Today we’d like to introduce you to Jose Valencia.
Jose, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Entrepreneurship has always fascinated me. While taking a vocabulary course, I was first introduced to the word as a young kid in elementary school. I remember vividly, the word itself captivated me with its mysteriousness and complexity “ENTREPRENEUR”. I clearly remember reading the definition and thinking to myself, “that is what I want to do in life”.
Ever since that moment, I feel like I planted a seed. I won’t go on to say that I immediately started trading or flipping baseball cards to make money as a young kid, like some great entrepreneurs throughout our society. On the contrary, I started my self-employed entrepreneur journey a bit later in life. I’ll get back to this.
The reality is that I come from extremely humble beginnings. Growing up my parents didn’t have much. So you can understand a bit better, I’m talking being brought up in low-income housing and knowing how much money my parents had to pay for my little league subscription back then. Can you imagine a kid worrying about how much money their parents had to pay to play little league? If you can, then you most likely know exactly what I’m talking about. Or how about this? I had no idea that vacation actually meant that you would get on a plane and travel somewhere. My vacations, which by the way were amazing because I didn’t have to go to school, consisted of watching a ton of TV and playing outside with the rest of my boys that grew up the same way I did. My first vacation was when I was 20 years old. First time on a plane too.
My parents did the best they could to raise me. My mom a hard working house keeper at a hospital and my father a truck driver, that couldn’t work much due to a back injury, both emigrated from Mexico to the US. Now that I’ve told you about my socioeconomic upbringing, I’d like to tell you about my real upbringing, the real shit. While I lacked money, cars, houses, vacations, fancy stuff, I had an abundance of genuine LOVE and family unity growing up. My parents didn’t have much, but they gave me everything they had. I had a ton of attention and I felt nothing but love growing up. I painted a little bit of a depressing, sad upbringing previously, but trust me, I had nothing but the absolute most amazing time growing up total opposite of how it might have sounded.
I wanted to take the time to tell you about my upbringing since it is the main reason why I am who I am and most importantly who I am becoming. Growing up the way I did has been a true blessing for me. Now, looking back in hindsight, it has been the foundation of how I run my business and has molded me into becoming the person that I am today. Let me tell you about my experience and my journey as a self-employed/entrepreneur.
I started working at the age of 16 at a fast food restaurant. Here is where I got my first experience of service and listening to customer’s wants and needs. I will be forever grateful for this experience. This first job taught me a very important lesson. Although it wasn’t a very skill demanding job, I always had the mentality of learning or taking away lessons to implement in the future. The important lesson I learned here was “EMPATHY”. I learned to put myself in the other person’s shoes across from the cash register. This particular quality has helped me with my business today.
I took the real life skills from my first job and started applying them to my next endeavors, all service-oriented, mostly hospitality, In a nutshell, my whole working life has revolved around customer satisfaction and service.
Fast forward to today, my clients now reap the benefit of all the years of service and real hands-on experience that I’ve accumulated over the years. I can freely and with all honesty say that they are in the best of hands. Lucky them! They’re dealing with someone who truly cares and doesn’t just see them as a paycheck.
So why real estate?
Like anything else, my career sprung from curiosity. Given that I grew up with very little knowledge of money and less knowledge in real estate I was hungry to learn the basics and essentials of the business. I wish I had a more exciting fairy tale story to tell you about why I got started, but I’d be lying if I did.
I decided to get licensed and shoot for the moon. I was ready to make a gazillion dollars. But, as probably 99.9999% of dreamers and entrepreneurs, I fell flat on my face and got a right hook to the jaw by good ol reality. Or the reality that I painted for myself back then at least. The truth was that I did not have the right mindset and preparation then, but as you can probably tell by now, I am an extraordinarily grateful human being and I took that first run as a lesson.
I see my career in two phases. I see it in phase 1, which was the failed attempt, and I also see it in phase 2, where I am now. Now at this moment, I’d like to disclose that I am nowhere near where I personally want to be, but thankfully I am a lot closer than I was yesterday.
Mindset
I have to say that personally working a lot on my mindset through personal development and acquiring better skills to enhance my business has to be the absolute most important part of having more success in business, which in turn transfers over to my personal life in a positive way. I am a firm believer that you attract exactly what you want. I am also a firm believer that it is extremely important to know what it is that you want from life to stay away from drifting. It is crucial to have a great relationship with oneself since hey, you are with yourself 24/7 and you converse with yourself the most.
All in all, I am a product of life lessons. Some good some bad. But if you were to ask me who is Jose Valencia? I am simply an individual who is grateful and enjoys life to the fullest. My ultimate goal is to be able to emit positive energy and impact people to believe that they are capable of ANYTHING!
Tell us more about the business.
I’m known to deliver an exceptional experience for my real estate clients. I pride myself on making my clients feel so comfortable that they can truly be themselves around me. I truly put my client’s interest before mine.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Like any industry, the real estate industry will evolve. I really can’t say how and when, but like anything else evolution and change is inevitable. All I can say is that selling a home is a full time job and endeavor. Good real estate sales people will be needed for a long time to come. Of course, unless people ask for leave from work to sell their house or properties. lol
Contact Info:
- Phone: 619-900-5843
- Instagram: @the.realestatedude
Image Credit:
Clarke Surrey-Surrey Media
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