S8 | Ari Rastegar: How to Scale: The Founder vs. CEO Identity Crisis | The High-Performance Audit.

In this compelling episode of the EAOT Podcast, I sit down with Ari Rastegar, the "recovering attorney" turned real estate titan and founder of Rastegar Property Group. Ari shares his incredible journey from a $3,500 loan to managing a portfolio valued in the billions, highlighting the "alchemy" of turning raw land into master-planned communities and high-tech data centers. The conversation dives deep into the "Gift of Failure," with Ari explaining why the traits of a great founder often make for a terrible CEO. He reveals his "REI audit" process, a rigorous scrutiny of his thoughts, triggers, and health habits designed to facilitate constant growth. Beyond business, Ari discusses his intense biohacking regimen, including his experience with over 200 hyperbaric oxygen therapy sessions and his 80/20 approach to nutrition and supplements. Whether discussing why Austin, Texas, remains a global "oasis" for investment or the vital importance of being truly present for your children, Ari offers a masterclass in building a meaningful, outcome-driven life.

Connect with Ari:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arirastegar/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rastegar/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AriRastegar/
YouTube: @Ari_Rastegar  
Tiktok: tiktok.com/@arirastegar
Website: www.rastegarcapital.com

Alexander V. Johnson is a Founding Partner of Mixt Solutions, a 6x Inc. 5,000 Fastest Growing Company in America. Mixt Solutions has successfully done millions of transactions on Amazon and works with some of the biggest consumer packaged goods brands in the world. In 2024, Mixt Solutions crossed over 150 million dollars of all time sales on Amazon.

Connect with Alex:
YouTube:    / @eaotpodcast  
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/06QZEpv...
Instagram:   / eaotpodcast  
Twitter: https://x.com/EAOTpodcast
Facebook:   / eaotpodcast  
TikTok:   / eaotpodcast  

Intro Music Credit:
"Alone and Afraid" - SourBlood:    • Alone and Afraid Official Lyric Video  
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7FJVH...

#AriRastegar #eaotpodcast #realestateinvesting #entrepreneurship #biohackingtips #austintexas #leadership #businessgrowth  #successmindset #TheGiftOfFailure #wealthbuilding #ceo

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

The first line of my book, which is called The Gift of Failure, is I hope you fail, I hope you fail a lot. And at this point in my life, I think that's the only thing that I've gotten pretty good at is failing because I've just done it so much in so many different areas. And so I've been in doing a um an RE audit of my thoughts, um, of my behaviors, of my triggers, of my um health habits, of my parenting, basically any and everything, drawing everything up uh for questioning, for audit, for scrutiny to enhance and improve, you know, and which is um admittedly wildly painful. What I wasn't entirely prepared for is that those problems were the gifts that we grew from. And I wasn't prepared for all of the challenges that brought, uh, not only to the deals, to the investments, to the capital stack, to lenders, to investors, um, project timelines. Um, but we persisted because we believed what we were doing was meaningful.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

But, you know, it takes a lot of different changes to the way you behave, and you have to be introspective about that and understand hey, uh, I have a role in this organization. The role is not to do everything for people. And that won't allow us to get to 100 million if you want to take the business that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

The the characteristics that make a great founder, okay, and I don't know if I fall in that category or not, but in theory, a great founder. Um you look at their the the their characteristics as a as a person, they have grit, um, they're resilient, uh, they have a vision, they probably are like the cathletes of business and that they're pretty good at a lot of different things. All of those traits that would make a great founder make a terrible CEO. A CEO trains people, they don't do everything. They're patient, they build systems and processes for me in general. And I work with so many brilliant people from so many different walks of life. And that's one of the great things about real estate is that it's about people. You know, a lot of people build houses, we build homes, you know, and and now with this new, you know, fourth industrial revolution, we're about to start building data centers, we built industrial facilities, um, you know, massive, massive industrial facilities. But um, this is a point where just everything is caused into into question, where um, you know, before I was looking for answers, and now I'm just trying to ask a better question. And I don't know if that answers your question or not, but um that's what the last few years have been about for me.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

No, I mean I I definitely uh agree with you, and I tell this to people really often uh that the skills that got you to where you are in business aren't necessarily the ones that'll get you to where you want to go. So I'm sort of dealing with that right now. Like, you know, founded this company 12 years ago, and now we've grown to 50 million and 50 people. So it's like, all right, well, what what is my role in this organization now? And it's not nearly the same as it was when there was two people in a basement, you know, shipping orders.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah. But, you know, it takes a lot of different changes to the way you behave, and you have to be introspective about that and understand, hey, uh, I have a role in this organization. The role is not to do everything for people, and that won't allow us to get to a hundred million if you want to take the business that way.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Um right. So this is that's exactly right. And uh reinventing you, your value system, what you see success as, um, what you see meaning as, where you see purpose as. Like these things need to be excavated, I think. You know, I I know certainly, um, certainly for me, as I mentioned, that's um that's that's a big part of this. And I think one of the um one of the things I look back on that, you know, I I say I wish I would have focused on, but you know, the journey is the journey, and um, you know, overcoming is the becoming, quite frankly. Um, but it's not a very good strategy to do more. It's a better strategy to learn, to delegate, and take the time to build out a process and put people, machines, technology, tools in place to do it. It's it's it seems at the beginning like I need, and maybe there, and there is a time for it. If I should do more, I should do more, me, me, me, me, me. But you know, business is about we, you know, winning at business, winning at sports, winning at anything longer term is team sport. Focusing on the process, focusing on building the team and taking the time to figure out who can do what, creating better if-then um scenarios is a great exercise for young young entrepreneurs in general. And it took me a while. I'm very much a late bloomer in life and um and in business. I think I've just been too stubborn to go home and just maybe spending more hours. Um but taking that time to figure out how to put very smart people in the right roles is certainly a much better use of time to serve your customers than stressing yourself out and trying to do more, because inevitably you're not going to do it as well as surrounding yourself by phenomenal people that have the right personality, the right skill set, the right focus to do a certain facet that although you could do very well, you could find somebody extraordinary.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah, I just uh finished this book, The Effective Executive. And really, like the there's a couple of you know simple principles, but one of the primary things is you need to focus on outcomes. Like as an executive of a company, like don't focus on how much time you take or where your time is allocated as much as like you need to get things done. And then you also need to focus on like what are the things that I actually can get done. Like, I'm in a large organization now. Like, I I need to focus on what outcomes I can actually drive for this company, not everything. And I think a lot of people lose sight of that. They're like, I need to work harder. It's like, what outcomes are you actually driving? Even employees, I think they lose sight of that.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Yeah, that's great. That's you're totally totally right. And I've failed miserably at that so many different times in so many different ways. And um, you know, you can't see the picture when you're in the frame. And so bringing in people that understand that, doing something, you know, it's really tangible, doing something that I know is going to create value for our investors. It's gonna have a great end product. Um, it's been a really big driving force. And to your, you said something about the best investment. Um, by definition, there is no best investment. The best investors in the world understand something called asset allocation. Okay. And asset allocation, effectively, is investing in a series of buckets, call it eight different buckets, three different buckets. Um, it's a it's an inherent level of diversification. And if you're really smart, um, you'll make sure they are uncorrelated, which means like if you invest in stocks, stocks go up, bonds usually go down. If bonds go up, stocks go down. So, in a perfect world, I would recommend reading Principles by Ray by Ray Dalio, um, or read Money Master the Game by Tony Robbins, who interviewed who interviewed 50 of the smartest investors in the world and wrote down what they said in classic Tony Robbins style. I love Tony, he's a national treasure. And and so the best investment is a series of buckets that are uncorrelated. Can real estate have a meaningful part of that? Um, absolutely, but um, any singular investment is by design the worst investment.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

I got you. So have you then fundamentally said, like, okay, we've got a lot of eggs in this real estate bucket and basket, and we had a you know a tough time during COVID. Like, shoot, I need to diversify, right? Because there's the other theory of like, hey, I I have insider information that this thing, right? If you knew Bitcoin was going to go from six bucks to a hundred thousand, like, don't buy a single family house, dude. Like, keep buying Bitcoin. Um, what's your philosophy there?

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Well, what we do in our day job is different than investing. Okay. Investing, I mean, I could argue my time is an investment and you know, whatever. But when I think of investing, I think about money, capital as an employee. And I ask it, what have you done for me today? And so my business, Rastigar Capital as it is now, which will continue to evolve in other asset classes, is the short answer by definition, just because as you get bigger and bigger, you go from building this to you have a construction company, then you go into lumber, and then you go down the this daisy chain that it takes, and you end up owning a bunch of stuff. You plug in prop tech, um, you start putting chips in your light bulbs, you put solar panels up and you go into energy. So there is a natural iteration where it will grow beyond the asset class of real estate naturally. Um, but this is my life work, and this is in the thing that we are building that I spend my time, my energy to, albeit in this one field, is where you get subject matter expertise to do your manual labor. I look at investing as something that you do once you have built up enough employees, call it dollars. Um, Charlie Munger used to say making the first hundred thousand dollars is the most difficult. And then compound interest through those allocation bubbles um buckets will then do the work for you. Time will do the work for you. Uh, wealth has grown in decades, not in days. And by design, it should be into those things. So I'm in um the very beginning of the harvest season of my career. I'm a 43-year-old CEO. I spent the first, you know, the last 20 years getting through undergraduate, getting through my master's program, getting through law school, um, you know, building some specialized knowledge to build this thing. Um, and that was the mission.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

So, do you have uh ultimate goals as to where you would like to see this company go? I mean, you seem like a driven guy. There has to be some sort of a goal that we okay, we've gotten to 10 billion assets under management. We like to get to 50, we want to get to 100. You know, have you thought through that? Or is your priority just be the best at this thing that we possibly can be and bring value to others around us?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yeah, I think the second part. I think that I'd like to continue to create more and more value. There's a kaizen, there's a Japanese principle called kaizen, which I'm sure you've heard. Um, it means constant, never-ending improvement. I'm out to build a meaningful life. You know, success is, you know, is is a science. You know, you can lay certain things out, and um, you know, but there's a point where business for me is a mission. And that mission is is never ending. It's a con, you know, this is why I'm alive, this is who I am, and my business is an extension of me. And so there's no limit to what that is as long as we are contributing and we're growing and we're serving and we're staying curious. And if we can serve more people, if we can do it um with more efficiency, with more productivity, and we can grow as people, as a team, as a company, and we can adhere to the old maxim innovate or die. Um, I would like to continue living. I would like to continue innovating, and I would like um like to continue um staying insatiably hungry um to to improve. And and that inevitably will most likely result in trillions of dollars, but that will not be the goal. That would be a side effect.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, I've heard it said that uh business is just a personal growth endeavor, masquerading as a capitalistic pursuit, right? And that's that's kind of how I feel it's like I like it. Yeah, I like that you have that's I've never heard that before. I love it. There you go. I mean, you can you can steal it. Um why don't you say it again? Say it one more time. It's uh business is a personal growth endeavor, masquerading as a capitalistic pursuit, right? Because because I'm probably like you, you know, like right now I'm working through a partner buyout, and it's a big project for me. Um, we're going to the banks, we're raising money, we're doing this whole thing. And you know, when and when I get to the point where I'm like, well, this sucks, you know. Gosh, I wish I didn't have to do this. Like, well, first one, you signed up for this. Two, it's like, this is exciting, dude. You've never done this before. Like, you're learning new things about business. Not only that, you're putting a worthy challenge in front of you that when you get to the end of it, hopefully in a successful manner, problems are the gifts we grow from, but absolutely. I mean, grow, you know, growth and comfort, never found next to each other. Um, yeah, comfort, comfort is so so overrated. Yeah. You've you've maybe heard of this book or read this book, The Comfort Crisis. Um, oh, that makes sense. You'd probably love it, man. This guy, he uh he goes on um a winter hunting expedition to, I think he's in like the way northern region of Alaska, like way, way north, with this like astound hunter, Donnie Vincent. And he writes this book about how all the things that have made us comfortable in modern life, like were very foreign to someone who lived three or five or eight hundred years ago. Like, oh, I'm never cold. It's like that's that's not normal. Like, oh, I'm never sitting alone by myself with my thoughts. Like, that's not normal. Like, I'm never, you know, outside for long periods of time. Like all these things are very like I'm never, you know, forced to move my body. It's like, dude, you had to like go hunt, go, you know, pick food. Like, so all these things that make us comfortable are very foreign to our human body and they're not really serving us, they're just kind of there as a byproduct of modern life. Um, but so I know you talked about like your your health and your family. Like, I think that people who hear that, they're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like I want to be successful, dude. Like that, you know, that's primary, you know, goal number one. But it's the old your health, your health is mission critical, bro.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Like, there's no way I take health super, super, super fucking seriously. Like, I take hundreds of supplements a day. I have a full-time age management doctor. I'm in hyperbaric chambers, infrared lights, exercise. You, I mean, uh eating, you know, look, I like pizza too, bro. But I mean, you know, uh sugar, I eat very little of it. I have a nutrition plan that's 80% of the time I'm basically eating salmon, vegetables, and sweet potatoes from Costco. I mean, that's you can't build anything meaningful without energy. Like it's like input output. And and if you feel like shit, chances are you're you're you're you're gonna act like shit. Feelings, how you put off as a leader, as a father, as a friend, like you really being in your heart, like a lot of the work I've done with Dr. Joe Dispenza. You know, if I don't know if y'all not know Dr. Joe, but yeah, yeah, give yourself the gift and go to a seven-day retreat. Um, I'm going to, I did five or six of them last year. It's absolutely palatable beyond belief what can happen. I mean, the seeming miracles that I saw were just mind-blowing of what happens when you change your state, when you change your energy. Um, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Do you feel like hyperbaric oxygen therapy was a big level? Because I just heard Brian Johnson talking about it, and he's like, Yeah, so every everything we did, he's like, nothing proved as meaningful in you know, moving the needle as this.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Well, well, let's talk about that for a second. I've done more hyperbaric sessions than maybe anybody one in let's say I shouldn't say that. I've done a lot of hyperbaric chamber sessions, meaning I've did hundreds last year alone. My boy Eric Cortez in Dallas has done 3,500 and he's in his 40s and looks like he's in his 20s. It's insane. Um, one of my dear friends, and he he facilitates it for me when I was in Dallas. There's some here in Austin, too. But here's the thing about hyperbarics. Yes, it is absolutely phenomenal beyond belief, with a few caveats. One is that if you don't have the base level nutrition, meaning the building blocks, because the hyperbaric oxygen through pressure, and by the way, the the soft chambers don't do anything. The hard chambers are really where it's at, and above two atmospheres, and regulating and going up and down between 1.7 atmospheres to three atmospheres, it's this wave protocol that if you go to a clinic, they'll tell you. One is having a it's gonna increase all this cellular growth, stem cells, all this other good stuff, angiogenesis. But that needs building blocks and materials to do all the good stuff. So if you have a base level of nutraceuticals, you have a base level of nutrition and those things in your body, and then you do hyperbarics, it's exponentially more valuable. Exponentially. Not even almost it's not even insane how much different it'll be when you're in that kind of shape. I've done it both times when I wasn't in shape and I've done it afterwards. The other thing is it only works in large doses in very short pro in very close proximity, meeting the bare minimum to receive any type of semi-permanent benefits to hyperbaric is 40 sessions. 40 sessions, the lowest. And you need to really do one to two per day on average, five to six days a week. So that's a lot of time because it takes 15 minutes basically daily for like you know, months. Yes. And really, all the real studies, if you read the Oxygen Revolution or you read Dr. Eamon's work or go to the Eyman clinics, it's really 80 sessions that you really see the exponential. I did, like I said, I think 200 last year. Um yeah, 200 in 2025 in extremely close proximity. Some were two 90-minute sessions on the same day.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

A lot of the day.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

I mean, it is. It's a but again, it it's wildly beneficial, but just go, and it's expensive. So it is a luxury. So um, but if you are gonna do it, you need to say, I'm gonna do 80 and I'm gonna do it every day, maybe, you know, maybe six days a week, five days a week, but one to two per day, five days a week minimum, let's say, ideally, six days a week, you need one day off they recommend for oxygen toxicity and you know, a bunch of stuff, has resounding intergalactic changes to your telomere length, your biological age, your skin, to your hair, um, to uh and a whole slew of other things because it treats the entire body as a system. But having that one big caveat, in addition to being only in hard the hard chambers with pure oxygen, in addition to having your health, nutrition in order, is where the benefits are, yes. And then it will move, it'll break the meter, it won't just move the needle, it'll break the meter.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Amazing. All right, thank you, man. I know you got to buzz out, man, but I really appreciate it. And sounds like you built like an amazing business and you got a very interesting perspective on life. And I think it's sounds like it's came very full circle for you to kind of pick up the most important pieces. Thank you, bro. I'm just getting warmed up. Got a lot to learn. Yeah, man. What's next? So, what's the what's the the project into the future for you?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Um data centers. Okay. Data centers is the big, big focus for a variety of reasons. For all the components that go into it, that's where the need is right now. Um but data centers, you know, we've built some great prototypes around master plan communities, around apartments, around office, around development, industrial data centers are now um a huge mandate with a few sites we're looking at now to build um some extraordinary stuff that will hopefully power um the next wave of um enhancing this human experience.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah. Appreciate you, brother. Have a great night.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Bye, bro.