Steven Pesavento interviews guest Armando Pantoja, an experienced investor and tech enthusiast, as they explore the importance of staying ahead of the competition in investments. Armando shares his childhood story of winning an Easter egg hunt by running ahead and relates it to his investment strategy. They discuss key factors in predicting trends, such as understanding human psychology, studying historical patterns, and staying aware of opportunities. Armando emphasizes the value of focusing on one's expertise and leveraging it in a specific sector to make informed decisions. The conversation sheds light on the significance of surrounding oneself with successful individuals and using their insights to uncover unique investment opportunities. Listeners gain valuable insights into maximizing profits by being proactive and investing ahead of the curve.
Resources Mentioned
Interested in connecting with other like-minded individuals? Then join our VonFinch Private Capital Network. Learn more at http://www.vonfinch.com/invest.
About our Guest:
Armando Pantoja is an experienced investor and tech enthusiast with a background in software engineering. With a focus on the tech sector, stocks, and cryptocurrencies, Armando leverages his knowledge and understanding of technology trends to stay ahead in the investment world. He emphasizes the importance of marrying one's expertise with investment strategies to maximize profits and identify unique opportunities. Armando's story of transitioning from a corporate job to entrepreneurship and investing inspires others to take control of their financial futures.
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00;00;56;15 - 00;01;16;27
Steven Pesavento
Welcome to the name your numbers show presented by the Investor Mindset. We're on a mission to create financial freedom for over a million investors. And I believe when you name your number, the number that you want to earn passively every single month, that creates your ultimate quality of your life. Then I believe you've achieved real freedom.
00;01;17;10 - 00;01;24;21
Steven Pesavento
So we're going to get into some some really fun stuff today. I've got Armando Pantoja in the studio today. How are you doing today, Armando?
00;01;25;06 - 00;01;26;03
Armando Pantoja
I'm good. And you?
00;01;26;18 - 00;01;49;03
Steven Pesavento
I'm doing great, man. I'm excited to dive in with you. A lot of people know you as tall guy tycoon, and you've got a pretty prolific channel. For those of you don't know Armando talking a lot about investing, wealth, building on stocks, crypto real estate and technology. You've you've built a business that you sold for a million bucks.
00;01;49;08 - 00;02;05;22
Steven Pesavento
You've been investing in a lot of different things. You're helping other people learn some of the same thing. So we've got a lot in common. Before we get into all of that and your story, I'd love to start off on a personal note by looking back at your life. What events or influences from your childhood shaped who you are today?
00;02;06;02 - 00;02;09;11
Steven Pesavento
And how is that impacted your money, your investing journey?
00;02;11;02 - 00;02;34;27
Armando Pantoja
So I've made a lot of my money on predicting what's coming next and capitalizing on it, right? So there's a story you always talk about. And at the time it didn't really dawn on me. It dawned on me that years later, you know, in my adult life it was this from my childhood. Now, I grew up in South Tennessee, so in the South I wanted to be I grew up in a church also.
00;02;34;27 - 00;02;54;14
Armando Pantoja
So in the South, one in the church, one of the biggest events is Easter. Everybody shows up in their best clothes. The pastor normally reserved his best sermon for Easter, and people that never went to church before or never went, the entire will show up. So every church is packed. And remember, Tennessee is a very it's the Bible belt, right?
00;02;54;14 - 00;03;15;28
Armando Pantoja
So that's it's a huge event. And most churches there, people prepare for it for months. And one of the things that they do is a huge Easter egg hunt for kids. Right. And that's one thing as a kid we look forward to. Right. Easter egg hunt. You know, a lot of times the church would say, you know, to make it more exciting to say, you know, whoever gets the most Easter eggs will win a prize, right?
00;03;16;16 - 00;03;36;07
Armando Pantoja
So it was like 5 minutes is the first time I ever remember doing an Easter egg hunt. So during his sermon, me and my brother, I was five, brother was three. We're all excited. We weren't listening to what the pastor was saying. Oh, wait for Easter. Right? So. So when it happened, we go outside, all the kids line up in a lineup at the edge of the field.
00;03;36;07 - 00;03;49;04
Armando Pantoja
And if you look out, it is filled. As a kid, I just remember in an endless field of eggs. But you know how you are when you're a kid. If I went back now, I'd probably be a small field. But as a kid it looked like it was like millions of eggs. And it was like, That's how I remember it.
00;03;49;21 - 00;04;12;27
Armando Pantoja
So my mom, she she bent down and she whispered in my ear, Do exactly what I say and we'll win. Don't ask any questions. Just listen to me. All right? So the pastor screams out, Go. You know, he's the I guess, the referee or whatever. So all the kids take one big step and they start grabbing eggs. My mom, she grabs him about his hand.
00;04;12;27 - 00;04;33;24
Armando Pantoja
She starts running down the field. The first like I remember the mothers of the church and other elders in the church started later. She was crazy, like, is she stupid or some? She don't know that all. She's running past a lot of eggs. She don't see the eggs there. So, Mom, run, run, run, run. And she gets into the field and she wish she had beans now tells me and my brother, now get the eggs.
00;04;33;24 - 00;04;52;27
Armando Pantoja
Right. So it's nobody over there, right? So we start collecting at the beginning, they were fighting over the eggs, you know, grabbing the other person, grabbing her from you. You have to you know, you're in a fight for the eggs. You're in competition way down the field. There was no competition. Some kids realized what we're doing. They ran down there, but they were too late.
00;04;53;11 - 00;05;15;24
Armando Pantoja
So we ended up winning the competition because we were way ahead of everybody else. So we were able to see what was down the field, get ahead of everybody else where there's no competition. And that's how we won that all that Easter egg hunt. So I've applied that thinking to everything I do in investment. If you put yourself six months, a year or two years ahead of everybody else, there's no competition out there.
00;05;16;06 - 00;05;36;02
Armando Pantoja
Now, if you wait for stuff to catch up, it's too late. You know the stocks, if you're in the stock market, they're already up. If you're in in building, a company's already too late. It's too many competitors. If you're doing anything else, you know of that nature, you're too late. If you wait for it to happen, you got to be ahead of the curve and you got to get out in front of everybody else.
00;05;36;02 - 00;05;37;17
Armando Pantoja
And that's where the most profit is made.
00;05;38;28 - 00;06;06;16
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, that's such a good point. It's where you can get clear on what's that unique advantage. How do you get into that blue ocean where nobody else is and and also, you know, in order to get there, you got to know what's going on. You got to understand what are the trends where things go. And I know that's something that you've become really good at and I feel like a lot of people are unclear about, You know, how do I start figuring out where where the ball's moving, where the puck's moving?
00;06;06;26 - 00;06;17;26
Steven Pesavento
So how do you go about doing that? And and, you know, let's break down that process for being able to determine what's that next opportunity where no one's at yet. But a lot of people are going.
00;06;19;07 - 00;06;41;11
Armando Pantoja
So it's it's like three parts that you have to kind of focus on in order to be able to predict trends. One is you just got to understand human psychology, right? Is that a lot of the markets, crypto stocks, whatever does a pattern and how people money moves and money moves out and it's based on human emotion, greed, fear and all these other emotions, hype, all this stuff.
00;06;41;11 - 00;06;58;21
Armando Pantoja
That's what cause people to get into cycles, get out of cycles. So you have to understand that when when most people get into an investment, it's too late, you know? And you have to be you have to understand that when your mom, your uncle, your cousin is talking about something, it's too late. Yeah. And you have to understand that.
00;06;58;21 - 00;07;18;29
Armando Pantoja
Second is that you have to understand history. And I'm not talking about like recent history. You have to understand the Roman Empire, Industrial Revolution, space race, the eighties, the stock market crash in 1920, The other one, Black Friday, Black Tuesday in the eighties. Yeah, do understand the dot com boom. You have to understand the crypto boom in 1780.
00;07;18;29 - 00;07;38;10
Armando Pantoja
You have to understand all of that because it's a pattern that happens over and over and over and over again. So if you understand all that history, so the new stuff and the last part is that you have to be aware of the opportunities, right? So now you understand human emotion, you understand historical. We call historical analysis in stocks, but also history itself.
00;07;39;11 - 00;07;55;20
Armando Pantoja
You have to be able to get you know, you got your base, you got to have new input coming. Now, if you sit at home and you don't do anything and you don't look up nothing, you have no context, no what we call circle of winners people around you that can bring that new information, then you have no you can't apply that stuff to anything.
00;07;55;20 - 00;08;14;20
Armando Pantoja
So you got to get out there, get around the right people, go to conferences, go to events, go to networking. That's where you are exposed to new ideas. And if you aren't exposed to them, you you have no way of like, if I'm not if I don't even know something exists, I can't even research it. And that's how new things come in to your life is that you have to be exposed to it.
00;08;15;06 - 00;08;33;06
Armando Pantoja
Get around people that have more money than you get around people to have more information than you get around People who are active like you are in investments in business, entrepreneurship, whatever, and those new ideas will flow. And then you can apply those new ideas, that historic history, and you apply them to human emotion. And that's how you figure out what the next trend is.
00;08;33;06 - 00;08;34;02
Armando Pantoja
Most of the time.
00;08;34;21 - 00;08;54;26
Steven Pesavento
Well, it's so powerful because when you start getting around other people who are already having success that are already on that path, maybe there miles down the road and maybe they're right alongside with you. But just a couple steps ahead, you can start understanding, hey, well, what's worked for them? How are they doing It? Oh, well, they're thinking about it like this.
00;08;54;26 - 00;09;21;02
Steven Pesavento
What if I thought about it like this and then that's when you as you said, you know, you get around your circle of winners that leads you to getting access to insider deals, insider information, the kind of opportunities that not everybody else is talking about. And maybe other people don't even recognize that there's an opportunity. And when you invest in those, you greatly reduce the risk, but you also greatly increase the upside potential.
00;09;21;14 - 00;09;42;22
Steven Pesavento
So there's a lot of that. There's a lot of that in the market right now. People are scared. People are you're seeing institutions pull out of the stock market at a very, very large rate. Now, consumers and you know, the rest of us traditional people, not as much. There's not as much movement there, but that can sometimes be an indicator.
00;09;42;28 - 00;10;08;06
Steven Pesavento
Now, in real estate, we're dealing with high interest rates. There's a lot of fear we're seeing in some areas. It doesn't make sense at all to buy while in other opportunities, only because we know the market, we're able to find deals that other people want in our deals. So when it comes to the types of investments that you do right, you focused fairly broadly on both stocks and real estate.
00;10;08;06 - 00;10;34;00
Steven Pesavento
You've done some in the crypto space. I know you're very interested in. I think there's some huge opportunities for people not only to be able to create more income, to be able to increase the value of that that they have to a business or as an employee, but also from an investing standpoint. So talk to me a little bit about how you've gone about deciding to be so diversified across all these different sectors and what's the mindset, what's the thinking on that?
00;10;34;00 - 00;10;36;20
Steven Pesavento
Why do you do that now?
00;10;37;21 - 00;10;51;21
Armando Pantoja
It sounds it sounds like a broad spectrum, but I'm going to clear it up. Is that real estate is outside, right? It's something I'm learning. So I don't really, you know, talk about it much. It's something I'm really learning and trying to. I know there's a good opportunity. I know that the risk is low, so I'm invested in real estate.
00;10;51;21 - 00;11;12;08
Armando Pantoja
But if you look at everything I talk about, I talk about stocks and I talk about crypto, and it's about the investments. It's all tech based. Yeah, my background in tech, right? I was a software engineer for 15 years, so I rarely talk about or invest in stocks that are outside of tech. Yeah. So in crypto is, is, is tech also right?
00;11;12;08 - 00;11;35;21
Armando Pantoja
So and my background in are in software but also I studied in grad school cryptology which is what crypto cryptocurrency is based on. So I kind of like I'm kind of in a narrow investment like I guess view it see it looks diverse, but it's actually pretty narrow because it's always something to do with tech, A.I. and all those things.
00;11;35;21 - 00;11;39;06
Armando Pantoja
It's always the bet. The base I have is my background in technology.
00;11;40;00 - 00;12;06;12
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, there's such a big takeaway there because a lot of people would look and they'd say, Hey, well, stocks and crypto and I like it seems diverse. It seems like a bunch of different things. But what you've identified as part of your way of thinking is, Hey, what am I really good at? What do I really understand? What do I really understand and how can I use that knowledge that I already have to go alongside those patterns to understand what's happening from a trend perspective?
00;12;06;20 - 00;12;14;16
Steven Pesavento
And how can that actually lead me into a place where I can make some decisions that other people aren't going to be able to make? So that's really big.
00;12;16;00 - 00;12;35;02
Armando Pantoja
And that's another point I want to make, is that almost everybody has expertise in some industry and they don't even know it. Nurses understand they're on the ground, they're on the front lines. They understand if a new medicine comes out, what a doctor's accepted, they understand things like that. Right. And one of the biggest plays I made was in the pandemic.
00;12;35;02 - 00;12;50;19
Armando Pantoja
I understood that everybody was going to move to Zoom because I worked for a corporation that I knew what was going to happen. And that was from, you know, and, you know, being on the ground, on the front lines. And like I said, even if you're a mechanic, you know, you know what people use and what they won't.
00;12;50;27 - 00;13;00;15
Armando Pantoja
You can learn a little bit about stocks, learn more about invest and use that base knowledge that you have and you have an advantage on everybody else. You just have to marry the two together.
00;13;02;00 - 00;13;14;17
Steven Pesavento
And so when someone's sitting down and they want to get clear on what kind of opportunities they should be looking at, what are some of the questions you think they should ask themselves to get clear on what they're good at and what they know?
00;13;16;17 - 00;13;38;18
Armando Pantoja
The stock market and investments in general is a very broad right. And different things affect different stocks, different things affect different cryptos, Different things are affect real estate, right? So you got to kind of like I did. You focus on a narrow perspective on something that you do know, right? And you stick to that one thing and you're able to find success like that, right?
00;13;38;18 - 00;13;55;17
Armando Pantoja
If you try to be too broad, it's it's a little bit it's more difficult because you have to understand more angles and more data points to be able to make the right decisions. So I would always tell people to stick in a certain industry or a certain sector and focus on that until you learn it well, then maybe you can go outside of that.
00;13;55;17 - 00;14;29;08
Armando Pantoja
But you need to if you focus on one thing, all the stocks in this sector industry are affected by the same things, the same macro events, the same economic events, the same laws being passed or whatever news being released or whatever it is, they all fall and rise together. So you can, I would tell a new investor is to find out what you're good at originally and then find out a sector in the market that relates to that and then start learning and start putting that knowledge that you already have to the test and see what you know, what you can make of it.
00;14;30;18 - 00;14;52;24
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, I think that's really good advice because sometimes it can be overwhelming. There's so many options. So when it comes to investing, there's so many options. When it comes to starting a business, it's like, how can you triangulate between what you're really good at, what you know a lot about, and something that you care about, that you want to continue knowing a lot about it and you try to hit that little bull's eye right in the middle.
00;14;53;06 - 00;15;17;29
Steven Pesavento
So I think I think you've got an incredible story. You know, not only have you become a great teacher on the investing side in helping to teach and inspire people about making those small investments today, regardless of where they're at so they can get where they want to go. But I'd love to hear your story. I know you've started some businesses you've worked in, in corporate jobs.
00;15;17;29 - 00;15;33;05
Steven Pesavento
You you're investing in a variety of different things. How did you go from that place? What's the story of going from that place of being employed to creating and exiting a business and then eventually moving into a heavy focus on investing?
00;15;34;13 - 00;15;53;13
Armando Pantoja
So so it all sort of started back in 2005. I graduated Austin Peay State University in Tennessee with a degree in computer science, right? So I went to Puerto Rico for a while. I play basketball. That didn't work out like I thought it would. I play pro basketball for like a year and a half, and I wasn't as good as I thought.
00;15;53;13 - 00;16;10;04
Armando Pantoja
So I didn't you know, I played, but it wasn't like I thought. So I came back. I said, Well, I'm a get a job in software engineering. So I started work for this company called Edge Net and Nashville, Tennessee. Edge Net was an artificial intelligence company. Now people hear that and say, what back then was the intelligence Been out for 50 years?
00;16;10;15 - 00;16;28;01
Armando Pantoja
So it's not like it was nothing. You know, it just is grown to now we're seeing stuff like Chad, Djibouti and stuff. But back then it was just facial recognition. You know what what that company did is that you'd build a new house, it would configure, it would put the windows and doors onto the CAD drawing or whatever.
00;16;28;01 - 00;16;48;11
Armando Pantoja
Now, it sounds easy. Back then, it was hard, you know. Yeah, it needed you needed to be able to do that. Now it's like we do that all the time, stuff like that. Yeah. So? So I work there and I worked there for what, a year, right? This was 2007. I started working there. So 2008 came along and it was the mortgage crisis, right?
00;16;48;18 - 00;17;05;22
Armando Pantoja
So they start firing people and letting people go for whatever reason. So I ended up getting fired from there. There was a big layoff, then a fire like they were fired like 50 people for anything they did wrong. And I was part of that group. Yeah. So I remember one of the biggest things that hit me is that I was completely and utterly dedicated to that job.
00;17;06;12 - 00;17;24;26
Armando Pantoja
I decorated my cubicle. I was excited to be there. I knew what had happened. I they gave me a box when they fired me. So I had to go in there for my box with all my stuff. It was a security guard behind me, right. And I felt so bad. I said, I told myself, I will never give this much of my energy to a corporation.
00;17;25;13 - 00;17;48;14
Armando Pantoja
Now, I believe in doing your best, working hard, but I'm never you know, I'm not going to think like this anymore. So after that, I moved to Florida and I got a job. I mean, I went to grad school and that's where I study cryptology. So that's really what I discovered Bitcoin. I started that in 2009. So, you know, I went to school for two years, Bitcoin came out 2009 also.
00;17;48;14 - 00;18;03;06
Armando Pantoja
I heard about it in 2011. I started investing a little bit. So so I had like $5 and I bought some bitcoin. It was hard to buy it back then. I used to have to meet a guy at the casino down in Florida and he'd be playing poker and you'd have to wait for him to finish your hand and you'd buy it from him.
00;18;03;24 - 00;18;21;18
Armando Pantoja
And in between his hands, you give him cash, he would open up your phone and that's how you would get it. There was no coin based coin based income for two years later. That was very few sites it. So I took that 500 and I didn't really know what to do with it. Right. So I'm online looking at these forms about Bitcoin and the future of it.
00;18;21;18 - 00;18;37;04
Armando Pantoja
And it's this guy messaging me and I only think that form exist anymore. He's a man. If you send me that 500 bitcoin, I can double it. Now. I was in grad school when I was struggling and I was like, Well, maybe this is true. It sounds weird, but maybe not sending the money. Of course he stole it, Never got it back.
00;18;37;13 - 00;18;56;25
Armando Pantoja
But it made me think if somebody wants it this bad, it must be valuable. So then I start researching the technology, I start research and all this other stuff, how it works. And so I would get tricked again. So, you know, some time went on. I go to grad school, so I had I had I wanted to build a company, right?
00;18;56;25 - 00;19;20;04
Armando Pantoja
So I started a company called Software and Software and we did custom software for people in the Tampa Bay area. The first two years. I did extremely well the last year because of a change in SEO, Google's algorithm. I can no longer get leads anymore, so it hit me kind of hard so we couldn't get any leads. I have 14 employees and I'm having to let everybody go when it's a whole bunch of debt.
00;19;20;04 - 00;19;36;08
Armando Pantoja
180,000 in debt because I had a lot of pride. Didn't want to give it up. Yeah. So I ended up having to give it up after I had that much debt. You know, it was it was kind of piling up on me. So I tried to go bankrupt. The terms of the bankrupt was so strict, I just didn't I didn't want to go through that.
00;19;36;08 - 00;19;51;16
Armando Pantoja
So I said, Well, I got to pay this off. So I applied for a good job at Google, right? And now I said, Well, if I can start my own company, maybe I can work for Google. That was my second dream. So I got to the first two interviews and they they didn't pick me from the third interview.
00;19;51;27 - 00;20;07;18
Armando Pantoja
So I was in I study for six months for that interview. You know, they have study guys instead of Google so hard to get into. And and I was really depressed. Like, I was like, oh, man. So I got another call triple A, you know, the the auto company that, you know, roadside assistance they also have insurance travel.
00;20;08;13 - 00;20;23;28
Armando Pantoja
They have a bank. So it's actually a lot bigger than just a car care. But so they call me up. They say, man, we want we want to interview you. And I went to the interview and I really didn't want the job. So I was like slumped down in the chair answering questions like And the thing about it is that I got the job.
00;20;26;04 - 00;20;42;11
Armando Pantoja
So that job ended up paying me more than any. It was the highest paying software engineer job in Tampa Bay. Right. And there's actually a good company, right? So but I still had in the back of my mind, I'm not you know, I'm not even though that company was one of the best company I ever worked for, it was a great company.
00;20;42;23 - 00;21;01;18
Armando Pantoja
I still didn't want to depend too much on a company, so I never brought anything in my cubicle. I never, you know, because I didn't want to go to the experience again. So at night I remember I had that debt to pay off. So I was a teacher out of college at night. So for two years, two and a half years, I would work all day to 5:00.
00;21;01;18 - 00;21;17;25
Armando Pantoja
And at night I'd be a teacher for 4 hours for five days a week. I remember like I was working so much. I remember my first two years of my daughter's life at all, you know? So I paid off $108,000 in debt and two and a half years. So then I was like, Well, I want to start another company, right?
00;21;18;05 - 00;21;25;29
Armando Pantoja
So I started another crypto company called Ice Rink. Remember, I'm not I don't have any money, but I was I didn't have any debt either, so I'm in a decent position.
00;21;26;11 - 00;21;40;10
Steven Pesavento
But you took the skills that you had on developing websites and understanding the algorithms to be able to build this site, which was something that was ahead of the trend because ICOs back then were. But that's early days.
00;21;41;09 - 00;22;00;12
Armando Pantoja
So like I said, as I learned about SEO in a company that felt how to bring stuff on Google, also, like you said, build websites, build stuff, how to add artificial intelligence. Then because of that company I worked for before. So all of those skills ended up at that point. So and so I got a business partner also because I didn't want to really handle everything.
00;22;01;12 - 00;22;16;20
Armando Pantoja
It was a guy I knew he was. He was used to be a stockbroker. So we both he, you know, it wasn't a lot of money. I'd say like $10,000 because I was doing all the work right? So I built it in about two months. We put it out there and it started getting traction. And I'm like, Oh man, it's kind of good.
00;22;16;20 - 00;22;42;22
Armando Pantoja
So then it made me, you know, it gave me an inspired me to work harder. Then it just kept growing and growing and growing. At one point it had like 1.2 million hits a month. Like ridiculous. We were getting like maybe 80 to 100000 just on ads, you know, a month, right, For the first four months. Right. And then a company, the fifth month, a publicly traded company from Canada called us up and said, we want to buy that into technology.
00;22;43;16 - 00;23;00;19
Armando Pantoja
All right. Well, how much you want to give me? And in my mind, I was thinking like 500,000 or something. And they're like in my my business partner said, no, it's worth way more than that because of the potential, because of that revenue and stuff like that. And he asked for 3 million for it, and then they came back for two and a half.
00;23;00;19 - 00;23;17;18
Armando Pantoja
Then we negotiated and then we got also we got we got warrants and we got stock options that we got stock. So we got the 2.5 plus all this other stuff we ended up being after after we sold everything like $4 million, four and a half million because the stock went up after we made the deal because we want to lock up here for six months.
00;23;18;06 - 00;23;20;17
Armando Pantoja
So that's when I became a millionaire.
00;23;20;29 - 00;23;38;12
Steven Pesavento
What I'm curious is what did that feel like to go from the place where you had that failure? A -180. You had to let 14 people go. You had to go back to getting a job, something that you said you weren't going to put that much into again. And you knew in the back of your mind you were going to go do this.
00;23;38;12 - 00;23;42;00
Steven Pesavento
What did it feel like to have that exit and all of a sudden to be a millionaire?
00;23;43;08 - 00;24;01;24
Armando Pantoja
Now, I remember the day it didn't it was like a surreal moment, like because it was through a broker, right? So the broker would take his card and then he sent us both like 1.1 to 1.15 million. So I'm looking at my bank kind of refreshing refresh rate and all of a sudden there's $1,000,000 in there. It was like nothing in there right before that.
00;24;01;24 - 00;24;18;01
Armando Pantoja
And I'm like, This don't even seem real. Like it was so surreal. It didn't seem real. Right? And then later on, the warrant money came in or whatever, and it was two, two and a half million, you know, it was a lot of money, right? So it was like, I still don't I didn't get excited. I didn't jump up and down.
00;24;18;01 - 00;24;40;05
Armando Pantoja
It was like so because after what I've been through, it was so surreal that I just didn't even get excited. It was like, I don't know. It is, you know, you know, I don't know how to explain that. So so what I did do is that I was working at triple J at the time, and I remember it hit the news like, you know, because it was at the time it was a big cryptocurrency, you know, acquisition at that time.
00;24;40;05 - 00;24;56;05
Armando Pantoja
I mean, now they are a lot bigger, 50% higher. At the time it was a lot. So it was in the news, everything. So all my family knew about it and they're calling up, You're going to quit your job. And I was confused at that, like, why would I quit? Yeah, I was making like $180,000 a year. I was like, Well, in five, six years I would run out of money anyway.
00;24;56;05 - 00;25;21;21
Armando Pantoja
So. So what I did is I kept working there almost for additional year. So I took that. At the time it was roughly like $2 million. And, and I started investing it because I said, well, my income surpasses what I'm making as a software engineer. That's when I quit off my investments. So I bought some real estate, I put some in Bitcoin, put some in some dividend stocks, bought some other stocks, and we put some money into private equity with a company.
00;25;22;08 - 00;25;28;06
Armando Pantoja
And then after my investment income surpassed my salary income, that's when I quit. A year later.
00;25;29;29 - 00;25;52;01
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, I think I think that's so cool because it's just such a great example of when it comes to entrepreneurship. It's about going out and trying new things, taking the owl, going back, doing it again, figuring out what, Hey, what do I have to do to make money now to cover my family? What do I have to do to pay off this debt?
00;25;52;01 - 00;26;11;06
Steven Pesavento
What do I have to do to set myself up to try something new? You took $10,000 in two or three months of your time and then hours and hours of time after that to build this website that you sold in a very short amount of time for a very big exit. And it was because you did exactly what we talked about at the beginning.
00;26;11;20 - 00;26;36;10
Steven Pesavento
You got clear on some of the patterns you took, the knowledge that you have and the things that you understand that you care about. And you found someone who also was really good at business that could come in and help support you in doing that. And you went out and you did it and you accident, but you did the smart thing because you didn't immediately just say, Hey, well, I just had money, I'm going to go and I'm going to quit and I'm going to hope that I can figure this out and do another business.
00;26;36;10 - 00;26;52;05
Steven Pesavento
You said, Hey, I'm going to make sure that I'm covered. Let me figure this thing out so I can start thinking like an investor and make sure that I'm actually I'm actually free, that I know that the money that I have can then work for me to put me in an even better place than where I am today.
00;26;52;11 - 00;27;16;01
Steven Pesavento
And once you did take the leap, you were then in a position where you could take that skills in that knowledge and have the confidence to continue to make those investments, learn new things. And most importantly, I think what a lot of people overlook is that because you had that freedom financially, because you had that money, you were able to then have the space and time to figure out what's that next thing.
00;27;16;11 - 00;27;35;07
Steven Pesavento
And since then, obviously you've built a lot of things, you've made a lot of investments. You're teaching people some of this stuff because you're taking the skills that you already have. And I want the listeners to understand because I'm taking away some inspiration here as well. But I want everybody to understand, like the power of that. It doesn't all happen at once, but it can build.
00;27;35;07 - 00;27;40;17
Steven Pesavento
And then all of these skills that you develop really can can pay off and integrate life.
00;27;42;00 - 00;28;04;14
Armando Pantoja
Yeah, like I said, is that the whole process took like ten years, right? And, and I had to solve for Cody, but I started small businesses before that. Even in high school I had a eBay store and still get everything was so hard. Like everything I did was so difficult. Like I had to work all night and fight and all this stuff.
00;28;04;24 - 00;28;23;23
Armando Pantoja
The last business and everything up, you know, the business I end up selling and everything else has been incredibly easy. It's like it's almost like everything I touch at the beginning. Everything I touch, turn to dirt. Now it all turns to go. And that's exactly what you said. Is that because I was when I was going through all that struggle, I was building up skills that I didn't know I'd even know.
00;28;23;24 - 00;28;42;24
Armando Pantoja
You even put it like, really, really well. And you said, you know, I never even thought about that. The CEO, the background, in order for you to tell us in a website led me to ICL Rica and I never I never put that together until you said it. But that's exactly what was happening over those years as I was build myself up and I didn't know it.
00;28;42;24 - 00;28;47;15
Armando Pantoja
Right. And then when it when the time came, it was incredibly easy to make a lot of money.
00;28;48;07 - 00;29;07;08
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, Yeah. I think I think there's so much to take away from that. Oftentimes we can't really put the pieces together. Looking forward. We can create a vision of our dream life and the things we want to do and the people we want to spend time with and how we're going to live and work and the impact we're going to make, all of those things.
00;29;07;08 - 00;29;26;13
Steven Pesavento
We can have that vision, but sometimes it's hard to put each individual puzzle piece together when we're looking forward about how we're going to get there. But it's funny because when we look back, we're like, Wow, I never thought that business that didn't work out actually set me up to get this mentor, this partner, this connection, this thing that end up putting me in a different place.
00;29;26;13 - 00;29;35;26
Steven Pesavento
And it's really a combination of those skills that ends up leading us to be in that place, to have the knowledge and the confidence to then try new things.
00;29;37;09 - 00;29;53;24
Armando Pantoja
Yeah, it's like everything in your story is, I believe, is there for some type of reason. You know, when you're building a skill or you're doing something, it's almost like on The Karate Kid, you know what a guy's like. He has to put his coat on a rat anorak and he put it up and then he's like, What am I doing this for it?
00;29;53;24 - 00;30;04;00
Armando Pantoja
And at the end, he realizes he's building a strong foundation to fight with. So it's like that, right? Is that when you live your life, that's exactly what you're doing. You're building up these skills that you don't even know that you're going to need one day.
00;30;05;12 - 00;30;27;01
Steven Pesavento
Yeah, Yeah. It's really, really powerful. So we're hitting close to the end of time. I'm really enjoying some of the lessons that you've been able to share with us. I've got one last question to wrap up before I do. Will you tell the audience a little bit about how they can follow you and and continue the lessons that they're learning here on any of your channels?
00;30;28;08 - 00;30;56;04
Armando Pantoja
All right. So I go by the name Tall Guy Tycoon tlg ui tyc0n and that's on Instagram is guys my biggest platform. YouTube is second. Also, LinkedIn is the same name and Tik Tok, but I use Instagram and YouTube more than any of the other two. And also I have a book out called The Strategic Millionaire, which talks about a lot of things we've been talking about today, the strategic Millionaire.
00;30;56;06 - 00;30;57;04
Armando Pantoja
It's on and that's great.
00;30;57;04 - 00;31;17;09
Steven Pesavento
Well, you guys should definitely grab a copy of this strategic millionaire because Armando's really on to some stuff. He's got a lot of great lessons learned. I know we've just touched the surface, so I have to have a back for a follow up episode. But kind of wrapping up on this, Armando, what's your advice to the listeners who who are sitting back as they're taking in this knowledge?
00;31;17;09 - 00;31;28;05
Steven Pesavento
They're looking at creating their dream life. They want to gain that skill and knowledge. They want to have the confidence. What advice do you have to them to gain that confidence when it comes to money and finance?
00;31;29;09 - 00;31;48;24
Armando Pantoja
Oh, the biggest thing I would say is that you can't sit back and wait because I mean, you can't sit back. Like we say, indecision is worse than a bad decision is because if I jump into an investment, I'm not saying I want a lot of money, but if I jump into stocks jumping or whatever and I mess up, I'm learning from that experience.
00;31;48;28 - 00;32;10;19
Armando Pantoja
There's really no such thing as failure. Because if we look at everything it as a lesson or win very you don't exist in that world, right? So if you if you put your money in a stock, whatever you thought it was going to work, it doesn't work out well. You learn something from that, you know. So instead of sitting on the sidelines waiting for the perfect time or being indecisive, jump into something not a lot of money, like I'm saying.
00;32;11;01 - 00;32;31;10
Armando Pantoja
And if it doesn't work out, at least you learn it's a bad decision. Well, we can change course on bad decisions, but if you indecision, you can't change course. You just sitting there wasting time. So I would just say a lot of times when we jump in any entrepreneurship, whatever, you're never ready, never, you know, to start a business or get into stocks again.
00;32;31;10 - 00;32;48;16
Armando Pantoja
You're never going to be ready. Even a president's not ready when he steps into office, because. No, he's never been president before. How does he know how to do it? You said. I'm saying, yeah. So he learns on the job like the first six months. Everybody does. So it's nothing wrong with that. And I'm just saying, is that so now you just have to execute.
00;32;49;20 - 00;33;06;09
Steven Pesavento
Yeah. Comes down to taking that action, making that decision. Such great advice. Armando, so great to talk with you. So good to connect. Follow Armando at Tall Guy Tycoon on all platforms. Really appreciate you guys listening and we'll see all the next episode.
00;33;06;18 - 00;33;07;01
Armando Pantoja
Thank you.