We recently connected with Aaron Rivera and have shared our conversation below.

Aaron, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

One meeting after another and anther, the main statment I heard from everyone was ” I wish I would have known this earlier”. I could relate in so many ways from all my meetings. Growing up it was get a job, work my way up and save for retirement.

In both of my brokerages the teams and I focus on all around client goals and bridging the gap in the financial education that systems that I grew up around. I was never taught how money works, how to invest, the differences in retirement vehicles, or anything of the sorts. Thats where the idea came up for the Financially Freeing Families Course. The problem is the lack of simple credible information. What I mean by that, is with social media there is a lot of information but in small amounts, and without the full context. So we created this course, which breaks down the money in the simplest of forms for everyone to understand. We are bringing it to the minority communites that I was raised in, where the discussion of money, insurance and investmenst is not talked about.

I have seen so many families lose a loved one and end up doing a go fund me or car wash to pay for medical and funeral bills, instead of having life insurance. My grandfather worked a job well past the age of 70 years old because he had too, with no savings. Something I did not want my future to worry about. When I was 35 I sold one of my businesses and lost about 60k in the following business and spent another 60k with nothing to show for it. I made 200k in a real estate purchase with nothing to show for it 2 years later ( It did help fund a restaurant). However, I never wanted to make those mistakes again. This past couple years we have hit the most in credit card debt than ever before that I want to bring awarness and education of value to the community. Money, assets, stocks, property stregthen communities, families and the work force. So we lead from that stand point when we work with our clients.

The online course Financially Freeing Families, hits on all levels. Starting from budgeting, savings, credit, buying a home, retirements strategies and escelating to more indepth financial strategies from a group of experts we partner with. We educated in a way that is easy to learn, open to youths and adults of all levels, with hands on mentorship and coaching. Surrounded by a community that understands each other. The most exciting part is that even though I left the different communities, and work force, we can all still work together to accomplish our own goals. I grew up in goo neighborhoods and bad ones, I worked in prodomitetly hispanic kitchen and restaurants to fine dining ones… all the of which we never talked about the way money works, and now we can.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

So everybody that doesn’t know who I am, I grew up as the son of an immigrant mother, a single mother. She raised three of us. I was the middle child and the stereotypical middle child. And, you know, we grew up in Arizona, different locations all around, from Paradise Valley, Mesa. And I ended up on the south side with my grandfather and my grandmother and lived with them for the better part of my young adult life. Went to school in, on the west side of Phoenix. And these are more troubled neighborhoods, I would say. Predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, minority neighborhoods. Where, you know, I worked from a, you know, as soon as I could get a job to, you know, the better part of 20 plus years in the hospitality industry. So I was a chef in hotels, fine dining. I worked in Las Vegas, New York. I had my own restaurants in North Carolina. I worked in Colorado. And until 2019, when I got out of the industry after again, 20, 24 years, and I went into the real estate industry. So right, 2019 went into the real estate industry. And then from there, obviously COVID hit in 2020. My whole real estate pipeline was all restaurant, you know, hourly employees, hourly employees, you know, from who I knew. And then of course, nobody can buy at that time because hours are getting dropped and restaurants are shutting down for a while. So the buying power dies. So that’s why I got into the life insurance industry. And with the life insurance industry, we talked more about finances than in the real estate industry. We talked about budgeting, we talked about saving, we talked about protecting assets, having a trust. And then really got me thinking, oh, man, you know, marrying up the two industries would be great. My whole drive is always to give back to the communities that I was a part of. You know, I remember hanging out with the homies and, you know, going out to parties and drinking and, but we never, ever talked about investments. We never talked about setting goals. We never talked about buying assets to make us money. And so now that is my sole mission, is to discuss those things, is to bring that awareness to the neighborhoods for everybody, you know, that is, that may not understand it, may not know how to talk about it or where to even start. We see a lot of things on social media, great, but understanding, breaking it down from the bare basics and how to set a goal, how to set a plan, there’s never the talk about that. Or if there is talk about it, do you trust that person, that information? So going back to the financial course, I broke it down to the simplest of forms so that we could, you know, level up and talk about the basics, a course that I’m surprised it’s not in any schools when I know why it’s not in any schools, but we’re going to leave that for a different time. And then as we graduate, we, you know, discuss real estate, when is the proper time because not everybody has, you know, should buy. When is the proper time of that? Let’s talk about the power of life insurance, compounding interest accounts. And so now we are married up both the real estate and financial sectors into an online course that anybody, you know, can learn from. And that’s our real drive is to actually start working with the youth and kids from before they graduate high school to the early stages of college and even, you know, families that are doing a little bit better off financially, but need to start saving for retirement and how to do that in a quick manner. So I’m really excited to be able to just bring it to the neighborhoods, still be myself, still be, you know, just a good person. And, you know, and true to my word, so my branding is essentially a word. And the partners that I have and our level of commitment to our clients all the way around, it’s just a strong, strong, you know, you have to have a strong, strong work ethic. You have to have a strong honesty and commitment. And, you know, when it comes to working with us, and we stand behind that, we have a money back guarantee. We always, for anything that we provide, any clients that we have, we do background checks so that it’s not just somebody just for lack of a better term, talking out of their ass to be able to do these things. And so we’re really happy with where we’re going into, how we’re growing it, and the impact that we’re going to have, especially on our minority communities.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

So, one story I had to unlearn was the lies I was told as I was growing up, you know, the typical money lies that I was told. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Money isn’t everything. Money is the root of all evil. Money this, money that, money that. Okay? And the lie of you have to work hard, get a job, grow in that job to retire. My biggest thing with all of that, it was all a lie, and the reason I say that, you know, money isn’t everything, and well, the reason I say that is because they didn’t tell the whole story. Similar to money isn’t everything until you need money. Okay? Money isn’t everything, but the more money you have, the better neighborhood you can live in, the better school district you can get, the better health benefits you have. Unfortunately, that is the case. Life isn’t fair. It is. It just isn’t. And, you know, money is the root of all evil if you use it for evil. You know, I’ve seen so many people use money for good, building wells in Africa, putting up schools, donating to charities, giving back to the community. You know, money doesn’t grow on trees. There’s an abundance of money out there and wealth out there. You just have to go out and find it and get it and utilize it. So, but these are all things that I was told as a kid and growing up that you had to exchange your time for money. Essentially, you do, but you don’t at the same time. You could exchange your time for a little bit of time and then create something that money just continues to come to. And if I would have known these things when I was in high school, it would be, I would have put myself on a whole different trajectory rather than becoming a chef where my salary was capped at $120,000 when I was in Vegas. Okay, great. So understanding that, you know, $120,000 at a 23-year-old back in 2005 was amazing, but I was always capped at $120,000. So I was never making more money than that, which was not amazing. Or understanding that if I were to, you know, save my money, invest in real estate, grow capital, great. I would be in a different position than I am currently. Which, you know, I think my mother, especially for this incredible work ethic, my grandparents for raising me and their incredible work ethic, to be able to have resilience when businesses have failed, when times are tough, and to, you know, stay focused on the true passion and goals that I have, that I’ll never have to worry about it.

One of the other things I had to unlearn was that college was necessary to have a successful future. And the more and more I think about it, the more and more I’ve seen it, the more and more I am grateful that I did not go to college. I see it personally as a scam in a lot of fields. Yes, you need college to become a doctor, to become a lawyer, and certain things, but for most of the industries, you do not. I think one of the underrated industries right now is trade industries, electricians, plumbers, carpenters can make amazing successful businesses with them, have some amazing financial futures with them, especially if those individuals learn to scale, and not just be the electrician on the job site with the hourly wage, but being the business owner and scaling a business. And this could be anybody from any community, any skill level, and any age difference. So again, understanding all of that, bringing real estate into it, bringing financial education into it, discussing business strategies, scaling opportunities, is where my passion lies and everybody on the team lies as well.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Alright, so I’m going to tell you about my three business partners, okay? And the last one is going to be the most important, okay? First, my real estate business partner, Norma Rivera. Same last name, no relation. We actually were on a cross-deal together in our first year in real estate. I was selling the house. She was actually purchasing the home. And the biggest piece of advice I was told was to stay in touch with anybody and everybody. Because you never know how it would entail in the future. Anyway, Norma and I stayed in touch for the better part of two years without even meeting each other. Okay, let’s go back. Got my license in 19. It was the end of 19. We were out selling this house. And then COVID happened. So I didn’t get to meet Norma until 2021. But we stayed in communication. We asked how our businesses were going. What are you working on? What am I working on? And such. So when the time came to scale my business and our businesses in general and go into the brokerage ownership role, she was the first person I called. Well, rewind. So for 2021 to 2022, we were working at the same brokerage. And it came to a point where it’s like, all right, I need to leave, expand my own business, and open up a brokerage of my own. And the first person I thought of was Norma Rivera as well. We have a lot of the same work ethic, strengths, drive, goals, passion for helping everybody. And it just worked so well together. So going from complete strangers on opposite ends of a transaction to becoming friends, to becoming business partners, to becoming one of my best friends and family has just been an amazing, amazing friendship that I never thought would have ever happened. And I’m so grateful for Norma because the way we work together, it’s very unheard of and very hard to find. So I couldn’t ask for a better business partner with that one. Now, when it came with the idea for the Financial Freeing Families course, my business partner is a friend of mine that I met who is a bartender. Who was a bartender. Now, I know what you’re thinking, a bartender, really? Yes. So not only did she have or had or still have three jobs bartending, excuse me, two jobs bartending. But she taught herself how money works. She got herself her own retirement investment. She built her own budget, set her own goals, her own savings, paid off her house in three years. Who does that? And still works a job. We’re not talking about having your own business or making multi-millions in investments or anything like that. No, she has a bartending job, two of them. Paid off her house, has money, financially secure. So when I’m thinking about that and I ask her, what is the biggest thing? She goes, I wish somebody taught me about this earlier. I said, great, now let’s teach people about this early. So when she came up and we both had the idea of doing something like this, we had different, similar clientele we wanted to go for. We realized that the earlier that we could get people to understand how money works, the better off it’s going to be for the communities, futures, and partnerships. And she’s just an amazing, amazing, well-organized, caring person as well. So if you see where the commonalities go into, you got to be caring, you have to have strong values, you have to be great worth ethic to work as business owners and partners. And the last and most important business partner I have is my wife. And I met my wife on my first real estate transaction looking for an escrow officer to put on the contract. I had no idea. She was one of the reps. And lo and behold, we had some friends in common. We created an amazing friendship first, turned into a romantic relationship. And since I saw her, it was like, yep, she’s mine. And we’re going on almost six years now together. And for anything I’ve ever done, she has just been the most supportive person in my life, most loving, most caring. And again, very, very high value, very high integrity, very hard work ethic that it is unsurpassed why all of us have some sort of commonality with each other, great vibe with each other, and just work amazingly with each other. That if you have those things, you have those traits, you have those standards, you can work with anybody.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: financiallyfreeingfamilies
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aaron.rivera.313
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-rivera-a443382b9/
• Youtube: financiallyfreeingfamilies
• Other: Skool Online Course

  https://www.skool.com/financiallyfreeingfamilies