Amin Ahmed: Hello and welcome to the Be Well, Do Well podcast.
Today is a bonus episode where I'm excited to chat with a remarkable entrepreneur
that's going share his amazing story of struggle, success, and extremes.
At four years old with eight kids, Juan's mother and father left Mexico
to start a new life in America.
By nine, he was getting up at 5:00 AM and working in the garlic fields
with his brothers and sisters.
So as you can tell, hard work is not a stranger to Juan, and I'm so excited
to learn about the mindset that got him to where he is today as the president
of Sage Real Estate, the leading multi-family and commercial real estate
brokerage in Long Beach, California.
Welcome to the show, Juan.
Juan Huizar: Thank you so much for having me.
Amin, I'm excited to be here and um, yeah.
Thank you for, for the intro.
Amin Ahmed: Absolutely.
Now, before we get started, I have to ask, I've got one sister, one sibling,
and she's been a big influence in my life, but we don't always get along.
You've got seven siblings.
I'm curious what that looks like in the Huizar household.
Juan Huizar: You know, it's the most interesting thing,
how close we are till this day.
We are like, we are on this massive text thread where all the siblings are on
it, all my sisters, all my brothers, and it's like we're kids like, we're like
high school kids texting left and right.
And people are, you know, sending pictures of their kids, kids graduations,
kids birthday parties, weddings that are coming up within the nieces and
nephews because now there's a lot of us.
Right.
And, people are amazed that there's this much level of love and
communication with all eight siblings.
I guess I'm amazed by it too.
And if anything, you know, sometimes people are like similar to you or you
know, if you have one sibling or two siblings and maybe I think with, there's
so many of us and we're all different.
But I think because there's so many, if someone was gonna be left out,
the, there's someone in that family that would kind of bring 'em along.
And so it's amazing, you know, how close we are still.
And this last weekend I got to see everybody.
We had a nephew get married.
And to get everyone to get everyone together is the best thing.
It's, it's all I could ask for.
Amin Ahmed: Hatch, match, and dispatch, I always say, right, Like when a baby's
born, when you get married and when unfortunately somebody passes away, Right?
The family comes together.
Yeah, definitely.
Family's always a big thing for us, you know, as East Indians, I, I was
born in Africa where heritage is, East Indian family's a big thing, right?
Back in the day that you all live in a small village, all the kids running around
and you know, that was the way it was.
My parents always taught us that education is priority.
And I, and I know that your parents also taught that as well, so correct
me if I'm wrong, but all of the eight siblings all got college degrees.
Juan Huizar: Yeah.
Correct.
So probably my parents' biggest accomplishment in their life is to
be able to get their kids out of Mexico where at that time the highest
education that we could have gotten from the, from the, from the little
town that we lived in was sixth grade.
So my parents only have a sixth grade education.
And because of that, they didn't want us to experience that.
And that's the, that's the reason why they left Mexico.
And so their biggest accomplishment was to bring us to the US, and I'm, I'm super
thankful that, you know, I'm an American citizen and, and that all eight of us had
the opportunity for college education and yeah, all, all eight of us have degrees.
And that, I think that's my parents's biggest accomplishment.
Amin Ahmed: That's amazing.
That's amazing.
Now, in the intro I mentioned about hard work not being a stranger to you.
Tell me a little bit about you being nine years old and getting up early in
the morning at 5:00 AM on a hot summer day going out to the garlic field.
When your friends from school are probably out riding their bicycles
or playing, what, what does that feel like when you're doing that?
Juan Huizar: You know, when I was, when I was eight, Well, listen,
when we came from Mexico, we came here for one goal was education.
For, for us.
Okay.
And so my, my parents, you know, so my dad worked in the field.
My mom worked at a little local Mexican restaurant.
They didn't speak English.
So this was like entry level minimum wage jobs that they were entering.
And so the family needed to contribute.
At that time, like the youngest was three years old and it went all the way up.
And every two years I feel like we, there was another sibling that
we had, so everyone had to work.
By the time I would see them in the summers go to the fields, I
had been asking since I was seven years old to asking my dad and mom
to please send me, because I saw, yeah, it was hard work, but they were
together and I loved my siblings.
And so although they were waking up super early and coming back tired
and fatigued and exhausted from working in the, in the, in the fields
all day, I wanted part of that and.
When I was nine, my dad finally let me go and I got to wake
up early with everybody else.
And this is in the Central Valley, so the Central Valley of
California a hundred plus degrees.
Every single day.
And you know, back then they would clip the garlic by hand.
And that's the work that we did.
And so this, this starts in July.
So from July, all the way through the end of August, you're working in the fields.
That is when, that is, when the crop is being clipped.
And so we were there at the, at the hottest peak in the summer, and that
was what we were doing every single day.
This was Monday through Saturday.
Amin Ahmed: Wow.
Wow.
And that, I mean, that, that sounds like just from what you're saying,
the heat getting up early, right?
Being out there it sounds like hard work.
Juan Huizar: So let me, let me tell you one of my biggest takeaways from
working in the garlic field, when, when we're working in the fields back
then after you clipped the head of the garlic and the bottom of the garlic,
you know, it's kind of a garlic bulb.
Right?
So each one of those goes into a five gallon bucket.
An empty five gallon bucket, something that paint would come in.
Right.
But now it's just been cleared out.
Yeah.
So you do that until you fill it up, and once you fill it up,
you've, you've earned a dollar.
So they give you a card and they punch the card and.
Now, I was nine years old, so like on my, my first week I was filling
up per day, nine buckets a day.
So I was, I was, I was making $9 a day and it wasn't that I was making is
all of us worked together as a family.
So whatever the family made that day all went back to help my mom and dad.
I learned early on that the harder I work, the harder I get rewarded.
And so my brother was a little bit older, so he was making more than nine.
And then by the end of the summer, you know, I was starting to make more and
more and in my head I was like, wait, the faster, the harder that I could
clip this garlic, like the more money I could contribute towards a family.
So taking that, taking that on, and, and applying that through, you
know, elementary and we got middle school when you got high school.
Well, now I'm in college, right?
And so, In college, if you're an accounting student, where I was in school,
every accounting student, like their dream job was to work for one of the big four.
So this is Deloitte and Touche, KPMG, Earnston Younge
and Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
So these are still what they call the big four.
They're the big four accounting firms in the world still to this day.
So when you're an accounting student, they, they tell you,
Hey, you have to have good grades.
You need to be involved and have leadership roles.
You need to interview well.
And so all these things, you know, at the university that I went to,
I didn't know how to interview.
Amin, I didn't even know how to properly handshake.
You know, tying a tie and all these things were things that I was not exposed to.
Like, I didn't have a dad or an uncle or anyone that taught me these things.
So now, so now I'm at the, at the university and I realize that the
university has mock interviews where you could practice interviews.
And so I took advantage of all the resources that they had, and I learned
all these things that I didn't know.
And so by the time, by the time, by the time the accounting companies came
around, I made sure that my grades were, were the best they could be.
You know, I graduated with honors.
I made sure that I was involved at the club levels and that I
would take leadership roles there.
And so, you know, I was bilingual.
That certainly helped.
And by then I, I had practice just to get good mock interviews.
I would, I would attend these clinics, these little courses they
would have, and I would just go until I got better and got comfortable.
And so I was fortunate enough that because I did everything that I was asked of me.
And in my head, in back of my head was like, Hey, the harder you work,
the harder you're gonna get rewarded.
Because I'm bringing these kind of that same work ethic that I
got early on working in the garlic fields that as a junior the first
company to give me a job offer.
This was like a year before I even graduated was Deloitte Touche.
Yeah, so they gave me a job offer and what ends up happening in the accounting
world is once a firm gives you an offer, the others all kind of follow, like, oh,
like, hey, they were vetted by so and so.
And so then, then came all the others.
And so that was gonna be my path, is I, They said I ended up signing with Deloitte
and Tush because they were the first ones I felt that were actively recruiting me.
They were the ones who wanted me.
The others kind of followed along after someone said yes to me.
And so I'm like, you know, like I wanna be loyal to them.
I feel like they saw the talent and maybe potential in me.
And so I had signed on with Deloitte and I'm a junior in college and I
have one more year to finish and I, and they say, Hey, just finish now.
You know, the stress is off of, Like, what are you gonna do for a living?
This is what you're gonna do.
You're gonna do, you're gonna work in the world of audit, right?
It's not a sexy world, but you're gonna work in the world of audit
and within three to five years, you'll, you'll become a cpa.
You'll work your way at management, you're gonna work a lot of hours.
But you're gonna have a lot of connections and, and resources.
And this is, you know, this is a way to to start off as a professional.
So I was excited.
You know, this, this was gonna be my, this was gonna be my career.
Amin Ahmed: That's amazing.
Now, before we get into what happened next, I want to touch a little
bit on the fact that we're both parents, we both have young kids.
So how do you instill that, that drive and hunger in your kids from a young age?
How old are your kids again?
Juan Huizar: So I have two daughters a 12 year old Vivian, and then my
my nine year old Solana, she's, so I got 12 and nine year old daughters,
Amin Ahmed: What advice do you have for the parents listening here, for instilling
that need and that desire to want to do more and not just get distracted by all
the, the digital, the tech, the screens?
Juan Huizar: I mean, I, That is a really tough question because, I did it out
of fear and there was no safety net.
Right?
I did it out of fear and there's no safety net.
Mm-hmm.
well.
Your kids and my kids have a safety net.
They have us.
Okay.
So that, So that's the very tough part.
And so, but as I think about it more, because I do get this question asked
often, Well, Juan, how can you take what you have and now give your kids?
Cuz what you have, you're like, you really want more and you want the best out of
yourself and you're gonna push yourself.
The only way that I could possibly teach that is just through being
who I am, and they get to see it every day being who I am.
And they get to see it every day.
Now teaching the, you know, they're never gonna work in the garlic
fields, but I, but I've done a little miniature documentary on my family.
I took a camera crew up to the Central Valley where I'm from to capture what life
was like, you know, the, the whole waking up early, we caught that all on video.
I actually went back to the garlic fields and I got permission from one of
the farmers to, to record what that is.
And so it's some of those things.
I interviewed my sisters, my brothers, and we talked about what life was like
in Mexico, what it was like coming to the US and actually crossing the border
and, and then what life was like here when we were having to work in the field.
And so these are videos that now we have, these are videos that my daughters get to
watch our nieces and nephews get to watch.
And it's just a constant reminder of where we came from.
Life is much, much different for you now, but we're not gonna forget why we're here.
And still it's why are we here is education.
And I, and that's still the goal with my daughters.
It's educatation.
It's still to them.
Exact same thing.
The, the exact same message my parents had for us, I want them to have as well.
Our
Amin Ahmed: parents when they moved here, you know, mine from
Africa and, and yours from Mexico.
It was, they were working a lot.
They were working hard, you know, they had little, and it's hard to
have a wellness routine, Right.
To, to find that balance, which is so elusive.
Juan Huizar: Yeah.
So one of the, I guess, newest activities is that we picked, I picked up running, I
you know, I think I had mentioned before that I had done 11 years of CrossFit
where like, you know, I got physically fit and CrossFit's like a different type of
quick fast workouts with heavy weights.
And so that was great.
And then I kind of picked up running.
And so for the last three years I've done multiple, multiple trail
runs, marathons, half marathons.
And then most recently I got into a triathlon.
And so I did my first half Ironman.
And so I spent, yeah, I wake up really early and I spend a lot
of time either riding the bike, swimming or running depending on
what the schedule is for the day.
Amin Ahmed: And so what does your morning routine look?
Juan Huizar: So I wake up at five in the morning.
I spend 10 to 15 minutes meditating.
I spend 15 minutes writing.
There's a terrific book.
It's called the artist way morning pages, if you read that book, you'll
see the importance of just writing.
And so I write and a lot of ideas and creativity comes out and you
don't even know where they come from.
And, and it's this beautiful thing.
So meditation, I write, I stretch.
I'm a big believer in stretching.
I stretch every single day because I know I'm gonna push my body and
I don't want my body to break down.
I don't want it to let up.
And then after that is when I start my, my workout of the day, whatever that might.
Amin Ahmed: That's amazing.
Yeah.
Getting up early.
It definitely has benefits.
I get up pretty early and I, I know when I, I was never a early morning
person growing up, and then I started to become one and I saw those benefits
and I've also done the morning pages.
Is there something when you're doing the morning pages, like you have a
column on the side that's like, when I have this inspiration or something,
you know, the spark of genius, you just like jot it down on the side.
What's your process for that.
Juan Huizar: So the, the, the way the book reads is you, you just start
writing anything and if you have nothing to write, you write your name.
Or if you have nothing to write, write the things you're grateful for.
But this is not a journal, this is once you start writing ideas start coming up.
And I'm not even like trying to like, Bring these ideas up.
I just start writing and things come up, or feelings come
up and it leads to results.
Or it sparks this light, light bulb in my head of like, Aha.
I could use that either towards something for the family,
something personal, something financial, or even for my business.
And I really, really enjoy it.
Something I would've never done in the past.
But you know, I gotta learn from the people that are doing it.
Right.
And a lot of people do do write in the morning.
Amin Ahmed: Do you find that it helps you overcome like blockages
if there's something you're working on and you're stuck?
You may not be going into the morning pages with a looking for a
solution, but do you ever just like find the solution when you're, when
you're letting it flow through you?
Juan Huizar: Sometimes you find solutions to problems you
didn't know you had . Okay.
That is the most amazing part.
And when you go back and you start reading, there's patterns to what
you're writing and then you get to see like, , I address that concern.
I address that issue.
I actually did that.
Then it feels so good.
And if you didn't, you know what ends up happening is that all of us have all these
ideas and stresses in our, in our head.
You need to get 'em outta your head.
This is the one way that I get them out of my head.
Amin Ahmed: Do you mind sharing something that, like a problem
that came up or a challenge that you didn't even know you had?
Juan Huizar: So typically they're like, work, Well, typically
they're like marketing problems.
Like, who am I gonna hire?
Sometimes it's like, who am I gonna hire next?
Interesting.
You know, like, you know, for anyone who's an entrepreneur,
they're like, We want more leads.
And so, you know, a lot of us who are entrepreneurs, there's like
a hundred different things that are going on through our heads.
And, you know, we're, we're the rainmakers, we're the marketers,
we're everything for our business.
And so more recently I was like, okay, where, where are my pain points in my
business and what are the things that I no longer want to be doing because I want my
productivity to be at a hundred percent.
I want to do the things that, that like my time is.
Best use.
Right?
And so what came up, I made a list of the things I didn't want to
do, and through that I was able to hire someone to handle that list.
And that came directly, directly from morning pages,
just writing in the morning.
Amin Ahmed: That's pretty cool.
That's really cool.
Now I promise that we'd come back to what you do now, and
you could have been an account.
But you're not one now.
So what happened there when you had your offers?
Juan Huizar: You know, it's interesting.
I spent all my, you know, five years in college getting this job
with this accounting firm, right?
And then, so there I am with the, everyone wanted to be in my position,
a junior going into the senior year knowing that you have a full-time job.
Like that is what, this was in 2003.
And so then I had a salary waiting for me.
It was, it was great.
Well, as a senior, I meet someone, and his name's Mark Malan.
And Mark Malan was a real estate investor.
He was a real estate broker, appraiser contractor.
He was all these things surrounding real estate.
I met him as a senior and he offered me a job and I needed a
job during that time as a senior.
And I started working alongside him.
And as I was working with him, I saw him building wealth through real estate.
And so I saw him buy commercial buildings, and he would always figure out, so
he would buy like vacant commercial buildings, downsize them into smaller
commercial spaces, improve the property, and then bring in new tenants, bring
in good income, and then he would refinance and then build wealth.
And he and I would see what he was doing.
He did this with commercial buildings, he did it with apartment buildings where
he was always looking to add value.
Sometimes he would simply refinance it and like keep the property.
Mm-hmm.
and other times he would sell it and buy another larger property.
And I saw this with hotels, self storages, commercial buildings, apartment
buildings, houses, whatever he could do to build wealth, he was doing it.
So my entire senior year was, You know, getting through the last of my accounting
courses and working with Mark as his assistant, you know, I was just running
around with whatever he needed of me.
Well, as I got close to graduating, Mark got used to having me around.
Okay?
And so he said, Hey, I know you told me that you wanted to be a
CPA and do this accounting thing.
No pressure, but I would love to keep you.
Like, what is it that they're gonna pay you?
I'll match the salary, but more importantly, I will teach you how
to build wealth through real estate.
And at first I said, No way.
Like, like I'm, I'm set.
I'm gonna be a CPA.
And everyone, I mean, for the most part, if you tell someone you're a
CPA, and granted I was 22 years old, very, I was young and, and to think
that I was gonna be a CPA and, and you know, that was gonna be well respected.
My parents get to tell their, their friends, Hey, you know,
Juan is gonna become a CPA.
I thought that was gonna be my path.
And so at first I told Mark, no.
Hey, I'm just gonna stick on this plan.
Back then, it was all about your resume and who you had on your resume and who
you work with, and so I told him no.
And then what I realized was the accounting recruiters that were recruiting
me, I told them what I was doing during my senior year as a, as a senior and
who I was working with while they wanted me to set up meetings to meet Mark.
They, they were, the accounting recruiters were more interested
in what I was doing with Mark than what they were doing in accounting.
Hmm.
And so then that kind of got my head scratching, right?
Yeah.
And I was like, Wait, why is it that they're more interested in learning how to
building wealth through real estate when they're, you know, they're all CPAs now.
Like, aren't they happy with that?
And I thought, and well, kind of a small story.
So Mark Mullan is the person who offered me the job.
His mentors a guy named Jeff Chauncey.
And so Jeff Chauncey, I got to meet every now and then.
Well, the day that Jeff Chauncey was set to retire and he was gonna move to
Florida, he, I ran into him at the bank.
And so Jeff waited for me to be done with what I had to do, and.
I'm in the middle of, of like my decision making, right?
Like what am I gonna do?
Which direction, you know, fork in the road.
They're both good options.
Where do I go?
And so Jeff waited for me and he's like, Hey Juan, I'm about to catch my flight.
I'm leaving.
I just want to, you know, say it was good to meet you.
He's like, If I could give you some advice, He's like, I know
Mark asked you to stay on with him.
And he said, If I was you, he says, I would go learn how to
build welath in real estate.
He said, because that is unlimited.
He says, If you become a CPA, yes you'll have a good salary,
but you're gonna be capped.
You're gonna be capped in, in, in that profession.
He said, But if you could learn the way that Mark is building wealth,
there's no limit to what you could do.
And kind of hearing it from someone who had already made it
was retiring, you know, he had his yacht waiting for him in Florida.
I was like, Well, And he said, Hey, what's the worst that could happen?
You could always go back to accounting.
So I, that day I pick up the phone, I called Deloitte and
Touche and they were so upset.
I called them and I said, I'm sorry, but I decided to go in a different
direction and they were upset, you know, they were waiting for
me to graduate and go that route.
But, you know, as a, you know, by then I was 23.
I, you know, I, I guess I took a leap of faith afterwards.
Everyone, all my friends and all the kids in my accounting
department thought I was an idiot.
They're like, You blew your chance.
You worked so hard for this, and you're just going to go do real estate.
That makes no sense.
And so through the years there was, there was times where I was
like, I may have made a mistake.
Yeah.
And you know, now it's, you know, over 20 years or something that I've have
graduated since, been out of college.
And now looking back, it was the best decision that I could have made.
But early on it's hard to know that, you know, now looking back, I'm so glad that
I, that I made the decision that I made.
Amin Ahmed: You know, hindsight is always 2020, right?
You look back and you're like, I know I made the right decision now.
But when that doubt, crept in.
What did you do?
Did you, did you consider going back?
Did you, were you just like, I'm stubborn, I'm just gonna keep going
? Juan Huizar: No.
You know, and I don't, and I wouldn't even say that I'm stubborn.
I, I always know that a lot of people know more than me and I'm
open to learning from everybody.
Yeah.
But You know, there was a lot of early success that I had
in real estate thanks to Mark.
You know, he showed me how to get started and how to invest and
how to you know, create wealth.
And so all these things started happening early on.
And so when things got tough I.
I always wondered what if, like, what if I would've become a cpa?
What if, if I would've joined this company that there was always that,
but at no point did I wanna go back and call them and say, Hey, I'm ready.
You know, I'm ready to come back.
Yeah.
And certainly now it does.
Now it doesn't even cross my head at all.
Yeah.
. Amin Ahmed: It's good.
Yeah, that's a good thing.
One of the mantras that we have at home here is that everything
in life is a wonderful journey.
and we tell our kids it's wonder filled because you don't
know what's gonna happen next.
And it's a journey because it's not just the destination that you're going after.
Mm-hmm.
. And you know, when I hear your story about moving from Mexico, you
didn't know what was gonna happen.
Right.
Then you go to school, then you go to middle school and
high school and then college.
Right.
And even at the end of that journey where people think that college is, you know,
graduated from college as your end goal.
You still were ready to take that 90 degree turn.
I mean, it is crazy, but I'm, I'm happy that it worked out for you, right?
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Now, are there any, any productivity hacks?
Like you, you're a very efficient person to get all of this stuff done.
You've got kids, you, you know, you're, you're busy in your business
and you take time to, to run crazy, crazy marathons and stuff.
Right.
Do you have some productivity hacks that you'd like to share with our audience?
For, for them to get stuff done?
Yeah.
Juan Huizar: And it's gonna be as simple as filling up your calendar
with the things that are important.
Nice.
Filling up your calendar.
So if you look at my calendar 5am to 7:30am, completely blocked off.
Mm-hmm.
5am to 7:30am, because that's gonna be my morning routine and my workout.
This is every day.
Yeah.
And then, but then, you know, obviously then we schedule out
the day, but then when I get home, six to eight, phone is off.
Phone is off because I do not wanna walk into the house with being on the phone and
then I have to wait to hug my daughters.
No way.
So it's off.
I put it in my briefcase, I zip it up and I just leave it in my car.
Now because I own my own business, I know things are gonna happen between that two
hour window and after we put 'em to bed, then I'm gonna come grab it and there
might be some work that I have to get to.
Right.
But there's a lot of scheduling and so I feel like, you know, when it comes
to working out, cuz people do say, Well, how do you have time to work out?
It's again, early morning is getting that stuff in, in the morning.
Then I don't have to worry about.
You know, I'm the kind of guy where like I have to work out every day.
Like this is like seven days a week.
There's really no recovery, even though they say that's good, right?
It's, I'm just going hard.
And so then I go hard in the morning and then I check that box and like
my body doesn't need that anymore.
Right?
And now, you know, I could go hard at work and then, then I could go hard
in being the best dad and husband that I could be once I get home.
But.
Everything has to go on the calendar.
Every little thing has to go on the calendar.
And that's probably, in terms of being productive, that has to be
the number one thing, you know?
But, you know, there's a lot of apps.
I mean, I use, you know, Headspace, I use Headspace for for my meditation.
You know, there's a, there's a certain app that I use for
stretching, and so I let you know.
I'm a consumer of these products because it makes my life easier and
it takes the decision making off of my hands, and I'm like, Okay.
I just follow the script that they have for that day.
Amin Ahmed: Yeah.
I love that.
I love that because when you say take that decision out of your head, right?
Like I said, so many people yesterday I was talking to my son and I said,
When you have too many decisions to make, you go into decision.
In decision, and then you're stuck.
You can't make any decisions.
Right.
And do you, do you sometimes get stuck in there where you're like,
Or does that morning pages and meditation, does that help you not
get stuck in making a decision.
Juan Huizar: Everyone's gonna get stuck.
It's just how long do you get stuck and how frustrated does that make you?
And, and you know, really what ends up happening is that
frustration gets you more stuck.
And there's really right.
There's no productivity in being frustrated.
And so I'm not gonna say that, you know, my morning routine clears everything.
You know, you're still gonna get stuck.
Mm-hmm.
. And that's why like I have a wonderful team in my business and.
Man, I love mastermind and brainstorming with people.
I love it.
With any issue that I have, I'm like, Can't have this idea or
this thing's bothering me and I'll bring it up to my team.
And just getting ideas on top of ideas and their ideas and leading off of that
and building and building on ideas from a business perspective is my favorite thing.
And typically, you know, to, to your point, I still get stuck,
but I will talk about being stuck with other people, right?
And through that through that collaboration is
where solutions are found.
Amin Ahmed: So we've learned quite a bit about you in terms of, you know,
your backstory, your, your morning routine, your wellness routine.
But is there any one thing that people would be genuinely
surprised to learn about you?
Juan Huizar: Well, it's probably not a good thing, but lifelong severe stutterer.
I am a lifelong severe stutterer.
And, Amin, this is something that for the longest time in my life I wouldn't talk
about because I didn't wanna face the fact that I had this speech impediment.
And so I tried to hide it.
I try, but I mean well into my adulthood.
This is high school, college.
And I realized, Amin that one of the reasons why I chose accounting.
Subconsciously, I chose a profession where I didn't have to speak.
I chose a profession that really you could do auditing and you're really not having,
or this is what I thought, that you didn't have to speak with a lot of people.
And so it wasn't till I was about 35 that I got a little bit of therapy and I joined
Toastmasters and I faced my biggest fear.
It's just regular communication.
So I mean, when I say that I stuttered, I was afraid of picking up the phone
and saying, Hi, can I speak with Amin?
Like that would not come outta my mouth.
There'd be like this.
I would get jammed up with my words.
They wouldn't flow out properly.
I couldn't order at a restaurant like so for the longest time.
Till this day, my wife will still order for me cuz she knew how much
of a struggle it was for me to order.
Wow.
And so now that I said yes to your podcast, it's because through through
Toastmasters and through like facing my fear, through facing my biggest fear,
this is years and years and I've stuttered since I was a kid, since we left Mexico,
I had this massive stuttering problem and at some point a couple years ago, I, I
saw that Toastmasters was actually helping me for some, you know, it's, it's weird.
My, my favorite saying is, working on a weakness reduces the fear of it.
Working on a weakness reduces the fear of it.
I was finally facing this fear and I was going into this group
and I was on stage a small group.
Right.
Toastmasters is this group where we practice, had a public speak, right?
I was there not to public speak, I was there just to speak.
I was there just to talk.
And so that started giving me confidence and I got better.
And so now it's interesting, I tell people and they're like, No, like it was severe.
This was not like, Oh, Juan's you know, when you're little,
it's like, Oh, he's cute.
He stutters, right?
Mine was not cute.
It was like this.
Being, being in college, knowing the answer and not being, being fearful to
raise your hand because you're gonna stumble through your words, was my entire
most of my life I've been a stutterer.
So now the only I bring this up only because it does feel good for me to talk
about it and say, this is what I am.
Because for the longest time I've tried to pretend like, Oh, no, no, no.
I just, I said that wrong.
I was trying to like hide it and now I'm like, Okay, this is who I am.
I still have it.
I'll never get rid of it a hundred percent.
But now that it's gone away, I say yes to every speaking engagement where I'm
asked, because I feel like for the first time ever, I could get my words out and
I'm like just so thankful and blessed that I could, that I could do that.
And I know that's simple for anyone who hears this says,
Man, that's just speaking.
But like, not everyone could do that.
And, and that was my disability.
And so, I don't know, that's not like a fun story, but it's just
a story that I felt like sharing.
Amin Ahmed: Oh, that's amazing.
One, thank you for sharing that.
Thank you for the vulnerability there.
You, you're blowing my mind right now because, you know, I thought, I thought
I, I could contain the extremes, but like, you know, 35 and now I know I
was doing some research on you before our call and you've got a YouTube
channel, dozens of videos there.
Can you talk a little bit about the business and the content that you
create on YouTube and what it is that you hope to do through that for your
for your clients and the audience.
Juan Huizar: Got it.
So what I've done is more from building trust.
You know, like when you're in a business and you know this, is that we, we
try to build trust book appointments and serve our clients, right?
Those are the main three things that we're doing no matter what you're doing, right?
But in order for me to really scale as a business I needed to show people what I'm
about and so what I'm passionate about.
And so, because I've, I learned early.
You know after college how to build wealth through real estate.
And so I, I've been fortunate enough where I own large portfolio of properties and
Mark held up to his end of the bargain.
Juan, I'm gonna teach you how to build wealth, how to, how to, how
to become independent and wealthy.
By owning real estate.
So he did that.
And so now what I do is through my YouTube channels, teach others exactly
what he taught me and now I get to put my experience and my little twist to it and
things that maybe I, I use or I learn.
And so our YouTube channel is dedicated to teaching people how to build
wealth through real estate ownership.
Whether it's apartments, condos, houses, everything.
A lot of people want this information.
And so our YouTube channel has, is growing, it's growing quickly and we
have a lot of subscribers coming into us.
And, and that is really at first, when I got started with this, it was this
was actually part of my therapy is having the camera on me having to speak.
This was not something that I wanted to do, but.
The feedback and the comments and the support and the people sending back
comments saying, Hey, I just did this because of your video, or I would love to
work with you and your team, or Can you refer me to someone in such and such place
because I'm not in your area and now we're ready to do this, Or, We bought our first
investment property because of you, or now we're on our third one because of you.
It's those comments.
I mean, that just keep me wanting to keep doing this.
It's just, it feels good that people care this much about the one, you
know, one of the things that I'm really passionate about and And I'm super, super
happy with the success of the channel.
Amin Ahmed: Oh, that's beautiful.
When you hear people telling you the success that they've had as a result of
something you've spent time, you know, overcoming your challenges with stuttering
and, and getting in front of the camera.
What's the name of the YouTube channel so that our audience can look it up?
Juan Huizar: Yeah, so it's just youtube.com/sagerealestate.
So Sage Real Estate is my company, and the sage is, you know, sometimes
people ask, Why'd you choose that?
Sage is another word for wisdom.
Mm-hmm.
. And I would like to think that like when we're advising our clients and our
friends on, on the next investment step to make that it, that it's, it's backed
with a lot of wisdom and sage advice from what we're telling people to do.
Amin Ahmed: Well throughout our time together here, you've definitely shared
a lot of sage advice for us, and I just wanted to thank you so much for taking
the time, first of all, and coming on and talking about it sharing some
of your feelings and vulnerabilities.
And if our audience wanted to get ahold of you, where can, what's your website
or where can they get ahold of you?
Juan Huizar: Yeah, so check out our YouTube channel, but my, my
website is um, www.sageregroup.com.
So that's sage re for real estate re group.com.
So check it out if, if anyone has any questions or wants to
run something by me, I, you.
Tell, tell me that you heard me on Amin's podcast, and I would
love that, Love to hear from you.
Amin Ahmed: That's awesome.
Okay.
Once again, Juan, thank you so much.
I really appreciate your time and I'm really grateful that you were
able to spend some time with us.
Juan Huizar: Amin, it was a lot of fun.
Thank you for having me.
I, I appreciate you so much.