Reynaldo Santana On How To Create An Impact Through A Digital Non-Profit (#146)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.

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Reynaldo Santana is a visionary and purpose-driven business leader who thinks that entrepreneurs can improve the world. Reynaldo is on a mission to assist professional business owners. Reynaldo is an entrepreneur, investor, author, speaker, educator philanthropist, and contributor with a long list of accomplishments.

As a former tech executive, Reynaldo's 10-year career had them work with the world's largest military and government agencies in award-winning projects for clients that include Lockheed. Martin, the US Navy, the US Air Force Disney NASA. BMW as well as managing budgets of over $30 million.

Reynaldo also has other nonprofit organizations where he focuses on underserved communities to build affordable housing and teaching people about real estate, sales, and marketing

Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast and as usual, you have a fantastic episode lined up for you. I'm so excited for you for all our listeners. One of the things that the Deep Wealth community that we hear a lot is Jeffrey I get it. When I have a liquidity event, I can do all kinds of social capitalism.

I can set up a foundation. I can donate to a charity. I can pick a social cause and that's great what can I do today? I don't want to wait. I just want to start making a difference out there. What are my options? And today that's exactly what we're going to be talking about with our guest who has done some incredible things of combining what us as business owners do so well with what as a society, we need to just get these things going because let's face it as business owners, founders, entrepreneurs we make the world go round.

You know it, I know it. And now with our guests today, we're going to find out yet one more way that we can make that difference. So let me not get ahead of myself, Ray, welcome to The Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast. Absolutely delighted to have you here. And there's always a story behind the story. Ray, what's your story? What got you to where you are today?

[00:03:50] Reynaldo Santana: Thanks so much Jeffrey and thank you everyone for listening today on the podcast. What got me to where I am today was lots of challenges, roadblocks, sacrifices, moments of, crying, and just depressed and feeling lonely. Going through failure, I mean, smacks of life's. To be honest with you, because I think as human beings, we have to go to some sort of transformational stage or a journey.

And I've definitely went through that, for someone my age, I'm 33. I've done a lot with my life so far. I've been able to travel around the world and experienced different experiences when it comes to business and life. But it took a lot of hard work to get here and persistence and perseverance.

I'm sure all of us have heard of these sorts of things, but we tell you it's true what they say. I mean, don't judge a book from its cover. And you know, things may look shiny on the front end, but in the backend as a business owner, we've all been through it. We've seen it. It's a lot of work sleepless nights.

And I'm happy to be where I am today, Jeffrey, but they all started with just you know, seeing my mom and dad growing up, seeing them working 60, 70 hours in a shoe factory I'm over here in Massachusetts. And as a young boy, my grandmother raised me out part-time when my brother and not really understanding why I couldn't see them every day the full time.

But as I grew up, I understood that they came from Dominican Republic so that we can have a better life. So they taught me the definition of hard work. And if you don't work, you don't eat. And with that mentality, you know, always brought it with me. And overall that kind of builds my big why each day getting up each morning, working artists to not only make myself proud, but also to make sure that my parents are taken care of and that my next generation of, you know, my kids once they're born, but they have a great future and they can take what I teach them into their teachings for their kids.

[00:05:33] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. I love that story. And Ray, you're really a modest guy. And one thing I got to say is, I don't know if you have a big enough goal or it's lofty enough because you only want to impact 1 billion people. That's a billion with a B. Maybe we can start there because you've done some pretty wild and crazy things with impact.

And I love what you've done with the Impact Annex and just taking the whole word impact and building that right into your ethos. But you have a very lofty goal, all joking aside, 1 billion people. Wow, what's going on with that? What's this all about? Share with us, what you're thinking and where this is going?

[00:06:10] Reynaldo Santana: Happened to do that. I can tell you that in my twenties, I've been fortunate to work in corporate, work in small mini businesses, working startups to understand that my passion is to live life and has a lot to live, and it's a lot out there of life overall. And I found, you know, in the twenties, it's about learning more about who you are.

And I learned that for me personally, a nine to five is boring. I believe that there's a lot more we can do as human beings. If we're in part ourselves to do bigger things. And within my twenties, I've had a chance to work on big projects, for example opening up the market of virtual reality and augment reality.

In Mexico, I was the first VR, AR president of the association on there. I worked with McKinsey and Company to create a blueprint for this digital transformation or you can say Industry 4.0. Blueprint in Mexico to allow all these manufactured, all these industries to innovate and also bring new technologies like VR AR to help folks upscale, because we've all seen it.

From Asia, Europe, they're all innovating automations coming into tools, AI, cloud source, cybersecurity, and there's some countries that are behind. So in Mexico, the plan was to implement VR AR to up-skill the workers of the future and also students. So they can get certified inside of VR as they assemble a turbine engine or a CNC machine or vehicle.

And so I sort of working on big projects that's just one project. The second project was working on a startup where we were taking these animals that had superpowers. We call them superpowers because they have unique things that other animals and humans don't have seeing in the dark. Being resistant to cancer.

And we're analyzing, how do we take those DNAs sequences and see how we can put that into humans? Like humans don't have cancer. Humans can see in the night or human can overnight develop wings. So it was some big stuff there that we were working on it, but the market wasn't ready for it. The invested what ready for it.

So I kept working on things that were ahead of my time and they're all learning experiences. So I guess overall, what I'm trying to say is that I had some big glasses or vision glasses on my mind, my eyes, you can talk about, I like social impact, like impacting many people, I think outside the box.

So when it comes to this 1 billion people that like to focus to impact, I'm going to do that through real estate and through this organization called Impact X. I have a nonprofit it's called the ESG Housing, Inc and it stands for Environmental Social Governance. It's all about self efficient, smart villages, homes, or residential apartment complexes.

What makes my model unique is I'm focusing on bringing 3D printing to print homes very quickly, no waste, sufficient, is green completely. It's all made up recyclable items and concrete. So I'm not sure how much, Jeffrey, you know about this or your audiences, but in terms of 3d printing, I believe that is the future of construction to catch up to this big demand and so I'm working on bringing that to reality. We have a few projects here in Massachusetts and the goal is that as we create these apartment complexes throughout the US the cash flow, that is develop by the rents are going to be circulating between each of these apartment complexes so that we can create different funds for families.

So basically if the pandemic happens again, God forbid it doesn't. But if it happens again or that, or there's any sort of emergencies we can help you pay for your rent. We can also help you pay for Internet. If you have no Internet, we want you to have access to Internet. So you have access to education and programs because we want to empower those tenants inside to not rely on the government, not rely on society, they can get a job.

You don't have a good resume, but we're allowing yourself become independent. And this is where the Impact Annex comes to play, we're going to sponsor people to understand what their strengths are, what their knowledge. And create a nonprofit, a digital nonprofit, which basically the website where they're going to educate people on what they know the most.

We said the biggest acids that's in your mind. And by giving them these non-profits to promote or to understand, or to teach what they know, they can create passive income and it to create a name for themselves, which is great. So I think that I'm working on is intertwined and not only that, but the focus is US, but also international countries.

So slowly we will influence other people, create more JV partners and get to that 1 billion. I may not be able to see in my lifetime and that's perfectly fine. Cause the most important thing is to plant those seeds, build those teams, communicate that vision to energy and you'll get there.

[00:10:42] Jeffrey Feldberg: We are entrepreneurs, business owners. We take the quote-unquote impossible, and we transform it into I'm possible. So here's who you seeing that 1 billion in your life. So let's have the rubber hit the road here. And I imagine our listeners are saying that sounds absolutely fantastic with this 3d printing for buildings and real estate and Internet access.

But tell me as a business owner, I have a terrific business and we're preparing down the road at one point for I liquidity event and the 9-step roadmap, the Deep Wealth Experience, all those terrific things. But what are you talking about here? How can I play a role right now in what you're doing with a digital nonprofit for my business?

What does that mean? How can you help me? What does that look like? So what would you say to someone who's asking those questions?

[00:11:28] Reynaldo Santana: First of all, they're in the right mindset into the giving back and doing something philanthropic something big. A digital non-profit is basically a non-profit where you're leading with education. So if you're a for-profit right now and you like to give back, you like to do something to increase the value of your business, the best ways to create this digital nonprofit.

But aligns with your for-profit. And what does that really mean? Let's say if you have a for-profit business where you're a plumber. Let's say the for-profits called Joe's plumber business, the nonprofit can be Joe's plumber academy dot org, and on the.org, non-profits out of things. You're going to educate people on how you help them, educate people on the services and products that you normally pitch them on. Just educate them on it. How do you help people? How do you fulfill their need? What are the pain points that you're solving? So it's taking that content and just changing it into more educational.

It can be through courses, through workshops, webinars through even a podcast. Believe it or not, it can be through an ebook, blogs, you name it. But what's great about this is once you have this digital nonprofit, you have access to grants and ways to reduce your taxes all by leading with education and one of those grants that I specialize in is a Google ad grants for nonprofits.

Now you'd be surprised Jeffery, when I speak about this 97% of folks don't know about this Google grant and this Google ad grant gives you $120,000 of ad credits to be used for just searches. So it's the one type thing any through keywords that ties to your business or your source of your products, you're gonna appear on the first page.

Now think about what you can do with $10,000 per month in Google ads credits. Create multiple campaigns, test different markets, different languages, different age groups. You can put that towards, starting an event online. There's so many things you can do with $10,000 per month of ad credits to promote your organization.

Now you'll be asking Ray, now how that can help my for-profit well easy. By creating educational website as a nonprofit and having this grant $10,000 of traffic going to your website of your nonprofit basically people are going to want to have access to your educational content. Therefore, they're going to have to give you their first name, their last name, the email address to access these contents, which is great for you because now you're building this big mailing list.

Of all these potential customers. You're going to educate them so that on the for-profit side, you can take care of them and service them. So as they build this mailing list, you can respond back via email, hey, John, thanks so much for looking at my workshops on the sources of these products or this lesson.

If there's anything I can do with, you know, do for you, please contact me. Here's my phone number and my email and my for-profit business where I can service you. The conversion rate is going to be huge. Why? Because you're building your reputation. You're building trustworthiness, you're doing social good, social impact. You're also becoming a thought leader in your space. Think about it, how many competitors out there in your niche has a non-profit? I say mabye 1%, but the rest of them give to charity, which is great, but how many of them have their own non-profit right. And that's where you come in, how you can become meek in your space and be unique to your customers as well.

[00:14:45] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. So you've gone a long way to figure this out, because I imagine the listeners are saying, okay, what's this going to cost? And effectively with the $10,000 a month. And what was the name? It was a small company that you mentioned that you partnered with. What was the name? It started with a G a Google or something rather.

Never heard of them. Just joking, but the $10,000 a month that you're getting in, in ad spend for the nonprofits. So that, that really goes towards recovering the costs of this. And I would imagine though, our listeners saying, okay, Ray that's amazing.

Congratulations on putting that together. But how much time is this going to take? I'm busy. What's involved. I got to, it sounds complicated to set up a nonprofit and then a separate website and who knows what else? So walk us through that process of what's involved and Ray, I know from your side, it's almost like an incubator.

Maybe this incubator that you have, and I know one of your taglines business guidance with love. So walk us through how you're helping the process of a business owner who shows up. And says, okay, Ray, I've drunk your Kool-Aid. It sounds amazing. I want to do this, but I don't know where to start. Show me how what happens next.

[00:15:52] Reynaldo Santana: Yeah. Great question. Jeffrey. I got the question a lot and I'm happy to answer. So first of all, before we select anyone, they have to watch a webinar to understand the whole concept because I have to first train your mind to give before you receive because I'll be honest, we don't have a lot of people to this program.

Because we want the right people in this program, to use it for good to educate and impact that's number one. Number two is basically we have two programs. One is a done with your program and a done for your program. So I'll start with the done with your program. Basically, it's eight weeks where I provide a video series, where you hear myself, my partner Brendan here that speaks about the process and what you have to do.

And it's pretty simple process. You talking about a, having a website, choose a name, purchase a domain name, have an email address for your nonprofit, a virtual office space phone number, just small things like that. The cool thing is that you can watch this at any time you want, and you can go as fast as you want, or as slow as you want.

So there's no rush. That's number one. Number two is basically we take care of the most complicated part of the whole journey that is doing a fond registration for you. That's either in the US non-profit or if you're doing it in Canada or somewhere else. We can help you with that. We have an internal partner that has about 15 years plus doing non-profits and he guarantees a 501 (c)(3).

So that means that we can guarantee the 501 (c)(3) for everybody. So we take care of that complicated part, not problem. Your job is to educate and be open-minded to working with us in terms of submitting your information on time. Like I mentioned, those that domain name, email phone number, virtual office space.

So we give you all the tools and resources to make this happen and we give you training. One thing that Google does not provide by the way is support, and that's a big one here. We give you access to support. Now that means you can speak to us on the phone, via email. We have a Facebook group as well.

You can bring up your questions, your concerns, and we can answer it for you. So it's really a step-by-step kind of process. So you're never alone and it's pretty simple people, over-complicate it. And they think, oh my gosh, much work, It really isn't. And if it is too much for you to the timing you can assign someone to this project to help us, to help them kind of work together.

It can be a marketing person. It can be another cold fonder, just someone from a team to take the eight-week course. And aside from that, if you're by yourself in a business, you have no time whatsoever, then yes. There's a done-for-you program as well. It's a premium, but we gave everything done for you.

All we ask is one phone call for an hour and a half. We'll go through all the details, ask all the questions, get everything we need from you upfront. So we take care of the rest for you. And that's really about it.

[00:18:26] Jeffrey Feldberg: So, what I'm hearing you say is you have two flavors. One flavor is okay, here's a webinar, go through the webinar over an eight week period of time at your convenience. And then we tell you step by step, what you need to do. And then on the back end, we'll help you with some of the more complicated things, the filings, the creation, all that.

Or if you're busy, we'll really do all that for you in an hour and a half call. And so I'm wondering Ray I'm sure listeners are asking this. Okay, Ray, that sounds pretty good. You've given me a couple of options here. My out-of-pocket costs, to set up a nonprofit and get all of this going is it hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, what are we looking at here?

[00:19:04] Reynaldo Santana: Great question. So we have two programs that we offer. One is if you're a US citizen and you like to create a digital nonprofit through us in Canada, it's going to be a 5,200. Now you could be asking, he said, Canada, why Canada? I'll tell you why. As a US citizen, you can open up a us non-profit in Canada.

And what's great about it, that it takes literally three to four days just to get that charity status. And you qualify for that grant, which is great. So you're talking about maybe three months to have everything ready to go. Your grant, your website, your nonprofit, and you can start working and start educating people and seeing that return on investment, which is a great, it's fast, it's quick, it's easy.

You do it right. And that's 5,200. And that's what paid only once. And then aside from that is the US program for those folks who are listening, who have a nonprofit, you'll get this one. I'm about to say next if you're a for-profit only. You may not understand about you went out to obtain a 501 (c)(3) status in the US, it can take about three to nine months, sometimes 12 months, but we do it below nine months and we guarantee it.

So it's a longer hold period before we can apply for the grant, but there's some advantage to that. And that is the tax incentives. So when you have a digital nonprofit in US. That aligns with your for-profit that has a lot of tax breaks, a lot of tax savings. You can do even investing into this program. You can write that off and get that money back from your nonprofit.

So there's a lot of great goodies by having a US nonprofit. So it's worth the wait because of that. And that program is $9,800. And again, you only pay once and you're onboarded onto the program and again, we guide you step-by-step, we do all the hard work for you. And you have access to support, and then additionally, if you're not a techie person 50% of the success is getting the grant, which we guarantee.

The other 50%, which again, we train you on, how do you use Google ads and still too much for you to manage or to understand we can manage the Google ads for you as well for your nonprofit, which is great. And our prices are really below market, which is great.

So we charge $500 a month to manage your Google ads for your to digital nonprofit, which is pretty cool. Okay. That's about it. There's two programs.

[00:21:16] Jeffrey Feldberg: Got it. So if I'm hearing you right, and again, it sounds like you really thought of everything. If you're in a bit of a rush, you can go to our friendly neighbors in the north. Good old Canada and set it up there. And I'm hearing maybe in three months, you're done. You're set.

You'll save a little bit of money. If you want to wait, you can do a US nonprofit it will take a little bit longer nine months perhaps. But it sounds like there's some more tax advantages. If you do it in the US a little bit of a longer wait costs a little bit more money, but you have the tax advantages That now kick in and your for-profit is benefiting from that. Did I get that right?

[00:21:49] Reynaldo Santana: That is correct.

[00:21:50] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so let's now try and do a little bit of an integration here because I can imagine that our listeners are saying, okay, I got the process down and Ray and team are going to help me with that. And I can choose where I set it up and roughly how long that's going to take.

And on the one hand, I do want to help people. And that's why I'm doing this non-profit and pay it forward in education all about that. Maybe we're even educating in our business anyway. So it's taught that much of a stretch to do. A little bit of a self-serving question, but to throw it out there anyway, it's on the minds of our listeners.

How can I integrate if possible, the nonprofit with the for-profit and I know you alluded to that a little bit earlier, you can get a mailing list and collect the names and the email addresses, but are there anything that you can't do? So if I'm getting the names and email addresses for them, Not-for-profit and I'm able to use that in the for-profit that's legit.

That's all. All good.

[00:22:44] Reynaldo Santana: Yeah. So what Google really cares about is that you're leading with education. So your not-profit website has to be all educational content. You shouldn't be charging people on there. Anything else, shouldn't be a really selling your sort of products or services that can for-profit or have any sort of for-profit languages.

And we teach that in our program, there's a website policy that we have to follow so that it gets approved. So we make sure your website is up and running a hundred percent that you're not having any sort of commercial activity on there. They do not care about really is what happens in the back end.

So what that really means is you have to focus your mind on the non-profits all about just educating people. And if anyone there responds back to you through your email that they need help, or they want to partner up, or they want a consultation. That's when your for-profit comes in and helps them and services them and partners up with them.

That's about it, nothing else. And I think the nonprofit also helps to build your brand. That's all about building your brand as well and trustworthiness, and that's why it's important to if possible, if you're not camera-shy, have some videos on there of yourself explaining certain things or have your team on there.

But that's really the whole mindset in terms of alignment with your for-profit, that they're both are very similar in terms of products and services because you're educating on those same certain things. And that grants can be used only for that.org and believe it or not, this is another best practice that we teach is you can add your.com on top of that grant.

[00:24:12] Jeffrey Feldberg: Oh now we're talking. So how does that work? What does that look like?

[00:24:16] Reynaldo Santana: Yeah. So as long as your domains are very similar and your for-profit and non-profit are similar in terms of what you're teaching, what you're educating, what you're doing, Google allows that, and you can share that grant for both of your for-profit and non-profit. And that my friend is very powerful.

All right.

[00:24:34] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. So practically speaking, what does that mean? So if I have a similar name for the not-for-profit and the for-profit and Google gives us the blessing that yes. We're going to let you use really the two in the one program. How does that look? Are people going to the.org or to the.com or what happens?

[00:24:54] Reynaldo Santana: So that depends on the person's operating the Google ads management. It could be us, it can be the the business owner himself. It comes down to the campaigns that you create in the ads and where you want them to go to, what landing page? You can create multiple landing pages and each landing page could be about a specific product or.

Where you educate them on that. And same thing as a for-profit. You can either create multiple entities or use what you have now. And to send traffic that way. And we always advise that depending on the business, sometimes Google has a specific policies on certain industries and what they expect and what things you can not do.

So we make sure that we follow those policies so that you won't get flights. Cause again, what's good about this journey is that I've gone through this process myself multiple times. I think it's more like $70,000 in startup fees just to make sure I perfect this system and this process to always guarantee the grant, so I can teach about best practices and do's, and don'ts, for example, you're not supposed to add a debit or credit card to the back of the Google ad grants.

Like what interests your grants. So there's certain things like that Google doesn't teach you or share with you. Things that I had to go through myself and many headaches to understand the process and now share with folks, but yeah, there's growth hacks there for sure to help businesses thrive and be found on Google because we can agree that today consumers are doing a lot more due diligence today before they buy anything.

And they're going to LinkedIn, they're going on google searches, reviews, testimonials, Facebook, you name it. And what a beautiful thing is that when they look up your name or your business, that they can see that you're educating people, what you do, it shows expertise, it shows an authority figure. Overall it builds that trust you stick out like a thumb and that's great.

And then we can do it right now. If you Google search any sort of product, or it can be a lawyer or anything like that, lawyers have all these ads that they pay for it. But then if you search. I want to learn more about immigration law or what's the different between immigration law and public service?

You see that hardly? No one is teaching about it or hardly there's no ads or no company that's has any ads there that's teaching about these certain topics about law. And that goes for your industry as well. If you can start ranking on these certain topics, then. It's going to be very beneficial for you because today consumers they feel more empowered to research first before they buy.

So you can bet that they're doing, what's the difference between this and this. How do I do this and this? And if you're that person that's ranking or teaching about certain topics and isn't going very well for you.

[00:27:21] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. So really it sounds like out of the gates, if someone's just saying, you know what, Ray, I just want to help people. I really want to make a difference. I want to educate I'm so passionate about what I'm doing. I just want to get this out to the world that here you go, this is a way to do it.

And really you're being funded that is not so much out of pocket in terms of money. It's a little bit of your time to do, but you can pay it forward, make that difference. And Ray you're absolutely right today, consumers, more than ever they want to deal with ethical companies that have the right decisions in the right areas and when you can show a not-for-profit, That's really making a difference on the education side that really allows people to check that box. But I'm also hearing you say that at the same time within the system, if you want to find ways that you can link the not-for-profit with the for-profit and tie the two together and have everybody win in that scenario, that when done in the right manner that, hey, no problem and everyone's the better for it. And so I'm wondering in both scenarios, Ray, are there some success stories that you can share with us?

[00:28:30] Reynaldo Santana: Yeah, for sure. I have Jason here, Jason came from us. He's a marketing guy. And Jason has a digital marketing agency and he came to us because his market niche was not doing too well however, he was passionate about teaching about infinity banking.

Jason has a passion for that and he want to teach just for fun. He want to teach. And they'll tell them, hey, we'll go to the grant, you know, teach about that topic. And it's gonna go very well for you because you have all of them, $10,000 per month of ads.

We set up his website, everything else for him very beautifully. And once he started assigned those kind of campaigns as to his website within one month he had a lot of attraction. His grant or his website was set up in a way where people search what is infinite banking, he appear on the first page and then that took him to a website where they had a few content educational content to learn about certain things and the advantages, the benefits of infinite banking. And then, there's a place where it says, I don't want to pay taxes, click here.

[00:29:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm sure that's a popular one.

[00:29:34] Reynaldo Santana: So you click on that button, it says, enter your first name and email, and then you click submit, and then it takes it to a webinar.

It gave Jason a half-hour for him to explain everything about the infinite banking for those folks that, you know, similar information. And after that 30 minutes of education. The next step was, hey, book a call with me if you need help with this, or you want me to explain anything further. And he was getting about 50 calls a week, just booked because of that.

And it kept increasing. And to a point that I didn't hear back from Jason anymore. It's pretty cool because right now, I checked in with him really this weekend, he's spending over 3000 a month. And that's bringing about 20,000 impressions on average and the slowly keep building up from that, and that's very powerful because that's now created for Jason, some passive income without him really needing it. Even though his market agency wasn't that strong, but it did provide a backbone for him more. They say that if you do what you love, you never work again in your life.

And that's what happened with Jason, where, he had a business. He was passionate about educating about this topic and that became his main source of income not purposely but by accident just because he wanted to educate people. So now, he does both, but now he has this on autopilot, which is really cool and it keeps educating people and he has his own Facebook group now where he now supports these folks as well with questions.

So this is the one success story that I can share where, you know, you're talking about someone who just wanted to educate people on something that he loves that topic and that grew into some of that he didn't expect. And that can happen for anyone.

[00:31:01] Jeffrey Feldberg: And for our listeners out there. Here's the question for you because we're all going to agree that the best salespeople in the world, they never do a day of selling and you may be thinking, what in the world are you talking about? How can a salesperson not sell? For starters, all of us are quote-unquote salespeople, whether we realize it or not.

But the most successful salesperson ever, whoever walked the planet what's being done is education. And so you're educating people, you're sharing, you're bringing a different point of view. And so for our listeners out there, let me ask you this. Do you have perhaps a company newsletter or an email or maybe some videos or some webinars that you're doing anyway?

Well, what if you could now get that out there to a larger audience, and thanks to the special program that's been put together, you're getting funded to make people more aware of that. Isn't that part of your vision and your mission anyways? Most business owners that I know Ray, they are saying, hey, yeah. I just want to make a big change out there, a positive change out there in society, and really make the difference. And we're doing it anyways. This is just one more way of another feather in our cap so to speak of some resources and some tools to really get us out there and make that difference. And so from that perspective, so we've been really down in the weeds here.

Let's take a bit of a step back and a 50,000-foot overview now. So, Ray, he gave us a little bit of your background. You've shared what the program is all about. But I am just curious now that we know you a little bit better and we've just been talking back and forth. How in the world did you come up with this in the first place?

Because you didn't wake up one day and say, oh, you know what, there's this program out there and I'm going to get funded for these ads and I'm going to do this and I'm going to set up this real estate and then other companies and a business not-for-profit incubator. How'd you put this all together?

[00:32:51] Reynaldo Santana: Yeah. So first of all, this Google grant has been around since 2003. And I didn't know that all this started in 2020. So for those folks, I mentioned I'm a tech geek past 12, 13 years I've been in the technology space. And when 2020 came, I was working for a company where they were producing the number one VR goggles in the world.

So I had clients like NASA, BMW, Ferrari different military branches. So I was doing some pretty cool stuff, and I was only employee here in the US. I was head of BD and I got laid off because of COVID so once I got laid off, I'm like, okay just got married three months ago. And I have no job now.

Good thing I have a saving account, but now what? So start applying for different jobs for, you know, in terms of VR and also financing to see you know, can I get anything? And no one was hiring and I'm like, all right not a problem. So I sat down and thought about my life and I came to realization that, you know what, I've done so much in my twenties and I think it's time for me to do a change in part of myself, I think of taking many risks. Trust me a lot of risks in my life.

I feel very confident about my abilities, my skill sets, and you know what, let me get into real estate. I've always wanted to do it. Had no guidance, but let me do it. And by the way, guys, you're talking to a guy who did really bad in high school, did not like education whatsoever. That was just a music geek. I've been playing music by the way, since the age of seven, I still play music today. And all I care about what just performing and nothing about schooling. But I'm saying that because I spent about $6,000 in an education. I went to MIT and Harvard Business School that online programs for real estate and investments.

And I did that, just bam like that. I pay for a real estate coach and I'm like, wow. Did I really just pay for education? I didn't have to do that. Yes, I did. Because now I value education. I understand how important that is and how that can impact and change my life and other people's lives as well.

So I did that. I did an internship with my best friend, Steven, and fast forward made some money in wholesaling I created an LLC calls Santana Capital Group. I'm like, all right I have no track record. How can I get investors to give me money if I had no track record or experience? And that's when I met Brendan at my coworking space and Brendan's, this is mid-twenties kid marketing was, and I, as I, yeah I kind of once a while help people with grants for businesses and I'm like, oh, really? I'm like, do you mind if you do it for my business?

Because I need some help. And I paid Brendan about $3,000 just to do me the favor. And he did it for me. I plugged in that grant into my real estate business, which it's called REI Authority. And it's a nonprofit to educate beginner investors that are minorities and underserved communities.

And that was pretty cool because I'm a minority. I also grew up in the projects. So I understand how it feels like to not having access to certain things in terms of education. So I wanted to make sure I can educate folks to get into real estate and learn about the different principles that I learned through, Harvard, MIT, and my coach.

That was great because that brought many investors to me that were interested in just working with me just because of me, not because of my knowledge, but just because of who I am as a person which was pretty cool. And then that allowed me to start doing some deals and working with people and I'm like, wow this is really cool.

It's going to help many people out there. If, think about COVID many business, shut down some to lay off all their employees their budgets went half or more. It was cut. So many people were suffering and. I like to create a business around this. I'm of this. Good at creating business, doing business, working with people, creating partnerships, et cetera, but you're the mastermind others.

Can you teach me how to do this? And together we can work and impact peoples like yeah, I'm open to help you out. Yeah, sure. So from that point on that's where things, where it was born. So from the money I made from real estate, I injected into this business for trial and error to perfect a system of process to help people, because in the first few months it was a done-for-you program.

But it got overwhelming with creating websites, creating content, and it was so many things. Now we can onboard as many people anywhere around the world to get these grants, help them create their websites. They do the contents and we guide them and we can support them via Facebook group or via email.

And that's where things got, you know, how things started for me. And so I'm now running, three organizations at once, which sounds crazy, but I'm used to it in terms of working like many hours a week. But what motivates me is that vision of impacting 1 billion people, having a vision that's bigger than yourself excites me.

And I'm looking forward to the future. Cause every time I share this message the energy comes back through a form of a JV partnership, or a new customer, or someone who has a new idea that wants to maybe inject it into this business model. And I'm all open for it because, at the end of the day, it was good to go to bed knowing that you just changed someone's life out there.

And the thing is that I don't know how far this can go in terms of, hey, if John stands up today, he has a grant. He's now educating people on X, Y, and Z. That can go really far because the Internet is global. It's accessible to everybody, so once you do anything out there on the Internet, it stays there forever. So you kind of leaving a legacy behind. So it's pretty good to know that you're teaching people how to make some big impact, and that's going to be there for a long time.

[00:37:43] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, Ray, what a terrific story and how you got this all going and the different moving parts and how today three companies. My goodness. I can only imagine what your days are looking like. Just a heartfelt congratulations to you. That's absolutely terrific. You know, Ray, we can just go on and on, but we're starting to bump into some time constraints here. So let's change gears here. As we begin to wrap up the episode, and I want to ask you a question I'd like you to think about the movie Back to the Future and in the movie, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time.

So imagine now it's tomorrow morning, you look outside your window and there it is.

The DeLorean car is not only sitting there, but the door is open and is waiting for you to hop on in. So you hop into the car and Ray, you can go back to any point in your life, perhaps it's you as a young child, a teenager, adult, whatever the case would be. What would you be telling your younger self in terms of wisdom or life lessons or, hey, Ray, do this, but don't do that.

 What would that sound like?

[00:38:48] Reynaldo Santana: That's a great question, Jeffrey. I would say don't pay attention to the noises outside. Stay your focus. Stay your ground. Do not give up. Your best friend, you are your hero. You are the best version of you. Keep believing in your dreams. No one can stop you because you have greatness within you.

Okay. Tell me something to shoulder about a boy, but that sums up. I say that because that sums up my whole history. There's many times where I wanted to give up many times where my own family went against me with my train of thoughts, my ideas, what I wanted to do being bullied in school, being picked on.

So I went through a lot of struggles in life to get to where I am today and it really took perseverance and not giving up and staying my course and always having a vision. One example was when I was in high school, I barely graduated. I had a 1.8 GPA like I don't care about school, only music.

And I remember seeing that last row and kind of feeling bad about myself because I saw my friends, they were on stage. I told myself you're better than this. You're smarter than this. You can do what they're doing too.

I tell myself, a four or five years down the road, I'm going to be on that stage. And behold, that's what happened in college. I opened up the college ceremony. I was on stage and I remember crying on that stage just because of remembering like younger Ray in high school and what he said.

So at a young age, I always thought I'd be doing something big with my life, regardless of my bad grades, regardless what people said about me, just keeping my focus was really important, and believing in myself. And even it look like crazy talking to myself but it was really healthy and very helpful for me.

So that's why I say these sort of things, because what journey has taught me.

[00:40:19] Jeffrey Feldberg: Ray. Wow. Thank you so much. And you're putting yourself out there. You're being vulnerable. You're sharing a little bit of your past that made you who you are today. And so many life lessons in there that you're sharing for all of us all. Thank you for that. And Ray, I'm going to put this in the show notes.

It'll be really easy for the listeners, if somebody wants to find you online, what would be the best place?

[00:40:40] Reynaldo Santana: Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn. My picture is pretty cool. I'm shaking hands with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. Pretty cool. Aside from that, I am on Facebook and you can find me on the website www.impactannex.org. Or my personal website, ronaldosantana.org, there's place there to communicate with me as well.

[00:40:59] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And for our listeners, we'll put all that in the show notes. It'll be a point-and-click for you really easy to save you some time. Ray, you know what? We're wrapping up this episode and just a heartfelt thank you. You spent part of your day with us here on The Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast.

And as we wrap things up, please stay healthy and safe.

[00:41:15] Reynaldo Santana: Thank you so much, Jeffrey. And thank you everyone for listening today to this podcast.

[00:41:19] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.

[00:41:22] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.

[00:41:32] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity

[00:41:37] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:41:43] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.

[00:41:59] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.

[00:42:21] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.

[00:42:31] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:42:45] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.

[00:43:03] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:43:30] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.

[00:43:48] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

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As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe.

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