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How to Fund Your Real Estate Empire Without a W-2 with Jimmy Rios

• Ed Mathews • Season 4 • Episode 176

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Ed Mathews:

Greetings and salutations, Real Estate Undergrounders. It is Ed Mathews with the Real Estate Underground.

Ed Mathews:

Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for all of your support, as well as all the folks that have subscribed to us through Apple and Spotify and Amazon and Audible and all those other places. It definitely helps us grow. The one request I have is text us, let us know what topics you're interested in, what asset classes you want to hear about, because we definitely want to bring on guests that speak to those questions so that we can serve you even more than we do today. So, with that in mind, we have a unique guest today. Usually we talk about we get geeky about apartment buildings, and there'll be some of that in this conversation, but we've invited Jimmy Rios of Rios Business Advisors to the show to talk to us about business credit and a whole bunch of other things. So welcome to the show, jimmy.

Jimmy Rios:

I appreciate it, Ed. I'm really happy to be here. There's a lot of. I'm always learning and I love hearing from you and what I can learn from you and advisors versus see what I can parlay in my years of being an understudy and learning and putting it out there.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, I appreciate that and thank you for your time today. I know you're super busy and it's early morning. Where you are You're in Arizona, if memory serves. So, for those folks who haven't discovered you yet, I want you to tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Jimmy Rios:

Sure. So my name is Jimmy Rios. I own Rios Business Advisors, but I also own Rios Business Funding and Next Level Credit building business and business credit and being able to leverage properly and being able to use good debt to be able to further their cause in whatever endeavor or industry they're in. So we're industry agnostic. We can work with anyone and really it's taking some principles that many people just didn't think about and putting it together.

Jimmy Rios:

And we've studied the markets for 25 years and real estate was was our backbone, is what we started with. We're licensed in mortgages, real estate insurance, so we've taken a passion to real estate because it was where I got everything started from. It was where I found the needs of the holes in systems and being able to help others plug those holes for myself, and I was able to do the things that I needed to do, not only as an investor, as an owner of properties and helping others to achieve those goals as well. So we just branched it out and expanded our business to be able to help more people. Definitely, real estate is our path.

Ed Mathews:

Something a former colleague of mine used to talk about, jeffrey Moore. He's talked about the bowling pin strategy, which you start with one thing, you get world-class at it, and then there are invariably one-offs that serve that same customer base and you add that capability over time and when you become an old guy like me you've been doing it for 25, 30 years then you've built one heck of a business. So congratulations on that. I know this started in like your parents' kitchen, if memory serves right, and so I want you to tell me about Jimmy Rios 25 years ago and the real estate guy and how you all got started.

Jimmy Rios:

Think back in the late nineties. I graduated high school in 94. And in 97, I started with an outfit called commercial credit out of Tempe, arizona. They got bought out by Solomon Smith, barney and Travelers Group, who became Citigroup. Right In the late 90s there was the mega mergers.

Jimmy Rios:

And I was going to ASG as a young student, I didn't know really what I wanted to do. I was always in sales in some foreign format and I saw an ad for a branch manager trainee at Commercial Credit. I got the job and as I was going to school I was working there full-time doing both. I really started falling in love with it because I started helping a lot of people, but it also started opening up my eyes to many things I didn't like in corporate, in the commercial world, where there was a lot of limitations on how you can help people was a lot of limitations on how you can help people. And that's how it started in my mind that if I could do something for these people of my own doing, how much better would the world be. It was a microcosm of the mindset of what got me going in developing different things in my mind on this case study here how can I help them? And that actually was a precursor. It came from helping my parents as immigrants, and maybe in the first generation, Colombian American, and helping them. Their lack or lack of confidence in their language skills forced them to ask me and my brother to help them with everything. So we were constantly calling insurance companies, mortgage companies, tax companies, doing all these things for them. When I went to work at commercial credit, a lot of the people that were coming through were Hispanic Latinos that needed the same help, so they would get denied for credit. And then they would ask you know, obviously, why didn't I get denied? There was just a generic checkmark that you have to give a reason and you see these letters all the time right why you got denied, but they don't tell you how to fix the problem or what really is the solution.

Jimmy Rios:

When I started my property management company from my parents' Arizona room and then eventually led to Rios Financial Group, I started seeing that many of these people it wasn't that they had bad credit, it's just that the credit, the way it was set up, wasn't showing the way it needed to show to get an approval. Well, we had to get them on paper to be able to prove that. So it forced me to start doing taxes and setting things up, because many of these were paying their bills, making good money, but it wasn't again flyable on paper. So we had to get them out of the shadows and I had to start constructing these taxes and doing these things. I became an underwriter to be able to learn the backend on how loss mitigation and risk management worked at a higher level.

Jimmy Rios:

And when you start working in the background and you start seeing how these banks underwrite and approve and do those things, it gives you an upper hand because now you can construct your picture like how underwriters want to see it right. If you know the rules of the game, you're going to win. So a lot of people don't know that and they just go and throw an application in and then they get denied. What if we construct everything so that it falls in line with what the bank or institution wants to see Right? Then it's a lot easier to get approval or the conditions are easier to meet, because you've already met many of those conditions.

Jimmy Rios:

But, then we did hit the curve where everything was. We blew up, and so I had to pivot at that time myself and figure out what I was going to do, because we were piranhas in the wall, and so I had to pivot at that time myself and figure out what I was going to do. Because we were piranhas in the industry, we couldn't get a job in the mortgage field anymore, and so I went in for working in car dealerships and learning the credit game through the car dealerships, and ultimately I built Next Level Credit, which was a credit enrichment company with the purpose of helping people build their credit from the ashes and then build business credit, which was another total concept that nobody really wanted to dive into because they didn't know.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, I'd love to unpack that. Let's talk about business credit. One of the things that challenges a lot of investors, myself included, is that we're not bankable when they say okay, give me your W-2,. I haven't had a W-2 since 2018, and I'm not the only one, so how do you attack that?

Jimmy Rios:

It's not just the act of doing the things that I talk about in my book about how to get business credit. It's the little things like the MAICS code that you give your LLC. So many of us will go out and say I'm going to start a real estate investment company, but in the scope of underwriting they look at real estate as a big taboo. But if you change it to a consulting company and designate the LLC as a consulting company or even a SaaS, you know, or just change the NAICS code, regardless of what you're really selling, it makes wonders when you go present this. So when we build websites and everything around this concept of banking, a business can be fundable. You can have two businesses, right, you can have a holdings company and an LLC and your holdings company can be the one that gets funded. So we build a fundable company. You can still have a DBA and even an LLC over here for the day-to-day operations, but you can still construct a fundable company with all the attributes of a real company, even though it's just sitting there.

Ed Mathews:

It's a holding company. Typically, we have a holding company and what we do is that's where our intellectual property goes. We have a holding company and what we do is that's where our intellectual property goes. All of our frameworks and this podcast and the other podcasts we run demo to dollars and everything else. So that's the holding company. I'm curious what your thoughts on this. Typically, when we have to move money between one of the companies, it's a licensing agreement, right? Yeah, exactly.

Jimmy Rios:

There's a lot of, and we have tax strategies on our team that really pinpoint the strategy and how to just take it up through the holdings company and then it's a lot easier to be able to put it through. Many of us have LLCs for each property we own. It's kind of temporary laws, the schedules and everything like that. So you got to really start thinking outside the box instead of being inside the box and only think one way. You really got to break down that box and start thinking differently. Because this is about more than just what am I doing with this? Because many of us will fail with one right. Let's structure ourselves better from the get-go so we can do more. Because now, if I'm going to go and leverage, I don't have to just go through a hard money route, even though that's a very normal thing to do. What if we position ourselves in a way that we can get the funding that's needed properly, like the big boys do?

Ed Mathews:

right, yeah, so let's walk through that. So we're launching a software as a service company called Ella Vista that serves real estate investors and brokers with back office automation, voicemail system or AI voice agent systems, things like that and we're launching that probably in a couple of three weeks. So by the time this is live, this show is live, ella Vista will exist so we can talk about it. So we've started this SaaS company. So how do I create a company that has business credit? Walk me through the framework.

Jimmy Rios:

Yeah, so there's two answers to that, right, because we had the slow round and we had the fast round, right?

Ed Mathews:

Fast is always better.

Jimmy Rios:

We built corporations that already have basically all the bells and whistles. We even put a personal guarantor. We've done everything that we talked about in my book so that you don't have to go through the slow process. Right, and when we talk about expensive, we're talking about living investment $50,000, and we get you $500,000 in lines of credit with 0% interest for two years, right, so, right out of the gate, you're getting a business in a box that has all the acumen, everything that's needed, to, within 90 days, start part-lining that money and doing the things you need to do right.

Ed Mathews:

I heard you say personal guarantor, which we can talk about that in a sec. But so when you say that, does that mean that I've got to have a 750 FICO score? Like how does that work?

Jimmy Rios:

Yeah.

Jimmy Rios:

And then for usually an individual, if they're going to start their business credit, they got to start with some personal credit right To be a personal guarantee and then develop the non-personal guarantee side where, if we construct a business with a CFO on your business as the PG, you now don't have a liability personally to be able to get the funding that you need.

Jimmy Rios:

So by constructing it the way we do, we limit the liability of the corporation right out the gate. You get a tax write-off in investing in yourself in your business, right, but now you have basically everything set up to be able to fund yourself. So now you borrow from yourself, right Off the line of credit that's given to that company B that we've constructed. And now you have a lending entity right that you use for all your lending purposes, right, and we even do multiples of these. You don't have to just do one. On average, we'd lend $500,000 for that business. So personal guaranteeing anything is more of just a way to get in, and then within about six months, we start giving real business credit under the business without having to personally guarantee anything.

Ed Mathews:

Track record.

Jimmy Rios:

You do, but it takes a while to be able to build the big, high levels of credit right. You'll get the U lines and the Amazons and you'll get the smaller credit. But if you're trying to go big time, where you need these bigger tranches of money, those are difficult to get non-recourse and we do non-recourse funding and recourse funding right. But if you want to try to build quickly and you have the capital, or even come in with joint partners in doing it, it's a very smart way to elevate your business quickly and get all the attributes acumen they need without having to go the slow ride. The slow ride is advisable to anyone.

Jimmy Rios:

If you have a business, build your business credit, get a Donnie Bradstreet number and start building on your credit. There's a lot of tools. My website included realbusinessfundingcom that will give you tips and tricks to do it. But if you really want to put steroids into this thing, do it in a way that's going to get you there legally, very well structured and with guidance and mentors like myself who've done it and are doing it, and a heart of love. And now you're working together smarter because, listen, I was an underwriter for many years. Right, I know the game, the rules of the right. I know the rules of the game. If you know the rules of the game, you're going to win right. So why work harder in trying to get approvals and whatnot if you don't know that side? Let somebody else take the brunt on what needs to be done and get you the results.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, Right on man. So in terms of the $50,000, the investment to get to the line of credit, what's the value exchange there? So I write you a check for 50K or series of payments, whatever so what am I? Getting for that.

Jimmy Rios:

You're getting a full-blown business that's already aged over four years on paper. You're going to have a CFO. You're going to have Dun Bradstreet. You're going to have a website that has all the acumen. You're going to get a private address not tied to your home, a phone number listed with 411, and there's going to be trade lines that are going to be seasoned and added to the business credit so that it shows lines that, even though they're just trade lines on paper, they suffice the risk mitigation strategies that the banks use to be able to approve.

Jimmy Rios:

So when you go to an American Express block to get X amount of money, they're going to approve it based on the picture that's presented Well, different than if you had excellent credit and you go and try to get this on your own. You might get some variance of it, but because we worked with these industries, these institutions, for so long, they know the quality of clients that we bring through the gate, so they're more apt to give us an approval because of the quality of our clients that we've developed. 80% of everything that you see out there is based on presentation.

Ed Mathews:

Okay. So you mentioned a couple of things that I'd like to understand. So Ella Vista is a company that was founded in 2025. So how does that work? Do you have a catalog of LLCs in your back pocket? Yeah, okay. So walk me through that. And the big question I have is how is that legal? No, this has been done for years. We're not talking through bars here, so obviously it's legal.

Jimmy Rios:

Yeah, no, because I'm a business broker as well. Right, so I'll buy and sell businesses all the time. And it's really like when you sell a home and you transfer the title of that home, that home was seasoned for a number of years under your domain, under your possession, and all of a sudden you transfer it over. There's still a historical factor there, but you're the new owner. We do the same with businesses. Businesses have built through their EIN X amount of credit and if I go and sell that business, we still are able to transfer those assets to the new owner, right? So on paper, we'll do all the legal movements to bring that business under the new ownership and then we still have the fundable characteristics of the business.

Jimmy Rios:

And that's what the banks are looking at is they don't really care. You can have a business out of Wyoming and you don't even know who the owners are. It's all about following that pathway and making a business transferable and fundable for the client, and that's what we do. We walk through the whole phase. There's companies out there that will sell you a business, but it's like when you have a trust. If you don't find the trust, it doesn't do you any good. It's just sitting there like a shell. It doesn't do anything until you fund it. So we need to fund that business and get actual trade lines and monies attached to that business so it makes it worthwhile. You're not just putting $50,000 to work for nothing. It has to be very put to work, of course.

Ed Mathews:

Like I said, it's a value exchange.

Jimmy Rios:

Yeah, I think that's where the missing link is out there and people say that's an added money. I can go online and I can find a shell corp for $1,500 or whatever you I. I have probably 10 businesses on paper and I could sell if I wanted to, but that's not a fundable business. They haven't done all the work. You still have to work to get that company funded and doing the things it needs to do in your thing. That can take time.

Jimmy Rios:

So if you have a company like mine who does the work on the back end and has the season for you, then we always have a season amount of companies ready to go. In fact, when we go and advertise for our personal guarantors, they get paid really well inside of our program. So they're vested in wanting to become part of this because they have passive income coming from using their credit, because they have passive income coming from using their credit and it works really well because there's parameters put in place so they can't do anything with that. Credit belongs to the company but it's very systematically used in the way we do it so that you can keep growing your business.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, that was actually my next line of questions is you also mentioned a CFO. How do you compensate the personal guarantor? I assume the PG and the CFO are the same person. Yeah, Okay, so how do you compensate that person? Say, for instance, I hire you to help me build credit for Ella Vista We'll use that example again and we don't actually have a CFO. You're looking at him, but right now the Vista would acquire one of your companies for a minimal amount of money and with that would come an outside consultant who is the CFO? Or do they own equity in that company? Or is there a contract or like?

Jimmy Rios:

how does that contract? There's a contract. Let me explain something. Everything that we do is very much done in a way that eventually, everything is going to get transferred over to you Once we get the funding mechanisms and everything in place. That CFO, it's a very short-lived contract.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's probably the six months right, as soon as you get the recourse, exactly Right.

Jimmy Rios:

Because it's meant to solve a problem, so we need to get funding to be able to pay these clients. So it comes from the funding that we generate to pay all these PGs as part of the total cost of the program. At the same time, one integral piece of our puzzle that we haven't talked about is our eye level hand level program. What that means is we actually set up a third arm of income that comes through our investment firm to be able to offset the debt that has been created when setting this up for you, because you've already paid $50,000 for a business that hasn't produced $1 yet, you're acquiring debt in the form of having to pay a. How do we pay this debt so that we can do the things we want to do with our company? And that's where our annual returnable program becomes imperative.

Jimmy Rios:

It becomes another source of income for your company to be able to get rid of the debt, not just the debt that's incurred for this, but any other debt that you have in your liability column. So now you position your company in a very beautiful way because, as a new SaaS in the business, you can just focus on using your lines of credit and doing the things you need to do to elevate your company while using the investment platform to pay off that debt monthly. So you're not worried about generating income from the business so much as paying off the debt over time, and we don it in a way that within six months to a year, all your debt is paid off. We want to help you keep growing and not be straddled with the burden of debt that most companies have, because most companies work backwards right, myself included.

Jimmy Rios:

Every one of us have been victims of this. We bootstrap ourselves right Personal credit or homes or friends or family credit cards, whatever it takes. We're very good at putting together our vigilance and getting things off the ground, but then making everything work in a circular motion where it's now, it's doing what it's supposed to do. That's not always the easiest part. As we scale, as we delegate, as more needs of the companies are coming out marketing, whatever where do we pull from? If we don't have the necessary means to do that, then we start pulling from our own person and that's where we basically go against the limited liability aspect of your company.

Jimmy Rios:

We want to keep everything inside of a structure that keeps you elevated, keeps you whole, so that if anything were to happen over here, right, worst of the worst, you as a person is okay and you can still keep going. So why we build these systems is always because we want to have contingencies in place that are always working in your favor, regardless of what happens with tariffs, the real estate market We've kind of been through these things COVID, all these calamities, even the tech boss in the late 90s. I've been through all these and every time that I never fooled in my company when I always took a setback and having to pivot and go around, it took how many years for me to recover. So I said I've got to put something in place that's always going to be my backup plan so that I'm always generating income, irregardless of what's happening with my day-to-day operations.

Ed Mathews:

Got it.

Jimmy Rios:

That's where the high-level program was built on, because I knew that companies. I couldn't be the only company suffering from that. I knew that there was high-level companies going through that with just more zeros. I like the brand. Top that in at Google. High-level to high-level. You'll see me splattered all over the only ones in the audience with a problem.

Ed Mathews:

Sitting right on my briefing sheet for the company when I did my homework on getting ready for this conversation. Okay, jimmy, this is really interesting. You mentioned a book, so tell me more about that before we get into the lightning round. The book's called.

Jimmy Rios:

Decoding the Mystery of Business Credit and what I did was I took years of notes in the market in that trajectory when I lost everything myself. I was probably the biggest case study because I had over 35 collection accounts, three repos, two cars that were taken. I was like I had so much writing on real estate at the time and I was so young that I didn't realize that this could happen. So I learned from that chapter in my life which wreaked havoc. It wasn't just from the financial standpoint. It caused my divorce, it caused me to go into alcoholism and recover from that and there's so many negatives that came from it. But there was a lot of positives too, because from the calamities that I went through I developed a plan to help myself and help others.

Jimmy Rios:

And credit was a deep point. It's hard to recover from anything when everybody's looking at you as basically on the earth because of your credit. You're judged in so many ways, not only from a job perspective now, but like getting a rental, even going to rent a car, and there's so many different things that happen with credit besides building a business with credit, not all beside building a business. And so I said as I was going through my calamities and building myself up. As I started building and rebuilding, I started seeing that people would look at me different and when I would go into a car dealership with good credit, I didn't get a car in 30 minutes to an hour, no questions asked. When I didn't have good credit, it would take me two hours and they would ask for a ton of money and I was getting the worst rate.

Ed Mathews:

Oh yeah.

Jimmy Rios:

So you can only imagine what happens when we start working with our home, with our cars, with our businesses. It's a domino effect. So I built a program to help people take a step-by-step approach, not only in helping them with their personal credit. So we built a credit enrichment company. I call it enrichment because the connotation is positive, as opposed to repeller, which the connotation is that it's broken and it's negative. Right, they want to be rich and get you to a better level, and many times it's because lack of knowledge. Right, we, for example, have a lot of debt. Right, we don't know how to fix that. But what if I told you that in constructing your enrichment package, we have investors who will buy some of that debt for a short period of time, so that I can basically increase your score by 150 points and get you where you need to be. And now your debt to limit ratios just are under 30%, where they need to be. And it constructs credit in a way that is unfathomable to the regular job, because they don't know the moving parts that encompass our credit report Under the kimono. You need to see your credit, understand the moving parts and what composes credit. If you don't know those basic blocks, then how are you going to fix it? You should. There's professionals that know how to work the system and know how to get this done quicker than you trying to do it.

Jimmy Rios:

Part of this program is about consistency. Every month, no different than trying to lose weight at the gym. You don't just go one day and hope that you lost 20 pounds. You got to do your diet, you got to work out every day, you got to look at your map, right, all those little steps. So why is it any different with my program? Next Level Credit is about taking those step-by-step approaches and being able to elevate yourself, which is doable. You don't have to pay me. People pay me because they buy my book and set it aside. It's sitting there not doing anything for them. They don't know how to put things into action. So if you can't put things into action, then you call me. Let me put it into action for you. No, you can't put things into action, then you call me. Let me put it into action for you. No different than to try to go change your oil or change your carburetor or whatever. You don't have the time to do it, you pay somebody to do it and right then.

Ed Mathews:

I value money. Okay, so let's get into the lightning round. I'm always curious about it. Obviously, people who are successful like you, the mortgage is taken care of, the car payments are good to go, the kids have the college thing figured out, and nevertheless you get up on Monday morning and jump headfirst into the office, and so I view that as purpose, and so I'm curious about what gets you out of bed on Monday morning.

Jimmy Rios:

Well, I have a motto. I said I'm your partner in progress, right, and I have a passion to help people in every walks of life. It's not just the money factor, but if I can help you spiritually, emotionally, physically, based on years of experience that I've had in overcoming a lot of negatives, right, if I could do it, then you can do it too. And many times people just don't have that guide or that help right, and so I wake up every day with gratitude because I have another day to really explore my talents and everything that god gives me to do, and so I find that there's a lot of people out there that need our help right, and not just in what I know, but in other facets. Maybe it's just to listen to some help someone in so many other ways. So I do find that the law of reciprocity is very heavy in my heart and being able to give back to the community, and so I'm building communities, right. My brother and I built a community in Medellin, colombia, called Gringo Paisa, which is Americans in Medellin. There's over 26,000 Americans that live in or have signed up in Medellin that need guidance on they want to live a better life. I'm starting to build one here called Vision to Victory on Facebook, for being able to help people with the vision that they have to be victorious in their life, not just on the financial part. It's going to come if you follow a set of guidelines and be able to help people take that vision and be victorious in achieving their goals. That's my passion project right now. I'm living every day.

Jimmy Rios:

I have twin boys that are 16, a daughter that's 19. I pride myself on being a beacon of light and hope in their life. Just yesterday, my daughter called me about a decision that she had to make about a class, and it's very crucial that we guide them in the proper way not making the decision for them, but then those alternatives to make the proper choices. That's how I look at everything that I do with people as well. I don't want to do the work for them. I need to give them the free will. The biggest gift that God gives us is to make that choice, but informed. It gives you more power to make a better choice.

Ed Mathews:

Right. So I'm curious about mentors that you've had. You've learned a lot and you're clearly very smart, so I think a lot of it has been self-learned. But I'm sure you've had folks that have thrown an arm around you at one point because they liked you or any other reason, and so I'm curious about the best advice one of your mentors gave you, and who was that mentor? Who gave you that advice?

Jimmy Rios:

I am a very spiritual person.

Jimmy Rios:

I don't think I'm very religious per se, I can't quote scripture well, but when I did talk to my bishop he gave me some really good food for thought about being spiritually aligned and understanding that for us to be able to lead others, we got to do the right things ourselves.

Jimmy Rios:

So talking the talk and walking the walk and being that example and I really took that to heart because I lived on the other side of the equation, with ego and with all those other factors I couldn't do any of the things I'm doing now if I didn't put my ego in check and learn how to find humility in everything that I do and gratitude and I think that became my cornerstone and my foundation to be able to help others and to be able to give back, learning how to forgive and hold those resentments at bay, forgive myself and learn how to be a better person, right.

Jimmy Rios:

Use the power of love to help others. A better person, right. Use the power of love to help others. That really has been a catalyst in helping me mold and build, really overcome a lot of objections and problems that occur in business too in business and in marriage and everything that we did I take those things at heart? Because if it wasn't for that advice and being able to really own in on that, I don't know. I think I would have probably recreated what I did back in the day drinking again or doing other things and this really helped me grounded.

Ed Mathews:

Excellent, congratulations on your journey. I don't know a family that isn't touched by addiction in some way shape or form so horrible. So I'm also curious about, speaking of decisions, the business decision that you made and you're like, oh, that was a mistake. What was that kind of decision that you made business-wise that you'd love to have back, and how did you deal with it?

Jimmy Rios:

I got into wholesaling years ago and I made many mistakes in that arena. Right, because there's something about wholesaling that was very attractive to me. Something about wholesaling that was very attractive to me? Sure, but if you don't have a lot of time sometimes to make the proper due diligence, you do need to be very wary when you do these things right, not to be swayed by the pretty things and really dive deep into what it really is. Right, I named choices based on looks and I thought, oh, it looks great, it's a great area, blah, blah, blah. And then I kind of find out I needed $25,000 of electrical that was behind the walls or had a mold problem or a bunch of different things.

Jimmy Rios:

I learned in that world to really be more active and due diligence and take a note, not being swayed so much. And don't get me wrong, there are opportunities that you're going to have to take a chance and a risk on. I've learned to make better, more calculated risks in putting my money to work, and so now I think a little bit differently. As a young whippersnapper, I was very quick to act on certain things. You know what I do now. I do listen to my wife a lot more.

Ed Mathews:

Smart man.

Jimmy Rios:

I have an intuitive way of being that really leads in a good way If you can learn to humble yourself and accept that guidance as well, because I listened to a lot of people in my circles. Now I surround myself with smarter and better people that have good intention. In the past I didn't right. I surround myself with people that I thought had the best intentions of the world and they did't. It was all about money, and so I took away that and said look, let's not focus on the money aspect. The money will come. Let's focus on the principles and these little basic blocks that I talk about.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, besides your book, I'm curious how you take in information. Are you a reader? Do you listen? I'm a reader. So what's that book on your nightstand these days? Who's the author?

Jimmy Rios:

I went back into reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. I had read Rich Dad Poor Dad years ago in parts, but never really studied it, and for the message that it gives, I thought it was about getting rich and it's not. It's totally about understanding the mindset of what goes behind that. So for me it's always good to come back a little more mature in our world and take more out of it. So I've been studying that mantra and those ideas a lot more and it's helped me a lot.

Ed Mathews:

Excellent and final question of the lightning round how do you define success in your own life?

Jimmy Rios:

For me, success is love right. Success is finding love in everything that we do and who we're around. Being able to help others is love. I don't think love gets enough attention out there and how it should be used. I think there's a lot of people that need it. I don't think we as individuals parlay that to others. I think we're too selfish in how we do things, where, if we start thinking of love as another way to help, it opens up pathways in your life that you didn't think were even possible. For me, that becomes another cornerstone that is very important is being able to and love is, in many forms, not what I said earlier in being able to forgive, and that's part of the love.

Jimmy Rios:

Being able to forgive and that's part of the love being able to including yourself act slow to anger right and think things through on how you speak and how you act on things right a lot of those things are building blocks from love, and so I really emulate that and really try to focus on that.

Jimmy Rios:

People say you're always so calm and I said look, I think of Bruce Lee that said you need to be like water. You gotta be to be fluid. No problem is really a problem. Everything's perspective. If you have a problem, let's find a solution. Let's not hit the panic button. Let's work through this, and that fluidity in working through everything has helped me a lot to stay above everything that I do.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, we call it around here. We call it working the problem. All right. So when you're not talking about real estate or business credit or any of the other things that you do professionally, what do you like to do for fun?

Jimmy Rios:

So me and my wife, we're travelers. We love flying areas, foods, culture. This year alone we've probably been to three or four places and we're always working, but at the same time, we're probably been to three or four places and we're always working, but at the same time we're taking time out to enjoy ourselves, because we put different things in place to be able to do that. We do have kids, so we have to balance all that. I get my kids every other week, so we balance. We just came back from a trip to Mexico. We were just there two and a half days. Then we took my brother and he hadn't been there in 10 years and he had the best trip. And so now you're partaking and sharing with others what you enjoy, and it's a great deal.

Ed Mathews:

Hey, jimmy, I've really enjoyed getting to know you and hear your story, and I think I learned quite a bit from you today, so thank you for that as well. You need anything, let me know oh you and I are going to have a nice conversation offline about somebody that I know who's near and dear to me. How can people get in touch and learn more about you and your business?

Jimmy Rios:

Yeah, so I always tell everybody to go to our YouTube channel and subscribe at Rios Business Funding. I'm in Instagram and talk under at Rios Business Advisors and you can reach me, text me through there. I'm constantly checking that and get a lot of people that come out through there. It's usually the best way, easiest way, and then get my book on Decoding the Mystery of Business Credit through the website at riosbusinessfundingcom. We have an ebook in there. You can also get it on Amazon.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, fantastic, jimmy Rios. Thank you so much for your time today. It's a pleasure to meet you, my friend, and continued success.

Jimmy Rios:

Appreciate you.

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