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This solo episode is a practical playbook for buying, building, and owning businesses—distilled from the career of Fernando De Leon and Leon Capital Group. We cover how an immigrant mindset, speed in downturns, and incentive-aware dealmaking can compound into a multi-billion platform across real estate, healthcare, and financial services.

You’ll learn:

- How to turn labor into equity (and why ownership is better vs one-time fees)
- The four questions to decode big-deal headlines and fund incentives
- A crisis playbook: speed, certainty, enough-but-not-perfect exits
- How a PropCo/OpCo strategy scaled to ~265+ dental clinics
- Building in-house lending (Patient Capital) and insurance brokerage to control growth and margins
- The origin of Crexi and the power of clean data + auctions + listings
- Relationship flywheels: brokers as compounding assets

Who this is for: HoldCo builders, searchers, SMB operators, and PE folks who want a gritty, operator-led path to compounding.

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro & Leon Capital Group overview
00:02:24 - Border-childhood & immigrant mindset
00:03:55 - Spelling bee, father’s passing, $10k lesson
00:05:21 - Turning labor into equity at 14
00:07:18 - Harvard takeaways: negotiation “currencies” & hiring for outputs
00:08:50 - Goldman: seeing the pipes of money & incentives
00:12:37 - Four questions to decode deal headlines
00:13:14 - Move to Dallas (2003) & flood-map/option flip
00:14:43 - 2008 crisis: speed over perfection; spouse’s push
00:16:09 - Rapid distressed deals (bad loans, 24-condo flip)
00:18:00 - Broker flywheel & long-term loyalty
00:19:23 - Sponsor: Spacebar Studios (newsletter compounding)
00:20:29 - Propco/Opco playbook → to 265 dental clinics
00:23:01 - Repeatable playbook: medspas & lab rescue
00:24:02 - Build it in-house: Patient Capital financing
00:25:50 - Cut out middlemen: insurance brokerage
00:26:36 - Crexi origin story: data, auctions, listings
00:28:38 - Wrap-up & next-episode teaser

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Subscribe on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6lr5bE3SNZF2uEE7Nb0DHh?si=cP_nAarhRmep1lvnR6uk5g

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/holdco-builders/id1695713724

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.