The 5 Questions Podcast
Join us as we unlock real estate and business insights, one question at a time.
The 5 Questions Podcast
Empowering Youth and Achieving Financial Literacy with Alfonso Cuadra
Ready to unlock the secrets of financial resilience? Join us as Alfonso Cuadra, the Godfather of Real Estate, shares his journey from a young entrepreneur to a leading real estate investor! Learn the power of multiple income streams, mentorship, and giving back through his inspiring Cuadra Youth Foundation and global philanthropy.
https://www.wealthgenius.ai/
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And you know, it was such an experience that you would not have here in North America, for sure.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the 5 Questions Podcast, where we unlock real estate and business insights, one question at a time. Welcome to the 5 Questions Podcast. I am your host, mario Lamar, on today's show, really excited about our guest. He's been investing in real estate for over 27 years. He's got a portfolio of over $200 million in assets and his name the godfather of real estate. Welcome, alfonso Cuadra. Alfonso, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much. Five questions. I'm like, how is he going to narrow everything down to five questions? Well, we're going to see Mario. Good to be here, my brother. Thank you for having me on the show.
Speaker 2:The concept is five questions about real estate or business, and we get straight to the point. The concept is five questions about real estate or business, and we get straight to the point. I love it. The first one I'd like to ask you is you know, you've been investing for many years now. You have an extensive portfolio under your belt, but what made you want to start investing in the first place in real estate? What got you going?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wasn't always an investor. I was a business person first. I started my first business when I was 17 years old, and it was a clothing business that I grew to stores all across Canada by the time I was 21,. I was very successful. I had money in the bank, I had all the toys. I had the life of my dreams at 21 years old.
Speaker 1:At 21 years old, I had made it, and the issue was I had no financial literacy. No one taught me how to invest, and what I did was I blew the money, and it wasn't until I was 24, at the brink of losing everything, that I made a decision that I would never want to feel that way again and I started to educate myself on financial literacy. I started to read about being wealthy. I started to read about wealthy people. I love biographies about all the wealthiest people in the world.
Speaker 1:After doing all of this research, I discovered that number one.
Speaker 1:My issue was I was very much a consumer and so I needed to transition from being a consumer to an investor, having the investor mindset.
Speaker 1:Number two I only had one stream of income, which was my business, and when that suffered, you know, and that dried up, I was left, you know, trying to figure out what to do. What I discovered is that the wealthiest people in the world not only do they not buy stuff, but they reinvest their money into income producing assets, which leads me to the last point, which is real estate. When I read about all the wealthiest people in the world, even though they had other businesses, all of them, every single one of them that I read about, had real estate as one of the streams that they had, and so that's what I realized Even though I was successful in business, I needed to become an investor and through that transformation led me to investing in real estate, and I never looked back. I transitioned to a full-time investor by the time I was 30 years old so okay, that link leads me to another question I have for you.
Speaker 2:uh, you went into real estate because you wanted to follow the footsteps of the people that were successful and and making big money. But then how does someone Building wealth, how does someone do that? Just as a snap of the finger?
Speaker 1:Good question. So it's not necessarily a snap of a finger. I had to make a decision. The first step is you have to make a decision on whether or not you want to be wealthy, right, I mean, it's going to come with some effort, and the first thing is you have to decide. The second thing that someone will need to do is get educated on how that's going to happen, and so that's what I did.
Speaker 1:I started to read about all the wealthiest people in the world. Not only did they all invest in real estate, but they all had mentors and coaches that got them there. Right? Everybody talks about you know, like mentorship someone that mentored them, and so I knew that that was going to be my path, and so I looked for people in my community that were doing the things that I wanted to do, and I went out and reached out, got, got mentorship from those people and, you know, even though I had to make a huge investment in myself, but I knew that the best investment was the one that you make on yourself, right, I wanted to bet. I wanted to bet on me, right, right. And that's how I got started, like I was shown the way I had to go and and get advice from people that were doing were in this space so you didn't try to do it on your own.
Speaker 1:You went to to seek guidance to make sure you would be successful I've had so many mentors and coaches um, everything that I've ever done in my life that's been successful has been because I've had a mentor or a coach.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is probably one of the biggest point I want to bring out to our listeners is, if you try to do something especially real estate, because it's big money make sure you know what you're doing and if you don't well, get some guidance so you do it well. So our third question for you I know you have your Quarter Youth Foundation and this is something that I admire you doing what you do with that foundation, but can you explain a little bit what goes on in the Quarter Youth Foundation?
Speaker 1:What goes on in the Quarter Youth Foundation, so a big part of what I do and why I do anything. I built Wealth Genius. I built multiple companies. We have over 10 companies that are currently active in our portfolio. The reason why I do anything is because I believe in this philosophy no one left behind. If you really want to come with us, we're going to help you, we're going to bring you with us, and the reason for that is because, when I was young, I felt like I was left behind. Number one my dad left during the war, never came back In the education system.
Speaker 1:When I came to Canada as a refugee, the education system was pretty tough on me and I felt like you know, I was consistently left behind in school and you know there was no guidance, it was no help, there was no support. As I became a teenager and I was on my own, I felt like the whole. I was like on my own, like the whole world was against me. I felt like I was left behind, and so my philosophy is I don't want anybody to ever feel that way, and so, even though I've started by helping, mentorship mentoring, you know, adults, training them and showing them the way and how to become successful, how to become free. I've had thousands of students. I've created thousands of millionaires all over the world. I still want to address my 12-year-old self, where.
Speaker 1:I felt like I was completely alone, and so the whole foundation was created. With that foundation, no one left behind, and young people right now I feel like they're being left behind and it's an important and we have a goal to reach 1 million young people in the next five years, and so that's kind of been my passion, my life's work and my passion, and the results have been incredible. These young people are just incredible people.
Speaker 2:And if somebody you know wants to donate to help out in the foundation, or how does it work exactly?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So basically, what we're looking for is time. Right, money's nice and in fact, we have initiatives where we are taking donations, but they're for very specific causes. For example, as you know, we're building a school in Sierraai forward slash gives. They'll see our initiative there. We're building a school. I actually just got back from Sierra Leone and we did a quarter youth event there and we're we're we're building a school there with another organization called Freedom Tree, and if anybody wants to donate, go and go there. Wealthgeniusai forward slash gives. Go there and donate, because it's an amazing cause and all of the funds are going directly to build that school.
Speaker 1:For us on the Quadra Youth side, instead of money, we want people to donate time. Time is the most valuable asset that someone has and these are not problems that people can just throw money to. People have to donate their time. For example, I could have just donated money to build a school in Sierra Leone, but I took my time to go there and educate some of these young people, and this is how we're going to truly make an impact. And so the challenge that I put forward to everyone, especially the people that are listening to the podcast you know we have a one-day event.
Speaker 1:It's called the Ultimate Teen Entrepreneur, and what we do is we actually, you know, do this across Canada and the US, and if someone is really excited about financial literacy for young people, they can organize a local event. We will come and deliver the event. We have all the product. We bring all the workbooks, the pens, the t-shirts for all the young people. But ultimately, we work with people on the ground. Just before I went to Sierra Leone, I was in Steinbeck, manitoba. So there's no place too big or too small that I won't go to to make sure that the message continues. But that's the way we're taking donations. We're taking donations of time. We want people to be able to step up and help us organize one of these events.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's great to know, because maybe some communities or some parents with kids in school, they want to give that to their children. So all you have to do is organize a group of what? 15, 20 children in a classroom, 20 young people.
Speaker 1:There's no limit to the amount of people. I've done events for like 150 young classroom, 20 young people. You know there's no limit to the amount of people. I've done events for like 150 young people, 200 young people. Really there's no limit.
Speaker 2:But to make it really, worth it and dynamic, I would say minimum 20 young people between the ages of 12 to 17. And then you guys come in and then deliver the Okay, perfect. Now you kind of touched on my fourth question, but maybe you can uh circle back. And I know you went to Africa to start building that school with freedom tree. Um, what was your experience down there? I was, you know, maybe a couple minutes on it. Uh, it's, it's going to be hard to go. Uh, you know, in a short, I know you can talk a lot about it, but what was your experience? Come people over there versus, maybe, north American people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really incredible. You know a lot of these developing countries. You know they're kind of behind on things and you know the technologies that we have. But what I find really interesting, you know, even though people you know the technologies that we have, but what I find really interesting, you know, even though people, you know they're they're living with nothing. You know some some of these people have still dirt floors, right, Some of the some of the houses, especially where I went, I went into the villages, right, so they have still mud houses. You know mud, you know dirt floors or whatnot, you know, but they're happy, right. Some of these people have, you know mud, you know dirt floors or whatnot, you know, but they're happy, right. Some of these people have, you know, they don't look at material things like the way we do Some of the things that are inconvenient. For us it's not even a realm of possibility because, you know, in some of these developing nations they're trying to survive, right, and it was definitely a humbling experience. It was definitely an experience that I will never forget and we were right there with the people.
Speaker 1:One of the most memorable moments was you know Tara, which she's the CEO of Freedom Tree, what she does and to build a school. It's not. I used to think, oh, you just put up money and you build a school, but you gotta have the stakeholders involved. The Ministry of Education needs to be involved, the village and they need ownership over this building or else they're not gonna use it, they're not gonna respect it. So there's a lot of work we're talking about even years of work in advance and what they do primarily is build these clinics, birthing clinics, and I'll never forget this for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:But we went through these dirt roads, probably about three hours, to get to this one village and when we arrived and it was a, they were looking at a future site for a clinic in one of these villages and the whole village was there waiting for us. And as we came into, like, kind of like the beginning of the village, the entire village came out and they were singing to us these welcome songs. So now we're walking with everybody in the village and we get to their meeting place where they did this amazing ceremony and singing and dancing, and then we got gifts, and so we got the traditional you know, sierra Leone, you know dress, and Helene and I were dressed, you know, and they gave us names. We have very specific names for that village and Tara, you won't believe this something very special.
Speaker 1:She got a goat. She got a goat, a chicken, plantain and avocados. And you know it was so funny because that goat came home with us in the van and you know it was such an experience that you would not have here in North America for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing so many different experiences, and it's good to see how it takes us back, how people can appreciate the little things in life. And now, maybe sometimes we need to step back and reflect on, you know, how good our life is, which, you know, really pushes me to encourage our listeners if they want to participate in the cause, go to wealthgeniuscom, and $20, $30, $50, whatever you can give goes towards a good cause. Here's our last question for you, alfonso. It's not a complicated one. You do a lot of stuff. What's next? What's next for you? What's next for the plans of WellGenius, maybe? Or what's next for you personally?
Speaker 1:Well for us, everything that we do, we continue to expand on right. So our portfolio from a real estate perspective, we're bringing the portfolio to 7,500 doors In the next five years. We want to get to a billion dollars, you know, assets under management, right, so that's our goal in the real estate side. Wealth Genius, this is a passion project, you know. This is our way to give to as many people as possible. The gift that I was given in terms of having this understanding and learning how to invest and building portfolios, creating financial freedom, have a mission is to inspire the world to create financial freedom, time freedom for themselves, because I know that if people have their time back, they're going to do amazing things with their lives.
Speaker 1:And so, when it comes to Wealth Genius, you know, right now we're, you know, at around 1200 members. We'd love to get to 5000 members. Of course, we're looking for quality. We're always protecting the validity of the group. So it's not like we're looking for quality, we're always protecting the validity of the group. So it's not like we're looking for millions and millions of people, but if we can maintain the quality of people, because, as you know, wealth Genius stands for excellence and action, takers and camaraderie and community, and so, if we can continue to foster that and still continue to grow the membership, we're excited to do it. And then, lastly, you know the Quadra Youth Foundation for one. We're building this school, but we don't want to stop there. We want to build hundreds and potentially thousands of schools out there and we want to impact the lives of a million young people. And that would be for the very short term. Those are some of the goals that we have.
Speaker 2:These are not small goals, but they're ambitious, and you know what Congratulate you. I'd like to congratulate you on those goals because it's not only for yourself, but it's also for the communities. You know you're thinking of other people and it's so beautiful to see. So thank you for that, thank you for the motivations that you give us and thank you for being on the Five Questions podcast with us today.
Speaker 1:Hey, great podcast, my man, congratulations. And keep moving forward, keep expanding, keep growing, keep creating and we're going to see you at the top.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning into the 5 Questions Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, like and hit the notification bell on our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Stay tuned for more insights and tips to transform your real estate and business game. See you next time.