AMIR KHOSHNIYATI: From Bullied To $2 Billion By Age 30! (2019 MUST WATCH INTERVIEW)

hi I'm Amir Kosh naughty I went from bully to billions and I'm one of the passionate few I really enjoyed today's interview with Omar we got into a lot about my past what I've accomplished how I got there I really hope it inspires all of you welcome to this episode of the passionate view podcast today it's your host Omar here and today we have an unconventional interview because we get to sit down with somebody who's not too often seen on social media there's the billion dollar entrepreneur Amir Ocean yachty and only in his early 30s Amir shares with us in this interview his story as well as his mind said that it took for him to get out of college finally he wanted to do in life in turn move up in his career and later take the lessons from his career although it wasn't naturally his passion but find a way to carve it into a solution in the marketplace and since doing that not only has he become passionate about his work but he's also become mega successful doing it and at such a young age has already picked up clients like Samsung Apple the NBA and so much more with this technology that will blow your mind but in this interview more so than his business model we talked about the mindset that it takes to play the game of life at a high height level and go from wherever you're at and life right now as you're listening this to ultimately make your dreams a reality and the best part about this interview that we actually shot at oceanfront and my favorite city on the planet Laguna Beach California and literally overlooked in the water and one of the most beautiful properties one of many he owns while sharing the wisdom in the process so I really want to encourage you guys to sit back relax enjoy this powerful interview with a phenomenal view from none other than serial entrepreneur and the young successful man on a mission Amir Kosh Nadi enjoy [Music] right now so today I'm here happy to be here take a bad movie yeah yes absolutely thank you for having us in your beautiful home here oh they run in Laguna man very awesome pleasure so let's get right into it a lot of people might not know you in the social media space but in the tech space entrepreneurially you're very well known in the niche that you're in can you talk a little bit about before we get to your success talk a little about your humble beginnings and sort of where you grew up before you went on to you know do what you've done in business and acquisitions and investments and now manage an investment portfolio of over a billion dollars where it take us back where did it all begin for you began in Lake Forest California so born here I was going back and forth I have a Persian heritage so I up to about the age of 13 I was going back and forth to Iran a few times a year and it was a little difficult I guess growing up because I was learning the English language at the same time learning the persian farsi language and then at the same time spanish so wide spanish my parents thought it would be a good fit to also Spanish in Southern California so I uh ended up picking up these three languages and my parents thought it was a good idea to kind of push me into school a year early so ended up going to school and the problem was at this Montessori they had no idea what I was saying because I was blending three languages together in a sentence so they basically told me hey you know he needs to go back home and try to develop his English skills and start at the right time so ended up doing that but but I guess life wasn't as easy back then personally because language was a barrier and I had a very thick accent almost believe it or not through write off to about high school all the way through middle school and I still there's certain words I stumble on and passing but it was it was very tough in the early days just just kind of gearing to the culture here as I was going back and forth always a very awkward skinny nerdy kid Japanese siblings I did I do I have one younger brother who was who has been very close to me my whole life we polar opposites but we just just from the standpoint of how we grew up we stayed very close and he's on a very good track he's stayed away from the business and the tech and he's on the medical routes and he's gonna run a doctor actually in two months from now Wow very problem so did you guys grow up in a household that like cultivated like going out and achieving going out and doing big things or where was the seed planted in you at that point where you were being bullied and didn't really think entrepreneurially where was where did the seed start for you like huh I want to do something big and start then did it start later I was I guess a little bit of an awkward kid I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life we when I was born we lived in a one-bedroom apartment things weren't all so rosy we shared it with another relative and as we were progressing through life my dad I rarely saw him I would see him a couple times a month because he was always on travel and he was entrepreneur same thing he came in not speaking the language and started a company from from the garage essentially and as he was picking up I actually it's really funny I thought he was a pilot not an entrepreneur because he was flying so much and he was never home yeah and as I started to grow up and understand more the respect level was so high because it was such a family man and it was there's so much instilling morals in us but at the same time he was doing so much in the business world that none of us knew about and none of us saw and as we evolved I guess that that humble beginning kind of stuck with me because I saw what he was able to do but it also kept us grounded because we still got to see exactly where we came from and what the foundation was behind that gotcha so initially growing up you guys didn't really have money or didn't have much until like later in high school that's when he started his business and started having a little bit of success there he started having success and again we still didn't understand that and what he was trying to do was instill the the right level of integrity in us to not not be driven by monetary things but understand that that hard work takes time it takes patience and when he had finally done well in his own light he kind of came back to us and said guys we're now in a place where I can teach you the right things I can take you out into the world and teach you how to fish but I'm not gonna catch that fish for you so if you really want to invest in yourself often have education I can I can assist you guys with that but that's where the bus stops and you really have to now figure out what your niche is and what path you want to go down so for me it was a little bit i opening because i i was able to see his journey and appreciate it more as i was growing but then as I started to get older then the the statusbar was a little bit higher for me to try to achieve because not only did I have to surpass him but that support was wasn't there anymore he was just there from a level of advice but it was more just kind of on me and my shoulders and where I wanted to go with my life nice so then is it in college that you start thinking entrepreneurial II or you know what was your first venture what did you try anything in high school I tried many things and they all drastically failed starting out or were some of your first businesses I guess my my first business was when I was in my early teens and again very introverted back then and language again barriers so I was buying small toys at that time a target and I was taking him apart and I always had an obsession with LED lights and I still do it to this day and so I would take him apart and then I would pretty much try to configure him again as a new product so I went for a little while and tried to sell these at different campaigns within our middle school and massively failed obviously but that tech was kind of in me and I always wanted to be a part of something where hopefully I could take products and give them some kind of life or bring them to life in a artificial inteligence virtual reality kind of way and you know fast forward to now which is now what we're doing left and right it's funny how he came full circle so I tried that through through high school I worked at CVS so that was the interesting humbling experience back to now what I'm doing and where we are and you're only 30 now right I just turned 30 Wow it's awesome so that that was I guess the first ventures and then I I started dabbling a little bit into real estate while I was in college just to just to help a little bit but I I still didn't know what I was gonna do my big break truly came when I was in my master's program and I was working for somebody that actually had everything that I wanted in life and he was almost like this role model that I was chasing month-to-month and I ended up being at that stint for about a year and a half so is it an internship or was it it was in it was an internship and my hope was that they were gonna hire me after I was done so I was I was basically going to school all evening and working throughout the day so I get to the office early on and I was very blessed because the CEO oh really saw that I was putting in the hours so he kind of took me under his wing and not only taught me things that at that time I was in a marketing role not only taught me things in the marketing department but expanded we meet more into the lines of sales into the operations of the business into the financials so he gave me a big boost and at the same time I was investing in myself with the education so it all kind of came full circle but this guy he had everything I wanted sharp to the tee had a very nice Porsche that used Volkswagen I was so ashamed in a way when I was going out in Orange County I believe in art one time it broke down in downtown Laguna Wow and I was pushing it down down the street and nobody was helping so and then I thought I would get it together go to the office and I'd see him with his car and I said this is where I want to be so he became a little bit of an eye-opener so he became kind of like a mentor to you absolutely now what did that teach you about like the importance of mentorship because I think there's a lot of people who you know in their early whatever teens or 20s or coming out of college they don't know what they want to do with their life or they're looking around how important was it for you to have a mentor versus if you didn't for people out there who are kind of considering or trying to find their way in life would you say that experience taught you I think the mentorship thing taught me one recurring theme and that was the understanding that if you pull the right resources like he saw in me you could build the right team and that team will help you to achieve the right things in life for me when I was starting out I didn't have an understanding of what I wanted to do so I was kind of dabbling around doing a little bit on the financial side doing a lot in marketing because he brought me into that department but the good thing was that mentor started see skills in me that others didn't and that I didn't know I had at the time or I didn't know I had the confidence behind so he was able to pull those skills out front and center show me some success behind it and then monetarily give me some some benefits and some boost and encouragement and then with that then I was able to understand basically how to leverage that skill set and then as it progressed forward it made more sense all the confidence he was instilling in me back then because I used to come into the office and he would say you're doing so great I'm so proud of all the things you're doing and then I look and I'd say I just I just pulled the analytics report I was a big deal I just pressed export here I didn't understand at the time he was building my confidence and he was building me in a way to think and try to push myself better but so I'm very grateful for what he did and in the same light I would say for people that are looking right now to find their niche or try to figure out what they want to do with their life try to follow somebody that that truly is doing it or has done it that's willing to take the time and invest into your skills and developing them so how old were you when you first got that internship I was 21 so I had just graduated my undergrad I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life and I ended up moving to China and I went to studied there I really wanted to just get away from everybody and everything I kind of start fresh and it was a little bit humbling for me because I remember I was so excited to leave the country yeah and not go to the Middle East for go to you know to China and as a plane was descending down I started to realize what am I doing here and we landed and I was walking the streets and nothing made sense I mean that I couldn't make up the language I couldn't figure out what the writing man and long story short after about two weeks this truly became home to me I started to see the value of hard work I was seeing buildings put up in about eight months over there Wow quick turnarounds because people get up to 33 in the morning and they work till about 8:00 9:00 p.m. Wow they brought their rice cookers to the job site it was all in one and they were so not only engraved and passionate about their jobs but also very family-oriented and when I was when it was time for me to actually come back to the States honestly didn't want to leave because it was just such a humbling culture and then you come back here and there was a lot of I guess glam and superficial nough so bright it brought a lot of morals and it's still a lot of morals into me that hard work comes with the passion you put into your everyday life so I brought a lot from that trip so when I came back here I I didn't have work experience but I knew that I still had the drive to go to school and I knew at the time the only differentiator for me outside of just being another person with a bachelor's degree was to go get a masters degree and try to put myself in a light that a company would hire me and hopefully I learned at a time I didn't know what being entrepreneurial was I didn't know what starting a business was but I knew that if I took some of those soft skills and hard skills and brought them together maybe it would give me a competitive advantage in the market so I went straight to my master's program I was interning there it was about a 18-month program so it's pretty fast paced and the school was was all evening and then I came back but but but it was challenging at the same time because I was going to school with kids that were in their 30s mid 30s sometimes even early 40s that had a lot of experience so a lot of the content was just complete but what I had done was I was positioning a lot of the content from schooling with my mentor at the same time and blending it together so it was almost a MBA program on steroids for me because I was getting the experience in real real life in my everyday and what was the nature of the business you interned for like what were they in the business of so it was a electrical engineering business so I always wanted to be on the tech side I didn't know what kind of tech and these guys they were doing power system analysis software so they were basically you could think of him like a interior design software for engineers so they could go out and map out where the outlets are they could predict when the faults were gonna happen so their line of business was very interesting but for me I wanted to kind of dabble into not where their success was but where their failures were away is that I want to zoom in on that because I think that's a very wise point can you talk to the audience about why it was important for you to zoom in on where they were failing or where they were having inefficiencies rather than just going on the successes that they were have sure so for me I was trying to make such a statement I guess it was more of a selfish role in the business yeah that I was trying to understand where they were failing so I could try to figure out or it could be a value-add for that yeah and hopefully turn it into some benefits for the business hopefully get myself to make a bigger jump in the business so right there was part but there was part I guess a little bit of selfishness because I really wanted to make an impact there and I saw myself being invested in by the senior management so I just was trying to get get my foot in the door obviously you never know what you're doing in the moment and where the benefit is going to come out in your life right but what I was doing up to about 23 23 and 1/2 turned out to be the bread and butter for what I do right now a 30 so it was a combination of exactly understanding where their faults were it was a combination of falling on my face many times to understand the procedures they had and the processes in place but it turned out that when I ended up starting my own and building it I had the full support of their senior management because they wanted to close down that line of business at the operating so I not only did did I get their support but it was also a boost for me to start basically what I wanted to do so that was the foundation for you starting your next business venture correct yeah and was it was a little bit tricky when you started a business from there or did they support you or was there a little bit of like it they supported me to the point that they said go ahead and start it but they didn't support me in any other manner so I still was responsible to go try to find the engineers try to find the technical resources to help us not only get our foundation going but also the marketing and the sales folks so it was it was new for me it was a big risk but I knew that if I was gonna make a mistake in my life it would be right then in my mid-20s versus somewhere in my mid 30s or late 40s right and then it might be too late in five my family at that time then there's much more pressure yeah so it was uh it was more support from them just to get the venture going so at that time I know you didn't have cash too or capital to invest right so yet to get investors yes did you had you done that before that was your first time it's still really new and a little overwhelming and yeah at that time I had because I needed a couple million dollars to start that I needed actually three to get it going and I was a little apprehensive because I said I I didn't really want to take on more debt than I needed but I knew the foundation of the business was based around three three million dollars and I had asked multiple people and they had basically rounded out around the numbers so I basically took a three million dollar loan out and it was under the agreement with the group I had taken it out they had said three years to pay it back so a million a year based on the cash flows and the proform of it put together for this business how long did it take you to raise that that three million from idea to actual funding of about eight months I did started while I was in that business and actually I was very transparent with that business that I was looking to do this so they they did support it in that realm to say your figures are right ya know good luck doing it yeah and so we we hit a goldmine because not only was my vision right for where this problematic area was in their business but the team was right that we brought in and that team believe it or not and now it's been about six years I still use that team and all my businesses whether we were in the Microsoft channel on the integration side whether it's right now what we're doing on the digital side with with products I still bring that team everywhere I go my same marketing people my same sales people all of them follow me in every venture because I trust them and I know they're willing to put the effort so it doesn't matter what industry we're focused on so with that with that story we had taken the 3 million and I was under pressure after the first couple months because we were basically in the negatives business was just complete overhead and you're new to this whole thing's your fault no it was completely new the smartest move we had done is we took an engineer from a competing company and he had walked us into a big partnership and then when he walked us into that partnership what had done to the business they had basically funded and secured our three million dollar loan just with one deal Wow so we had five months we broke even on the business Wow so that company had guaranteed us at three million and then on top of it we were just making profit basically with every new account we brought in yeah so it started very engineer centric with semiconductors and now we're expanded over to medical devices we're working with a lot of IC providers really just going into the nitty-gritty of these faulted products and it's it's been great it's been a big job it's awesome so I have three questions that pop up number one when you were initially when you initially got the investment how confident were you in the time it would take you to ROI that three million dollars not just in terms of you to ROI but in terms of paying back the investors what was your anticipated timeline versus what it actually ended up being so very transparently they had put three years in my mind I knew it was gonna be around two so I had a little bit of a safety net for a rainy day never in my mind that I think it was gonna be something in five months that we were gonna blow up be hands-free just five months you made the three million back there were off our hands we had full equity and we were we were off and running so I guess in in this light it was it was a lucky hit because it was a gold mine that we fell upon right time right place but but the team was really what carried over over the line completely so that's actually the second question is what did you learn from your internship whether you learned it from there elsewhere about what it takes to recruit the right people to put them in place because a lot of people you know you succeed or fail based on your team a lot of times it's not just on the leader it's on the leaders ability to put the right people in place so what did you find were things that worked and didn't work when looking to bring in the right people whether it's recruiting from other companies knowing what to look for what not to look for you know personality is it actual like proficiencies and you know specialized areas or skill sets like could you like do a little deep dive into what you found works for finding effective team members absolutely so the biggest challenge I was facing because I was young and people saw that I was very hungry to be entrepreneurial a lot of friends were coming to me and asking for jobs we're right around the same age group and a lot of them were job shopping basically at the time so biggest challenge for me was dividing the line of friendship versus what you do in the business world right obviously you have friends that are very skilled and they're people that could bring a lot of value in but then you ask yourself a question can you break your friendship in the right format and focus on business if you working together so that was I guess the number one challenge I was facing at the time and I still face in many many different lines of business I'm in its where do you draw the line between a friend and where do you draw a line and talent that's outside that's non-biased in your everyday relationship so that was the biggest hurdle I was jumping through but then when I came back to it it really was around finding the people that had done this before in some capacity and bringing them in and motivating them in the right format that they would do it here and take it to the next level and that they would last in the business it's not someone that was coming in for a salary increase they would get the training and then they would turn over and then you'd have a huge gap in the business and basically have to start over so that I was playing with those two pieces and the internship itself was teaching me the foundation of seeing good in people because this guy saw something in me and I didn't have the confidence to say you know why are you confident but the same way he was building my confidence I was now looking at it in the same way in building a team building their confidence yeah so how did you go about recruiting like on a very like Jim didn't specific example like how did you go into building a team did you recruit from other companies at that time I was just messaging on Facebook really I was absolutely messaging everything on Facebook and Wow and how are you doing research just literally going to competitors and just messaging just just going on their websites if I saw names I was messaging on behalf of them wouldn't respond half of whom would ask what the salary was and I would offer a quarter of the money because I just know we couldn't afford them and Wrightwood stopped talking to me so it was a little bit of a grueling process bring in the talent and many of the times age was at my disadvantage because people were seeing that this was a kid in his mid-20s and I'm you know 40 years old with three kids why would I put my eggs in a basket with this kid when I'm already secured I'm secure in our I've been here seven years yeah so that that was I guess the biggest challenge at the time because I knew we were onto something good but bringing people in and gaining the respect from a position of age is sometimes very difficult until you achieve the right things and still it's difficult because you really have to put the trust and the other people and let them know that age is not a factor here it's the common goal of where going I love that and that and I want to add because I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs watching this or listening to this what was part of your persuasion process when trying to recruit people you know and in dealing with that right because a lot of times like you said they might have kids they might have already been at this job for seven years they might be being paid more than you can offer what did you use to persuade them you know what did you notice it was it the vision was it getting them bought into the vision I mean what was it that you use that really helped you that a lot of people listening could implement in their own business that they're trying to go I was very transparent with them I told them you know this is new to me I see it as a goldmine but I'm willing to put in the work just like they are that we're doing something in a common format all my businesses have no offices unless you're an HR role or a financial role where you're kind of have to keep things private you don't have an office we all sit together in an open space there's no cubicles everything is cut open so you can literally look across and see everybody if you need to take a call you can take it in a corner a desk but everything is in a common platform so it doesn't matter if you're by title as senior manager or if you're just an intern you're sitting in a common area so I think that was the biggest step we took forward and I actually got this when I took a tour in a Silicon Valley company back then that was a startup because I saw that the the level of pressure of being in different tiers in an organization was completely lifted when you put everybody on the same playing field and so when people came in and I'd invited him to launch and bring them to our office and it was empty we had you know two chairs full in a space that fit 80 people I'd show them that we have a common goal here and there's no titles there's there's no arrogance behind what we're doing everybody's working hard everybody's getting up early the I used to get comments from people and they would say I'm here we're not running a bakery here why are you getting up at 4:00 in the morning and emailing us and I said this is the time your most productive because when we come to the office we're talking we're meeting yeah so that was the way that we kind of lifted the barrier it was it was by showing people we're willing to do the work versus going in there and saying okay this is your task for the day come back Friday at 5:00 p.m. turn it in and we'll review it and write me so how much sleep were you getting waking up at 4:00 a.m. because I know you're famous for not getting a lot of sleep right I sleep about two hours a night no way and I don't drink coffee I'm just wired with and you feel healthy you feel good I work out everyday I try to eat healthy one last time you got eight hours of sleep it's been a while it's been a walk because I travel a lot so my time zones are a little bit off yeah and so I've been like this since I was a kid my mom used to tell me she she'd walk in a room and check on me another night and I wouldn't make a noise but I'd be laying on my back with my eyes open just starin at just thank you and I went to doctors and you know knock on wood you know everything is always checked out as healthy but I just I've always been sleep deprived because my brain is working I'm consistently coming up with ideas everything is very digital with me being tech oriented but I still sleep right next to a notepad and a pen and I do jot notes a lot through the night and I'm inspired by an idea different things and I don't know where they come throughout the day or through conversation but I think about them and I jot them and I reference a lot of times whether it's real estate related whether it's investment related or tech related back to those notes it's sometimes I'm able to piece different relationships or different ideas together as a result of my late night thinking makes sense okay now let me ask you this right when you took off in the business right the new business venture you had a lot of success relatively quickly for people who aren't familiar with the systems that you're involved with I know you told me that you guys help things like the Samsung when I had the issue when you know the phone yes we're blowing up at a high altitude or whatever um can you talk a little bit about the scope of like your business what it actually does and Horsham clients you guys have actually served sure yeah we've uh we've worked with almost every major brand to date and the good thing is what where I started with that business and some of the other ones I've started we basically aligned all these brands together and multiple facets where whether it's on the engineering on the front end when it comes to their manufacturing all the way to when it goes out and gets distributed out to the consumer level so what we were doing here we were helping in their production runs to understand if they were to assemble let say an iPhone a certain way what can cause that phone to go wrong or in many cases if it's commercialized like the example with Samsung and it starts exploding in the market how quickly can we fix that problem to save that brand the money so we're able to do that through many levels of testing and then at the same time we took basically this foundation this relationship and we started working with platform players to digitize products so that they could use these phones and actually interact with them in a format of getting loyalty making payment learning about the brand so we're basically taking any kind of physical product and giving it a digital birth certificate so I started on the manufacturing side working with these brands now I work with them on the consumer side so it's truly into him Wow and I know you told me that there's a thing too that you guys might be working on with the cards right like the chips inside of the debit cards absolutely yeah so so our technology was on the front line of all the credit cards so when the credit cards turned to chip format we were basically the authentication play behind the credit cards so that was probably one of my biggest claim to fame was was being on the on the basis of those chips would this sell that business but now what we're doing is we're working with a lot of big brands to basically take software payments let's say Apple pay Samsung pay and build them into credit cards so all the new releases of the Apple credit cards will be that foundation of that technology oh yeah that's coming out with Apple pay that we heard so how tricky is it to get into meetings and negotiations with companies and players like Samsung and Apple is the barrier to entry as tricky as somebody would imagine is it as intimidating or is it really just a matter of you know the right phone call the right connection the right network well what we've learned is relationships are key as we've went through this process so the best best way to get your foot in the door and if people are starting out fresh and they're saying oh I have a good idea and I want to go pitch it to Apple where do I start a question is or the answer to it it's not where do you start it's how do you approach them with basically a problem that they have that you can fix so for me it's always challenging looking at it but then you say okay well where is the really the need for what we're pitching to somebody and we always saw that the easiest route in was through the engine Department and the reason why is because the engineer would look and see what's gonna make my life easier within this company that I'm not pulling all my hair out or having to turn gray and secondly where is the job security for me personally that I can work with a company that I bring in that has a basically a long runway with what we're trying to accomplish here so for us it was always as easy as going in trying to just knock on a few engineers doors and just say can we take you out to lunch talk to you about what we have we think it's a complimentary fit through these lunch meetings what we would get is a lot of requirements from them that either we'd circle back and start anxiously putting together and right or we'd instantly see this is a gap they have and we're solution for that and then also figure out the right people to talk to necessary to move it up exactly so then they would package it and then sell it a level up as an influencer and they would be a very good stakeholder for us internally and then we'd start working the channel up and then what happens is you get one brand then you start reference selling to the other model you leverage it because they have a competitive advantage and now this brand they need you because if they don't this brands gonna start winning so for example Samsung is probably one of the biggest contracts you guys have so how many phones dealt with this issue or had to be recalled or were affected by the at that time they had lost about I think it was about four hundred million dollars and just straight impacted sales from these phones because either people were not buying them or they were basically having to reimburse people that had already bought them so it was a major hit they took and for us to get our foot in the door it was very low risk at that point because they were bleeding basically money so you immediately saw that opportunity and then you approached them did you approach an engineer like just walk us through for the audience listening step-by-step how you went from like ha we could really help Samsung here to actually going and implementing did you reach out to the engineering team did you have people on your team reach out to the engineering team at Samsung so over the mechanics of getting access right what we had done is we approached them we basically said we know you have this big issue and we know that you're working with other people and internally working really hard to fix it what does it take that you give us some of these samples and we try to diagnose the same problem and we knew at the time we had certain machines we had one of six in the world that could do this analysis and new out of that one of six for others government agencies had it so they didn't have control over the other ones we didn't know where they were but we knew we had a competitive advantage regardless even if they had their hands on one or two of those extra machines that we could probably bid in pretty well to start fixing it so they did give us a couple samples we've massively failed at it but we were doing the jobs for free right at the time so we we kind of put in a lot of our Friday afternoons on this special project because it wasn't revenue generating but we started to figure out basically the right steps of what it was and what it ended up being and how we solved it was we figured out they were getting one component from a thailand manufacturer they were flying it into the u.s. and they were putting it on the motherboard here and then putting it into the final product so they're going in from thailand and then actually putting it together here assembling here and then what we had done was we figured out that it was a pressure issue so when it was hitting thirty thousand feet altitude the circuit was popping and as a result of that fault when it was going into the final motherboard the phones were overheating and then exploding so in process of having them shipped that's it was it was just basically a bill of material that was going into the motherboard and then into the final product and how did you guys figure that out your machine was able to test through some level testing and then we basically were basically reverse engineering everything up to a certain temperature of the phone heating up yeah and we were figuring out that one component as we drilled into different segments of the motherboard one component essentially was never solidified and as we got a couple samples we saw it as a recurring trend over again we honed in on that and then we started figuring out what is the cause of this not basically being assembled right went back to the manufacturer of that piece we saw that they were assembled right coming out the door but somehow they weren't assembled when they were getting here so what is the common bridge that's causing this to pop off and we figured out it was during their transfer Wow so then you approach them some say hey we figured it out this is our solution and then you win the contract that way we won the contract and then we basically we actually even got a royalty from them for winning it Wow not just the contract long term but fixing that problem because they were bleeding at the time beautiful so then it was just rinse and repeat after that with any other companies that leveraged that piece now let me ask you this as soon as you started making money because he said it was profitable you know making millions a month and obviously you earned back that investment fairly quickly what did you start doing with a lot of that cash did you start investing in real estate you know what did you start doing right away with that capital probably not the smartest things because III were in her mid-20s I was in my mid-20s making money and I started spending a lot and not something that I guess I was proud of but it humbled me pretty quickly always had a passion a lot around cars and and watches and being a nerdy kid that was bullied and picked on you always wanted to be I guess a little bit more showy and in the light because you're very introverted and now you kind of have a leverage you're you're very young and you have a lot behind you to start doing things so I was spending a lot I was going out in ways that probably wasn't in the right format I'm not I was buying every car that I could possibly put my hands on I I remember I had I had finally purchased my house and I I barely had enough at that time to just buy that house in Laguna and then I had another big check come in the next month so then I went to the tea and just bought as many cars as I could with my guru at this time about twenty four and a half Wow so so how did it feel when you started making money like that to finally prove your dad that you could make it was there a lot of personal satisfaction involved at that stage it was but he's always been some someone that's not really impressed by the monetary things that come in but more of the journey and more of the impact you're making long term yeah so for him he's you know he's told me he's proud of me three times in his life because he's pushing me and I respect it so much but at that time when I was going through so much it I was young so I thought the success was built upon what you have on your wrist what you drive and it was it was I guess shortening my my outlook on life so I was doing more I guess monetarily into into the the nice-to-haves of life's not really the need to ask so I humbled myself I guess pretty quick right around 26 27 I leaned down on the cars and I started to start to make better investments and that was probably one of the best thing I started to do when I started to dabble into the real estate portfolio and started adding to what kind of the family had put together I had some friends that also had invested into a portfolio so I had built on top of that and that was probably the best thing I had done because I was now not only spending everything I had I was only spending about ten percent of what I was making and putting ninety percent into things that were appreciating pretty quickly and for context of Seir portfolio for people listening can you tell because it's quite impressive right I think you got a couple dozen properties just alone and they're gonna be cheap or Beach Corona del Mar which for those are you watching around the world is one of the nicest places here on the west coast can you talk a little bit about your portfolio yeah so we oh it's amazing it's seriously amazing we uh I guess we're trying really hard to be the big players here in South County of South Orange County around the residential side of real estate know every market luxury definitely anything around couple million up to about 25 30 million so I guess done pretty well building out this portfolio about 44 homes in Orange County 14 of them are like this oceanfront and just continuously building on it so my advice is if you're looking to spend your money start start going down this route and start looking down the real estate route versus anything else beautiful now for people listening I know a lot of them are gonna be interested in the big chunk of that journey in the middle of your 20s how much sleep I know you said he didn't get much but like how much sleep work relentless work ethic was put into building your business for people listening who want to build their business and you know nowadays with social media everybody wants to you know get rich quick you know obviously for you to start anew he that kind of happened but it took a lot of work a lot of you know the mentorship a lot of years of things not working before things worked quickly you talked about the mindset that was required for things to start working for you for people listening absolutely I think the biggest understanding you always have to have is you have to trust the process when you're going through it just because you might get lucky and hit a goldmine in a couple months a couple years or if it takes you 10 years 20 years to get there you have to trust the process and learn what gets you through it if you're not taking that as a lesson either you're gonna lose it because you don't appreciate it and it came quick or you're gonna get to the point that you're gonna use it as a hobby but then you're gonna do and dabble into many other things and try to be a master of all these traits for me it was about passion always even right now when I have a lack of sleep it's not because I just can't sleep it's because my brain is consistently working I'm looking at ways to improve all the things that we work on daily and I feel like nothing should be robotic in life if you feel like you are doing the same thing every day in a robotic fashion you're not truly living even days when I'm driving to the office I don't take the same route I might make a couple right turns and left turns because I know that will stun my day very similar like how you work out you stun your muscles by doing different workouts right and that will put a change on my daily activity which hopefully will get my brain to stimulate and work in a different manner as I get through the day so it's a lot of work but you got to love what you do and sometimes me being a lost college kid and not understanding where I was gonna go and what my direction was I started to figure out slowly by doing things I didn't like what I liked and then started to progress from there what about some challenges you made early on I'm some mistakes I'm sorry early on that you would have done differently like things you learn now looking back that I should have done this or probably should have hired this sooner now what are some mistakes that you can give to yourself 5 years ago that would have helped your learning curve then knowing what you know now I think the biggest change I would have done because I I did some of the things that usually traditionally come in your 30s to 40s for big entrepreneurs and happened in my 20s was surrounding yourself with the right people in my early 20s I guess my personal life I wasn't necessarily around the right people and I slowly started to understand if your 9 to 5 has a certain routine and then your 6 2-8 has a different routine either one of them being toxic can affect the other one and no one's mastered both of them but the reality is if you're in a bad relationship and when you leave that office your mind is on that relationship and you're stressed when you come to work guess what you're not fully there putting that effort you're you're maybe on text messages you're leaving the office to do a phone so we weren't eventually you're messed up and you're not at a hundred percent there right and then when you're working if your job is not truly something you're passionate about or that drive is not there behind it it's gonna affect your personal life because you're gonna work overtime and then your spouse your girlfriend whatever the case is is going to be affected by your work life so you have to find the right balance to shut things off the best you can and have a balance between both because that's going to bring your anxiety and stress level down and equally you're going to be able to work alright interesting yeah so you dealt with a lot of those mistakes early on there absolutely I think some is self-inflicted but as part of the process of being young I guess how about in terms of hiring people recruiting people what did you find worked versus what didn't work you know when do you for example have people in your business when you know okay it's time for them to go what's the leeway for giving people opportunity you know what did you find in that case because you probably have collectively what hundreds of employees between all the businesses the big one 1,200 between all of them I think right around 15 so what systems have you put in place for managers or people hiring as - like who - keep on board who do not keep on board what's been your process with that that's worked for you I have a theory called a 360-degree interview so you don't just check in on the employee the employee checks on their supervisor as well it's two-way communication but more importantly the dialogue is always open I have an open door policy open communication for everybody people should always communicate what they like in their job obviously they don't want to come back and say I hate everything we're in the wrong company but but the point is if you have a path let's say you come in as an assistant and then you want to go down a marketing path and then you start learning within marketing you like data and maybe you want to go into the BI track of the company and do a business intelligence and and dashboards and reports and where the cases you have an evolution path and you're doing it based on your day to day job you're learning and then you're building a career for yourself so I think that needs to come from the individual itself and not a manager because no it's like you go out in the street and someone says you're gonna become a firefighter today well that's that's not how it works you you find it because it's a passion behind you and it's also not sustainable if there's not a certain level of enjoyment or fulfillment there exactly so we do quarterly check-ins with everybody but we do it in a way that they can review who is supervising them so they can give them honest open communication and they can grow together but also people have roadmaps and those roadmaps change if you're not open to change you're in the wrong place I believe every aspect of life has to have change and progression I don't know yeah very good point now in terms of investing let's talk a little bit about that because I know you play a major role in helping companies that are you know not doing so well get invested in them turn around flip on maybe sell them what have you found are the common denominators between entrepreneurs who succeed versus those who kind of maybe don't succeed at all or maybe they start and then stop and starts up you know I'm sure you've noticed patterns common denominators and for their behavior what do you noticed most successful entrepreneurs do well and the ones who get stuck even if they've had a little bit of success do the same know where's some things you've learned about that I think the biggest one is being honest and open and realistic about what you have we approach a lot of companies that say oh we're the next Facebook and we say okay well that's great let's go through your platform let's dive into there and they say okay we need you know 10 million dollars to get this going because we need this kind of marketing budget and we're gonna give you you know 5% of the company and we ask okay how long have you been in business you know four years okay how much money of you made zero so someone like that is not realistic into really the path and they've tried certain things so the companies that I really enjoy approaching are the ones that say you know we may have done something for two or three years and it hasn't worked out how can we get involved or do you think that you can leverage some of the things you've done in the past and we bring it together those are the ones that are successful the ones that truly are open about what has went wrong and they're looking for resources to come fill the gaps very similar to what you know my nine-to-five is we go in and we all challenges for businesses and help them with their technology get to the right level I try to do that with startups as well bring a value add to them because if I'm not bringing you a value add then there's no benefit into what we're doing absolutely now how about some big failures you've had what are some things where I don't know if it's to the tune of millions of dollars but I'm sure you've had a tremendous amount of pressure on you at times what are some major failures you've had whether you've shared them publicly before or not where you were like holy how am I gonna do that how am I gonna get out of this how am I gonna solve this how am I gonna and how did you turn it around yeah so I mean I have one property has probably been the biggest loss of my career right now so far we bought into it about 13 million and we thought we were gonna put about another million into it and make make some good profit that property is now six and a half million dollars so pretty pretty drastic loss and we said okay well why don't we just eat the loss here I'm still trying to sell it actually but I know that when that sells I can take that six and a half and diversify it into a couple different portfolio properties and then hopefully that will build the cover for the loss that we had on that yeah that makes sense but I do want to hone in maybe on one thing because on the business side sure there's a lot of rainy days and there's a lot of struggle but personally I think I've had some more failures that have affected and slowed me down in the business world and a lot of those who came truly out of relationships and being with the wrong kind of people people that you know you may and a lot of people they see glitz and glamor and they see all these very nice things in life and they said okay that's the life I want and I want to be in a nice car and I want to go and travel or be on his private jet or being - yeah but the reality is it if you're not a good judge of character and you're bringing the wrong kind of people into your life from a relationship standpoint believe it or not your business will fail it might even go completely bad that it ruins your life and you don't have a chance to start another one very interesting you say that have heard the expression that goes on that people don't have business problems they have personal problems that reflect in their business absolutely so you'd agree to that that that's more of the case of the biggest challenges than actual business problems how do what you're saying and for me you know I I hit this you know goldmine pretty early and have came pretty quick but what I started to see was you it's like a light that attracts bad insects towards it it started to really slow me down in my mid-20s and even though we've accomplished so much I feel like that was the biggest regret of my life very transparently that if I had cleaned it up at that moment in time I don't even know what where the jump would have been obviously I'm very grateful for this but that's the best piece of advice I can give everyone it doesn't matter what your level of success is do your best to still try to be under the radar the best you can enjoy the fruits of your labor but don't try to base your relationships and your personal relationships outside based on your success did you notice when you started making money that you started attracting a lot of that a lot of those people into your life absolutely when you when you don't have it and you start doing things in an outrageous format you do you do start falling into relationships that aren't I guess the healthiest or attracting people that are really around you for the wrong reasons yeah or use you or the tribe missing taxes yeah yeah and then you figure out you have cell phone bills for 12 people on your credit card so the point is you you learn really quickly and if you can make those adjustments you make those mistakes in life but you make those adjustments you're gonna be in a better place now what about things that you would have maybe aside from that done differently on the way up is there anything aside from those stuff whether it be in business whether it be in your personal life that you were done differently aside from things you've already shared I would probably go back to back to my early days especially high school and I guess I would I would push myself and challenge myself now that I know business was my route to work much harder in business related courses because I think that would have given a big boost being young and starting your own company you don't know a lot of the roadblocks that people run into and it becomes very challenging because you don't know better you haven't read it in a book you haven't experienced it firsthand so when you're young you you don't have that hands-on experience in a workforce but you have access to books nowadays especially with the youtubes and the social channels even on Instagram with some of this Instagram TV you can go in and you can learn from very credible people and that can help you get a footing for where you want to go so obviously social platforms weren't that prominent when I was coming up but definitely the books were there and I don't think I used them to my full advantage and maybe they would have helped with my English better perfect that's pretty good now though ma'am okay now and then I want to touch on one point I kind of asked a little bit earlier but I'd love to zoom in a little bit more is on the entrepreneurial space when you go in and flip companies you mentioned that some of the biggest mistakes people make are outside of the business actually and then it leaks into the business and there's consequences there but as you know as an entrepreneur who's seen companies do well what do you notice our common denominator someone entrepreneurs who make things work who move fast to figure out problems you know what are some things just so that those qualities can stick out to people listening to this beyond some vague sense of you know do the right things build the right team what are the nuances of mindset that have really worked for you and you've seen work for other entrepreneurs and companies you've invested in I think it's finding the niche of exactly where you're gonna fit into the puzzle so we've worked with many companies that that had all kinds of issues and we didn't try to we knew that we could approach them and try to fix all of them at once but we knew that if we approached them for example with some of my developers and we just fixed their platform got them to the right level got the foundation there maybe helped them with some marketing that they could use some of their know-how or maybe we could bring somebody else in to get a quicker time to market so for us or for those entrepreneurs out there that are looking to either start their own or work with someone I'd figure out where your best value at is connect into that piece of the puzzle and then leave the rest of the pieces of the puzzle for somebody else that can come in and help you as a team to move it forward don't try to do it all yourself and even if you have the the funds or the access to investors still don't try to do it yourself bring your value-add and then bring other experts tell plug why do you think most people are afraid to bring in people like why do you think most entrepreneurs want to do things themselves I think it's the bigger reward afterwards because then I want to avoid equity the point is you could have a hundred percent of nothing or you could have five percent of ten billion which one would you prefer for cents so so do you have to look at it in that manner and I think a lot of people it's like telling them there he's ugly that they don't want to accept it because it's their baby right but at the end of the day you want to be very realistic and say okay these are some challenges we're having but let's figure out how we slowly can can bring it up to surface beautiful man now I want to ask one more thing there's on a personal note before we wrap up what was the motivation fueling you early on it seems like there was a little bit and correct me if I'm wrong but a little bit of wanting to prove to dad that I could do it on my own was there a little bit of that in there a little bit but I think more of it was geared around the the hostility I was getting in middle school I'm going I I was in seventh grade at the time and September 11th had happened oh wow and not speaking English and being named a mirror being named a mirror with my last name that I could barely even spell at the time I grabbed her skills it was very difficult and the kids were so rude to me I remember I cried almost every day through middle school from sixth grade to mid middle of 8th grade and I had had my first fight in eighth grade I was I was in a bathroom I'll never forget and I I was using the urinal and someone pushed me and I had went all over myself and the kids had just all the boys from my classroom in the bathroom laughing and I remember I had gotten into an altercation with someone and long story short they had suspended me indefinitely and at a time my dad was working very hard he was traveling and I was home and you know sitting at home watching music videos waiting for when I was going to go back to school and I had went back for this board meeting to for them to figure out what had happened in the altercation and I remember I was sitting outside the the board room and my dad was in there and I could hear him and I heard the level of voice in the it was it was escalating to almost a scream and I remember someone saying that your son is a mess-up he's not going to amount to anything where are you and it broke me and I was so embarrassed about what had happened and I was so embarrassed that I had even gotten into a fight and I it wasn't even an altercation that I could even be proud of but it was just something that I had to group that in and then I my dad had said and he said I'm pulling him out of the school and he's gonna prove you wrong so it that always has kind of been in the back of my mind so it's been more you know it's been challenging because I do want to surpass certain things I do put benchmarks of myself of the most successful people and saying I gotta content consistently beat that bar but I always reflect back to that story and the abuse I was getting and I remember that statement almost every day of my life because I knew I had to challenge myself to beat that scenario and and I'm hoping that I'm progressing on my love that was that a big part of the motivation like constantly throughout like that's what kept a mental dialog a push push push push push that was what was most dominantly fueling it absolutely I wanted to prove everybody wrong I wanted to prove that it doesn't matter if you come from nothing or if you come from a lot I've seen some of the most successful people have kids and their kids don't even amount to anything they actually go backwards and cost them more money well then and then I've seen the opposite side of it where kids come from the mud and they turn out to be the biggest biggest things and the biggest successes so it doesn't matter who you come or where you come from or who you come from it matters what you do with the opportunity and those doors that are slightly open and seizing those moments and most importantly who you surround yourself around if I can give one word of advice find the right circle find the right friends utilize your family the best way you can and build yourself through that arena don't try to do it any other way because that team will carry you that right partner will carry you to the right arena that's beautiful man now as we wrap up here I want to ask one last question and this is for people who maybe are in a situation where you were when you were in your early 20s or maybe for you guys listening around the world and you're maybe you're in your 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s or any age and you're trying to make your life work and maybe you guys are stuck if you could condense your wisdom which I know you're only thirty so you still got a long way to go but at 30 like what have you seen be you know maybe some of your most gold elements of wisdom that you could pass on to somebody who's maybe looking for direction maybe looking for purpose whether they're entrepreneurs or not right maybe they're trying to find the right business idea maybe they're you know they're in sales and they're trying to you know get good at it or you know whatever it is people who are just stuck at some facet of life and want to get to the next level what would be your best piece of wisdom if you could condense what you've got so far now and give it to the world what would be your best 60 second piece of wisdom I would say absolutely never stop learning even if you have a passion towards let's say I'll just use marketing as an example if marketing is your passion be the best at it don't try to be a master of all these traits and learn a little bit about marketing and then start dabbling into sales and then say okay I'm gonna be a really great CEO be the best at one thing and that being that best requires reading it requires researching it requires being hands-on working figuring out what's gonna kick you in the teeth and how you grow from it but be an expert at that one thing and that one thing only and then build yourself around that and then find pieces to plug in the rest I love that powerful map thank you so much well before we wrap up we play a game called first things first I know if you've heard of the game so basically how it works is at the end of every interview I play a word game called first things first where I rifle off word or phrase and then you tell me the first word or phrase that comes to mind it's like a relation game okay so I'm gonna go through one word you tell me the first word or phrase that comes to mind I'm gonna do ten of them okay make sense the only rule is that you can't repeat yourself twice okay you got me yep okay number one money not important number two failure you need it was that needed neither being bullied when you were a kid the best quality friends importance times 10 success in business progression your most valued possession three worse family and friends your biggest insecurity my best mmm-hmm accomplishment you're most proud of evolution your future in progress and the last one you ready what you hope somebody takes away from listening to this interview and hearing your story your passion your insights what do you hope somebody hears from this interview and takes and goes and implements in their life effective right away inspiration I love it thank you so much Amir thank you for bringing your inspiration to the show thank you guys for tuning in you can be sure to follow myself and Amir in the description below if you guys are listening on iTunes so you guys can check it out in the description so next time with strong live with passion Billy of those dreams please if you guys enjoyed that video be sure to hit that subscribe button right now because every week we do the very best in personal development content interviews and insights help inspire you to take your life in your dreams to make them a reality and also if you don't know how to book between guests same way I have you can check the link below for my top 3 secrets so if you have a podcast or a show or whatever is you want to collaborate with them you can click that link below I'll give you those top three secrets to help you get in touch with anybody and also don't forget the passionate view is available on the media platforms as well so you can subscribe to the podcast and until next time thank you for being one of the passionate to you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Passionate Few by Omar Elattar

Views: 126,745

Rating: 4.9131842 out of 5

Keywords: Bullying, Bullied, Omar Elattar, Omar The Rockstar, The Passionate Few, the passionate few interview, Manny Khoshbin, Amir Khoshniyati, Amir Khoshniyati interview, manny khoshbin interview, the passionate few podcast, millionaire interview, billionaire interview, from bullied to $2 billion, from broke to millionaire, grant cardone, ed mylett, business interview, gary vee, tech mogul interview

Id: -jo0yytcSBs

Length: 61min 10sec (3670 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 01 2019