Carlos Justo receiving his second breath

Sometimes when you live large, you fall hard. But there is nothing that says you have to stay there.

Such is the case of the real estate agent for the mega-rich, Carlos Justo. This 53-year-old Cuban real estate broker has lived the best of his lives and recently had to file for bankruptcy with more than $ 20 million in debt after exaggerating and indulging in what he calls his own “greed, outright.” . However, he refuses to see himself as a failure and has, in fact, declared that he will come back bigger and better than ever.

Talk about someone who has overcome many difficulties. He was born in Cuba in 1955 and came to the United States in 1967 with his family. Without a high school diploma, he started out small, as a janitor and office worker in his teens. He worked at McDonalds and packed groceries. Knowing that he wanted more out of life than that, he got his GED and a real estate license and went to work.

While many real estate agents want to sell as many houses as possible for a living, there is always another way. For Justo, that way was to sell expensive houses, and not just million dollar houses. He wanted to sell million-dollar double-digit homes, even though he would “settle” for multi-million dollar mansions.

And he was good at it. Not content to sit back and wait for deals to be finalized, he worked tirelessly to help the deals to be finalized. He even had a helicopter as part of his business, so not only could he get potential clients to properties quickly, but he could also give them an aerial view that most realtors could never have managed.

And the stars he worked with. There are Shaquille O’Neal and Rosie O’Donnell. There are Sean Coombs and Gloria Estefan. If it was Miami and it was expensive, Justo probably had something to do with it. He himself became a star. He traveled in a chauffeured Rolls Royce limousine; one had to look at the part. He was the star of his own reality show called Million Dollar Agents. He sold his own brokerage in 2002 for around $ 25 million. He lived in a $ 7 million mansion and owned many other properties.

And that’s when things started to sink in for him. As the real estate market began to suffer, his career change from real estate agent to real estate investor fell apart. He could not pay the payments and he could not sell the properties. He wasn’t alone, but he was the biggest in the business, so he hit hard.

These days, after filing for bankruptcy, he lives in an apartment; an expensive one, but still an apartment. Most of his debts have been erased, although he is fighting with the IRS over his tax obligations. He still has a driver and is still working to make deals, but now he’s being driven in a Land Rover. His train customers still speak highly of him, as do his new customers. He’s getting back to what made him rich to begin with, real estate marketing. He doesn’t ask for compassion, and he probably wouldn’t get it; Even in a depressed Florida housing market, you still have an average income of close to $ 400,000 or more a year.

And that kind of talent, drive, and a will to succeed will likely drive you back to the top once the housing market starts to roll in.