Explore Juan Cano's journey in the Real Estate Industry

I guess so. It kind of reminds me of the fact that I’m not from here. I came here with nothing. – Juan Cano

My family is from Columbia. I was born here but I don’t feel like I’m from here. I’ve always been surrounded by Columbian culture. I also don’t really identify myself in the type of conversation a typical person of my age would be having. I don’t feel like I’m in the same mood people my age would be, like partying. That’s what rootless reminds me of, it kind of reminds me of myself. Being from Columbia is something I have to be grateful for. It’s beautiful over there, people are really hard working and teach you to appreciate the small things in life. My family would taste the difference between a brand-new cup of coffee that was just brewed and a coffee that’s been sitting there for a while. They enjoy the small things and aren’t in a rush to get things done. Here, it doesn’t matter if the coffee is from this morning or yesterday, coffee is coffee. I feel like people in Columbia are humbler and warming. That’s what I try to reflect in business too. I don’t just want to sell the house. You’re not supposed to give people advice on what to do but I at least try to give them a personal opinion on what I think it’s best. I let them know I am doing that because I appreciate them and am not just looking to make money. – Juan Cano

When I was 18 years old, I just got into college, I was in school for mechanical engineering. I had a teacher who was a bit of a jerk and I got in an argument with him. I started doubting whether it was worth it to stay Columbia, pay the tuition to get a profession that wasn’t going to pay off. Knowing I had an opportunity to come back here and explore my growth potential here in the U.S made me go back. I thought I might as well go to Massachusetts, start serving tables for a while until I figured things out. I dropped out of college when I was in the fifth semester. A friend of mine told me that he wishes he had come back with me. I think life kind of guides you. When I got back, I had convinced myself I was going to serve tables and go back to college to study mechanical engineering, I would’ve transferred my credits over. What ended up happening was that I stayed there serving tables. I have always been very responsible and the manager at my job decided to make me an hourly manager so that I could train the newer servers that came in for the seasons. Then I ended up being a full time manager, assistant manager and that’s where I stopped. One day I asked for a vacation and I didn’t get it. It’s the same story, when I don’t get what I want, I make a crucial decision. So, switched over to real estate because a friend had invited me in and it ended up working out. – Juan Cano

When I was younger, there was this point in time when my grandma lived here and we were all living in Columbia. So, occasionally we would come here to visit her. I would come here, buy the newest iPhone, take it back to Columbia and sell it for a profit. I did that a couple of times until I saved some money and bought myself a motorcycle in Columbia. That was my first business idea. – Juan Cano

The way they proposed real estate to me was funny. I used to stay in a family house, and lived on the second floor. I had just bought a car with the money I had saved from the server job and had parked it in the driveway. The car needed some work but I’ve always been a fan of buying used, saving money, putting some sweat equity. So, I put this car from somebody who had crashed it into a tree. This person’s mum had decided to take the car away and ended up selling the car and I bought it. Long story short, it had a broken headlight with a short circuit. It was a very windy winter and the constant wind started a fire under the hood of the car and the first day I had it. That day I left early thinking I was going to get the car registered and insured but when I got back home, everything was on fire. The house was on fire, the Red Cross was there, the firefighters helped us save whatever we could. I was able to get my passport which was important. The red cross called us a guy, he happened to be from Columbia, and he just told me he did real estate and was going to help me find an apartment. He offered me a place at his friend’s apartment for almost two months until the new tenant would move in. I lived there for free during that time, and was able to save money from my server job to find myself a rental. All that time I kept thinking he could’ve charged me a broker’s fee and get a lot of money from me. The day I made the decision I called him and he told me he was very busy but would give me a split of what he made, teach me on the process and that’s how I got started. – Juan Cano

Getting a real estate license isn’t really complicated. All you have to do is take a 40 hours course. They don’t teach you much about selling real estate. It has a lot more to do about law, procedures, how you have to be honorable, they teach the technical stuff. You have to do your due diligence. When you get your license, the government will see you as someone more knowledgeable and you have to be more responsible. For people who struggle with math, there is a small math part but the course isn’t really hard. I had the benefit of knowing where I would go after I got my license. I already had my contact and, in my ignorance, I didn’t really think I would get paid more if I worked for another company. I went with him because I felt good working with him. Essentially, you would go to an office, negotiate with the broker what your split would be. Let’s say if you make $10,000, will the broker split it 50/50? That’s normally the beginner agent scenario. When you’re just starting out you should be looking for an office that will educate you and actually teach you how to sell, not just the legalities of it. They should be teaching marketing, sales procedures, etc. The bigger companies are franchises so it all depends on what the broker of the franchise is going to do for you. Most of the time, they’ll have you tail an agent, follow him around. What matters is how much time are they going to spend on you to actually train you. In my case, my company was smaller, it had 20 agents. Now there are forty of us so it’s still smaller compared to the big sharks out there. – Juan Cano

Anyone would feel lost in the first few weeks, you wouldn’t know what to do, you’d see everybody on their phones, talking to people and you won’t know who to talk to. When I worked at the restaurant, half of the people I knew would come and go. I didn’t have many friends or a big sphere influence. That’s what these brokers tell you at the beginning, to call your sphere of influence. There was no sphere of influence in my case. So, I just started knocking on doors. I partnered with the guy who brought me to the office. He took me on during the weekends whenever he had time and we would meet people, say we were real estate agents low on inventory and would love to talk with them about selling their apartment. The hit ratio was pretty low, a lot of people slammed the doors on our faces but there was this one gentleman who called us after had left him a note. He told us he didn’t want to put an ad or get tied up with us but it happened to be that we had a buyer for that specific house and everything just got together. When I got my first check, I was so happy because I had made so much money. It took me almost three months to be able to sell a house. I would like to add that knocking on doors is labor intensive. If I was starting all over again, I would recommend past myself to make a nice video, show people that you know what you’re talking about. Showing people that you’re an expert, putting that out on social media adds to your credibility. You need to spend money to make money. Spend money on advertising and hopefully once you start reeling in your first fish, keep at it until you sell the house. That’s basically it. – Juan Cano

I just want to clarify that even the gentleman that brought me in the office I currently work at, he didn’t have the gift of training, didn’t teach me what I had to do or show me a step-by-step process, I just followed him around, he made it look easy and when I tried to do it, it was so hard. YouTube is a great free resource; I have learned a lot from it. A real estate agent has many aspects, he can focus on rentals, be a listing agent, a buyer’s agent or take care of everything. In the beginning, I was taking on whatever I could get. I would say it took me about 8 months to get to the point I didn’t have to ask questions to complete a whole deal. In my first year I sold about thirteen houses which is not a lot but it’s good compared to what other agents sell. I have to say I probably asked a lot of questions to my broker during that process. – Juan Cano

The sky’s the limit. There are a lot of people who have the gift of selling. If I was a broker, I would be happy if a new agent sold 6 houses in his first year. Targeting one every two months would be ideal. A transaction usually takes two months. If he handles one at a time, each house would bring him a different obstacle and I think six is a healthy number. – Juan Cano

Recently, I’ve started thinking more as a business than an employee. Some time ago, I was working on restaurants so I had the mentality of working for my boss, my broker. Then, being self-employed hit me and I realized I was just working for myself. I just work under my broker but everything I do, the money I make depends only on me. I started branding myself on social media, creating tips and tricks. I started doing advertising, mailing campaigns, and continued knocking on doors. The one important thing is that I didn’t want people to know I sold houses. I wanted them to know my name so that the next time they recognize me because of my name whatever business I’m in. If I transition to consulting, people will know that Juan knows a lot about real estate and I can consult them. – Juan Cano

My strategy was that in the area I was working in, I googled and did my research on who was trying to sell at some point but wasn’t able to sell. Maybe they overpriced their house or their agent didn’t do a good job, etc. Since he wasn’t interested in selling anymore I had to figure out whether his motivation died or he just couldn’t sell it. If his motivation died, he would slam the door in my face. If he had experienced an obstacle, I had a really short time at the door to figure out what it was and show him that I could solve or overcome that obstacle for him and sell his house. – Juan Cano

Most of my research is oriented on what type of person would do what type of thing. If I saw the house that was for sale, I would try to figure out what the problem was. If I realized that for example it is overpriced, I have to put myself on the buyer’s shoes and find out what type of buyer would buy the house. So, I try to market the house to that type of buyer. Maybe that person is lifestyle oriented so maybe I get the house staged, get a nice video showing lifestyle in that property. Maybe it’s all about numbers, maybe it’s perfect for an investor looking to make cash flow and I advertise it to them which normally isn’t as public, they want it to be kept private. So, I email it to them. Every contact information I come across, I keep. You never know when you’ll need someone. If I email an investor and they say they’re not interested I ask them what they would be interested to invest in. I write a note besides it as a contact that the next time I have what he’s looking for, I refer it to that guy. – Juan Cano

My brokerage is small, there are only 40 agents. What got me thinking was an agent I got along pretty well who moved to a different company and told me how he struggled when moving over. I thought that  if people knew my name over my company’s brand, making myself or my own brand as the center of attention, I could transition from this brokerage to another or to my own easily. The biggest tool so far has been Facebook ads. You probably meet 70 people per week if you’re an active person, knocking on doors or going to events. If you do Facebook ads, you’ll get yourself in front of many more people. It doesn’t have to be Facebook ads, it can be YouTube etc. I started working on my website, running Google ads, showing people that I have knowledge and I’m talking about the same thing on Facebook, Instagram. I put together a color scheme, fonts, just kind of creating an image that I want to respect and follow. In case I scale my business, I can assign those things to somebody else. I’m always thinking long-term, if I’m not here to create that content myself, at least I have somebody who knows how to. I’ve been very busy recently so my wife has kind of taken over. She does everything exactly how I would do it and when she gets busy, I assign it to somebody else and then we’ll start scaling the business. All advertising has been social media so far but we want to at least start partnering up with other companies. I’m currently representing a client that was born on a wheelchair and put on several offers. I’ve been working with her for over a year now. She stopped but she’s back looking at houses and it’s hard because she’s a first time home buyer who doesn’t come with a lot of capital. I was thinking of putting together a GoFundMe page. Believe it or not, I put an offer on a house and the owner called back saying he loved the story and he wanted to reach out directly to the buyer with my permission by following the correct procedure. He didn’t give her the house because he had to think about his family first but he was making a decent amount of money from the sale and wanted to contribute some to the purchase of her house. That got me thinking about starting the GoFundMe page and I wanted to donate part or all of my commission to her and just team up with other companies. Maybe a painting company would be willing to paint the house when she moves in. I was looking to branch out to other businesses so that not only the direct consumer knows me but the other businesses do as well.  It’s not just about the transaction, you have to put heart and soul into what you do. – Juan Cano

Sometimes it’s tough. I try to be as neutral as possible and be as appealing to everybody as I can. However, sometimes I’m 100% honest with my clients or if I feel he’s making a bad decision, I’ll respectfully let him know. That person is the ultimate decision maker and I think giving honest advice makes people trust you a bit more rather than just letting people do their thing. It seems like you’re just waiting for your check and that’s not how I work. Going back to the lady on the wheelchair, I haven’t sold her anything yet, I do it out of passion. Obviously, we’re both realistic. I wouldn’t be working with her if that wasn’t the case. However, just because I’ve been honest with her, she’s referred me to two or three clients that I have been able to sell houses to. So, put your client first and everything will kind of line up. If you walk inside a house that needs a ton of work and say it’s not a big deal because you’re just thinking about getting rid of it, that’s going to bite you later on. – Juan Cano

The most houses I’ve shown to a client in a day to a single client may have been eight or nine. That’s not ideal because that person won’t remember the first house by the time he’s at his eighth or ninth house. However, these people are traveling and coming here just for the weekend and they’ve got everything planned. You may work with one client for a long period of time not because they want to but because they haven’t been able to buy their house yet because it’s a tough market. I might have shown almost 40 houses to a single client during the whole process. I want to emphasize that if you show every client 40 houses, you’re not going to make any money. However, there are transactions where you might show a client two or three houses, he identifies the one, has the means to pay for that house no matter what the circumstances are and you make the sale faster. It’s not necessarily less stressful because problems may pop up in financing, inspection, etc. – Juan Cano

Do whatever you think is sustainable long term. I knew an agent who was really good at rentals in Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, social media. She would make a ton of money doing rentals. The good thing about rentals is that they don’t take two months to close. They happen really fast. Rentals can generate quick money and sometimes can be easy and sometimes can come with consequences.  The tenant can call you after they have rented the apartment and tell you they have an issue. You have to put them in touch with the owner who is the person they should be talking to unless you’re also the property manager. I think investors are really sustainable because you can have 10 or 20 really good investors that will buy or sell a house with you every single year and you’ll have that repeat business. – Juan Cano

I would go back to what my broker always says to me: “You have to spend money to make money”. If you feel like your sphere of influence isn’t as big (mine wasn’t either), if whatever you’ve been doing isn’t working, sign yourself up for karate, kickboxing or whatever and make some friends there. Invest money into the business. If you go out for a business dinner with a couple new people, reach out to them through social media or whatever. For example, you can say to the owner of a woodworking shop that you’d love to connect to get gifts for your clients who have bought a house. The truth may be that you do not have a ton of clients at the moment to give him business but maybe you can turn him into a client and at the same time buy his product. I made sure my barber, electrician, etc. didn’t have a real estate agent because I’m their real estate agent. I make sure I’m the real estate agent of everybody I come across. – Juan Cano

Every single day I write down what I want to get done and I always shoot for more than I think I can get done. I’ll finish up whatever I didn’t do the day before but the mindset is that while I’m watching Netflix, I could be doing something else. It may sound like I’m overworking myself but I just hate wasting time. If I can get as many things done as I want to do, that’s a really good day. If I write down ten things I want to do and actually do them, I feel like I had a really productive day. That comes with waking up early, being organized with your time. Every single time I meet someone and I get their contact information I put it in my CRM. I make sure I store it because I can never know when they’re going to need me or I’m going to need them. I’ll reach out to those people occasionally and every single time I talk to them, I’ll write down a brief resume of how the conversation went. That’s because I don’t want to talk about the same things the next time I call them. I’m organized with everything, with time, my contacts, my money. It’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how much money you keep. You can be making $40,000, someone else can be making $100,000 but if you save $1,000 a month and put it somewhere it will keep growing, you may end up having more than the other person who wastes it. I’m very detail oriented with everything, I don’t like my car to pass its oil change, etc. – Juan Cano

I didn’t really have a goal in the beginning. I just wanted to make money but then I realized I liked real estate investing so I would qualify myself as an agent who prefers working with investors versus working in retail, home buyers. The reason I like to do that is because I can learn so much more from someone with a lot of knowledge that is using this as a tool to build wealth. If it’s a single family or a hardworking person who’ll buy or two houses in their lifetime, they’re thinking about commodity and lifestyle. On the other hand, an investor is picking things apart to see if the deal makes sense to him and there are more factors than just if the house looks good and the client feels good about it. My long-term goal  in real estate is to invest more than to represent clients. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m taking the good deals for myself. Nobody could do that but I do learn from every single client I come across. The real wealth in real estate is building passive income. I use my sales to fund purchases and with those purchases hopefully build enough passive income to slow it down a little. – Juan Cano

So, I haven’t done the actual counting but I would say I work close to 65 – 70 hours a week and I never have days off, I take time off. During lunch, I may take 30 minutes to maybe watch a YouTube video to take my mind off topic. If I feel I’m wearing out, I might take two or three days in a row and call it a vacation. During the past years, I haven’t had a big time off. Recently I went to Columbia but the pandemic enabled me to do that. The business is slower during wintertime. I knew traveling wasn’t recommended but if I didn’t do it at that time, I was never going to do it. I took some time off. The weekend’s the busiest time. Real estate is not as fun as people might think. The truth is that while everybody is having fun, you’re not because when everybody’s not working, you are. If they get out at 5, you’re showing houses after 5 during the week. If they don’t work the weekends, you show houses on the weekends. Sometimes I have to split myself up, go to three or four houses with one client and run around and travel for another hour to get to another spot and show the client some other houses there. I can probably work with six clients on Saturdays and Sundays. – Juan Cano

They are young and that’s the biggest advantage they could have. My broker tells me all the time that if he could give up all his money to be my age, he would. Take into consideration that you’re young, do whatever you want to do, make mistakes if you have to and make sure it’s sustainable long-term. – Juan Cano