Inside Private Capital: Scaling, Optimizing, and Leaving the Hustle Behind with Pedro De Leon Jr.

Yeah, absolutely. So, right now I'm residing in McKinney, Texas. I've been putting together local events ever since I moved here. I went from workshops to specifically last year putting together local events for accredited investors. I'm an investor myself. This year, I'm pivoting, still keeping that investor focus, but also adding businesses that are in the $1,000,000 range that are looking to scale or at least connect with private lenders.

The reason I'm doing this is because there are a lot of business owners having challenges accessing capital on the traditional banking side, the private lending side, or from investors. I used to raise capital in the past, so this is where I guide people. I help them find investors and learn how to position themselves so they can raise money for their deals.

My bread and butter is financial services; I've been working in life and health insurance, and now I'm actually getting my RIA, studying for my CFP (Certified Financial Planner). I also have a little fund where we invest in deals as well. One of the biggest, most amazing deals I'm happy to be a part of is a veteran-owned whiskey company. I'm a vet myself, so I said, "Let's do it!" There are a lot of moving parts, but it all correlates back to helping businesses scale and providing value to the community.

I served 6 years active duty, and when I got out, I went into the Reserves and said to myself, "I don't think I want to work for anyone else." I wanted to jump into the entrepreneurship world. I started in the financial advising space working for MassMutual. I had great mentors there who pushed me to expand into the nonprofit world. Through that nonprofit work in Los Angeles, I actually got involved in multifamily real estate because we were providing affordable housing for veterans.

From there, I got involved in a few incubators and did pitch competitions. I won a few of them, coming in 1st and 2nd place, and I started learning more and more about working with investors and understanding alternative investments. People started asking me, "Hey, I know you've done this, you've been around investors and won pitch competitions. Can you guide us?" So I started coaching people and getting hired in-house to help companies raise money. Throughout the years, I always heard the pain points from business owners needing tax advice or strategies to scale, and that's exactly what brought me to what I'm doing now.

That’s a good question. A lot of people ask me what I did, and I tell them I was not an officer; I was enlisted. I was a grease monkey, I was a mechanic! The things I learned in the military that carry over are leadership, number one, and project management, number two. It taught me how to set up KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and accomplish them, and if they weren't accomplished, how to analyze what we could do to perform better next time.

Those two things really gave me my foundation for entrepreneurship. Being organized, of course, and knowing how to delegate. That’s a huge part of leadership. If you're trying to run a company completely on your own, good luck, because you're wearing multiple hats. But if you build a team, that is what allows you to scale.

At first, it took me a very long time to manage my time between family and business because I have a hyper-focused persona. When I'm hyper-focused, I will not stop until the job is accomplished, that's a habit I got accustomed to in the military. Because of that, early on, I missed some of my kids' school events or sports. As I got older, I realized, "You know what? I need to slow down." Not slow down on doing the work, but become more intentional. If something is happening with the kids, I schedule it in and make time for them.

I don't believe in the "hustle mode" anymore. When I was younger, coming from New York, I always thought you just had to hustle, hustle, hustle. But in reality, you waste a lot of time. If you are hustling and neglecting your health, your eating habits, and everything that makes you a person, you're just creating more challenges for yourself as you get older. I have a lot of physical injuries from my past, and I realized I have to take care of myself. I learned to slow down and say, "If I'm going to hyper-focus, I'll give it a few hours, and then I shift fire to spend true time with my kids." It takes a while to learn how to cut the time and make that shift.

Professionalism may mean different things to different people, but for me, it goes back to what I learned in the Army: having core values. In the Army, we have core values like courage, leadership, and selfless service. When you are operating as a professional, my number one requirement is having ethics. Being ethical, being transparent.

When you anchor yourself in strong core values, you naturally attract your ideal target audience, the exact clients, partners, and network opportunities that operate the same way. It creates synergy. If those shared core values aren't there, the relationship just turns into negative energy.

Man, that's a good question. On the business side here in the US, the number one thing I would change is economic education. There is a clear gap in the entrepreneurship world regarding economics. We need to help kids and rising entrepreneurs truly understand economics. It is the core foundation for knowing how to run a company and understanding how to do business within a city, county, or state. That knowledge trickles down into improving the workforce and securing city grants because production increases.

On a personal note, I wish more people had cultural awareness. I’m not talking about national cultures; I mean understanding different communication styles, leadership styles, and how people work together. I work with so many different types of people and behaviors, and taking the time to understand them changes everything.