude, and I went to war.

So a year and a half.

So, Eric, what made you decide to make the conscious decision to go ahead and just focus on that model specifically?

Was it because of the skill set that you already had with the call centers.

And you were like, dude, I'm good at this.

I'm the best.

I'm just going to double down.

Yep.

Okay.

Someone like you, a guy I knew,

said, dude, there's this wholesale real estate industry.

It's just like what you were doing, except distressed timeshare owners.

Now it's distressed homeowners.

So he goes, you would crush this industry.

And I was like, cool, send me a couple of recordings.

Let me hear the pitch.

He sent me three recordings.

I listened to two of them, called Shyle up, and I said, let's go run it up in this industry.

I said, We'll dominate it.

And that makes sense, dude, because in 2021, I remember it was starting to blow up on social media.

Yes, so I could see probably one of your friends.

Yep, probably saw like Ryan Pineda example, like out of Vegas, right?

A big wholesale, wholesale real estate guy, and they were talking about TikTok, Instagram, and all that stuff.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was

because people were talking about it and they're like, dude, wholesale.

Why not, right?

Yeah.

And you got in at the right time.

Got in.

Yeah.

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First year, 2.6 million.

Next year, 3.

Next year, 3.

Ended up, you know, going to a lot of conferences and masterminds.

And I saw

within the industry a lot of the coaches, gurus, influencers, whatever you want to call them.

I was sitting in the crowd and I was there for a very specific reason.

One, I wanted to see see how they were teaching it because I had my own way of doing it.

And I saw a massive opportunity for me in this space.

Never once did I ever talk about being a coach.

Yeah.

Never.

But after now 14 years

of having a lot of success as an entrepreneur,

made tens of millions, lost tens of millions, made it again.

I was like,

I can come into this industry and teach virtual sales at a level I don't think anyone in this space can match.

Yeah.

100% over the phone.

If you're going to go door to door and walk in their house, I'm not teaching you how to do that.

But if you want to do this over the phone, I don't think there's anybody better in the space to teach you how to implement a sales process virtually that'll get you the results I can get you.

Yeah.

So I started that.

I started up run it remote.

I knew leads were were what drove the business in this industry.

So from a beginner's point of view, because the level up, it's a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs, 912, and they're looking for opportunities.

Cool.

So from the perspective of a beginner, break down what is Run It Up.

Like what, like essentially?

Yeah.

Like from a beginner's point of view,

Run It Up, the concept that you're doing is essentially

you're getting a virtual call center.

Yeah.

How's the setup for a beginner?

Got it.

So it services the wholesale industry, which is leads.

So what Run It Remote does is

you hire our cold callers to go and generate motivated seller leads for you.

So you can be at home, you can be at wherever you want.

It's virtual.

They're going to send you homeowners that have gotten a phone call.

They've spent three to five minutes on the phone with a call out of the blue.

And they've answered very specific questions.

Do you want to sell your home?

Yes.

Six months or less?

Yes.

What is your motivation?

They're going to give us their motivation.

They're going to give us their timeline.

They're going to tell us everything: three-bed, two-bath, 1,500 square feet, 1980 build.

And here's the reason I want to sell.

And then we, so we qualify the lead for you, then we send it to you.

You got to go and convert that lead to a contract.

So that's what Run It Remote is: is we are a cold calling VA company that does lead gen for companies.

Let me ask you a question, Eric.

So I've been using a call center for the past five years.

So I use it actually for two different companies.

So

I used it for ATMs, for automated teller machines

for quite a few, for quite a long time.

And we did that.

We did Bitcoin teller machines, which is big right now.

And then two and a half years ago, now we do it for credit card processing.

Got it.

So I've been using the same call center, man, but I've been curious, right?

Because obviously I always want to bring everything in-house.

Of course.

Do you teach this concept for different industries?

Is it similar or is it just specifically wholesaling?

So we can go into any industry.

Okay.

I run it remote is a company that ultimately we are going to build to exit.

It is a cash cow.

We control 100% of it.

Right now we have a 15, to answer your question, yes, we can help.

Okay.

But we have a 15,000 square foot facility in Pakistan right now.

We're building out another 15,000 square feet.

And a lot of our talent is coming directly, our team is coming directly out of college.

And they are teaching English now over in Pakistan in the universities.

Like it is a yeah, it's it's it's the in the universities, it's the primary language that they're holding their studies with and all that stuff.

Within our office in Pakistan, we have four full-time English teachers because that's the first thing someone asked is, how's the English?

Our Englishes are really good.

I was shocked when my partner, Sean, Sean Serrani out of Atlanta, 22 years old, one of the most brilliant entrepreneurs at his age I've ever met.

He was our ties to Pakistan.

His father,

born, raised in Pakistan.

Sean's, you know, born, raised here in the U.S., but

his dad still spends six months out of the year there.

So that's how we were able to get to Pakistan, open a brick and mortar office, and build out the team that we have.

I mean,

we dumped $150,000, $160,000 just in the rehab of our building.

And over there, that's a lot of money

to rehab in Pakistan.

So we have a beautiful facility.

And our goal is to ultimately pivot into other industries.

So like with what you are talking about, dude, me, you, and Sean just need to jump on a call, like honestly, and just test pilot what you want to do and take it from there.

Dude, let's do it.

Yeah, yeah.

What was the question, though?

But no, the question is, beginner.

For a beginner's point of view, which you explained it.

Yeah.

You explained the concept, which is good.

Because I know there's going to be people watching this.

Yeah.

And there's going to be a lot of business owners that are going to be like, dude, can you do it for my industry?

Because there's so many different industries

that can use a virtual call center.

Oh, gotcha.

I had interviewed someone else earlier this year.

I think it was John C., right, Melio?

I think it was John C.

But she was beginning to start doing this.

And she successfully did it through another, I guess, like an affiliate hub that would essentially be able to allow you to create virtual call centers, but they owned everything.

We do an affiliate model.

Yeah.

So that's where the exit's more than likely going to come from, right?

Yeah.

Is that.

Yeah.

So that makes sense, dude.

That's good.

So, so let's get into more purpose-driven point of view from your life, brother.

So, what's your why right now, man?

I mean, you've gone through it all, brother.

You've built a hundred million dollar company, you've uh, you've uh about to exit, you got sued, you made the money back, now you're building another venture.

You know, you, we were just talking about your beautiful home, you're about to wrap up here in the next couple months.

Yeah, you got the family, dude.

You've been married for so long, you're living what I like to call the new American dream, life by design, brother.

So, what is your why now?

What is your purpose?

So

I only ever wanted to be

in the beginning, man, I just wanted to feel part of a family.

I was an outsider in my own family growing up for many, many years.

And,

you know, a lot of people are like, oh, that's such a low-level surface why.

Well, when you grew up the way I grew up and you had the internal demons you fought as long as I did,

It's not a surface level.

I want to

build the most

amazing family and give my family the experiences, not spoil them, my kids, to where they don't understand hard work ethic and all that shit, right?

Because I think you can go to an extreme.

But dude,

I want to show my family that no matter what the hell you go through in life

my my 13 year old son's right outside the door here and uh dude he's been he's been overweight most of his life and this is answering the the why right i um

my son's 13 years old he's been overweight most of his life and i can get in front of i've helped thousands of people i really have

change their life and get financial freedom and break the nine to five and motivate them to want to just go and light life on fire.

And my own son, I was failing to do that with.

He was 11 years old, 211, 12, 13, 14, 15 pounds.

He was obese.

And when I look at the pictures, it almost brings me to tears

because that's a direct reflection of me as his father.

the one that's supposed to be leading the pack.

And mom.

You know what I mean?

I believe as parents, we failed him.

We came out to Arizona and he met Andy Elliott for the first time.

And Andy said something to him that triggered him and he's never been the same since.

And he was wearing Elliott shirts for the longest time.

His closet was full of Elliott shirts.

And I had my own brand.

I had my own shirts.

And it was one of those things I was like.

Uh-huh, moment.

I was like, wait a minute, dude.

Why aren't you wearing my name?

My son, which I'm grateful.

And I tell the story to Andy all the time.

I'm like, brother, I love you.

Yeah.

But

I don't want my son wearing your shirts more than mine.

Yeah.

You know,

it internally,

it was eating me alive.

Right.

Because I'm like a complete stranger to Kai 60 days ago.

And now he idolizes this guy.

So I'm like,

where did I go wrong to where

my

shirts aren't filling his closet?

So it's like, all right,

I got to process how I'm fathering my son, how I'm leading my son.

And now today, dude, when I tell you me and Kai are up at four in the morning, Monday through Friday together, going to the gym, he wears my shirt all the time.

It like literally gives me goosebumps because without Andy, without having that fire, watching another man lead his family the way I was not leading my family,

there's levels to this shit, dude.

Of course.

Just when you think you are doing it right.

And it's not the comparison game, but you're like, damn, bro, I thought I was doing okay.

No, I'm not.

You know what that is?

You're inspired, bro.

Yes, I was inspired.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

No.

That just shows what type of human being you are, dude.

Yeah.

You're a servant leader.

You're leading by example now.

You're like, dude, like, I thought I was doing it good.

Yeah.

This guy, man, he's another level.

Another level.

Right.

So at the end of the day, that's inspiring.

Let's unlock the chamber.

Yeah, that's how you grow.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the only way to grow.

100%.

You know?

Yeah.

So

I want to be an amazing leader one to my family, first and foremost.

I want to get closer to God.

It's always been something that has been very confusing to me.

Even though

without

any shadow of a doubt, For me to be sitting here talking to you with everything that I've been through and we've only heard a small fraction of it, a guy like me without

something out there looking over me doesn't make it at this table.

It doesn't.

I know there's a bigger purpose for me.

I attract the misfits, the underdogs, the counted-outs, the black sheeps,

any race, it doesn't matter because I'm very open and vulnerable with my story.

So I attract them all.

I'm real.

I have nothing to hide, like literally, zero.

And

my goal is to help the 28-year-old Eric.

Yeah.

Whether you're male or female, I want to be the one that can be,

I want to be their Shila, where she said, I believe in you.

And that's all it took was one person to say it multiple times.

I believe in you.

I believe in you.

I want to be that person for people.

I'm going to be okay in my life.

Like I've hit a point where we're going to, eric's gonna be be okay yeah again as long as i don't put the drugs and alcohol in my system yeah there's a lot of lot of me's out there where i can relate to everything

when somebody says something i'm like man you think you're alone but you're not

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like i've been in your shoes before much much worse and when i can go and tell them my story and then just give them a little glimpse of hope and then just say i believe in you like dude not everyone's gonna get it but the ones that are out there where the pain's great enough and they've hit their bottom and they're ready to change it would be super selfish of me to not go and get as many of those people as i can yeah and bring bring them with.

No, absolutely, man.

And you never know whose life is going to change.

And that's why it's super important to tell your story to the public, man.

Leveraging digital marketing, leveraging social media, and just telling them the real, dude.

Like, that's very inspiring, man.

I love it.

I love the fact that you took extreme ownership, bro.

You saw your son.

He was overweight at a certain time.

He was wearing another man's last name.

And you're like, what the hell's going on here, dude?

Yeah.

I'm successful.

I'm a good father.

And then you're like, you know what?

I'm going to suck it up, dude.

I'm going to make it happen.

I'm going to leave my son, right?

And it's the same thing, dude.

Like in 2024, it was the best financial year for me.

I was running three different companies.

And then everything came crashing down.

Happened.

Everything, dude.

Got $200,000 taken away from a CLO of mine, one of them.

The other one almost burned down another company.

And then in the meantime, I get married,

found the love of my life, my best friend, my rock.

And,

dude, I'm over about 245 pounds.

so i was about 45 pounds overweight bro no shit oh yeah how long ago this was earlier this year bro yeah it's insane so

we actually have another mutual friend he goes by planet mike yeah yeah so i know that guy's for like almost four years now i met him in san diego when i was living in a penthouse over there and i met him in an elevator and i remember i had just uh i had a a 400 000 day i was you know on the phones and he's just like dude you got some aura inside of you i'm just like bro i'm just like I didn't know living by design.

That's the way to put it like that, but I was just like, dude, I'm just living life.

You know, I'm like, I'm happy, right?

I'm in control of my life.

And he's just like, dude, we got to be friends.

So ever since I met him there, he's always been like, dude, you got to optimize your health.

It wasn't until earlier this year, dude, where it was just the pinnacle of depression for me, bro.

It was the top.

Like, I, bro, I've been in some deep ass depression.

You know, I've gone to rehab myself, dude.

I've gone through all this bullshit myself and you know i tell the real i i i tell the world like the the real the ups and downs because with every new level there's a new devil brother of course so so so when it comes to this entrepreneurship game it's not meant for everybody it's meant for people that are able to hold the most pain right yeah yeah but then also they're able to see through all the bullshit and continue right because it's going to be hard regardless yes so so when i come when it comes down to it the mutual friend dude um he had told me about you he had told me about you before i even met you oh wow and then and then i started following you and then and then the second time uh i i heard about you was through tommy uh providge yeah andy elliott's guy and he's like you got to meet this guy eric he's on fire he's one of andy's best like uh mentees right now i was just like really and then I met you last time in Arizona, dude, and that's how we clicked.

Yeah.

So it's meant to be, bro.

Of course.

It's meant to be, man.

It's meant for you to be here, tell 4 million listeners on a monthly basis to your story because it's very inspiring, dude.

It's just people need to hear this shit.

Yeah, it's real, right?

So in your opinion, what makes someone successful in your space, dude?

And wholesaling in general?

Because I got a few mentees that are in wholesaling right now and they're building some nice size companies, but not at your level.

Yeah.

So what makes somebody successful in your space?

Really good question.

From my understanding, I don't have any facts to back this up.

95% of people that try to jump in the space, there's a 95% fallout rate

of people that try to get in and give up before they get the first deal.

That's high, right?

That's a high fallout rate.

So I believe they think they're jumping into the real estate game.

They're not.

It is 100%

lead gen and sales.

And then we obviously have to know how to underwrite the deal in order for the numbers to make sense on the lead in order to assign it and make any money.

So

I would say for anybody that's getting in, it is a contact sport.

The deals don't find us, we find them.

You cannot get around the money-making activities that are going to give you success in the industry.

That's picking up a phone, making hundreds of freaking dials and getting hours upon hours of talk time on the phones.

They believe you can skip that and get consistent deals.

It does not happen.

And trust me, I've had thousands of people, thousands pay to understand how to play this game.

And the common denominator around all of them that have success and the ones that do not

is the ones that have success, they immediately get to work just picking up a phone, taking a script that I give them, reading the script, calling as many homeowners as they can, and just making offers.

And then the ones that don't have success,

they'll do it for a little bit and then they just stop.

Or

they'll make five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 offers, and they have not heard a yes yet.

And they're like, oh, that was bullshit.

This don't work.

Wow.

It's a contact sport.

Momentum is built.

It's not given to you.

So you got to build momentum.

So if you're going to get in, just understand

it is real.

It's as real as rain.

But you have to do the work in order to get the results that's with any industry though yeah you know you were overweight you I would have if you would have told me that I never would have thought you'd been overweight oh yeah no like never for but you put in the work oh yeah you know it's like we didn't I didn't get in this seat I didn't skip the hard work like I've been doing that for 15 years still today From this, from talking to you to go to the next podcast, I'm probably going to make a sales call because there's leads that are waiting to talk.

Like, I haven't gotten too good to pick up a phone.

I love that.

I'm still on the ground level.

I stay in the trenches with my team.

It's funny, you had said

2024, you had, it was like everything came crashing down.

Yeah.

Dude, 90 days ago for me, I made a really bad decision

in my business.

And I always tell my team, when I make a decision, I'm going to make it.

I'm going to make it with confidence.

And then we're going to figure out whether or not it was the right one.

But I need to make sure I got the team that's willing to back me god forbid because i'm human if i made the wrong one please please just help me make it right right and i made a bad decision i in in 90 days net net money to the bank i lost over 300 grand yeah in 90 days and i pivoted real quick corrected the mistake a lot of my team got up and walked out

um they were like

i don't know dude that wasn't that wasn't too cool yeah so like i'm rebuilding again dude yeah Yeah.

It's constant.

I love the game.

And it happens.

And it happens.

You have to be comfortable with making those type of decisions, especially when you've been in the game for so long.

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, and she's like, dude, he's like, Paulie, and he's a former police officer, and now he's a crypto, like a massive crypto investor, man.

I mean, this guy, you give him 50 grand,

he makes an additional 20 grand every single month.

He just knows how to do it.

He's very intelligent at that.

I don't know shit about that.

I don't know nothing.

I invested 50,000 one time.

Block five went down and they'ren't my money.

I can't even talk about it.

I don't know nothing about it.

Yeah, but anyways, this guy, he's just like, dude, can you imagine back when we were in PD, dude, that if you were to tell the old self that you could take 50 Gs and make 20 Gs within a 30-day span, would you believe yourself?

I was like, fuck no, dude.

Never.

No.

Bullshit.

Scam, not happening.

Yeah, exactly.

And that's what majority of people see until they experience it.

Yep.

So I love the fact that you're real, dude.

I love the fact that, you know, you're saying thousands of people have tried to learn this, but the ones that do make it are the ones that are making contacts, That's it.

It's real.

It's real.

It's real.

I love that.

I love that.

So if you can leave one piece of advice for our listeners to level up their life, brother, in 2025 and beyond, what would it be?

Audit your circle.

Like, dude,

audit your circle and see who you're hanging out with.

Usually you are a product of your environment.

And again, take it as sound and cliche or whatever.

But if you're trying to do big things and you're the only one in your circle that's thinking like that you're gonna have a really really hard time i'm not saying cut them out cut them off overnight but dude i look back if i look back 15 years ago 14 years ago

there's not a single outside of my wife there's not a single person in my life that was around then

all new people yeah so you you really need to

You need to take a hard look at who you're hanging out with, where you're hanging out with them, and what you're doing when you're hanging out with them.

And if none of it's productive, there's a really good chance you don't have a circle, you have a cage.

And that cage, you'll stay caged up for as long as you can.

And it could be

the closest people to you in your immediate family.

Again, I love my mother to death.

Literally, she's one of my biggest cheerleaders.

She wasn't 15 years ago, but I've gained her respect.

Thank God.

Because if there's one thing I wanted to do, it was just make sure she didn't have to worry about me.

But

if you're the only one in your circle that's aspiring to do big shit,

you more than likely

need to find a new group to start hanging out with.

And dude, I'll say this, and I don't even know if

you offer coaching, right?

I do.

Or whatever it is.

Okay.

This is what I can say is

pay to get around people.

And when I say that, I mean that.

Oh, well, Eric, it's a fake relationship.

No, it's not.

It weeds out all the bullshit.

It weeds out all the bullshit.

So, and you might not be able to stroke a big one in the beginning, check, but get into a group, a mastermind of people that have paid the same price to play and start networking with them.

Start getting new phone numbers.

Get out of your comfort zone.

All of my friends, all of my business partners have been met in those rooms.

You and I met in a room.

That was a fat check we stroked.

It is.

To get in that room.

Over $100,000 to get in a room.

Yes.

And whether we ever do business together, we've exchanged numbers.

Who knows where it leads 12 months from now?

You never know.

But it weeds out the bullshit.

So audit your circle.

It means

everything

if you are trying to have a breakthrough in life and you're the only one out in your circle that's trying to have that breakthrough.

Absolutely, guys.

And that's the level up.

Eric, where can they find you uh instagram the eric klein uh the and then eric e-r-i-c and then c-l-i-n-e the eric klein uh youtube linkedin anything else yep youtube is

eric klein official got it got it and uh that's it guys that is the level up with eric klein guys if you feel motivated from this podcast make sure to share this with someone that you care about that's going to level up not only in sales but lead gen wholesale real estate guys there's so many things that we talked about, even limiting beliefs and mindset, right?

At the end of the day, guys, we are number one in business right now because of you guys.

We want to thank you guys to our 4 million listeners on a monthly basis.

We are actually top eight right now in all categories as well.

Let's keep it going, guys.

That's the level up with Paul Alex.

We'll catch you on the next one.

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