Today's Guest: Candy Valentino

I am excited to welcome Candy to the show today because she has such an impressive and diverse resume! Candy started her first business at 19 years old with no degree, no corporate background, no money, and no internet. She successfully started, scaled, and successfully sold businesses in service, retail, e-commerce, and product manufacturing in addition to creating a vast real estate portfolio as a flipper and investor.

At 26, Candy founded a non-profit charity. Through her business success, she bought and donated a building to the organization. Since then they have saved thousands of lives and Candy has been actively involved, personally raising millions for the charity.

During her two and half decades as an entrepreneur, she has been named to Top Business Leaders 40 Under 40, Top 50 Women In Business, 10 People Making a Difference, Top 10 Business Consultants by Yahoo Finance, and was the youngest female to receive the Governor’s Award in Entrepreneurship in Pennsylvania.

Candy was recently selected by Success Magazine as one of just 6 ‘Women of Influence’ and additionally listed to ‘Leaders Who Get Results’ with names like Will Smith, Gary Vee, and Brene Brown.

Highlights From The Show:

Candy starts the show by sharing some of her background. What makes her accomplishments even more impressive is that she basically came from nothing. Both of her parents had blue-collar jobs and gave birth to her in their teens. She thought initially she would be the first person in her family to earn a college degree, but was amazed that her professors were teaching her about running a business when they didn’t have one of their own! This launched her into her entrepreneurial journey.

Candy has a lot of diverse projects, but I wanted to see what her real estate journey has been like and if she was still investing. She said absolutely she is still investing and part of what she loves about it is its flexibility. Candy talked about how much she loves the design process and managing contractors, so she has continued to hold some of her properties after rehabbing them, but she really loves the flipping process. She shares that it has been important for her to remain somewhat conservative with her investing because the only person she has to rely on for money is herself. Now she is able to flip in the millions and her last project was a $4.5M total gut property. We also talk a bit about how she was positioned in 2008 to avoid the housing market crash.

Because Candy is involved in so many different businesses, I asked her what life hacks she uses for productivity and staying focused. She talks about how much she really loves being an entrepreneur and continually being pulled in different directions. She emphasizes how important staying disciplined and focused on your goals is and not following the next shiny object. Candy states that most people are not willing to put their heads down, focus, and play the long game, and so therefore, their businesses really suffer or never get off the ground. She says she has a productivity grid that she focuses on every day to perform the top three, absolutely necessary tasks for each project or business that she has to get done in order to move it forward. She also keeps her phone face-down and on silent all of the time until she is ready to handle the incoming texts and emails.

We then spend some time discussing Candy’s book, Wealth Habits: Six Ordinary Steps to Achieve Extraordinary Financial Freedom. She calls it a no-BS guidebook because she wanted to be honest and clear with people about how to build financial freedom that isn’t couched in flowery language. She stresses if anyone just does these things and does them consistently, they can find success as she has.

What a refreshingly honest interview with Candy Valentino who was a ton of fun for me to interview! Don’t miss the latest episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast with this very special and incredibly successful guest!

Notable Quotes:

“I just couldn’t reconcile in my 18-year-old brain how my college professor was teaching me about business when he didn’t have one himself.”

Candy Valentino

“We can tell you the best strategies for building wealth, but if you hate your life, you are not going to be able to sustain it for very long.”

Candy Valentino

“I don’t necessarily know how to repair cars, but I do tend to know more about cars than most of the guys in my circle.”

Candy Valentino

“The minute self-employed people stop working, they stop making money. That isn’t a business, that is a job.”

Candy Valentino

“I didn’t want to continually trade time for money.”

Candy Valentino

“When people know, like, and trust you, they want recommendations of what to buy.”

Candy Valentino

“I am not educated, I don’t have an MBA or some fancy letters. This is really just self-education by reading books in my office.”

Candy Valentino

“We learn from mentors or by making mistakes, and the latter is a lot more expensive and timely.”

Candy Valentino

“You didn’t have any pre-built doubt. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can have is ignorance.”

Mike Simmons

“When the expectation is low, you don’t have to do much to impress people.”

Candy Valentino

“I know people who basically committed business suicide in 2008 because they were so over-leveraged.”

Candy Valentino

“When we look at the data from any type of market, winter always comes.”

Candy Valentino

“I just stick with what I know.”

Candy Valentino

“If you haven’t been doing this for 20 or 25 years, you absolutely should be playing in this below-median house range.”

Candy Valentino

“I love entrepreneurship, I love investing, I love being pulled in a million directions.”

Candy Valentino

“Before my feet hit the floor, I find five things I am grateful for.”

Candy Valentino

“That would be my book - ‘The So-NOT Miracle Morning’!”

Mike Simmons