I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Ace Allak—a powerhouse entrepreneur whose story is as inspiring as it is real. From nearly losing everything during the Great Recession to building a thriving empire that spans real estate, development, and mortgage, Ace proves that success isn’t about avoiding failure—it’s about learning from it. We dive into his journey from humble beginnings as the son of immigrants to leading Christie’s International Real Estate in Utah, creating the MH Allak Foundation, and embracing the philosophy of “winning or learning.” Ace also shares game-changing insights like the “genius of and” mindset, why writing down goals rewires your brain, and how to create abundance without sacrificing what matters most.
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Winning Or Learning: On Turning Setbacks Into Success With Ace Allak
Ace Allak: A Story Of Serendipity And Success
What is up, Money Masters? I have with me a special guest named Ace Allak. Welcome, Ace.
Thanks, Wade. I appreciate you having me.
I’m so glad to have you on. I had an interesting situation. The way I met Ace was in this weird roundabout situation where I picked up a new vehicle. I’m living in abundance. One of my dreams was to have a Rivian R1S for my family. I found one for a crazy good deal. I’m looking for a couple of things to add to it, like rails for the top and possibly a charger for my garage and stuff.
I find this guy selling some stuff on Klassified, and it turns out to be Ace. It turns out Ace is the husband of one of my friends from high school, whom I haven’t seen for 25 years. You guys all know I’m a believer, so I’m like, “God, why in the world did you reconnect me with this woman, who I used to have as a friend, who’s now married to this cool guy who lives in this cool place up at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon?”
I used to go up there as a kid to go snowboarding, and I’d go by this place. I’m like, “What is up in that little loft over there?” There was this cool little bridge that had been built out. There was this curve up around the mountain. I’m like, “There’s got to be some cool houses up there.” Randomly, I end up in front of this guy Ace. We start talking a little bit about business and stuff.
I’m like, “Have you ever been on a podcast?” He’s like, “I do podcasts every once in a while.” I’m like, “Would you join me on my podcast? I want people to hear your story. I want people to know how you’ve become successful.” What I want you guys to get, as Ace tells a bit of his story, is that wealth isn’t often given. It’s developed. It’s who you are as a person. It’s the background that you grow up in. It’s the motives that are undergirded by how you grow up, oftentimes, that cause us to take actions in a certain way, which can lead to great success.
Ace, before you start talking, I’m going to share your public bio. If they look you up online, they’re going to hit up something like this. Ace Allak is a partner at Legacy Mutual Mortgage National Bank and the Owner of AK Development, LLC, a development and property investment company that was honored as the Salt Lake County Developer of the Year in 2022. That’s a pretty cool accolade.
Thanks.
He’s also a Founder of Christie’s International Real Estate here in Utah, which started in 2024. He’s going to tell you some of the story. As of 2024, about a year into business, they had done over $660 million in transactions. That tells you something. There’s something cool going on within that organization and with the leadership of someone like Ace. It’s on track to do close to $1 billion in 2025.
In 2020, Ace launched the M.H. Allak Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization providing scholarships and aid to underprivileged and immigrant children. Ace is a sought-after housing specialist and a business sales coach, sharing his insights at speaking events and on national media outlets, including NBC, ABC4, and KJJZ and KSL, which are Utah-based television stations.
That’s a pretty interesting background and powerful bio. People might be going, “This guy is crazy successful.” That’s true. I acknowledge that. Thank you for taking some time out of your busy life, managing all these different companies and all the cool stuff you’re doing, to spend some time sharing some of your story about challenges and successes with our audience. I want you to share some of your backstory with us. Can you do that?
The Backstory: From Humble Beginnings To Success
Absolutely. Before I do, I want to say to the audience what I said to you when we started this episode. I listened to a few episodes before we did this. I was immediately taken aback by your abundance mentality, your sage wisdom that you’re giving people. What I feel is in your heart, which is to help others and give them something that you’ve learned. First of all, I want to say I’m honored to be on this show.
When somebody asks you, sometimes you don’t know, so you want to investigate. To say I was excited and impressed would be an understatement. Thank you for having me on. That’s a lot when you say it. What’s interesting is that it sounds like I’m a serial entrepreneur. I didn’t set out to be. My story is one of a lot of failure and getting up behind it.
You brought up this home that we’ve built, which we’ve been fairly private about, for the most part. When we first moved in, we had these construction cleaners that came. The day before we moved, which was around Christmas time a few years ago, there had been some drywall repairs. There was dust everywhere. Imagine the stress of moving day. You get there, and there’s dust on everything. You’re like, “I’m going to move in. How am I going to get rid of the dust?”
I called the construction cleaners. It was a gal named Theresa. I’ll give her a shout-out. A wonderful lady. She still helps us to this day. I don’t know that we could function in our home without her. I called her. I didn’t know her at the time. I said, “Here’s what happened. Could you come today and help us clean?” She said, “I’m in Park City. The weather is not great, but I’ll come afterwards.” This is on a Saturday.
She shows up at 4:00 PM with her crew. They come through the house and start to clean it. I tell my brother, “We’ve got to eat. Let’s run to Chick-fil-A or something.” We then go to Chick-fil-A. I offer them food. I say, “Can I buy you guys dinner?” They say, “No.” I say, “I insist.” We buy them dinner. My brother runs and brings it back. They immediately take their food, and they go out to their car. I’m like, “Hold on a second. You guys come in here, sit down at the table, and eat with us.” One of them still wouldn’t, to give you an idea. He couldn’t get there. He was too uncomfortable. He insisted on eating in his car.
Wealth isn’t often given; it’s developed.
They sat there. We were all sitting around this island. She goes, “Can I ask you a question?” I said, “Sure.” She goes, “I have seven kids. How do you get a house like this?” I was embarrassed and taken aback. I’m not used to nice things like that or these kinds of questions a lot. I got quiet, and I gave the most honest answer I could give her, which is, “You fail a lot.” That was the most real thing I could say, cornered in an awkward situation. That’s what my mind goes to. It’s this reframing of failure as not being failure.
I’m pretty critical of the school systems in the US. I don’t have a good solution, so I try not to talk about this a lot. It’s a problem I don’t have an answer to quite yet. In school, we’re taught that to fail is to be wrong or to be bad. It’s like, “Here’s your bad grade. You messed up. Here’s your consequence.” As you know, and as a lot of people know, in business, it’s either you’re winning or you’re learning. There is no failure. I either won or I learned. That’s it. If I could have learned that earlier in my career, it could’ve saved a lot of emotion because a lot of business and success is managing emotion. That has helped me significantly. It’s winning or learning. I wanted to touch on that for a minute.
As far as my story goes, I grew up on the East Coast. I am the son of immigrants. My dad came in 1964. He put himself through college. I don’t want to say we grew up in poverty, but we grew up poor, as he was a student in South Philadelphia. He eventually got a job in Washington, DC, working for the World Bank. He was a professor-type. He ended up with two Master’s and a PhD from Wharton and Penn.
We moved when I was in 6th or 7th grade to Virginia. I went to college at George Mason University. I had a great upbringing. We grew up in a split-level home, nothing too crazy. Before that, when we were in Philadelphia, to give you an idea, I remember my parents saved up all this money and rented a car one time we went to Florida on a vacation. You see pictures of it. It’s this little Toyota Corolla with cloth seats.
Do you remember those ‘80s cars with the vinyl seats and the rips in them? They pinch you when you’re in shorts. They were hot in the summer and super cold in the winter. For those of you who didn’t grow up with that, you almost dreaded getting into the car. Everybody had cars that were 10, 15, or 20 years old back then. You buy them for $100 or $200. I had only known vinyl seats. I didn’t even know a lot about cloth seats. I didn’t know leather existed. I remember being in that car, sitting on those cloth seats, and being like, “This is so nice.” I was rubbing my face to feel this cloth seat.
I was probably eleven years old. After that, I would always try to look at people’s cars, because if they had cloth seats, I knew they had money. I didn’t even know leather. It wasn’t even a thing. It was from that. I had two parents who loved each other. My dad traveled a lot, probably six months a year. We probably said goodbye to him 100 times during some of those formative years, coming and going.
Eventually, I graduated from college. I worked a little bit in the startup world. I got a job here in Utah. After a year or two off, I went around and surfed a little bit. I snowboarded and did all that stuff. I then got a job in energy management. At the same time, I bought a lot on the side and built a spec home. I had a friend who was doing that. I sold it, made $30,000, and thought, “I’m retired. I’ll never have to work another day in my life. I have $30,000.”
$30,000 meant something.
When you’re in your twenties, $30,000 meant I was done. I was retired.
The Great Recession: Navigating Business Challenges
It’s like a year’s salary, right? I’m going to pause you for a second. I remember when I was in my undergraduate work at the University of Utah. I was working at a local big bank in Utah called Zion’s Bank. I was making $12 an hour, $24,000 a year, or something like that. I thought, “If I can get a salaried position or something at $50,000, I’m going to be set.” How naive.
I was probably making about $45,000 at that job. To get a check for $30,000 was life-changing. I did what everybody does when they have their first success. They assume they did it all themselves. They know everything. You start multiplying at a rate. You start doing the math and go, “If I do 10 of these, I’ll make $300,000.”
Sometimes, the least qualified are the most demanding.
I did that, and then the Great Recession hit. I quit that job and started my development company, which is still open to this day, AK Development. I had a tough time going into the recession, as most people do. We had 23 projects at the time. We were running out of cash. It was five years of decline after decline. We avoided bankruptcy, but barely. I remember having to bring money to closing after we built a home or two. It happened to a number of them.
We even had some projects purchased in 2007 that I sold in 2019 for a loss. When everybody says it’s all these wins, I’m like, “If you don’t know how you lose money on a piece of land you bought in ‘07 and sold in ‘19, call me and I’ll explain it to you, if anybody has any questions.” In the interest of full openness, that happened. It took some time to work through some of those things, but we did, and we did it honorably, which was hard to do because people were letting things go at the time.
When you say honorably, you’re saying you kept up with your payments. You didn’t default on all your debts and file for bankruptcy?
We didn’t file for bankruptcy. We did not keep up with all of our debts at the time. We did have to give back some of the land to banks. We were communicative. We were negotiating. On the one that we had, they would not let us negotiate. We were so upside down. They wouldn’t let us negotiate unless we missed payments, which tells you how broken the system was at the time.
I remember calling my dad and saying, “Dad, this is what they said,” thinking that he would be so disappointed. Here I was, going to miss payments and not keep an obligation. He was kind and understanding about it. He told me he loved me anyway and to do what I had to do. I needed that permission from him at that time to do that. I wish it were that clean. It wasn’t.
You look at the Great Recession. That was the greatest economic event since the Great Depression. Those were the two biggest in the last 150 years. In hindsight, it was a big deal. We navigated it at the time. I ran out of money in 2011. I was friends with one of the owners of Vivint. He wanted me to go sell door-to-door alarms. I had a small part of this little mortgage brokerage. The loan officers started making money because rates had dropped. Out of survival, I was either going to sell door-to-door alarms, or I was going to do refinances.
I was dating my wife at the time, and I didn’t want to move, so I did refinances. I saw the opportunity in mortgage quickly. These guys were making a lot of money. They were whining, “This business is the worst.” I’m like, “You guys have no idea.” To make $20,000 or $30,000, I had to sign my life away on a loan and try to sell something. These guys were making that money at the time without any risk.
People were coming to them, saying, “I’m going to get my lower rate. Refinance my house.”
The Birth Of Christie’s: Filling A Market Need
It was purposeful because at the time, they were FHA streamlined, so people’s balances didn’t go up. Their payment would drop. They would skip a payment, and they’d keep their escrow refund. It was one of the few times in lending history when it was helping people. It felt good. I did that and experienced some success there. I kept the development company open as an arm to work through these projects. Fast forward a number of years, and we did well in mortgages. I was fully committed to that. Our development company kicked up again organically a number of years later. I then started buying commercial property using the money I was making from the mortgage.
That portfolio started to build in 2017. I was a business coach at the time for loan officers and realtors. A few years ago, I felt strongly that there was no brokerage that I could refer them to. I’d refer them to a brokerage, and they would be told the wrong thing. They were told how to do business the wrong way. I want to be clear on something. I did not want to start that brokerage. I genuinely felt like it was a need. I needed it like I needed a hole in the head.
As a lender, you wanted to be able to send these people who are refinancing their homes to the people you’re coaching about lending and real estate. You didn’t have a place to send people who needed to buy or sell a house.
Luxury is a premium experience, and therefore an ethical obligation.
No. I couldn’t refer realtors whom I was coaching at the time. I couldn’t refer them to a brokerage to work, or I would, and then the result would be disappointing consistently. Frankly, the bar was so low in that industry. I felt strongly that it needed to be brought up via some professionalism, some core values, and some correct training.
I had some success coaching some real estate agents. I’d taken some from $70,000 a year or $80,000 a year to $300,000-plus. I had a dozen or half a dozen of those that I had worked with. I saw the changes it was making in their lives, speaking openly about that. It started as an idea to open up next door. I could go speak maybe twice a month, and we could coach them up a little bit.
It evolved, and I hooked up with some business partners, Matt Magnotta, Sam Cubis, and Ben Fisher. We started Christie’s. That opportunity came about. It was like you and I meeting. It seemed meant to be. It took on a life of its own. Those are my three categories. We got financing, a mortgage bank, a development company, land development, and then the real estate brokerage. That’s how it all came about.
What I’m hearing is this idea of a serial entrepreneur. Not everyone who is a serial entrepreneur sets out to become one. It’s not what they intend to become. It’s that they recognize some opportunities, and they’re willing to say yes to those opportunities to solve the problems that you were seeing. For example, the brokerage that didn’t exist to provide the right training for those people you were coaching. You were like, “I’ve got to solve that problem.”
When people needed help with refinancing mortgages, you were like, “I’m going to jump in and be one of the people who do that. I’ll help accomplish the intended outcome of freeing up cashflow and providing a better future for people.” With Christie’s taking off, there was clearly a need for that. The market that you’re in is a little bit of a higher-value market than your typical home. There are your $2 million-plus homes in the Park City area. That buyer of those types of homes needs a little more sophistication, wouldn’t you say?
Yeah. I want to clarify. I’m not a realtor. I am a founder of the company, but I’m not a realtor, nor am I licensed. The average buyer in Park City and Deer Valley is mostly self-employed, and it’s still about 70% cash. However, sometimes, the least qualified are the most demanding. It can be your more difficult buyers, your lower-end buyers, that can require more time. That’s what’s ironic.
Having said that, the average price point in Salt Lake County is in the $600,000 range. We’re officially a legacy state. I don’t know that there’s anything inexpensive between any of our counties. In Weber, Salt Lake, Wasatch, Summit, and Utah County, everything costs a lot of money, especially with interest rates as high as they are. Affordability is a real item on this.
It ended up being a bit of a growth pocket because when interest rates are high, people tend to pay more with cash, which grew that segment. Not to mention, the amount of wealth that was created post-COVID or during COVID is astronomical. For the few that made it, it did. That $8 million-plus or $10 million-plus home hasn’t gone down much. People are still buying them. We are opening up an office on 9th and 9th in Salt Lake. We’re also going to open one up in Utah County. Those will be opened up this winter. We’re shooting for December.
Not just serving the luxury market, but the regular market with this better value system for how to do the business of real estate.
What’s interesting with that is we were talking about this because we’ve been on this marketing journey. I’m going to tell you something that I know is controversial, and some people may disagree. We hired this branding expert. We were looking at what the word luxury means. What is luxury? Luxury, to me, means it’s a premium experience.
For example, to me, when you go to Chick-fil-A or somewhere like that and every person answers you with, “It’s my pleasure,” that’s a luxury experience. Anybody who wants to argue with that, I can show you their numbers and the lines in the drive-throughs. They’re making luxury money as the owners of Chick-fil-A because they’re providing a luxury service.
If you can’t see what’s possible, what are you aiming for?
To me, a luxury experience is an ethical obligation. If you come into my home, offer you water, and say, “Do you want it cold or room temp, or would you like ice?” To me, that’s an ethical obligation to show care for a guest in my home. I have a bit of a different view on what that means. My son, when he was 4 years old, the 2-year-old had slammed a door on his finger and almost cut off his finger. We took him to the hospital and got it figured out. We found the best finger or hand doctor we could to get it attached.
He was little. I remember going to that person’s office. Respectfully, he was amazing, but my son was scared. He was probably 4 or 5 years old. We walked in and saw that it had that ultraviolet lighting, low ceilings, and an old desk. He was intimidated and scared. It didn’t make him feel more welcome. I remember thinking, “If only he took $10,000 or $20,000, painted the place, and put in a new desk.” This guy has been in business for 30 years. I know he’s got the funds to do it. I get that the desk still functions, but it makes people feel more comfortable, especially these kids.
To me, that type of thing, in my opinion, is an ethical obligation. Using your words, you’re withholding some abundance there. It’s not even about investing to make more money. It’s about investing to make a child feel more comfortable when they walk in there. I feel the same way in real estate. Everybody deserves a great experience.
I love that. Defining the word luxury is the ethical obligation to help somebody feel comfortable and confident in the experience they’re having and the service you’re providing.
It has less to do with how much somebody spends.
The Genius Of “And” And The Tyranny Of “Or”
I like that. We have a couple of minutes here. You and I were talking about the word and versus or. We’re living in a place of and, where I can do this and that. I can be a good father, I can be a good husband, I can build wealth, and I can serve my community. Tell me about that. Tell me about dealing with the pressures of building a business and the responsibilities that come with that, still being able to live in this world of and, and fulfilling the commitments you’ve made to these other important people in your life.
It’s a concept called the genius of and versus the tyranny of or. It was created by a Harvard professor. The way I learned about it was they interviewed the CEO of Vivint, a guy named David Bywater, who went to Harvard. He got his MBA there or his JD. I can’t remember. During an interview one time, they asked him, “What was your biggest takeaway from Harvard?” He said, “It was this professor who, the whole semester, would harp on that concept of the genius of and versus the tyranny of or.”
We all have stories that we grew up with. It’s very Anthony Robbins. Divorce your story and marry the truth. We have stories based on how we’re raised, what somebody told us, what a teacher may have said to you, what a friend may have said, your experiences, and your observations. We’ve developed these stories about how the world works or how life works. Those have a lot of ors in them.
Being a wealth coach, you know the danger of poor pride. It’s the idea that to be wealthy or to have a lot means that you must have stepped on somebody to get there. You must have compromised your morals at some point. On some level, I was raised that way. I’ve had to unwind a lot of those stories in order for me to see what’s possible. If you can’t see what’s possible, what are you aiming for? Do you ever see those star lasers that go up way up into the sky? It’s like you’re putting a ceiling on it. You don’t know what you’re shooting for unless you can remove those stories, and then you can look up at the sky. That was a key, tactical item.
I can’t stand rah-rah coaching sessions where everybody goes into a room, gets all excited, gets motivated for a day, goes home, and then three days later, they’re doing the exact same thing they were doing before. One of my frustrations growing up was that I liked tactical, real, applicable ways to take good information. I’m like, “What does that mean? How do I apply that day-to-day?” That was one of the reasons I went on the coaching journey. I was lucky to have some good mentors who taught me that.
This is a tactical way that you can apply that concept day-to-day. For example, you’re a father. You have six kids. You know this. A lot of people will say, “I care more about spending time with my family than I do work, so I’m going to make that a priority. It’s not as important to me to create wealth because I want to focus on that.” That would be a great example of an or. I can either be successful at work or I can be a good father.
Let’s reframe that same question as an and. I can be successful at work, and I can be an incredible father. Now, we’ve got to figure out how we are going to do that. I need leverage. That means I probably need to hire somebody because I need to replicate my time. I’d better learn how to hire people. What book am I going to read?
Most of our decisions are made in our subconscious.
It opens up pathways in your mind that force you to go down roads of, “How am I going to do it?” It’s a key thing. To me, that’s like a train track. You know those train track analogies where it’s one degree, but you end up somewhere completely different. To me, that’s what the genius of and versus the tyranny of or. To this day, I have to reset it all the time. I go, “Hold on a second. You’re doing the or thing right now.”
The Power Of Writing It Down: Achieving Your Goals
The question you ask that you said before is how. It’s like, “I want to be a good father, build wealth, build my business, be a good community member, be a good church member, and all that stuff.” Instead of “Can I do those things?” which is stuck in either or or yes or no, it is, “How can I?” You just add the word how in front of the word can. Now the brain starts working. That’s an invitation to all our audience out there. Shift your question. Instead of, “Can I?” It is, “How can I?” Start working on it. Take action.
I came across one of your clips on your Instagram, where you were talking about being a data guy. You’re like, “Here are the numbers. You are 88% more likely to accomplish a goal if you write it down.” Why wouldn’t everyone just write it down? If the numbers tell us that you’re 88% more likely to accomplish your goal by writing it down, what holds us back from writing it down? I want you to comment briefly on that as we wrap up, as a very practical outcome. What does that mean to you?
Here’s a little bit of context on that. You say 80%-plus, and then I had one of my top salespeople fact-check me. They were like, “You always say that.” They did it one time in a group, and they said, “It’s 88%.” I’m proud of my 88% because I didn’t want to be wrong. It is 88% more likely to work if you write it down. The reason is that most of our decisions are made in our subconscious.
When an astronaut goes to space and comes down after two weeks, they have muscle atrophy. They can’t walk. You hold them, and their legs collapse. Anybody can Google this. The most they say we’re using our brain from our conscious mind is 15% to 18%. Let’s say it’s 20%. Most say we hang around 11% or 12% when we’re using our conscious mind. When you do an EEG of the subconscious mind, it’s fully active. It has no atrophy and no dormancy, which means it’s working all the time.
When you write things down like that, we don’t want to be dishonest with ourselves. We don’t want to be liars to ourselves. When you are writing, you are programming your subconscious mind, “I’m going to get to that, I’m going to do that.” You’ll make subconscious decisions to get there. I’m a tactical guy. I’m an engineer. My education is in engineering. We’re in banking. We’re in underwriting. Everything is tactical. This is a tactical tool. Some people say, “It’s woo-woo. Write it down and it’ll happen.” It does.
I love that you keep bringing in God and religion to this. People say it’s God or science. I think the two are so harmonious. One feeds the other. I think God works through science. In these situations, there are great examples of that. You have a wonderful example of what is a very tactical item mixed with something that maybe is a little bit more spiritual or mystical in terms of how it gets there. I’m glad to hear you’re watching that. My Instagram is my name, @AceAllak. Feel free to give it a follow.
Thank you. That is an invitation to go do that. Ace has got some great content as a business coach over the years, and he is a great, successful businessman himself. This is the real deal. This isn’t just people blowing smoke. This is real success through real failure, which we don’t view as being bad, but being a learning experience. Failure is learning. It’s how we grow and develop as quickly as possible. The mantra is to fail fast. You get to success by failing fast. Thanks so much for joining me on the show.
It’s an honor. Thank you. You’re running an excellent, purposeful show here. If there’s anything I can do to help you, please don’t hesitate.
We appreciate that. I’d like to have you on for another episode, if you are willing.
Whatever I can do to help.
We’ll plan that out. Have a great rest of your day. Love you. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you in the next episode.
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About Ace Allak
