We recently connected with Carlos Jimenez and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Carlos thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Moving to the US at the age of 16 by myself.

Carlos, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was born in Mexico City and grew up in Ciudad Del Carmen, Campeche, a very small town near the Gulf of Mexico. I am one of three boys. In 2002, when I was 12 years old, my dad made some mistakes at work and as a result was sued and fired. This brought very tough years financially, emotionally and mentally. Fast forward to 2008 (now 15 years old), I moved away to Merida, Yucatan for a better opportunity. I started playing basketball, I lived by myself, faced many challenges such as missing meals, walking to and from school for hours, walking to and from basketball practice, not having family or friends around and more. Despite the difficulties, I was in love with the game of basketball, which drove me to persevere and pursue excellence. I joined multiple teams and I decided I wanted to play in the NBA. The summer of 2009 arrives and in conversation with my dad, the subject of looking for something even better arose. He mentioned I had an aunt in Santa Ana, CA. He had not seen this aunt for over twenty years and I had never met her. He called and asked if she could take me in for a couple years to learn English and play ball in the U.S. She said it was going to be tight, but we would make it work and to send me over. In the following weeks, my dad borrowed money to purchase the flight, sort out my documentation and sent me over.

I arrived at LAX on July 18, 2009. I quickly noticed that there were six other people living in my aunt’s one bedroom apartment. This didn’t matter, I was ready to work. I slept on the living room floor for two years, learned English, and managed to graduate HS. After graduation, it was time to move on. I really had no option but to go back to Mexico, unless I earned a scholarship to play basketball in college here in the U.S. I had one coach that believed in me, which led me to reach out to a bunch of colleges with all of them saying no. Despite all of the “no’s” I received, I decided there was no way I was going back. I took the next eight months to relentlessly work on my game, working out eight hours a day and training kids in between to earn money and be able to survive.

After eight months of long hours and days of training, I made the Saddleback College basketball team. Our sophomore year, we won the state championship and that Summer I earned a scholarship to play at a four year Div 1 University. After graduating in 2017 with a Bachelors in Business Management, I started a youth basketball academy called UYP Basketball. I grew it to six figures in revenue, with millions of views across our social media giving us the opportunity to host players from all over the world. When COVID hit, UYP went zeros and before I knew it I was behind on my rent and my accounts were in the negatives. I didn’t get any PPP loan, SB loan, or stimulus checks and I had to pivot and figure something out. Since graduating college, I had been learning about real estate on my free time and COVID gave me the opportunity to take action and go all in. I started cold calling for hours a day to find deals with no luck. No having handouts forced me to work my butt off and to never quit. After six months of cold calling and no deals, no checks, and falling behind on rent, on my 7th month I got my first deal. It changed everything for me and opened my eyes to how lucrative Real Estate could be. Momentum started and that month I closed seven deals. Fast forward nine months, I was 50% partner of the company and had helped generate over 2m in net profits.

Today I am blessed and grateful to be able to employ 30+ people across my businesses, help my family back in Mexico and help those looking to achieve financial freedom through entrepreneurship, real estate, and hard work.

A little bit about my businesses:
Trusted Investors
A Real Estate company that focuses on rehabilitating distressed residential properties. We operate in Southern CA, TX, GA, TN, FL, NC and SC.

CBH LLC
A Real Estate company that buys single family homes with the objective of reselling to Latino families that may not be able to qualify for a loan. Our goal is to provide the opportunity for homeownership and help 1,000 families by 2030

UYP Basketball
A youth basketball academy with over five hundred members and three locations. We welcome anyone and everyone that has a desire to learn and play the game of basketball – ages 4-18.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Moving here at a young age was one of the toughest things I’ve gone through. I could deal with sleeping on the floor but not knowing the language, not having any direct family around, not having any money, and not having any type of support was extremely hard. Don’t get me wrong, I will forever be grateful to my aunt for providing a roof over my head and food (when she could). Without her I would not be here, however, living in a different country and just getting by had me wanting to quit countless times. Over and over I wanted drop everything and go back home.

I’ve been going at it for fifteen years. Whether I was on the basketball court training eight hours a day to earn a scholarship, losing my first business (UYP Basketball), cold calling for seven months straight, being broke multiple times, I never ever gave up.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My partner for Trusted Investor is the person I cold called for when I got started in Real Estate investing. I met him through his father in law (Joe), whom I met at a local real estate meet up. Joe was one of my first mentors and when covid hit I called him to see if he had any work and he told me to call Ryan. Ryan blew me off for a while until he finally answered and told me to come into the office. He gave me a list of home owners to call, a script and told me to go to work. Seven months later I found my first deal and nine months later the deals I closed had earned the company 2m in profits. One day I walked into the office and there he was waiting on me, with documents to sign to become a 50% owner of our new company Trusted Investors.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.trustedinvestors.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carloscloses/