Sofia Castro
Personal Interest: Working out/Boating and family timeBusiness Interest: RE Investments, rehab of projects and mentoring my teams.Built a business empire from “nothing”.I dropped out of high school soon after 10th grade. I suffer from dyslexia but was never tested and at school the teachers never spotted it, the frustration was too much.
I then went to school for computer tech and also worked at a bedding company as an assistant/receptionist. Worked at many jobs thereafter. When I worked at Pipeco (a job one of my brothers helped me get) I met Bobby (1989). Bobby was trying to start a business and asked for me to go work with him, I took a leap of faith and I did! The business failed, tried other ventures and nothing. During which time, I got pregnant and decided to go back to school for ultrasounds technician and went to work at a cardiologist office.Meanwhile, Bobby worked 2 jobs at BBB and Rusty pelican at nights. We kept looking for opportunities and came across a leasing equipment brokerage (we purchased a how-to kit), we borrowed the $1700 from my mom and called it Finance Team of America.
I worked during the day while Bobby was getting it off the ground. At nights I would assist in typing paperwork in the typewriter and faxing it over to prospects. We did this for a year until things picked up, I then quit my day job. We both worked on this business full time and brought in a partner (Bobby’s brother) as the company took off fast thereafter and in 2001 the strategy changed to private lending equity firm specific to the medical industry, the name changed to Bankers Healthcare Group (BHG).Today the business generates billions of dollars in revenue. During which time I opened up a Commercial Mortgage Company called Commercial Mortgage USA.
In 2003 we were asked to invest in a multi-family/condo conversion with our BHG partners. It was a nice experimental journey. It was a rollercoaster as the financial world collapsed in 2007, we almost lost it all! We had no real knowledge in the condo conversion world. There is where we learned multifamily investment and our interest crossed with our financial knowledge. Realizing that residual income can create our wealth! 2011 we created our own multifamily investment portfolio which we named Ortsac Investments. We began with small garden apartments consisting of duplex/triplex’s, grew to anything under 50 doors. Today we have built our portfolio to 450 million dollars consisting of 3000 doors.
We want to continue growing the multifamily investments for generations to come.
I am passionate about helping others to grow and show them how to learn from their failures (and ours). If there is a will … there is a way! Through my multifamily experience and knowledge, I found an avenue that I am able to help others grow financially and grow wealth through our mistakes.
I love philanthropy and help charities for people in need. I have been involved with projects that leads a charity that fosters children in Haiti in conjunction with food for the poor. I also donate funds to 3 charities: a foster the Thembelihle School in South Africa, Operation smiles and Scentsability organization.
The latest charity has been mentoring the chairman of a non-profit that is dear to my heart. Ideal Foundation – my part in this project has been assisting in the housing process for the mentally disabled young adults.
