The Power Of Perspective: Thoughts on Family, Business & Life After A Near-Death Experience w/ Myles Berrio

A rap. Miles. Barrio. What's going on, my man?

What's going on? How are you, brother?

Doing good. Doing good. , you have a very powerful story. You're killing it in real estate. You're killing it in your health. You're killing it with your family. The guy shredded, the guy's healthy. The guy's a family man. This is all important and it's all great things to be, but you had to overcome some frequent adversity to make it even more impressive that you are where you are today. And I think that part of your story is just as valuable, if not more valuable than the part of your real estate investing. So if you want, man, I'll let you take the driver's. Cause I really want to take a peek behind the curtain of , who are you, before we get into the numbers, let's get it. Brother . myles: Yeah. I didn't come for much my mom and dad, , they've never owned anything, let alone their car. So I just , I never really grew up in , wealth, ownership, anything like that. I'm from Panama, Central America. My dad is Hispanic, barely speaks English. My mom's from Montego Bay, Jamaica. So , I came to the United States and . , I had this conversation with someone before about, let's talk mindset, right? There's this story that there's these two brothers that had a father who was a drunk and very aggressive and one of the brothers was like super mega successful. And the other one was like, drunk and aggressive, right? And they both get interviewed cuz the really successful one gets interviewed and they end up interviewing the other brother and they just say What would you attribute to your success? How did you become who you are today? And he goes my dad wasn't drunk, dude. He wast drunk. He was aggressive. He was, what do you expect? There was no way I was gonna be like that. I just ran as far as fast, the opposite direction. And , and then they interview the brother and they ask the exact same question, what happened? What? What do you feel like attributed to where you are today? And he goes What do you expect? Like my dad was a drunk and super aggressive So anyway. The reality is, it's never about what happens to you in life, it's what you do with what happens to you. My story isn't as unique in terms of the fact that we all go through struggles, we all go through challenges, yeah. We hear these things all the time, Oh, I didn't come for much. My parents struggle financially, all that stuff, so it's really just what you do with that. And for me, I don't know necessarily, I'm still trying to figure out why specifically, I decided to be the other brother where I just ran as fast as way the other direction rather than falling in the same footsteps. Cuz it's very easy. You only know what you know, right? So if your parents are doing a certain thing and they have a certain mindset, generally, that's just, that's like the mindset in what you have. But I don't know. I think there was just a, there was something in me that wanted more outta life and I do believe , all of us have a calling and I think for me it had just allowed me to listen. And hearing that and knowing that there's a calling over my life, I just didn't accept, mediocre. I gotta stop, I gotta stop you there real quick, brother, because just. just because that story resonated with me. What you just said. , because that's exactly how me and my little brother are, and it's, Oh wow. It's, yeah. So it's caused a huge gap. It's caused a gap in the family, because I was the one that I saw my father and I was like, Okay, he's not around his kids. He's a workaholic. He doesn't care about any of this. He's not there at the basketball practice. He's not there taking me two games. It's my mom. My mom's doing everything. And so like for me, when I was on my journey of financial freedom, the reason I wanna do it is for when I have my kids. I wanna be able to be there for every single ball game. And like for every dance recital, five girls, that's a really key thing for me. And so I love that she said that because that's exactly how I am. I'm like, I see that guy. I'm like, I don't wanna be that guy. He's a perfect role model for what not to be. Whereas my brother uses it as almost like an excuse and a cru. To where he is like, Oh, dad, Dad messed us up. So this is me. . Yeah.

That get man. Yeah. And and I always say it's important cuz even with my own kids, like the idea is not what you leave your kids, it's what you leave in them. And when you can provide a roof over a kid's head, you can provide toys, games, clothes, and all these things, what are you really leaving in them? And . My parents are amazing individuals, so I'm not, necessarily talking down on them in a con any way. It's just the way they live their life in terms of what they thought would create a life of freedom to me, didn't really seem like a life of freedom most people think if I work. A job and make enough money, like at least that I'm not out on the streets or I'm not struggling financially. And if they want more money, they just go work another job, which ties up more time. So it doesn't really matter about the amount of money. You, you really still don't have a life of freedom because you're trading your time for money. And it just, That's what I took from, that. I wanted to run away from as fast as possible is, like you said, my par. At least my mom was able to come to, things here and there. But yeah, even for me, a lot of times I remember I would go home with, a friend of mine or something cuz both of my parents were working, right? They had to both work jobs where they weren't available. And if anyone follows me on social media, you guys all know, I'm like at all my kids, it's a blessing cuz I, I, that vision of mine, I really turn into reality. So I know I get a a lot of people hit me up about, me posting my daughter at her dance rec cuz she's two years old and I, I'm like the only father in the room. While I love it man. I know. And other moms. Yeah. And she, she, I'm at her dance classes and I've I've not missed one and I won't even, I was at my, daughter and my son's like fashion show. And this is a still a work day. It's Friday. . You might leave early a little bit at work, but the fashion show was at like 11 o'clock this morning, and it's just a blessing to be able to just say, Hey, I, you I. Life of my own terms. If I wanna be at their show or if I wanna be at the game, or if I wanna be at my son's swim class, I'm just there. I'm just always there and I can make that decision. So it's been really great to have that. But a little bit before real estate. Before we dive into that, like you said, , I actually had done a number of entrepreneurial avenues, You may or may not have heard of Vema but I was approached by Vema while I was at uga, University of Georgia in Athens. And it had never really taken off in the south. It was really huge out in the west coast. And I just to make a very long story short, I got started in Vema with him. Not to be boastful, but I just blew this thing up and the reason I didn't really finish college cuz I was on planes every other weekend just traveling, speaking at different events and whatnot, growing the company. So it's a network marketing company. VEMA stands for Vitamins, Essential Minerals, Manin and a Vera. Did really well with that, and that was my first exposure to entrepreneurship cuz I was training teams, I was running sales. I had to really understand how to cast a vision and get people, excited about having a better life even for themselves. And so that had to start within, how can you really teach someone something you don't know? How can you help someone go somewhere you've never been, right? So I had to learn how to, become an empowering person. Had the whole company car, I'm like 22, 21, driving a Mercedes, and we all know you can have all the things, right? A mansion, the cars the travel, all the different things. But it doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be happier, you become used to it aspect. Yeah. That, And then at the end of the day, you just start to realize that, this sort of this sort of emotion that you thought that this item would provide you, you realize that this item is really just still an item. And that emotion doesn't come from an object. But it really comes from perspective how you perceive things, right? And if you just buy another watch or buy a pair of shoes, even if it's expensive, at the end of the day, those shoes wear out the car depreciates, all these things disappear. So you gotta have. You gotta have a foundation that, that's not gonna just really disappear. Over time. And a lot of that comes from obviously things like our family, how we wanna impact people, things that just continue on, as long as we're alive and don't necessarily like, disintegrate, , like a pair of shoes would over time. . So anyway, I it was a great learning experience because that's where I learned mindset. So all the people that you might know today, Jim Ron, John C. Maxwell, Darren Hardy, Les Brown, t Har Veer, , Robert Kiyosaki, everybody. That was like the first book that I read. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Yeah. And it just rocked my mind, man in my world, about how to go about life. So , I took that with a couple of other businesses. Did okay with some of the other ones, but the one that was really awesome right before real. I was a wedding and commercial photographer. So again, it's never about the thing, right? It's, I always say it's never course it's the jockey. So when you have the, when you have a solid mindset, it doesn't really matter what you do. You're always gonna do really well. So a lot of people know me from just different commercial brands that I worked with. I've traveled all over the world. Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Dr. Me, I can go on and on. I was a commercial photographer for Netflix, so a lot of people know me from Love Is Blind. I was a photographer for Netflix on that show. Just a lot of really awesome, really cool experiences. But longs for short. I came to Greenville and Covid happened, and everything shut down. No one was no one was meeting up and taking photos and doing things. And , that was the transition in real estate.

I love it, man, because , what I tell people is you want to try your hand as many things as possible in the very beginning, right? Because what you're doing is, it's not necessarily marrying these vehicles. To 12. I tell people that you want to get a really clear idea about what your end destination looks like, but what's more important is the process of building skills along the way. So you are building skills and you are becoming a new and improved version of yourself with each and every failure that you had along your journey. Walk us through your into real estate and the rest of your story,

brother. When I first got started in real estate, it was really through a YouTube video, Man. It was wholesaling. Honestly, I watched this random YouTube video. On wholesaling real estate. And it was just, it's crazy. I, like I said, I've been in a lot of different businesses, t-shirt, business, food, truck, business, photography, marketing, consulting network. All these different entrepreneurial, you avenues and it's so wild. I like never knew about wholesaling real estate, even though I . I experienced wholesaling in other businesses. I just never thought you could do that with, a real estate, a property houses, you could literally wholesale a house, yeah. So when I found that out, I was like, Oh, dude, come on. I spent about a month, just studying it like crazy, watching every video I could, all the guys we know today and just like watching videos. And then after that I just said, All right, man, I'm at the ground running. And February is when I started doing marketing and trying to, do all the different things, right? Driving for dollars, sending out mailers , text messaging and things like that. It took me about three and a half months to get my first deal, So it was like April-ish when I got my first deal, and it ended up being two of. Two of the same checks, two different deals, but I ended up being able to close both of them the same month. And I still have all these photos. I document my journey as much as possible just to show people like, if I can do this, anyone else could do this. They were both $11,000 deals. , stuff that we do today obviously, could be way bigger than that. But at that time, to do over 20 grand, that was just, obviously from what I had done before, just to do 20 grand and a day essentially. I'm like, Oh my gosh, dude. If I could do that,, two times a month, three times a month, four times, really trying to, blow this thing up. . I did about six and six months. That was my whole thing. And I was on the Flip Man's podcast and show and I, was of starting to be, kind of name for myself. And I'm like connecting with all the, the guys that we know today, and, doing deals and working with people. But life. Took a turn, after about six, seven months of clearing about six figures and just doing well and having time freedom and doing all this stuff from your computer I got hit by a drunk driver coming home from the gym. So that just, totally. Changed everything, right? I This lady was going 91 miles per hour and intoxicated and essentially just hit my car head on at full speed, 91 miles per hour. And almost just died. Literally just, my wife almost just became a widow and I almost literally died that night, minutes away. and the only way to save my life was to amputate. Some limbs, I had to take, they had to take my leg off. And so I got my leg amputated on my left side through the knee. I broke almost every bone in my body is what they've said. Every limb that I had what's called compartment syndrome. So if you go through my Instagram, you'll see one of, again, I document everything I can even like this, right? Every limb was wrap. So I had to cast on every limb. My, basically my leg bent backwards into the left. And so they had to amputate that cuz the, all the muscles died and everything. So they just had to take it away. My left arm. Some people can see, some people don't, just cuz of, kind of photos and angles and stuff. You don't always see it. But my left arm is fully or is. Completely not functional at all. So I can't really bend it at all. It's actually kind of slightly twisted and a lot of people, if they see it, they think I'm like a burn victim cuz there's tons of skin graft all over. So I can't move my fingers at all. And in my right foot, not everyone realizes that either cuz it's not as easy to see my prosthetic or my left leg. But sometimes if you look hard enough, you'll see I have this brace around my foot, on my right foot. So I have what's called foot drop. So my, my foot doesn't like I can't lift my foot up and walk like , most people can. So I have a brace that goes through my shoe, around my leg that keeps the foot up. And yeah, essentially the only, okay, part of my body is my right arm. , essentially. There you, . But but yeah, man, so that was a whole journey in itself, man. Just having a feeding tube, learning how to walk, talk, just everything again, dude, for the next six months, half a year or more about six, seven months, just learning how to relive life. So that obviously will knock you out. Good , when you're trying to do deals.

Yeah. Let's say the least. That's a heck of a Tuesday, man. Just knocked out, God, man. The part about all of this is the mindset that you had already built before this, cuz think about if you hadn't have done any of the work you had done or had any of the exposure before, how much more difficult it

may have been. Yeah, man, I, And it's so funny. Yeah, it's funny you say that. I tell people this all the time it's like when people need to lose weight and it's affecting their heart and maybe they have some sort of cardiac whatever, just some sort of heart issue or something happens health wise and they end up having to get rush to the hospital and then all of a sudden they change their diet in, they leave health, they start living a healthier life. All this stuff I always tell people, you don't need. For the ambulance, to be able to see the value of your life and to make things a priority, like your mindset. A lot of times people just, for whatever reason, it's like insurance. You think you don't need it until you need it, right? So you don't wanna have a very reactive way of life. You wanna be preventative, right? That's why we have two different types of health, right? They say like preventative health, ? So there's things you can do to prevent things, ? But then you have we gotta take medicine and take pills and take things. Because something already happened. So you don't wanna have to wait till you're in the hospital. You wanna take preventative measures. And the way to do that, to help prevent some of these very catastrophic detrimental mindsets and, basically going down the wrong way, situations happening, is just working on your mindset before those things happen. And I don't wanna say everyone's gonna go through like getting hit by a drunk driver and almost dying. Their leg amputated and things like that. But the reality is You're either coming out of a storm in the middle of a storm or about to go into a storm. That's really just how life goes. Always. Yeah. At the end of day, you will go through some kind of challenge. It's just there's no one on planet Earth who was born. Started at zero years old, born and went all the way to maybe 60, 70, 80 years old and just had not one challenge ever. It just obviously doesn't even make sense. You're gotta go through challenges or so if you know you're going to go through challenge, life is good when life is good, right? And we just forget that there's seasons to life. So Jim Roan would talk about this all the time too, right? During the summer, he talks about ants, ? And , how ants work. You know how they prepare for the winter, right? They'll store food, right? Instead of waiting to try and get food during the winter, ? When, when the summertime's around, if you just eat up everything, you don't have anything stored, then when winter comes around, you're gonna be, sol, right? So it's like, how can you obviously think about, what's to come? And it doesn't mean you have to live your. And in a negative jury kind of way. But you just, you've gotta work on your mindset and your attitude cuz life will happen and you just gotta be prepared. So it's interesting you say that cuz Yeah. I mean it was, I don't know, maybe a decade of just crazy personal development and that definitely helped a lot being able to get through this situation. For sure.

How have your views on life changed since that happening? Because I had a personal friend that it was a similar situation, but he didn't make. He was a guy that was like crushing it. He's probably 27, 28 as well, and he was just murdering it. He was at the top of his game. Like he was just one of those dudes that was just living life and just jet setting. And then he was in Buckhead, North Atlanta one night, Bam. Drunk driver gone. And so ever since that moment for. I've really viewed things a lot differently with the way that I view each and every day. The way that I view time horizons. It's like the way that I view it is I'm fine with being patient for the results, but I wanna be impatient with my actions, is how I view it. I'm curious about your perspective shifts after having something like that happen.

I think at the end of the day, it's important for us to strive to be great. And to I think the challenge sometimes is so much of our life is just focused around what our success looks like in business, right? But we then tend to leave out and forget that you might be great at putting another dollar in the bank, but how much have you. Deposited in your marriage, how much have you deposited in your health and your health? How much have you deposited with your kids? So to be quite honest, like that accident didn't make me actually grind harder or go like life short. So I need to be like, know, I need to just crush it and go crazy , they say the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So prioritizing is so important. So yeah, people see me in business and I'm doing what I can. Like I said, everyone has different levels, so I don't wanna be like, Oh, I'm I'm Cru, crushing it is all relative, right? To one person, it may not be as great. So I just think I'm doing as much as I need to do and as well as I can in business. But I also translate that in my marriage, like I. And invest so much into my marriage, I had to pause in and invest so much into my kids, because when something like that happens you realize you literally could I could literally disappear today. My wife could be gone today. Literally. We have no idea. My, your kids, you, we just assume, we just always assume nothing. We have this cute little family or maybe I'm single and I'm just you. I have all these goals, these things, there's no way I could just die tomorrow or die today. You just, we just assume we're always gonna be around. It's just so not true. And that accident, it really did put in perspective like, I even need miles not to be boastful, but dude, I don't even drink. I don't even like drinking. And to someone who is like very person to develop. On top of his game, very faithful to his marriage, works out in shape, loves God. All the things you could check off to be like, I'm the perfect guy, or whatever, but I could have just died. It lyric could just died. Like it, nothing, it never matters. None of that ever matters. How cute you look, how pretty you are, how much money you're making, how are you prioritizing your life in general? And a lot of times we sacrifice things that shouldn't be s. For things at the end of the day that won't give us as much as we think it will. And so anyway, like that's, for me, that accident, it did less about money and business for me than it did just the overall perspective of life. I just wanna be, I want my children to remember me, for, in a certain way, and my wife to obviously feel a certain way. I don't need to have this. This stage presence with business that's gonna give me my success. I just, I really understand how short life can be. So I wanna make sure that, if ever anything ever happened, either the people that I would be leaving, that led me the most they feel a certain way, it's not a negative or bad or Oh, I wish dad this, or I wish my husband this. You work just as hard as you do in your business, in your marriage and your family and relationships with people. How you serve and love. Just, community, all those things are important too.

Man, preach, brother. Preach to 'em. . I love this man. I, and I'm a man of faith as well. And I wholeheartedly believe that you were put and you were given the second chance to do something great. I'm curious, Outside of your marriage, Outside of your family, which of course like, we're not even gonna talk about the real estate, screw the real estate. There's so I've got plenty of real estate on here, but like we don't have this perspective, this is why you listen to podcasts. This is why you go to mastermind events. This is why you get coaching. All of it really is when you boil it down, it's just perspective that you didn't have. Yeah. You just borrowing it from other people. So I'm curious, outside of your family and outside of your marriage, what purpose do you think that you are brought back here to fill in this world? Cause I think it's gonna be a big one, man. Like I could just feel it from you.

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, and again, this, everyone has their own opinion about it and it's totally fine. But I actually think, I'll just say this, as a man of God, a man of faith, like I believe at the end of the day, if you're a Christian, if you're a believer in Christ, and I know not everyone is, I'm just saying this is my perspective as a believer, that actually our purpose is all the same. Our purpose is. As it says in scripture, whatever you do, due to your best ability due for the Lord. So at the end of the day, it doesn't matter the vehicle, it all needs to point to Christ. So I believe my purpose is the same as all of our purposes, which is really to show people the love of Christ and to show people a level of forgiveness and love that you cannot find anywhere else. That's why as a father, as a mother, as a friend, we always fail. We can never be perfect, right? And it, even my accident, right? I have never felt negatively towards that. Oh my gosh. Are you kidding? Miles? Half. That doesn't make sense. Think about it. At the end of the day, did this lady wake up outta bed and said, I'm gonna drink alcohol and smash in Miles's car. So all of this stuff can happen and he lose his leg and all this craziness. Dude, she didn't even know me. Of course, it was a mistake. It was a mistake. Now, have I ever put anyone in the hospital? I have their leg amputated and all these things. Oh, but come on, at the end of the day, have we not all made mistakes no matter what level would you have wanted your mistake to be forgiven? Or would you have wanted that person to to hold that over you and not be able to forgive you? And at the end of the day, we all would. We all want forgiveness. We all, any mistakes that we make, that aren't intentional, we wanna. Have forgiveness for it. But, see, but that comes from a scriptural mindset. So when that happened, I just, dude, I, there was so much relief and there was so much freedom in me being able to go and live the life that I wanted to live because I wasn't holding on to this sort of animosity or this sort of emotion that would've really, kept me in captivity rather than allowing me to be as great as I can be. A normal, just worldly mindset. Anyone would, anybody would've totally, validated, eaten up, angry, and yeah, to, I would've had it, I would've had every person in their right mind, validate. Me being upset, angry, and all these different things. It's actually what really converted my brother, who essentially has been an atheist for I don't know how many years, my response to this accident because he was so angry. I'm like his little brother, so of course out of to do, he was angry. This is what it means to be a believer man, and how you can serve and love people no matter what, . And anyway, going back to what I'm saying is like that's what my purpose is to show people the love of Christ because I know it will literally absolutely create a better life for them than in just following the world. So I do that in my business. So here's an example. So the short term rental that I just. Which by the way, for zero interest, zero down, I love creative finance, so we can talk into some of this stuff. Anyway, so this is a short-term rental. One of the things that I, that that I'm doing so I have this whole thing called songs of B and B. So it's kinda like this little ministry that I'm doing through our short term rentals to where. Every month. One day out of the month, we shut it down and we open it up for a house of worship, for a house of prayer, for a house of healing. People that can come in, like literally these. We think about it. You own these buildings, you own these houses. Can you allow your. Actual buildings and assets to be a resource, to literally have people's lives change and to have healing and have prayer. Even in the short term hurdles, again, some people can see on social media, I have these prayer walls, right? Like basically any guest that come through can essentially, before they leave, write a prayer on the wall. Because when we have these songs of b and b we shut it down for a day. We have, worship. Snide and prayer and people come in and what, we literally have people's names and prayers that we can pray over. And and we can all do these things right, but sometimes we just don't choose to cuz it's not a priority or we just focused on the money and we say that we wanna impact people and all these things, but really just wanna be big and make a lot of money and do all these great things. But dude, how are you like actually serving and loving on people and utilizing the assets you have to really do, You don't need another 20 units to do that. Dude, what I just talked about that, that I could just say that one short term rental, that one short term rental right there could just be so impactful. That one house, right? So we don't need another 50 units, another a hundred units, another 2000 units to start doing these things. So I would just encourage people to really think about how can you leverage the assets that you already have? We're already so much wealthier than we think. We just keep looking to the guy that's running fast. Next to us thinking we're running slower and that we need to run faster. But dude, I run at my own pace. I'm not trying, I don't need to try and be like any other body, like I'm trying to focus on impacting people and serving and loving and pointing back to Christ. Cuz I, that's how I know I'm alive, dude. I just thank God every day that I'm, here with my family and with my kids. Start really impacting people, in a serious way with what we already have.

Dude, I'm fired up. I'm fired up. I'm ready to go. I'm on fire. Man's all right. Yeah so screw the real estate. This isn't even a real estate show today. This is just ladies and gentlemen listening. If you've made it to this point I feel bad for the people that you're running into today, cuz they're gonna be like, What drugs is this person on? They're going be going crazy, man. Aw, man. I love this. I love this, man. This has been awesome perspective. Yeah. I want to cap it there. Just to be able to just sit with this story and sit with this gospel that you're preaching and be able to have that perspective, man. Because there's two different things, right? There's the stories that are told, but what's equally as important is the person that's telling the. Yeah. So that's what provides the context, like , I can come and tell a story about freedom cuz I went and did it and I went through it and I've accomplished it. And you can come and tell this story of forgiveness and love unconditionally of priorities of like fulfillment, of true fulfillment and purpose and passion because you went through the storm, you went through it, so you can offer it at a level that's higher. Than somebody that may be coming on and they say, Oh yeah, I'm a unit 9,000. I can't wait to get to unit 10,000. Like the marginal utility of money is completely gone for 'em, right? So where can people find you and follow you along for the rest of this journey, Man.

Yeah, man. Again, seriously, Bryan, I just appreciate you even just having me on, dude. I love just connecting with other mind individuals and impacting others. I really appreciate that. If anyone wants to connect with me I'm, dude I'm pretty accessible all over. I document my journey. I'm all over social media if you just. Type in my name, Miles Burial m y l e s m y l e s and dot burial, b e r i o and Instagram. That kind of connects me to everything. Or if you just go to my website, which is just Miles burial go, so go.com. You could pretty much find e every way to connect with me through there. Miles Burial go.com. Love it

man. Love it. Appreciate you. Thank you for coming on man, and keep being you. Love it, dude. It's radiating. Likewise. All right. All right, ladies, gentlemen, this has been Miles Barrio. Brian Lubin with the Action Academy Podcast, signing off.