What Does It Take to Reach a Billion-Dollar Valuation? w/ Albert Preciado 🏘️ EP111

So if you can learn one skill, like just one skill, the first skill you want to learn is how to sell.

Just to give you an example, we spend 80, for $80,000 we spend on ad spend, we make a million.

Yeah. And we have 40 salespeople in our office.
Each dials 100 times, so it's 4,000 dials a day.

And right now, we're averaging 50,000 plus a day.

What's the goal?

I want to get to a billion dollar valuation. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays.
We are here inside of the RV motorhome parked in front of Tai Lopez's mansion because we're throwing a multi-day event. So I decided to convince Trevor to bring the motorhome out here into the freaking front gate, front parking area of Ty's house and just knock out back to back to back podcasts with friends that are living local, like Neil Patel, NFL players like Larry English.
We had a lot of great guests today. And right down the street in his fancy penthouse is Mr.
Albert Preciado. Literally right down the street.
You can throw a rock at it. He's got, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 sales reps up there, cranking away, doing six figures a week on one business, doing millions of dollars in the mortgage industry, millions of dollars in the real estate space.
He has three or four different businesses. Probably more than that, but three or four main category companies doing millions and millions of dollars per month.
And so we're going to ask him about how does he manage all this craziness? How does he manage mortgage guy, the real estate side of things, sales training, about to throw his huge event coming up this month. There's a lot going on in Albert Preciado's life.
So we're going to get into all of that. As you guys know, we cover three core topics, how to make money and invest money, how to give it away to charity.
Recently, Albert was on the podcast, but because the huge Driven Nine event is coming up, I wanted to bring him back on, which I never bring someone on back to back that fast. Wanted him back on, especially with the convenience of being right down the street.
So without further ado, Albert Preciado, give us the quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Yeah, so, you know, I just, I want to say first, thank you for having me here.
And then you've been around since my beginnings.

And what I want to say is I started from zero.

So anybody can create something.

And it's just been really, really hard.

It's really, really hard.

I make it look easy.

And I say life is easy.

But I say it because I'm trying to convince myself that it's easy.

Because it's super hard. I see you working really hard.
but I dropped out of college. I got into real estate, and I started selling.
So if you can learn one skill, like just one skill, the first skill you want to learn is how to sell. If you know how to sell, you'll sell yourself.
Like I've sold myself. I've sold the IRS.
I've sold the Department of Real Estate. I've sold my wife.
I've sold my kids. And I've sold my employees and my salespeople from whether it's leaving me, quitting, anything.
And so if you learn how to sell and you have the courage to take risks and then also never, ever quit, then you can make it far in life. And it's just been a whole, I mean, people don't realize that I'm 41.
So I've been doing this since I was like 19, 20 years old. It's when I started working self-employed, dropped out.
I quit my job as a teacher assistant because I was making nine bucks an hour and so i started in mortgage real estate and then that's how i made my first million in 2016 so let's fast forward to now you get this big penthouse there fun fact ty lopez had that office for years also that penthouse which is super cool that when ty transitioned and started moving to sweden and to his ranch in Virginia, he was leaving that office. And then Albert stepped into this big, cool penthouse.
Why decide to get this big, fancy penthouse when you could rent a normal office or, you know, I don't call it a boring office, but a normal office compared to being in a penthouse on Sunset Boulevard? Because if you're not growing, you're dying. And Ty had half of my office.
I have the whole floor so i have the whole floor and what i did is when i when i got that office three years ago like three and a half years ago we gutted it out so we spent about a million and a half just remodeling the whole floor so we put a gym a bar you've seen it locker room showers we have our studio and it's like a cool fun place but i got it before we needed it so like the mistake i made is i got it just when ko happened so I get this whole office and they're like you can't work from the office oh my god and it's like it's like nearly 20,000 square feet the whole floor 20,000 square feet on Sunset Boulevard 100 grand a month you guys can do the math exactly 100,000 a month and and so like it's COVID time so I'm like shit what am do? And, and so still say she's getting stressed out. So it's my wife.
So what I've learned through all my experience is that I always put, put ourselves in like something that I take a big risk that has a big payout if, if, if I win, but if I fail, I'm going to go out of business. So, like, every year I kind of put us out of business.
And then it just forces me to, like, not sleep, figure it out, find other resources. You talked about Neil Patel.
He's, like, my best friend. Like, you ask him who's his best friend, he'll tell you it's Albert.
That's a good best friend to have. And he's really wealthy.

He's really successful.

Super smart.

Really smart.

Probably the smartest person I know for sure.

And he always gives me advice.

We get together every week.

We go to lunch, dinner.

And I talked to him before coming here.

But when you grow,

you have like a millionaire mentor.

Then as you grow more,

you have a $10 million mentor. Then you have a $ a millionaire mentor then then as you grow more you have a 10 million dollar mentor then you have a 100 million dollar mentor then you started getting billionaire mentors so the level of advice they give you is just you can't compare it so when these people tell me do this do that like i listen but i think the the thing that has helped me the most lately has just been getting advice from higher level individuals net worth wise where they have more experience and more success.
Because I'm going to obviously listen to them more than anybody else. Sure.
So speaking of taking a big chance on a big, big, big, big project, you have Driven number nine coming up. Yeah.
Now you've thrown this eight times. I've spoken at like five or six of them, maybe more, maybe seven of the driven conferences where

you're getting 2000, 2800, 2200, 3000, 1800 year after year after year. That is really difficult.

This year you've grown your social media tremendously. You've gotten hundreds of

millions of views across your podcasts and viral videos. What is in store for driven number nine?

So driven number nine, I'm going to make a huge announcement. It's March 29th.
It's my birthday. So it's coming up.
And I'm just going to announce that Driven is becoming the next virgin. So we're going to be driven.
Everything we offer is going to be Driven. So it's going to be Driven Mortgage, Driven Real Estate, Driven Escrow, Driven Solar, Driven Financial financial services.
It's the ninth year of the driven event. And then we also have sales training.
We have the info products. But it's going to be like virgin, but better.
So I'm thinking like the next immediate goal is obviously to get to a billion. But I'm already thinking trillion.
How do we get AI involved, software, tech? I'm talking to Neil Patel about that stuff. And if you, I mean, you know me well, you know that I'm going to take another huge risk and I'm going to put us nearly out of business again, but I'm going to go all in and I'm going to do whatever it takes.
I'm going to borrow money, borrow more money, use everything I have and and just go for it. Because I just like, I'm a really big thinker.
And since I was a little kid, I just wanted something big. And what we want to do, like our goal is to change a billion lives.
If we change a billion lives, we'll become a trillion dollar company. And people will laugh at me, but people have been laughing at me since i said i'm gonna be a millionaire sure and then i said oh well i'm gonna get a ferrari they got it they left at me oh we're gonna get sunset towers the whole floor they laughed at me oh we're gonna make 30 million plus in a year they got it they laughed at me so like to me it doesn't really affect me at all and people say things on my social media they criticize me and and people have to understand is that that.
For me right now, it's the first time that I've been really spending ad spend. But I never really ran any ads at all.
Now we're running about $100,000 a month in ad spend. So I'm going to be in front of a lot of people.
Of course. And people are going to see me and they're going to be like, they're going to not like me because I'm brown or because I'm Mexican or because i have an accent or because uh whatever you know they they they don't like my my shirt that i don't button the second button because it just it'll rip uh but they're gonna hate me for some reason but i'm forcing myself in front of so many eyeballs that it's normal so some people friends they tell me hey they're saying this about you i don't feel comfortable uh're saying this.
And I'm like, cool. Like, I would be worried if nobody was talking.
Exactly. Yeah.
But, yeah, it's good. But once you get the sales part in, how good is the top sales closer if you don't have anybody to close? So that's why marketing is very important.
And, you know, Neil talks a lot to me about that that so how important is it to have a personal brand in the business space so for example I built a big brand over the years like we're going on driven event nine and so it's it's it's a decade that I've been working on my brand and it takes time and people want everything so fast like they want to it in one one year and and when you've done it for 10 years it's it's gonna be it's gonna be good and i told neil hey neil man you're a year younger than me and and you have more money than me like what's going on here and he's like albert i've been doing that for 10 years more than you sure i started my first business when i was 17 and i'm like and he's and he said yeah you need 10 more years. And I'm like, shit, okay.
So, so, so I get it. But, but then if I, if you look at five years back and you look at where you were five years back, you'll realize, damn, I've grown a lot in five years.
And you look 10 years back, you're like, I've grown a lot in 10 years. But the thing is that we're such driven individuals that we want to get results so fast.
And you have, you have to be patiently aggressive. aggressive like you like you are you work a lot but you have to be patient enough to understand that it's going to take 10 years 20 years maybe 50 years because some of these big huge companies they've been around for 50 years like a rocket mortgage they've been around for 50 years you know when i went public 20 years ago yeah april 1st 2005 yeah this is our 20 year anniversary you know how weird that is to say out loud it's been 20 years since i went public started my company six years before that like it takes time takes time math and time compounds though people are like oh how do you get all these interactions and social media followers because i posted 7 000 times yeah i didn't post 7 000 times in one day i posted once or twice a day for the last 15 years in a row and just math and time compounds and when you're in the game and you're just doing it over and over and over and over and over you're going to win how many mentors have you had well i have main characters in my life along the journey when i first started the clothing brand i was 17 years old we did dollars in sales, then $9.5 million, and I found this guy named Christopher Wicks.
He owned Fender Guitars, Ocean Pacific, Body Glove, LA Gear, all these brands that were doing tens of millions of dollars. So he was the person helping guide us in the clothing space.
Later, I had my best friend who's actually the godfather of my baby. He was the founder of Marvel Studios, named David Mizell.

He built The Avengers and Iron Man, all these movies, and you've met him before.

He's talked me through a lot of the major junctures in my life.

And in between there, I've had certain characters that are big in a certain category,

like really big in restaurants or really big in investing or really big at going public.

And I would ask them for advice.

There's certain guys like David where I just

kept them by my side for

15, 16 years now.

And when you find those people

and you latch on to them, because they're

just farther ahead in the journey.

And they've gone through different things. He sold his company

for $4.1 billion to Disney.

He sold Marvel. And so

he's very different in his journey.

Now, it's not that I'm going to ever sell a movie company company but i get to learn from him on what happened before during and after and so you've worked with a lot of the household names in the business game especially guys that have big followings and they're just part of your journey at one point grant cardone fit for you and later he doesn't at one point patrick but david fit for you and then you want to get someone else like you get different characters that fit for you along the path of your journey and then sometimes you find a friend like i've been close to you for many many years not as like a mentor but as a friend but like you stay close for a decade right and so people that are listening like finding someone that you look up to and respect and especially if they're in a category they're in it's priceless because they can pave the way for you yeah and and to answer your question on the on the final part is because of the brand like i had i brought a like a a sales leader you know he leads my my sales team head of sales his name is casey and casey cox and and so he brought the blueprint and he knew a lot sales guys and and when he brought those people in and the blueprint combined with the brand we just took off like like it companies that it took him 10 years to build we we already uh surpassed them by double in three months like this month we'll make 2 million in just sales training

sales by double in three months like this month we'll make two million in just sales training sales easily like two million we're shooting for three million but last last month we did a million for the first time the month before that we did a 550 000 and then the first uh november it was only like two weeks we did a one was it 150 something thousand

but it's been just growing more and then our sales people are growing they're getting better

then we're getting now better leads we have we have a really good uh ads team that runs our ads

so we're running ads on facebook on on instagram on tick tock and on youtube and then we're running a but they're scripted ads so no matter how how how much i like just wing it

you on instagram on tick tock and on youtube and then we're running a but they're scripted ads so no matt no matter how how how much i like just winging just talking just kind of freelancing the ads team's like no you got to read from the teleprompter because there's certain words and then neil's involved too so neil has told us like what to do how to do it you know he's a genius marketer so he's like you you can't say certain words because words because meta, TikTok, they could block you. They could ban you.
And then if you do it too many times, they could just ban you from their platform. So he's like, you got to have it scripted no matter how much you hate it.
So then now we're scripting them. So I'm just reading it, but I'm saying the hooks in order and I'm saying the words you can and I'm avoiding the words you can't.
And we're getting like really good ROI. So just to give you an example, we spend 80, for $80,000 we spend on ad spend, we make a million.
Yeah. And we have 40 salespeople in our office.
Each dials 100 times. So it's 4,000 dials a day.
And right now we're averaging 50,000 plus a day in sales we did 72k yesterday what's the goal of it as you build this sales revenue up and you're doing this training what's the goal I want to get to a billion dollar valuation and I want to add the tech and the software the AI and and it's it's gonna be driven everything so it's not gonna be just driven event or driven sales training or driven masterminds it's gonna be driven mortgage driven real estate driven solar driven financial services driven escrow so we're just gonna offer every single thing I'm even thinking as big as driven airlines and and I'm crazy like I'm something's off with me and I and people people people think I'm crazy. People think a lot of things.
But I go for it. And I like having people doubt me.
I love it. So I'm going to give you guys a quick example of what Albert's talking about when he mentions Virgin.
Now if you're listening out there, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening in a podcast, can you name, without searching online, can you name the CEO of American Airlines? No. Can you name the CEO of Southwest Airlines? You have no idea.
How about Delta? Nope. Frontier? Nope.
You don't know the name of any of these CEOs of any of the major airlines. If they actually walked in right now, slap you in the face, you wouldn't know who they were, even though they're running 10 billion, 50 billion, type airlines but if i said virgin airlines all of you know richard branson and richard branson is the only one that's a multi-billionaire owns a private island has his own companies casinos everything vodkas record labels and virgin airlines and it's because of a personal brand and so what albert is doing is transitioning and taking what's working for him in the driven space and then making it to his version of Virgin by building up his personal brand and tagging that name across all these companies.
I did that with Elevator Studio. I have Elevator Ventures, Elevator Knights, my events I've done 56 times, Elevator Mortgage, Elevator Funding, Elevator Syndicate, my investor group.
Everything is branded under the same name because it makes it easier for me to be building all these things and then putting my name on it. Not a white label, but as the brand that people trust.
They know whether they've gone to Elevator Night, they'll feel comfortable with Elevator Funding. They know if they've gone through Elevator Syndicate, they feel comfortable with Elevator Studio.
All those different moving parts are based on one core brand that people can know and attach to me. And I'll never sell Elevator because it's my brand.

The same way he wouldn't sell Driven.

He's building up his brand, his personal brand, and finally realized,

well, I have the mortgage guys here.

I have the real estate name here.

I have the sales training name here.

I have the Driven name here.

And finally combining it all together to make one super brand.

So as you scale this and you go through, what do you want to happen at Driven9? What are some of the speakers that are coming? Who's any surprise guests? We have a lot of surprises. We have a lot of surprises, but what I like to do with, I mean, this Driven event, we're going to announce the whole merging of the companies.
And the main thing though, is it's also going to be my birthday birthday weekend so it's going to be a good celebration but but my whole point of driven is i want to do for people what uh grant cardone patrick bit david and people like that did for me and and i want to give them the all the experience all the mistakes that i've made so that they don't make those mistakes. And the thing about Driven is we bring experts in different fields.
So we'll bring a tax expert. We'll bring a real estate expert.
We'll bring a mindset expert, a mindset coach. We'll bring people that are marketing experts.
So we'll bring experts in every field, and then we'll have operations, systems, processes, information, sales, all of that. But one of the main things that I see lacking in seminars in general is operations, systems, and processes.
So I don't like doing anything that's not worth my hour. So like if you're worth, if you make X amount of money a year, you divide that by 2080, that's going to give you what your hour is worth.
So if your hour is worth $1,000, then you shouldn't be doing anything less than $1,000 an hour. Some people are worth $15,000 an hour.
So you should just value your time because you can't get it back. And you want to focus on the big ROI, whatever returns you the most.
So what I've learned, making a lot of mistakes is hiring a lot of people. Grant Cardone, my mentor, he was my one-on-one mentor.
I was his best student. And he'll tell you that if you ask

him, he'll probably grin a little bit. But I love Grant Cardone.
I have nothing bad to say about Grant Cardone. And he, 11 years ago, I went to his first seminar, 30 people.
And he told me, you got to grow your army. But it's risky growing an army because you got to pay them.
And you got to pay people, right? It's salaries and all that stuff. So now, like, we have over 500 people that work for us.

And I have, like, four assistants.

I have a driver now, security.

We have five full-time videographers in-house.

Everybody's in-house.

We have 40 salespeople on the floor.

We have a full-time accounting team, processing team, SIL runs operations. I get to do the cool stuff.
I shouldn't do that now. I get to do the cool stuff, so I'm doing podcasts with Dan.
I'm going to parties, drinking nice champagne. I'm doing events.
I'm recording stuff, so it's like the fun stuff. But what I do mostly is the vision part.
So I'm a huge visionary, but a huge visionary compared, I mean, a huge visionary working along a strong operator and having strong team employees and Salesforce and running the right ads and all of that stuff. You create like an engine that runs without you and you step away and it's still printing money and you don't have to be there all the time.
And that's the best feeling and that's when you can exit. That's one of the things that Patrick Bidavid, also a mentor of mine one-on-one 11 years ago, him and Grant were my mentors 11 years ago.
And he told me, build your operation. So now I understand it.
So he told me one thing that makes a lot of sense. If your business needs you 80% of the time, it's worth nothing.
But if your business runs 80% without you, then you built a business that one day you can sell. So right now that's what I'm working on, and that's one of the big things that we're gonna teach at Driven9, how to create a business that runs on autopilot.
And it's a business that you can eventually sell. And that's what I want to do because that's what my mentors have told me, build a business to sell.
If your business cannot run without you, you don't have a business, you have a job. You're not an entrepreneur at that point.
You a job that's okay but you have to understand that

part when going into it until you build SOPs which is systems and processes you you're going

to get stuck you're going to get stuck dealing with all the nitty-gritty all the little headaches

and all the little moving parts and so you find people that can be strong operators like Albert

mentioned people that can run the show whether it's from the secretary to the sales to the manager

to the CFO or everybody in between if you have to be there for every part of it you have a job

Thank you. operators like Albert mentioned people that can run the show whether it's from the secretary to the sales the manager to the CFO or everybody in between if you have to be there for every part of it you have a job and a lot of times we can't just admit that to ourselves we think that we've built this big business that's sellable how can you sell it if you've got to be there to run it every single day yeah if you have to be there to run every single day it's not a sellable thing because why would someone else buy it if they got to keep you forever typically if someone acquires your company there's two options they either get rid of you or they do what's called golden handcuffs golden handcuffs is they keep you for one to three years base minimum and they pay you to stay on and they pay to stay on because they need you for the transition process or to run the business if you are instrumental in running the business you are not appealing to be acquired because if you get sick sick, or you get bored, or you get shiny object syndrome and want to leave, you can jeopardize their acquisition.
And so, you want to make yourself not needed at your business. I know it's hard to say, or it's hard to grasp the concept of it, but if your business can't run without you, you have a job.
Alright, last question for our special episode. I need need you to do me one favor i want you to look at this camera and tell the audience why they should go

to driven nine well you should go to driven nine because it's going to change your life and there's

a lot of new events there's a lot of uh new coaches influencers however there's not a lot of new events. There's a lot of new coaches, influencers.
However, there's not a lot of mentors, speakers, or events that the leader has been tested. And what I mean by that is I hired John Maxwell, paid him $400,000 to mentor me one-on-one.
And that included his private jet, flying him.

And he told me one thing that I'll never forget,

a leader that has not been tested cannot be trusted.

So you know me for a long time, decades.

So I've been around for 20 years and I haven't gone anywhere.

So I've been through the 2008 recession,

then 2020 COVID, 2023 was the worst year ever in my life, most challenging, especially for real estate, because rates went up to like 9, 10. This year is even more complicated than last year, but I figured it out.
So when in business, you have to figure it out every year. Every year, you have like a test.
And when somebody gets through those tests over and over and over again, then that's somebody you should listen and learn from. So Driven9 is going to be filled with experts that have a lot of experience, have been tested.
They to get through big struggles big things when they get complex and and you have to fight figure things out you know you're running out of money and all of that stuff that they need to figure things out in business that that's what we're gonna focus on 2009 and it's gonna teach you every single thing from marketing to sales to building your personal brand, operation system process, training, how to hire, how to fire, the good, the bad, and the ugly about business. All right, guys.
I want you to make sure to check out Albert Preciado across all so many social media platforms. Check out drivenevent.com to go to Driven 9.
If you have any friends in the LA area or you want to fly in yourself, go to drivenevent.com. It's coming up March 29th for Albert Presciato's birthday weekend.
It's going to be an amazing lineup. You can check out some of the speakers that are on there now and there's more surprises coming.
So Albert Presciato across social media, drivenevent.com. Visit us at themoneymondays.com and make sure to have important discussions with your friends family and followers about money and then Dan whoever just sends a message or comments back DMs on Instagram whatever Dan or comments on the podcast Dan then I'm going to give them 50% off oh perfect because they do Dan so we'll put like some call to action and I'll send it to you and then they can just click on the link and then they get 50% off.
Well, you heard it here first. So make sure to check out driven event.com.
You'll be able to use the code Dan for 50% off, but it's very important. Have discussions with your friends, family, and followers.
You got to talk about money. You got to talk about salaries, accounting, taxes, credit, understanding your scores, understanding how to set up your bank

account properly, understanding budgets. You've got to have these discussions because it's real

life. Money is part of your daily life and it's not rude to talk about money.
It's rude to not

talk about it. Money is very important.
It's super critical. Yeah.
We're going to talk a lot

about money. Exactly.
Yeah. So see you guys next Monday here at themoneymondays.com.