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Summary

Podcast Summary: Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman featuring Damian Maldonado

Introduction

In this episode of Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, hosted by Bob Pittman, listeners are introduced to Damian Maldonado, a self-made entrepreneur who overcame significant hardships to build a billion-dollar business from modest beginnings. The conversation delves into Damian's journey, insights on marketing, company culture, and personal philosophies that have shaped his success.

Early Life and Influences

Damian Maldonado's upbringing was marked by financial struggles and resilience. Born in Manhattan to a single mother of four, his family relied on food stamps even during stable times. After his parents' divorce when he was seven, Damian and his siblings moved to Colorado, where his mother worked as an FBI secretary. The family faced homelessness for several months, sharing cramped shelter spaces with over eight people. This challenging environment instilled in Damian a strong work ethic and a deep appreciation for money.

Notable Quote:
"That taught me a lot of lessons that I wanted to make money." [06:03]

Early Career and Entrepreneurial Beginnings

At the age of ten or eleven, Damian began working door-to-door selling candy and Avon products alongside his older brother Oliver. These early sales experiences, coupled with delivering newspapers from as young as five, taught him essential skills in sales, marketing, and financial management. By high school, Damian had already amassed significant experience in sales, working his way up from a cashier at Toys R Us to managing health and fitness club memberships across multiple states and countries.

Notable Quote:
"If you own the gym in Manhattan, we'd go and market it and we sell memberships. Five hundred to a thousand memberships in one to two months." [08:07]

Transition to Mortgages and Building American Financing

After gaining extensive experience in sales and marketing, Damian transitioned into the mortgage industry. With a modest startup capital of $5,000, he co-founded American Financing, a national mortgage company based in Colorado. Despite initial challenges, including the collapse of his first company due to market downturns, Damian's strategic use of marketing techniques and data-driven approaches enabled American Financing to thrive and grow into a billion-dollar operation.

Notable Quote:
"We bootstrapped the whole thing. The whole time we've never borrowed a dime from anyone." [11:43]

Marketing Strategies: The Power of Radio

Damian highlights his pivotal decision to shift from outbound telemarketing to radio advertising, which significantly improved lead quality and conversion rates. Initially skeptical about the high costs of radio spots, Damian and his team reversed engineered their marketing efforts by analyzing conversion ratios and loan amounts, leading to a more effective and targeted use of radio as a marketing tool.

Notable Quote:
"Once we saw our conversion ratios and the loan amounts, we switched from outbound telemarketing to inbound call center and went straight to radio." [17:08]

Company Culture and Team Building

A cornerstone of Damian's success is his emphasis on building a strong, motivated team. He prioritizes hiring individuals who are hungry and solution-oriented, valuing attitude over mere experience. Damian also underscores the importance of company culture, drawing inspiration from successful companies like Virgin and Zappos. He believes that a positive and engaging work environment fosters better customer service and overall business performance.

Notable Quote:
"A business to me is nothing but having the right team. If you don't have that, you can't grow a business." [17:33]

Navigating Challenges and Economic Downturns

The mortgage industry faced significant adversity due to rising interest rates, which led to a dramatic decline in the market. Damian had to make tough decisions, including laying off 90% of his workforce to keep the company afloat. This period tested his resilience and leadership, but by focusing on core numbers and adjusting strategies, American Financing managed to survive and eventually thrive as rates stabilized.

Notable Quote:
"When rates went up, the whole market fell 90%. We had to do layoffs about 90% of our people, which was really devastating." [24:24]

Personal Interests and Relocation to Puerto Rico

Beyond business, Damian is passionate about kite surfing, which motivated his move to Puerto Rico. The island offers ideal conditions for the sport and a conducive environment for expanding his business ventures into hospitality and media. Damian appreciates the cultural vibrancy and strategic advantages Puerto Rico provides, including tax benefits and proximity to major cities like Miami.

Notable Quote:
"I moved to Puerto Rico for kite surfing. It was the perfect place with ten months of windy conditions each year." [25:32]

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Damian offers valuable advice to those aspiring to build their own businesses. He emphasizes the importance of continuous learning through books and mentors, maintaining a strong work ethic, and being financially prudent by bootstrapping whenever possible. Damian also highlights the significance of surrounding oneself with the right people and staying focused on long-term goals despite short-term challenges.

Notable Quote:
"Read books, work really hard, and don't stop. Stay focused on what's most important and don't get distracted by the money." [29:03]

Work-Life Balance and Continuous Improvement

While acknowledging the benefits of books like "The Four Hour Workweek," Damian prefers a balanced approach that avoids complacency. He believes in maintaining a strong drive for innovation and improvement, inspired by figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who continually push the boundaries of their industries.

Notable Quote:
"Don't get too comfortable with success. There's always room for improvement and innovation." [32:28]

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

The conversation between Bob Pittman and Damian Maldonado offers profound insights into the traits and strategies that drive entrepreneurial success. Key takeaways include the importance of resilience, strategic marketing, strong team building, and continuous learning. Damian's story serves as an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs, demonstrating that with determination and the right mindset, significant achievements are attainable despite challenging beginnings.

Key Insights:

1. Stay Hungry and Humble: Maintain a relentless drive for improvement while staying grounded.
2. Strategic Marketing: Utilize data-driven approaches and adapt marketing strategies to maximize effectiveness.
3. Build the Right Team: Prioritize hiring motivated individuals who contribute positively to the company culture.
4. Financial Prudence: Bootstrap initiatives to maintain control and financial stability.
5. Continuous Learning: Invest in personal growth through books, mentors, and real-world experiences.

Notable Quotes Summary:

• “That taught me a lot of lessons that I wanted to make money.” [06:03]
• “If you own the gym in Manhattan, we'd go and market it and we sell memberships.” [08:07]
• “We bootstrapped the whole thing. The whole time we've never borrowed a dime from anyone.” [11:43]
• “Once we saw our conversion ratios and the loan amounts, we switched from outbound telemarketing to inbound call center and went straight to radio.” [17:08]
• “A business to me is nothing but having the right team.” [17:33]
• “When rates went up, the whole market fell 90%. We had to do layoffs about 90% of our people, which was really devastating.” [24:24]
• “I moved to Puerto Rico for kite surfing.” [25:32]
• “Read books, work really hard, and don't stop.” [29:03]
• “Don't get too comfortable with success. There's always room for improvement and innovation.” [32:28]

Final Thoughts

Damian Maldonado's journey from a challenging childhood to leading a billion-dollar enterprise exemplifies the power of perseverance, strategic thinking, and the unwavering pursuit of excellence. His insights provide valuable lessons for anyone looking to navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and build a lasting legacy.

Transcript

[Damian Maldonado]

Introducing Instagram Teen Accounts A new way to keep your teen safer as they grow. Like making sure they've got the right gear for writing, Knee pads check and helmet. Done. See you dad. New Instagram Teen Accounts Automatic protections for who can contact your teen and the content they can see. AI is rewriting the business playbook with productivity boosts and faster decision making coming to every industry. If you're not thinking about AI, you can bet your competition is. This is not where you want to drop the ball, but AI requires a lot of compute power and with most cloud platforms, the cost for your AI workload can spiral. That is, unless you're running on oci. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure this was the cloud built for AI, a blazing, fast enterprise grade platform for your infrastructure, database, apps.

[Bob Pittman]

And all your AI workloads.

[Damian Maldonado]

OCI costs 50% less than other major hyperscalers for compute, 70% less for storage and 80% less for networking. Thousands of businesses have already scored with oci, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters and Suno AI. Now the ball's in your court.

[Bob Pittman]

Right now, Oracle can cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI. Minimum financial commitment and other terms apply. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special [e-mail] strategic that's oracle.com strategic breaking news t Mobile Network outperforms expectations in all sectors because T Mobile helps keep you connected from big cities to your.

[Damian Maldonado]

Hometown on America's largest 5G network switch.

[Bob Pittman]

Now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card.

[Damian Maldonado]

Visit your local T Mobile location or.

[Bob Pittman]

Learn more@t mobile.com KeepAndSwitch up to four.

[Damian Maldonado]

Lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualified unlocked device credit service port in 90 plus days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required Card is no cash access and expires in six months. My dad works in B2B marketing, but I never really knew what that meant. Then one day my dad came by my school for Career day and told everyone in my class he was a big Roaz man. Then he just kept saying things like the bigger the roas the better over and over. My friends still laugh at me to this day. I think it means calculating a return on ad spend. One thing's for sure, I'll be known as the Roaz man's kid for the rest of my days. Why couldn't you just be a fireman or a lawyer? Why? You ruined my life dad.

[Bob Pittman]

Not everyone gets B2B but LinkedIn has the people who do. And with ads on LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people based on job title, industry, likelihood to buy and more. Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. We'll even give you $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com customer to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com customer terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be. To be. You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Damian Maldonado]

I've even tried to pay people employees in the past. Like, here's $100. Read this book. You know how many have done that? Zero. So it's one of those things that can't teach motivation.

[Bob Pittman]

Hi, I'm Bob Pittman and welcome to this episode of Math and Magic. Stories from the frontiers of marketing. Today we have a self made entrepreneur. Grew up in poverty, skipped the formal education and eventually built his own billion dollar business from just $5,000 in startup capital. He's the co founder and CEO of American Financing, one of the major national mortgage companies. He's Damian Maldonado. Damien was born in Manhattan to a single mom of four. He grew up poor, as he says his family was on food stamps even in the good times. And he has interesting thoughts on what that taught him and we'll explore that today. Although American Financing is in Colorado, Damien has moved to Puerto Rico and widened his aperture to hospitality, movies and more. He's a newly minted pilot, family man, dog owner, and a fun and curious guy. Damien, welcome.

[Damian Maldonado]

Thanks, Bob. Thanks for having me.

[Bob Pittman]

Before we dig in today, I want to do you in 60 seconds.

[Damian Maldonado]

Are you ready? I'm ready.

[Bob Pittman]

Do you prefer cats or dogs?

[Damian Maldonado]

Dogs.

[Bob Pittman]

Early riser or night out?

[Damian Maldonado]

Early riser.

[Bob Pittman]

West coast or east coast?

[Damian Maldonado]

Oh, tough one. East coast.

[Bob Pittman]

Colorado or Puerto Rico?

[Damian Maldonado]

Puerto Rico.

[Bob Pittman]

City or country?

[Damian Maldonado]

City.

[Bob Pittman]

Coke or Pepsi?

[Damian Maldonado]

Coke.

[Bob Pittman]

Rock and roll or country?

[Damian Maldonado]

Rock and roll.

[Bob Pittman]

Books or movies?

[Damian Maldonado]

Books.

[Bob Pittman]

Cook or eat out?

[Damian Maldonado]

Eat out.

[Bob Pittman]

Call or text?

[Damian Maldonado]

Call.

[Bob Pittman]

It's about to get harder. All time. Favorite music artist?

[Damian Maldonado]

Bob Marley.

[Bob Pittman]

First job?

[Damian Maldonado]

Door to door. Avon and candy sells.

[Bob Pittman]

Smartest person you know.

[Damian Maldonado]

Richard Branson.

[Bob Pittman]

Childhood hero.

[Damian Maldonado]

Oh, maybe Tom Cruise.

[Bob Pittman]

Favorite sport to watch.

[Damian Maldonado]

Kite surfing.

[Bob Pittman]

Technology. You can't, I gotta say.

[Damian Maldonado]

The iPhone.

[Bob Pittman]

Favorite holiday?

[Damian Maldonado]

Summer trips with the kids.

[Bob Pittman]

Last one. What's something you can't live without?

[Damian Maldonado]

My kids.

[Bob Pittman]

Great answer. Okay, let's start with the less obvious. Flying. I've been a pilot for over 50 years and love aviation. And you just got your pilot's license. What motivated you to do that. And how did it happen?

[Damian Maldonado]

Well, I haven't quite finished it. I'm still work in progress. But being able to do a little island hopping from Puerto rico to the BVIs, St. Martin, St. Barts, all that sounds amazing because we're so close to so many islands.

[Bob Pittman]

Being up in the air, having that kind of freedom, has it changed your perspective on the world?

[Damian Maldonado]

I mean, there's nothing like flying. True freedom, being able to go from a place at the drop of a dime. I don't think there's anything more freedom than that.

[Bob Pittman]

What have you learned from flying that you can apply to your business?

[Damian Maldonado]

I mean, you have to be very focused, dedicated and on top of your game. Zero space for mistakes.

[Bob Pittman]

Before we turn to your business, I want to set the stage by going back in time to your childhood. Clearly this formed so much of who you are. Can you paint that picture for us? The time and the place?

[Damian Maldonado]

So early childhood, you know, I was born in New York, Puerto Rican descent. My parents, we lived here until they got divorced. Till I was 7, my dad never left Puerto Rico. And then my mom went to Colorado. So we were raised there, went to high school there. We started our business there early on. My mom worked at the FBI as a secretary, raising four boys on a $30,000 income. Then she lost her job at one point and winded up being homeless for four or five months, living in shelters. And at the time I was only 10 or 11. You know, we were sleeping with homeless people in rooms of like eight or so people. So that you really look at your, your life really different at that point. So that taught me a lot of lessons that I wanted to make money. And for me, a big thing that changed my childhood. My brother Oliver, he got me a lot of jobs. My first job, selling door to door candy, selling Avon. And I got a job at Toys R Us.

[Bob Pittman]

How old were you when you started those jobs?

[Damian Maldonado]

I must have been 10 or 11. And you'd go in these cars, they drop you off into the neighborhood, they give you a box and they'd meet you at a certain place. It was kind of scary. You go at night, knock on the door. Was both of us and he was couple years older than me, so he must have been 12 or 13. I used to then smile and then we'd do a presentation to tell you what you what to say and just smile and look cute and ask for the order. So that was kind of my first sales job. And then of course we did newspapers when we were that age. And my mom would wake up early, we'd do the papers. And that was interesting because back then you had to collect the money from the customers and go door to door and say, hey, it's time to pay your bill. So learning how to deliver the product and then collect the money, that wasn't our venture. So it was a family event. It was all of us rolling up papers at 6am, 5am and then doing that until you go to school seven days a week. Wow. But that taught you a lot. Taught you how to work and get up early and do those types of things, which is, you know, the staple of any business. Person wanted to succeed, but then, yes, got a job at Toys R Us as a cashier and stalker. 425 an hour. I remember that. Worked my way up as a manager, then started marketing health and fitness clubs. And that's kind of where I got my experience of sales and marketing.

[Bob Pittman]

So you did not do a formal education?

[Damian Maldonado]

Did not.

[Bob Pittman]

What did you miss with a formal education? And what did you gain by not having a formal education?

[Damian Maldonado]

Yeah, good question. I always saw my friends doing all these fun parties and that looked really fun. And, and I thought, man, if I could go to college, I would be able to go to all these parties. I mean, that one I thought for sure. As far as education wise, I think what I learned not going was a little bit different. This marketing company I worked at when I was 18, right out of high school. So if you bob, if you own the gym in Manhattan, we'd go and market it and we sell memberships. Five hundred to a thousand memberships in one to two months. We'd have a call center, they call people, schedule appointment. We had a presentation. We sell them a membership, a two year membership. The gym would service them, but it was a two year contract. And basically I did that in 30 states and then five different countries. Australia, New Zealand, England, the Scotland. That, that was my sales and marketing experience. So we'd open up an office and close it down in 30 to 45 days. And that taught me all the numbers, like what was the cost per lead, what was the projections? And that's how I learned my sales and marketing experience. And I don't know if college teaches that kind of thing.

[Bob Pittman]

And when you were doing all that, what did you imagine your future was?

[Damian Maldonado]

Well, a book in my growing as a business band was Anthony Nardo's Awakening Giant Within. That was the first time I was like, wow, you control your brain. And I could do whatever I want and I could do whatever I focus on. So that book was the first thing that I started believing in myself. And then once I started doing cells, I put those things together. So if you know how to do cells and you can control your brain and you could go whichever direction you want, then that's magic. So at that time I was like, whoa, I'm gonna be a billionaire. I, I figured out the formula. I just have to work hard, figure out a system and duplicate it. And that's kind of what we did.

[Bob Pittman]

Here you are, young kid, trying to help your family, worried about, you know, your day to day living. How did you discover Tony Robbins? How did that book land on you again?

[Damian Maldonado]

I owe a lot of credit to my brother Oliver. He was an entrepreneur all his life. And like even doing the Avon cells and door to door candy, I never done anything like that. And so he's like three years older than me, so he suggested I read that book. And once I read that book, it's a heavy duty book. I highly suggest it to people. If you do that book, it will change your life. And also not just do the book, but do the exercises eventually. Sometimes people do books and read them and they don't actually apply it. And in that case, it's not going to work. I remember one of my first, first class flights of my life when I was young. I must have been 20 years old or 21 years old. And this guy is like asked me, does that book really work? And I'm like thinking, not for you, I mean, because already you're thinking it's not going to work. And for me it worked really well.

[Bob Pittman]

So how did growing up without much shape you? What are the lessons you took from that?

[Damian Maldonado]

It made me appreciate money and look at money very differently. I'm not a big, I mean, probably for an average person, I guess I'm a big spender, but I'm not necessarily splurging. I really respect money and I really look at the bottom line. What's my cost per lead? What's her profit margin? I really focus on the profit margin. A lot of companies, you know, all these questions like, would you rather have $500 million business doing 10% or $100 million business doing 50% margins? You know, I picked a smaller one, less risk, higher margins, and you could scale that better. And I've seen a lot of companies too that raise money. They don't really look at that bottom line so carefully, especially when they're working with other people's money in it. We've bootstrapped the whole thing. The Whole time we've never borrowed a dime from anyone. So it's always been something that I've prior to myself is really focused on those profit margins and maybe would have been bigger though if we borrowed money. I've seen a lot of companies that have done that and done really well. But I think being brought up a little bit more humbly, you know, I have no debt. Making sure that our books are really clean on a balance sheet is really clean. I'm a little bit risk adverse. So I don't know if that's a positive or a negative.

[Bob Pittman]

You know, it's interesting. In everybody's life, I talk to who's had success. There's one sort of improbable jump. It's the big jump. And I know you were talking about some of the sales jobs you had. I knew you did yard work, you did janitorial work, and suddenly you get into mortgages. How did that happen?

[Damian Maldonado]

So that was a, a big jump because I was marketing. I was just finishing up a promotion in Glasgow in Scotland. But I was a little bit burnt out. Must have been 18, 19 years old, maybe 19, 20. But I had like $15,000 saved up in the bank and I'm like, whoa, I'm rich. Like, I'm going to go to LA or New York and figure out my life and see what I'm going to do next. But my brother picked me up at the airport and he's like, hey, I got you a job. You start on Monday at this mortgage company. And I'm like, mortgages? I don't know anything about mortgages. I want to go explore. I'm young, I want to go figure something out. I have money in the bank. He's like, no, I put my neck out for you. You got to start here. I started on a Monday and it was this company doing 125 mortgages back in the day. Those 25% over equity deals, which was part of the mortgage meltdown or part of the reason they say this company was only doing these postcards. That was the only type of advertising they were doing. So I go from doing radio, telemarketing and all these other forms, I pitched the CEO and I go, hey, I learned all these marketing techniques. Will you pay me $60,000 a year? Let me run your call center. Let me do all this. He agreed and it worked really well. That was an average of 4 to $5,000 per client at the time, which coming from a world of $19 a month for two year contracts, I'm like, Whoa. So we put the same exact techniques that we did marketing health and fitness clubs into mortgages. You need a lot less customers. And that was kind of the. You know, we're doing the math. And I used Love Excel, and you plug in some numbers, and very quickly you're like, wow, this is a.

[Bob Pittman]

This is an incredible business you started there. How did you go from working for somebody in mortgages to your own company? I guess the word is you used $5,000 of startup capital to get it started.

[Damian Maldonado]

So that company I mentioned, that was the one doing 125, they ended up going out of business. Wall street stopped buying that paper. So it put us in a situation like we needed to figure out what to do. So we went on our own. And back then, we started as a broker, which means, you know, you close under somebody else's name kind of by necessity. And what we learned, we put into effect. And then slowly there started building our reputation, our repertoire as far as becoming a banker and then hedging loans and things of that nature and getting more sophisticated with it, which we kind of wanted to do anyways, by the company closing down. I don't mind working at a company, and I think this is something I tell people, because nowadays everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, but obviously there's a high failure rate of that. If you find the right company that you could work at and help that company become bigger and better, you're probably better off, in some cases, at least for many years, than that extra risk. That was a necessity. But I really enjoy building companies. It's one of my favorite things to do.

[Bob Pittman]

You started local and you moved national. Why and how?

[Damian Maldonado]

Yeah, local is when you first start any business. Local is the best way. You know, start lean and mean or, you know, if you could go get money, a lot of people go and raise money. That's also a great approach. But I think if you start local and you figure out your market and you figure out how to scale that, it takes a lot of risk from going national. So for us in our industry is very. It wasn't back then, but it was very regulated. So you have to get a Colorado license in this case, and then you have to get another license. But national is the only way to go. I mean, America, where obviously is, from my opinion, on an entrepreneur basis, the best country in the world. And if it works in Colorado, it'll work in California. It works in California, it's going to work in Florida. So scaling. I mean, every market's different, so you have to adapt to each market. But by being able to do it successfully in one, you know, you hit the whole country. But you have to be set up for that and that's a different animal.

[Bob Pittman]

So I got to know you because you were such a big user of radio to build your business. How did you discover the power of radio and give us a clue about how you use it?

[Damian Maldonado]

What was crazy, when we first started our company, we used to do outbound telemarketing because that's the world I came from. So I know how to set up call centers and that world is really good. But I've never. As a consumer, I hate getting telemarketing calls right. As I'm sure we all do. So I didn't love doing that because it's just a tough business on your employees. And also customers don't like that and it's kind of a forceful sell. I don't like high pressure sells. Call to very high pressure, especially outbound telemarkets is high pressure. So my old mentor, actually his name is Dave Simpson, he used to work at the National Fitness Corporation. I called him and I was like looking for marketing ideas and he goes, you know what could be interesting is radio. I go, really? I don't know because I found this guy in Denver, his name is Mike Rosenberg and he's on a 50 KOA. They just lost one of their companies. So they have a slot for a financial company and do you want it? And I'm like, well, how much is it? He's like 350 for a 60 second spot. I'm like, what? That is so expensive. And I couldn't believe the cost at the time. Back then I was paying the telemarketers $10 an hour. So I'm like, that's 35 hours for a week. Let's just call David generated 20 leads. So I'm like, well, is this radio spot going to generate me 20 leads? And what it did was it generated maybe, I don't know, somewhere around five or six. And I was like, oh, that's not that great. But then after we saw our conversion ratios and the loan amounts, once we saw the numbers, we literally switched from outbound telemarketing to inbound call center in one month and got rid of all the call center activities and we just went straight to radio and we just did the math, reverse engineered it. It was amazing experience because I didn't think that was going to work that well. And the loan amounts were better, the quality was better, especially with Mike Rosen's endorsement.

[Bob Pittman]

So what do marketers not understand about radio?

[Damian Maldonado]

I think from my experience I'm talking to a lot of people, they'll do a two or three month program instead of like doing annually. I think the consistency of being out every day I think is really important, which I don't think a lot of marketers understand that you don't build a.

[Bob Pittman]

Business like you did without great management. What are your core beliefs about running a great company?

[Damian Maldonado]

Now, having the right people is essential and sometimes you outgrow them and you have to maybe either replace them or demote them, or sometimes it can be promoted, but it's all about the team. I mean, a business to me is nothing but having the right team. If you don't have that, you can't grow a business. I've heard these companies where they go, you know, we don't even do any marketing. And all I hear is like, wow, you're staying small and I imagine you're doing most of the work. And I think to build a great business and you know, there's small business that are great, but if you really want to grow it, you have to hire a team and you have to be able to trust those teams. And a lot of times my salespeople or my mortgage consultants, they could do it much better than I could. And I'm much, I rather that, you know, I haven't done it in many years. Customer service is our main focus. Always do what's right for the customer, the team second, because if you don't have the customers, you don't have a team.

[Bob Pittman]

So the corollary with this, talk a little bit about company culture. What does it do for you? How do you build it? How do you use it?

[Damian Maldonado]

Yeah, I think culture is very important. I read a lot of books and I still read a lot of books. One of the companies I really admire is Virgin. Their culture is extremely strong. And I read his books and I learned how he did it and then I put my own little magic into it. Zappos is a great company. You know, I've taken my management team there three times to go see how they do it. They show you around how it works and they've been voted one of the best companies to work for nationally, many years in a row. I met Tony Heisch and he has a book called Delivering Happiness. I think learning from what a lot of companies do and implementing it for your own company is very important. But it's everything. It's, you know, you're spending more time with your co workers sometimes than your Own family. So I want people to want to come in and work. You know, with this new Covid and this hybrid model, we're doing three days a week at the office, we were less than that. I prefer being in the office all the time, but I do believe a lot of work life balance. But I think having people wanting to come in to do the work rather than, you know, when we first started the business in 99, if somebody was late, I'd be watching that. And I was a little bit too strict and I think that was old school culture. But now, like, you show up half an hour late, hour late, just work the extra hour, just somehow make it up. And as long as you're hitting your numbers, we're good. Those are the things that I think are really important to give the teams nowadays expect that have both work life balance. And I agree with that. But I also very much into the customer service and hitting your numbers. You don't have good customer service, you're not hitting your numbers, you're going to go out of business.

[Bob Pittman]

So you've hired great people. How do you look for people and any words of wisdom on the interview process?

[Damian Maldonado]

I really focus on people that are hungry. I love experience, but if you have great experience but you have a bad attitude, it's not the right fit. If somebody's negative and is not looking for a solution based, you know, I've had people that complain, but, you know, what's the solution? How do we fix it? And do you want to be part of the solution? If you just want to complain and not help solve the problem, that, that's, that's a real problem. So I think in life and personal relationships and in business relationships, you always have to be focused on how to fix every single problem. And we find people all over the place. Indeed, online people that leave end up coming back to American financing. We really pride ourselves in that. We've been voted one of the best places to work in Colorado many years in a row. And it's our goal to want people that want to be there. And you know, if somebody doesn't want to be there, hey, let's talk about it part as friends, because we don't know what your future looks like. And maybe you want to be back, maybe you don't. But we always want to have really good relationship with people that are there or that are no longer there.

[Bob Pittman]

More on math and magic right after this quick break.

[Damian Maldonado]

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[Bob Pittman]

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[Damian Maldonado]

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[Bob Pittman]

Nice.

[Damian Maldonado]

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[Bob Pittman]

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[Damian Maldonado]

My dad works in B2B marketing. But I never really knew what that meant. Then one day, my dad came by my school for career day and told everyone in my class he was a big Roaz man. Then he just kept saying things like the bigger the Roaz, the better. Over and over. My friends still laugh at me to this day. I think it means calculating a return on ad spend. One thing's for sure. I'll be known as the Roaz man's kid for the rest of my days. Why couldn't you just be a fireman or a lawyer? Why? You ruined my life, dad.

[Bob Pittman]

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[Damian Maldonado]

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[Bob Pittman]

Clorox and feels like.

[Damian Maldonado]

All right, that could go on for a while.

[Bob Pittman]

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[Damian Maldonado]

Use as directed.

[Bob Pittman]

Welcome back to Math and Magic. Let's hear more from my conversation with Damian Maldonado. You built an amazing business, but there were certainly big bumps in the road along the way. The recent high interest rates, I know, had a huge negative impact on the mortgage business in general. How did you navigate that adversity, and how do you navigate all those bumps in the road?

[Damian Maldonado]

Yeah, that was extremely challenging. I mean, the whole industry as a whole, when rates went up, historic speed, it's never happened before, went from, you know, 3% all the way to 7 and 7 plus even 8%. So the whole market fell 90%. So we had to do layoffs about 90% of our people, which was really devastating. People that have been working there for over 10 years and even longer, it was very, very tough. But if you don't survive, then the whole company goes out of business. So when you get into that mode, which I hate to say it is kind of survival mode, and I think, you know, mentally it's really draining because you have to keep yourself going while you're doing these layoffs. And so it was. It was a challenge. But then we focused on our numbers, and before we did that, we put. Tried to put the pedal on the gas and try to market and do all the things that we know how to do, and that didn't work. So we ended up taking some pretty big losses. Last couple of years. It was really challenging, but, you know, focusing on riding out the storm, so to speak, is what we did. And now rates recently gone down, so we're back to hiring mode. A lot of the people that were there before are coming back, which is bringing a lot of great energy. They're excited to be there. The team that was there already is like, we're getting back to. We call it AFC 2.0.

[Bob Pittman]

We were talking about your move to Puerto Rico. It's got great weather, terrific tax benefits, but I doubt that's why you moved. What was your motivation?

[Damian Maldonado]

So I moved to Puerto Rico for kitesurfing. So Portugal is very windy. Ten months out of the year is windy. So perfect conditions for kitesurfing. And that was the goal is the kiteur. As a matter of fact, I didn't move here for taxes at all. After, you know, talking to all my friends and everybody's talking about it, I ended up going that route. But it was a year and a half after I got here. It's Two and a half, three hour flight to Miami, so it's still close. And you got direct flights everywhere. And the culture is very nice. I mean, the people are nice. They want to get to know you. It's. It's a really great place to live, but I came for that. And now we're building businesses here, and we're starting to do some of our mortgage operations here, and we're building quite a few different things here, and it's. It's a great place to be.

[Bob Pittman]

I gotta sort of take an aside here. What got you so interested in kite surfing?

[Damian Maldonado]

Well, I was in a. Well, actually 2008, me and my kid's mom, we're not. We're no longer together, but. But we ended up getting a second home in Miami. I'm in Devoni palace over there in 23rd in Collins, and I'm looking out the back, and I was. I see some guy kite surfing on the beach and I'm like, what is that? And that was the first time I saw it. But then once I started kiting and it's just. It was very meditative. You could, you know, fly on the water. You could do amazing tricks, you could jump really high. It's a great sport. You could really clear your brain. And I highly recommend it for anybody that's interested in any sport. Water sports, skiing, snowboarding. I love sports in general, but doing kai surfing is a whole different animal.

[Bob Pittman]

So your Puerto Rican background is clearly important to you. How has that culture influenced your own company's culture and management?

[Damian Maldonado]

Well, Puerto Rico. So I've been back for six years. I came here to open up kai surfing schools. We bought a little boutique hotel, Nuno Uno. It's a little bit challenging to do business in Puerto Rico, or very challenged, very political. It's hard to get permits. We basically took that same things that we learned from all the other businesses and we put it here. So in restaurants, for instance, you have a really good GM or a really good chef. And in our case, we went with a really good GM to make sure that they're taking care of the quality of the food. But same principles apply. Having a really good team, focusing on the customer service and adding a lot of value.

[Bob Pittman]

You're doing some TV movie, podcast production. Tell us a little bit about that.

[Damian Maldonado]

So we're building a media company. So I've met quite a few people doing movies here, like Marlon Ackerman, and she did three movies while I was here. And I learned about. There's great tax credits for that. You get 40% tax credit if you're filling from out of state and then 60% of use Puerto Rican staff. That's a great benefit in itself. Plus it's a great place to film. So the studio is going to be ready for movies, projects that I think are cool, that I maybe want to invest in, maybe not, I don't know. But we have space for about 40 people and rooms where they could just come with their team and film. And then also podcasts. We love that space. We love radio, we love podcasts.

[Bob Pittman]

You travel a lot. Why travel? What does it do for you?

[Damian Maldonado]

You know, traveling makes you look at the world with a very different perspective. You know, I recently went to India last year, and when you go to India, it gives you a respect for the world, how the world lives and how lucky we are to be in America. But also, you know, a lot of people in India were very happy and didn't have much and that. I really get an appreciation for that.

[Bob Pittman]

Let's talk about that story. You've got a great story.

[Damian Maldonado]

Sure.

[Bob Pittman]

A lot of kids look at it at you and say, I want to do that. What advice do you have for kids from circumstances like you grew up in who dream of having what you have?

[Damian Maldonado]

I always have the same advice, which is really simple. I mean, read books. I always recommend three books, and these ones and Disorder, you go Awakening Giant within, then Rich Dad, Poor dad, which, you know, is a very simple book on how to look at money and then think and grow rich. And then from there, there's a lot of others. But if you start with a base like that, and I, I wish they taught that in college or high school, it would be amazing. Teaches you about positive thinking, about how to be motivated. So if you start with a base like that and you actually apply, I guarantee you're going to be successful. The challenge is, you know, I've even tried to pay people, employees in the past, like, here's a hundred dollars. Read this book. You know, how many have done that? Zero. So it's one of those things that can't teach motivation. And I have had some people do it and they've become successful. And I'm not saying it was because of those books. I'm saying they were already going to be successful because they would read the books. And I don't think you need college. I don't think you need any of that. If you Google any subject you want, you're going to find a person that did that and has been there, done that. Read their biography, ideally autobiography, and the amount of information, you know, gain from that. And do it like you're studying. Do it like you're going to college. That is your college. And I guarantee success if you read and you apply what you learn and you keep reading and you keep learning. By that, you're going to find a mentor, latch onto that person, ask a lot of questions, and you're going to find another. And it just gets you down this path that when the. I love this line, when the student's ready, the teacher will appear. The way you get ready is by having the knowledge to even know what questions to ask.

[Bob Pittman]

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who are at that stage where they've been building the company and building it, they're still trying to bring it across the finish line. What advice helps them?

[Damian Maldonado]

I think main thing is, you know, really watch expenses. If you could bootstrap it, bootstrap it. And once you have your systems down, then maybe go ask for money if you have to at all. I started our company with $5,000 credit card. Me, me and my co partner started with 5,000 credit. We never had to use the credit card. That was our backup. But I got paid 500 a week if we had the money. And she got paid nothing for years. So we really bootstrapped it. And a lot of times our employees were making more money than us. It takes a lot of tenacity or a lot of guts to say, okay, well, geez, I'm going to ride this out. I remember one of my good friends, Carrie Hecker, came in with a check of $20,000. He was like, look at my commission for this month. And at the time, I'm making, you know, $2,000 a month. So he was 10x than what I was making. I was like, geez, I should just go get a job. You know, that pops in your head. And I'm like, no, we're doing this for the long run. But you, you can't help to think that. But we made our company into a billion dollar operation and that had I gave up, that wouldn't have happened. But that didn't happen for years. It took a long time to make the first million dollars. And when I say million dollars, I'm talking a million dollars gross. A lot of people use that term really loosely, like, what, what is, what is making a million dollars? Is that making it yourself net, or is it your company? Because when your company first makes a million dollars, you take out your expenses, you might only have $40,000 net. And, and that is your first million Technically, right. But you only made 40, $50,000. And that's a great accomplishment because if you could do that now you do 10 now 10 million, now it's 400,000. If you have those kind of margins. But then you figure out how you work on your margins and just stay lean and mean and tweak, tweak and tweak.

[Bob Pittman]

So what advice do you have about navigating work life balance? You mentioned it earlier. Or maybe even work life integration, depending on how you look at it.

[Damian Maldonado]

Well, I've changed my mind on some things. When I first started becoming successful and making good money, I read, you know, this four hour work week, which, you know, it's a great book, but I don't suggest it or recommend it anymore because it kind of got me a little bit lazy. And those things work, right? If, especially if you're successful. Yeah, you could automate some things. Yeah, but I think this hunger that the reason like Elon Musk and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world and they don't have to work. Right. They could have retired a long time ago, but guess what? They haven't because they get inspired by it and they didn't take their foot off the gas at all. And they're innovating and doing amazing things. So I think just not getting too comfortable, which can happen with success. And a lot of people say, oh, do your passion. Well, that's great advice, but what if your passion doesn't pay and everybody says, oh, you can figure out how to make money on your passion. I don't believe that. I first say, first figure out how you're going to make the best ROI and then implement your passion.

[Bob Pittman]

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your 18 year old self?

[Damian Maldonado]

Oh, my 18 year old self. I would say read a lot of books, which I did. Read a lot of books. Work really hard and don't stop. And when you do get successful, stay focused on your family, stay focused on making sure that you keep what's most important and don't get distracted by the money, which I think can happen to people. Just staying humble and learning from the mentors, the people that you really admire. Look what they do. Use that as a learning tool, as someone you want people you admire, do that. And also your circle. Make sure you're surrounding yourself with the right people. Some of my best friends are my team members and it's because we have the same visions and we work together and we work hard and it's fun to make money and Grow businesses with your friends. That's more fun actually than, than, than most things in life, I think.

[Bob Pittman]

Math and magic is about exploring both sides of business and marketing, the analytical and the creative side. We end each episode with our guests giving a shout out to their personal favorites for the greats on both sides of the equation. So who gets your nod for the best math oriented business person? Someone who sees it through the numbers.

[Damian Maldonado]

So one of my first mentors, I know he's not the best in the industry or anything like that, but he, he started a company called AS Dave Simpson started a company called National Fitness Corporation. That's where I learned how to do my sales and marketing. He did this production sheet that I still kind of use now. It's very sophisticated now, but back in the day was just how many leads, how many customers you got, what was your conversion ratio and out of that how many ended up becoming a sell. And then you, you do math. For instance, on a week, if you had seven days of sales, add those up divided by seven times that by seven, that's your projection and you could do the same for by four weeks or whatever. That little formula right. There has been a big reason why we've been successful all of our businesses. That math equation was amazing for me and there was many others. But to me that's business 101. Who.

[Bob Pittman]

Gets the nod for the best creative, the, the power of an idea.

[Damian Maldonado]

You know, I would have to say from examples I've heard is like Steve Jobs, I mean to me would be the most magical magician. In 2007 when he introduced the iPhone, that was magical and he ended up disrupting many industries. But now we can't even walk out our doors without somebody staring at a screen. And for better or for worse, and it's an amazing innovation, but we are stuck to our screens like nothing else. So that was a very magical thing that he did and at the time it was revolutionary. Still revolutionary. And it became the standard. So I really admire what he did. In industry, is an amazing businessman and that's something that changed the world.

[Bob Pittman]

Damien, you've got an amazing and inspiring story. And the good news is you still got so much ahead of you. Thanks for sharing it with us today. Here are a few things I picked up from my conversation with Damian. 1. Don't get too comfortable with success. Even when you're on top of your company or your industry, you shouldn't take your foot off the pedal. There's always room for improvement and innovation. Plus you never know when the economy could take a downturn and honing your survival instincts is essential. 2. Education can take many forms. Just because Damien and didn't go to college doesn't mean he didn't seek out knowledge and lessons. There's so much to be gleaned from books and mentors. That is, as long as your mind is open to the idea that they have something valuable to teach you and absorbing information isn't enough, need to be adamant about applying it to your life and your leadership. 3. Being risk adverse doesn't mean you can't grow. In today's world, risk taking is often applied applauded for the big payoffs, but Damien's humble origins led him to take a bootstrapping approach to business. He's living proof that sticking to your own financial means doesn't have to limit what your business is capable of. Instead, being conservative can help you perfect your business model at a local level. Then, when you're ready to expand, you do it right. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart podcasts. The show is created and hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sydney Rosenblum for booking.

[Damian Maldonado]

And wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.

[Bob Pittman]

The Math and Magic team is Jessica Kreimcic and Baheed Fraser. Our executive producers are Ally Perry and Nikki Itor.

[Damian Maldonado]

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[Damian Maldonado]

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[Damian Maldonado]

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[Bob Pittman]

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[Damian Maldonado]

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[Damian Maldonado]

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