How Has Being An Entrepreneur Affected Your Family Life?

Many entrepreneurs desire to spend more time with their family. Business owner Alex Pardo shares how being an entrepreneur has affected his family life, and what some good ways are to keep things healthy at work and home. Alex shares some great tips with healthy perspectives of how his family life is affected by his business, but also how he makes it work well and how you can too.

"Business and the money we make it it's a tool right it just allows us to experience the things we enjoy with the people that we love and those moments are Priceless that's worth a hundred deals"

Well hello everybody and welcome to the iron deep podcast I'm Mike Stansberry today and we're talking to Alex Pardo Alex Pardo we've been friends for a while but uh we're glad to have you on thanks for coming on my brother I am blessed to be on with you it's exciting to see you uh venture out into the podcast world and and uh you know Iron deep I love what you and Brett are doing so I'm excited to be on and just be an open book and share brother yeah Brett has uh he's assembled like an Avenger like team to to help with the podcast and I'm kind of like uh the guy with the least superpower uh but I'm glad to be on the team so he's got a really good uh good team and um this podcast uh iron deep is is specifically about guys like you uh that uh you know you've been business owner you've been an entrepreneur all your life and we're trying to attract um other entrepreneurs to listen and because there's a there's a component that is not talked about a lot uh with business uh men specifically and that's their spiritual journey and so we we want to get into that but before we do uh people don't know who Alex Pardo is uh give me kind of the 60 90 second overview of kind of where you were how you started and uh and where you are now yeah man I'll do my best again I appreciate the opportunity to share uh born and raised in Miami my my parents came from Cuba my sister and I were born here in the states and didn't come from a family of entrepreneurs in fact I'm I'm the very first one to uh go out and start a business and I thought I wanted to climb the corporate ladder back in 2003 when I graduated from FIU and ended up taking a job at General Electric in their financial management program and uh I'm I'm not very good at many things but I'm good at a few and one of those is being able to reverse engineer the path that I want to get on and I remember three months into that job Mike looking at my boss and all the way up the ladder to the CFO which is where I aspired to be one day and I I just didn't want to do that I saw the life that they had and I'm like why do I want to do this that's not the life I want and so I I finished my two-year commitment I decided to go backpacking around Europe for three and a half months with a couple buddies I was single and uh and it was during I was I was on a train ride I think I was going from Spain to Italy if I remember correctly and I decided to pick up the book Think and Grow Rich and it was that book along with going through Carlton sheets no money down that really opened my eyes and said you know what when I get back from this trip I'm gonna start a real estate business I read somewhere in one of those books that most millionaires are you know have some sort of real estate in their portfolio and I had always been interested in real estate and so um I thought I was going to get back to Miami and start assuming loans because that's what my boy Carlton sheets taught me and uh decided to go to a marketing for deals boot camp learned all about wholesaling that was that was kind of my path that was your path and then now so you you you're in the wholesaling business 17 years of real estate experience Alex Pardo now what is what does daily operations look like what is what is what does Alex's day look like what's he handle what's he take care of what's his responsibilities uh yeah tell us about that yeah man I'm kind of smiling because that question answered two two and a half years ago was very very different than it is now it's it's much simpler life is a lot uh I don't want to say easier it's just simpler you know two three years ago I had I had built out a team I had nine ten team members and I had this wholesaling operation with 40 plus thousand dollars a month in overhead and I thought I wanted to scale right I'm sure your audience never heard that word scale before right it's a buzzword it's such a buzzword dude and and I I had joined the Mastermind that you and I are both very familiar with great community and I saw people building and scaling and and I felt that that was my path and then I quickly realized similar to my corporate world that I didn't want to do that that wasn't that building that kind of business wasn't aligned with my vision and the kind of Lifestyle I wanted and so uh back in 2020 I uh I I exited out of that wholesaling operation and uh took a little bit of a sabbatical and six months later decided to get into Self Storage which I'm sure we may talk about but to answer your question specifically operations are pretty simple I have a uh I have a a personal assistant who's phenomenal and takes so much weight off my shoulders one thing I've learned Mike is to surround yourself with just awesome people where there's a core value alignment and that uh and are just rock stars just great people you know people talk about the a players the rock stars I truly believe that a lot of the success that I have is is due primarily to God uh why I give God all the glory but then it's really about the people that I've surrounded myself with and so I have a pretty small team I have two va's and a personal assistant and uh it allows me to to operate a couple profitable businesses and not go crazy working you know 40 plus hours a week now it sounds to me so let me just kind of give a brief update or a brief recap of that so three four years ago in the middle of it uh wanting to scale because we're we're seeing what other what other businesses are doing and we're like okay maybe I want that and then you run get to the point where like oh that is exactly like that corporate lifestyle that I was running away from that I didn't want that you know when I went backpacking Carlton sheets uh that education I'm sure there was uh the yeah the Napoleon Hill and now you're you just had another you had another Epiphany and now you're you feel like you're in a you feel like you're living the life that was the antithesis of that or where are you at in that journey I would it's a really good question I don't think anybody's ever asked me that I wouldn't say I'm living the life that Tian tip this is so that I I would say I have been very intentional Mike about creating more space and time to focus on self-care to plug into God uh you mentioned this spiritual journey that I've been on the last I don't know maybe nine months or so whereas before my my faith has always been really important to me it's always been my Foundation uh but if you were to look at my calendar my phone in my bank account you wouldn't you couldn't really tell that right you know somewhere I learned and heard that you can tell what people prioritize by looking at what they value by looking at their bank account their worth their time uh my days are just I'm I'm very plugged into uh I'm allowing myself to be guided by what God wants me to do with my life and with my businesses I just had a call yesterday with a mutual friend Mike Wagner talking to him about in God my business partner and allowing him to guide me to the best decisions versus me making the decisions that I think are best based on selfish reasons or based on reasons that you know are are just because I want to help people and I want to impact people um and so yeah man I'm just I'm at more peace doesn't mean I'm not faced with a bunch of challenges that doesn't mean that at times I don't feel like a firefighter putting out all these fires that I probably started uh so it doesn't mean everything's perfect far from it but I'm much more at peace and I feel in alignment with the direction God wants me to go in it's funny you use that metaphor uh fires that you started we're all arsonists and uh and but we're not the firefighter we're we're we're like behind we're like can we hold the hose and God's like no I got this just just listen to me so you mentioned nine months was there a was there uh in you're on your spiritual journey and this is really what I want to dig deep into and and kind of um um kind of tell me how like what was it like nine months ago was there was there a hinge point was there a linchpin moment or was there something that you read or a mentor that kind of guided you you mentioned Mike Wagner um and how maybe he's mentoring you but tell us you know tell us how you got there nine months ago and and how do you continue that Journey that spiritual journey that you're on and I'm gonna be very vulnerable and share with you that I might not have all the answers to your questions because I'm still I'm in a phase I'm in a season now as they say where I'm I'm doing my best to just surrender to to surrender release let go let God these are all words and phrases that just are resonating with me um and so there was a moment or something that happened mine but as we feel something internally and I put your finger on it people have referred to it as a tug and things started happening like people that I would meet come I would have that would stir something up inside of me and I knew I was on this path is I I was raised Catholic and so we you know we don't consistently go to Catholic church every Sunday and I've gotten away from from Merchant and then I found this community um that was very different than it's Christianity but it's it's it wasn't like a structured Catholic mass and I remember the very first service I attended I was crying probably 20 minutes into that service and I'm like why am I crying like what's what is it about this message and the music that I'm listening to that has me feeling emotional and it's giving me physical chills all over my body and that happened the second week and then the third week and I'm like God's trying to tell me something here he's trying to push me in a certain direction or he wants me to open my eyes he wants me to maybe create some space and so I think that was when I started to realize I'm feeling something inside of me and I to this day I still can't quite put my finger on it and so when things happen that maybe don't go according to plan I'm taking it as hey you I've been saying to myself he's got the wheel maybe I should shift and say he's got the fire hose uh and so yeah man I don't know that I can give you a very specific answer to your question about was there a linchpin moment maybe that was it uh but I'm sharing I'm being very open on my podcast and even with my family about what I'm feeling and what I'm experiencing and I'm noticing now my daughters have an even more greater interest in exploring their faith and uh and so it's just really cool man I don't know I'm guessing a lot of people listening to the show are believers and and if if they're not maybe maybe that'll open their eyes to to plug into the source which you and I both believe is God and uh life feels just more at peace if that makes any sense it does it does I mean the one thing that God promises is that if you and there's there's a lot of scripture that talks about putting um letting him take care of your yoke letting him taking care of your birds but we um we and especially men because we're we we have all these struggles we want to be The Driver we're very uh ego driven and we we want to be the band and we want to take care of things and so it's it's easy to read it and go yes I want him to take my yoke but then it's a it's another thing to give it to him and yeah um the piece comes from your you know you heard I heard you say letting go or letting letting God take care of it because he is the he is the bearer of those burdens that's kind of what I'm hearing and you mentioned your your daughters um you know one of the things that that as you know as your your girls or what are their ages again they're one is about to be six and the other one's about to be eight like in the coming weeks now how fun is that it's awesome man it's being a father is is one of the the greatest gifts uh God has given my wife and I and it's uh it's something that I I I'm intentionally reminding myself on a daily weekly basis not to take for granted because I've heard a gazillion times how quickly it goes and I'm seeing that I just recently I stumbled across some iPhone pictures from like when they were two and four years old and I'm like I had to almost jog my memory like I kind of remember that you know and that's scary because those are precious moments you'll never get back and so I'm doing my best to be as present as possible and at the same time I fail pretty often if I'm being honest yes uh when this is all about it because I'm I'm the same way I've I fail consistently I've got a 20 year old and an 18 year old I have 20 year old son an 18 year old girl and it just went by like snap of the fingers and the you know as as uh terrible or social media is great good and it's also terrible but the best part of my socials is when the memories come back when they when they put a memory on there that's five years ago and you're then you're looking at your kid who was who was 15 at the time another 20 and you remember that moment um so I I get it that's uh uh you'll have more of that at eight and six it's it's gonna come in in waves what's what's great though though is their curiosity you know you just said it earlier they're they're curious about hey you know what what's what's life all about and they're looking those girls are going to look to you and look to your wife Natalie for for guidance there and you know what that's that's a gift from God because um you know what we what we show them and what we tell them is ultimately what they're gonna what's gonna anchor them so uh how's that been you know tell us what that's brother one of the things I've I've learned I think that I've really learned this year is when things don't go to plan with the kiddos and when I start to feel a level of frustration um they're teaching me something in that moment and I'm trying to remind myself of that uh and and it can be a struggle at times again I I'm I'm certainly you know me Mike we've been good friends for years but for those that don't know me I'm I'm not the one to ever come on here and pretend like I have all the answers or know it all because I certainly don't I'm I'm learning on a daily basis you know when these kids are born they don't come really with a manual uh outside of maybe the word right uh but I'm learning on a daily basis and and again one of the things I think I've really latched on to this year is is they're teaching me as much if not more than maybe I'm teaching them and you referenced I think as parents particularly fathers it's it's I think it's less about what you say words have power and and people give meaning to words but I think it's more about what you do that these kids are watching man even when we don't think they're watching they're watching and so it's cool to I notice sometimes them noticing me with my morning routine or reading the Bible and that Peaks their curiosity and sometimes they ask me questions so I get to play a little bit of a role in shaping them while understanding that the antithesis is true right sometimes the when I'm not the best version of myself or maybe I let frustration get to me or maybe uh like they model their parents right and so I understand that I have the ability to like shape them and I also have the ability to quote unquote screw them up in some way shape or form um and I know because I've I've had coaches throughout the years and I've gone to therapy and different things and I realize that even something that happens when you're a child you don't even realize has shaped your view or your mindset or your perspective on something and we make decisions based on our paradigms and based on our experiences so I'm just being more mindful brother that uh I tell them hey I make Daddy makes mistakes I don't have all the answers but I know who does right and that that's the man upstairs and so I don't know man it's it's I'm still figuring out a lot of this process and just being open to to surrendering and just uh seeing where God takes me the process of having kids and raising them um is probably the most challenging because it does reveal like when you're at home and when something goes right it reveals any issues that you need to work on pretty quickly yes one of the things I've I've learned so much I've got four kids and the the only benefit of having there's a lot of benefits having four kids but the the real benefit is I've got a 2018 and a 13 and a nine and I know me and my wife we always go oh we did that wrong so let's do it right this time so that's that that's the cool part but you know um I do when I see you and Natalie and the girls on social media I see you at their events and things like that you're right they are watching um one of the things that's what's interesting is uh as they grow older I remember as a kid and your parents live with live close by you and and um in Florida and when I went to a baseball game I would look for my dad I'd look for my mom and and they went to as many baseball games as they get go to and I remember doing that um because you know there was just it's as a kid it's important that you have you know have have that support system and my my daughter is playing for uh her High School softball team and what's cool is she comes up to the plate and she looks behind and looks for us or she steps in the box and I'm thinking man that moment right there yeah is is just the best because you know you put yourself back there right uh and and know that that's and that's the best part of life yeah doing deals is great and um being an entrepreneur is is awesome uh but that is is is the good stuff yeah and and I think the the one thing that I would just comment Mike and piggyback on that if and if people take nothing else from this podcast but they they don't learn this because I think everybody knows it to a certain degree but if they really prioritize is it's all about I think the quality of our lives uh and this is I think a Tony Robbins I'm paraphrasing but it's determined by the quality of our relationships right our relationship with our creator our relationship with our our our kids our spouse our family our friends uh the older I get brother the more I realize that it's less about attaining more and more and more right More Money More this more that and what I'm after are deeper relationships with the right people um and when I hear that story about your daughter looking back before she steps in the in the box that's a relationship you have with your daughter you know you and your wife it's it's relationally driven and I had that I was I was fortunate that as a child my my parents were always plugged into my different sporting events or whatever like I had that support and so I was able to model that uh and you might be listening to this and maybe you didn't have that but that's I think that's a um I think that can reveal to you maybe the kind of parent that you want to be or the kind of parent that you can continue to strive towards being right because just because you had something in the past it doesn't need to shape or Define the person you are the parent you are we can learn from all those things we certainly certainly can um and that is the the best part of my one of the things I've been listening to recently is you know we're we're wired as entrepreneurs and as men and human beings are required to just get more stuff and what you articulated very well is hey I just want to have really good uh mentorship relationships good relationships with good friends I want a great relationship with my wife I want my kids and I to have a a relationship so where that when they're adults we are we are best buddies and what's what I know about you and what I what I've been so uh excited to share with you is that I'm going on vacation with my in-laws this summer we're gonna go on a cruise but that's something that you can consistently do Alex Pardo uh I mean you're not out there uh you're not going you're you're not solo on your events and things like that when you go on vacation uh it's a it's more than just the nuclear family affair talk talk to us about that and what Memories uh that you're making with your kids and uh with your with your parents and in-laws what's what does that look like what have those experience been like I think for me I have such fond memories of going on trips with my family and again my my family you know middle class they did well but we certainly weren't wealthy uh we also certainly weren't poor and I remember my parents really sacrificing to take us on trips even if it was to Disney three hours away or whatever right like but just to create memories and I have such fun uh I I can I can tangibly remember those moments as a child and how I think it shaped me and my wife and I wanted to create those moments for our children and we we love travel and so that's a big part of our vision and uh one of the things we we try to do is every quarter take every month try to take a Friday off so that we can have an extended weekend uh or would during even during the week um and every quarter take at least a one week trip somewhere uh and so the year before we plan out hey what kind of travel do we want where do we want to go what do we want to experience we try to get the kids involved hey what do you guys want to do and so we were just talking before this the recording of This podcast how we just got back from an eight night cruise and we're gonna spend 20 days traveling the Amalfi Coast in Italy and uh and to me man that that's what business and the money we make it it's a tool right it just allows us to experience the things we enjoy with the people that we love uh and those moments are Priceless right those pictures that we talk about like that's that's worth that's worth a hundred deals right because you those are just moments and experiences that can't be taken away from you so uh yeah man travel is just a big part of our life and it's cool that my my now five-year-old has more stamps on her passports than her age right I mean that's that's pretty crazy she's she's gotten to be able to give her a different perspective how different for her to see how people live different cultures different languages I think that broadens their Horizon you know in five years from now she's going to open that passport up and look at those stamps and have memories of all those places there'll be things that she is just so grateful for those experiences and and and living life with uh with the family it's that that is uh something that I experience quite a bit is we we take a lot of pictures and I find my older kids going back and looking at things and being nostalgic uh about about trips uh we don't we haven't been to Disney in about four or five years but it's talked about on like a monthly basis hey you remember that remember this yep that was so much fun um and uh so yeah and that's the stuff that's the stuff right and then the other thing I I'll mention is you know because it's you mentioned we always try to involve our parents when possible because I understand the importance of uh the relationship that you know my parents their grandparents want to have with their granddaughters and vice versa and so we're all very maybe it's it's the Latin culture I don't know I can only speak from from my perspective but we've we've always been a very tight family unit and that's just very very important to us you and I are about in the same stage of life our parents are getting older and so one of the things that that I think that we just have to be mindful of is that you know time is is uh it's always it's fixed whether we believe it or not I mean we've got just enough time here on this Earth uh to spend with family and so the if you can just take advantage of it as much as you can yeah um you need to do that so last night I was uh again reminded I've heard this a million times but it hits you different sometimes because I've got a uh my daughter's going off to college is um you know she's at the age of 18 she spent about 80 percent of the time of her life with you at that moment so 80 of all that time that you've spent of your one-on-one time with her is already done at 18. that's that's an average uh and so I hope to to uh not be average don't want to be mediocre but it is just a a sober reminder of the amount of time that we have left so I have it on my she has 120 days and I think it's at 119 days until she leaves for for uh college and she's going to UT Chattanooga and I'm trying to be mindful of that to do something every day and to make sure that that has an impact because again we got yeah we got limited time there's this gentleman that I had the opportunity to interview on on my podcast uh about a year year and a half ago Jim Shields I believe is his name and I think he authored a book called 18 Summers and it talks about that that as parents we have when you put things in that perspective and you say we have 18 Summers with our children let's say your kids are are nine like dude you got nine more Summers before they're probably off to you know be adults and have their life and not like you can't experience more Summers with your kids but things are certainly different they're going to probably have their own family at some point or uh they get older you know life happens and so uh when you start to put things we feel like we have all this time and sometimes I find Mike that it takes it takes a tragedy right a passing of somebody we know or somebody we don't know like a celebrity I remember when Kobe Bryant passed away years ago it really hit me I'm like man like this is somebody who I felt I knew because I'm a Lakers fan a big Kobe fan and I I never met the dude so I don't really know him but like for life to just be taken away in an instant at 41 42 years old however he was it's just it's very sobering to know that we have no idea when we're going to be called and uh and to try to just take advantage of every opportunity yeah yes absolutely and uh you know when when those things happen it's always good to to really do an introspective I have another buddy of mine who's a big Lakers fan and his name is uh Nick and when when Kobe died uh that was on a Sunday you know I've talked with him on Wednesday I didn't realize how big of a fan he was he knew everything about him and he was a wreck for a week but one thing we talked about is just what you just alluded to to is like I I can't he's got uh two boys he goes I can't uh waste any more time and yeah that actually helped him change it made him pivot on a lot of stuff that event so it's it's apropos that you mentioned that um well Alex uh you know I think we're coming up to the Mark here uh about the end of the r d podcast if people want to know a little bit more about you how would they find you tell us a little bit about that what's that look like Alex thank you man so yeah I've been hosting I've been uh just very grateful and fortunate to have been hosting a podcast for come we're coming up on seven years uh almost 700 episodes which is just kind of blows my mind it's crazy when I when I started it it was it was really uh the intention then and the attention today is just to give back and help people but I never did could I have imagined that I'd be doing the 700 episodes later so it's called the flip Empire show and uh don't let the title of the podcast mislead you it's it's it's not about flipping it's it's much much deeper than that a lot of the conversation we had on this podcast if you enjoyed that I think you would you would enjoy plugging into that we also talk business and lifestyle and things of that nature um and then uh a mutual friend of ours Steve cabin on I at a mastermind that we we the three of us were a part of at that time we started a community of entrepreneurs called Ascend which is a mastermind Community uh we still do that to this day so ascendyoursuccess.com would be another place to get in contact with me awesome yeah I have sent a few people a few entrepreneurs to ascend uh Alex do a great job um and they impact lives and uh Alex again thanks for coming on the the iron deep podcast um this podcast is for business men who are entrepreneurials and we just want to I appreciate you being vulnerable here and talking about your spiritual journey because what that's going to do is it's going to give men permission to get to to think a little deeper about it and maybe ask some questions and if you uh have any um if you're listening to this podcast and have questions about um you know God about Jesus about any of that and maybe you just want to have a conversation about what iron Deep's all about please reach out to us and let us know and uh we'd love to connect with you again thanks for being on the r d podcast thanks for listening thanks for watching on all the different podcast forums we'll see you next time

‍