Jorge didn’t get his start in real estate the way a lot of people in the industry have. He credits his success to the school of hard knocks and the adversity he faced early on growing up in Peru. And, he mostly credits it to a special project with his mother.

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Being raised by a single mom through his teenage years already made life difficult to navigate for him. But when he was 16, he lost his voice and doctors soon discovered several tumors covering his throat. Even though they were able to successfully remove the tumors, Jorge's vocal cords were permanently damaged and the tumors sometimes return, causing him to have additional surgeries.

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To give Jorge and his sister a better life, Jorge's mom left his childhood home behind to take the family to the United States. Rather than let all of the adversity knock him down, Jorge turned it into fuel. He never forgot his childhood home. At just 25 years old, Jorge wondered if there was an opportunity to get more money for the house than it was worth in its current condition. That opportunity became a special project when he and his mother decided to renovate and flip the home - even though they had no idea how.

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“I had zero idea what I was doing, but my mom and I made it happen," he said. They learned as they went, hiring people, picking out floors, and revamping the entire home in just about 5 months. They sold it for a profit, although Jorge said it was bittersweet for him. "It was hard for me to sell it,  but it felt good to take something that caused me pain and turn it into a passion for myself,” he said.

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That project and that passion has taken Jorge to where he is today, one of the top real estate investors in the Raleigh Durham area. 

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“I don’t think I found flipping, I think flipping found me,” he said.  But, he didn't get there without almost a decade of hard work, failures, and lessons learned. “I learned from the school of hard knocks,” he said. “ I didn't read a book about it, learned it from failing and from falling down.”