The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
How Lee Edward Smith & Katherine Aguilar Turned Dance, Culture & Real Estate Into an Empire
04 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: How did Lee and Katherine turn their passion for dance into a business?
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What the hell just happened? Anyone that's an event producer, you sign on the dotted line and you start negative 600,000. It's the dumbest business ever. My event's only on Saturday, brother. I mean, I'm just saying. And we were like, wait a second.
You're like, we have access to all these people.
They're all millionaires and billionaires. I gotta get to the... This is like the climax of the story. This was my oh shit moment. And I'm like, let's tell them we have a keynote. This keynote doesn't exist, by the way. And we just put a blurb and a little clip.
Two days later, they message us back and they're like, how would you like 25 minutes on Sunday on our main stage right after Patrick Ben-David?
No way.
Guys, welcome back to Level Up Podcast. This is Paul Alex. Guys, we have a very special interview here, okay? I'm going to introduce you to a power couple that are investing.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did they face when transitioning to real estate?
salsa and bachata dancing. Okay, that's actually one of my favorite hobbies to do when I was in my 20s, guys. You know, nightclub, dance, impress the ladies. Babe, I'm kidding, okay? With that being said, guys, this is going to be a very interesting interview because we actually met at Paul Hutchinson's, the billionaire's charity event here in Miami for the Sound of Freedom movie.
As you guys know, we interviewed Paul a couple weeks back. But this power couple is actually going to talk about how they met before the success. All that good stuff. As you guys know, the interviews here are phenomenal. With that being said, welcome to the show, guys. Thank you.
Thank you, Paul. We're so happy to be here, and it's an honor. We love your work, and yeah, we just want to share our story, so we're excited. Thank you for having us.
No, absolutely. Thank you guys for coming. I know you guys are super-duper busy. You guys just had that remarkable event.
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we are. We're just coming out of the ashes like a phoenix. We're here in Miami with two under two, just one day in, one day out. But when you gave us the invite, we're like, for Paul Alex, we'll move mountains.
We're coming. All day long. All day long.
I appreciate that, guys. So for the people that don't know you, who are you guys? Okay.
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Chapter 3: How does culture play a role in building successful communities?
And what are you guys? Tell us a little bit about your background and what you're currently doing right now.
Sure, sure. I'll start. Sure. Ladies first. Yeah, you know, and we come as a duo always, and so we've worked together now, and we've been married for 10 years. We just celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary. Thank you. And we've been together for 17 years working as entrepreneurs. Wow.
You can actually say, I'm sorry too, Paul.
Okay.
And this is how we always love to keep our relationship fresh. He just makes me laugh all the time. We're always on that vibe. So, yeah, just both of us really connected on an entrepreneurial level because what happened was we were both killing it as entrepreneurs and working so hard in our own merits and in our own skills. And we just magically met.
And Lee could probably elaborate a little bit more on that. But what happened was we just converged and it just skyrocketed us. And so now, you know, we did start as Latin professional Latin dancers. We both found each other when we were already both professional and giving lessons and touring and all that stuff.
But what happened when we actually came together, we were getting out of relationships and we were like, we don't want to like start this long term relationship thing again. We're just going to do business and just chill and just like.
Well, that was that was Kat's idea.
Oh, okay. The truth comes out then.
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Chapter 4: What mindset shifts are important for couples in business together?
I had a nine to five working with lawyers and working with... I share a similar story with you that I started at 15 and a half working because I saw like the value of not just going to school, but also like really like getting hands on.
Absolutely.
And so my journey started with my dad being an entrepreneur and then growing upon that being like, I need to work. I need to make money. I need to learn. And so by the time I met Lee, I was already on a 9 to 5 job. I actually had opened my own dance studio. So I was an entrepreneur as well. And as soon as I would finish work, from 5 to 10, I would also teach Latin dance lessons.
And so it was like a 60-hour work week.
And I would say when I met Kat, I was like, because I've been working as an entertainment entrepreneur from the age of 11. I actually was a professional magician.
Wow.
He's a little sick today.
That's amazing. You got Emilio bugging out right now. He's just like, what the hell just happened?
I always tell people, sometimes it goes the other way, so you're lucky. Yeah, yeah. That would have been awesome. That would have been a good reel. It's now a PG-13 show. Yeah, yeah, seriously. But I started with magic and, you know, really for me, entertainment, you know, entertainment as an entrepreneur has been something I've been doing since 10 or 11.
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Chapter 5: How can entrepreneurs leverage their networks effectively?
It was fun back then in the 90s. And we would go do those magic shows, and then I went to George Mason on a public speaking scholarship, and here we are. We've been on 600 college campuses. We have seven shows still touring the country. So a lot of entertainment, a lot of entrepreneurship.
So let's go back to you guys are both from New York. Where did you guys actually meet?
So we actually met in Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., metro area. I've grown up and lived there my whole life. Okay. Let me bring this closer. Of course. Living there, Lee actually transplanted. He went to George Mason. We both went to George Mason University. I've always been there, but my mom is from El Salvador. My dad is from Peru.
They met there in the nation's capital and then grew our family there. I'm from Northern Virginia. Lee is from Brooklyn. We're naturally just lovers of
traveling and so honestly like we have you know that bug in us that even now with having two kids two babies at that in diapers of course um you know we still make it really prevalent to take them with us and do that so we've kind of evolved as we have evolved as a couple
You know, we went from Latin dancing, professional Latin dancing, and really being really great business operators and business owners. That was really the crux of it, even though we were in the limelight as professional Latin dancers, to organizers of festivals and major events. And, you know, you mentioned the Find Your Rhythm Investor Summit that just happened two weeks ago.
What's happened is essentially as we've leveled up with our stuff that has been happening in our business, we bring everybody for the ride. And we've been telling people you need to live in abundance. You need to, you know, join those. We love to share what we learn so other people can lift up.
And then we, you know, as soon as we started having kids, we ended up going back into like our roots, which was commercial real estate.
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Chapter 6: What pivotal moments shaped their entrepreneurial journey?
My dad is in real estate. And so that kind of led us back into this journey of entrepreneurship. Yeah.
And it's funny because as much as we've tried to keep those worlds separate, it's interesting because it's actually like our USP. It's what people, you know, when we do our keynote, which is called Find Your Rhythm, we open up and I flip cat. And, you know, it's like, come up with a better opener than that. It's a great opener, man. It's a great opener, you know, and this whole concept.
And how many speakers can say that they can flip their wife?
Yeah, that's true. I mean, I have a bad back. I mean, sorry, babe. But, you know, but that's the interesting thing. Like, I mean, we were crazy enough to think about building a investor conference off of a Latin dance festival. But the magic to what we do is really bringing people into our room and having them connect.
And we just said, let's just kind of take that energy and bring it to a little bit of a different room. Yes. People are people. They want to experience. They want to have fun. I mean, we had two billionaires and the co-founder of Priceline on our party buses going across the city. So it's a beautiful thing when you realize human connection, I think, is really the main thing.
And we are naturally, our gift is bringing people together. That's what we do.
Absolutely. You guys are big networkers. I mean, that's why I guess we all got attracted to each other. We're at the charity because naturally, you know, you guys can communicate. I can communicate. So it's just meant to be.
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Chapter 7: How did they pivot during the COVID-19 pandemic?
So let's take a deeper dive into actually like the mindset and the psychology of you guys being Latin dancers, you guys making that your niche initially and then transitioning into real estate. So who had the idea? What was the transition? What was that aha moment? Because for most people, there's a lot of people probably going to be watching this.
They're like, well, I'm really good at this specific hobby, but how can I make that into a business? Right? People just don't think like that. So I have the perfect couple here that transitioned from land and dancing to real estate, but then now throwing events and now connected with billionaires. Unheard of. So what was that pivotal time in your guys' life? What happened? Paint the picture.
You want me to take it or you take it?
I'll start and I'll let you finish it because it was really cat's ear. But I think for us, you know, when you're going, when you're climbing a mountain, right, you're climbing a mountain and we're all trying to attain that next goal or that next goal. whatever the level we're trying to get to, there comes like the pivotal moment. And I think for us, it definitely was our kids being born.
Ironically, this is being shot on Labor Day. Our son was born on Labor Day three years ago, not to this day, but it was on Labor Day. For us, we said, you know, we were on the road 175 days out of the year touring, doing shows. So it was really like our lifestyle was amazing. I think at some points we said, you know, we love our life. Like we're having fun. We're having fun.
But when we had our kids, it was like that was the pivotal moment where it was our – I don't want to say wake-up call, but it was like, okay, now we really got to put this into gear and kind of go back to the roots of real estate, which is where Kat's family comes in.
Yeah, I think there was a lot of soul-searching there because also there was a pivotal moment also that COVID happened. And if you know events, events shut down. And so at that point, we were just starting to be thinking about having kids.
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Chapter 8: What advice do they have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
And then it's like, oh, my God, our world. We actually were able to pivot because we're just quick like that. And we attribute to our agents also that helped us out. But we pivoted to virtual, which not a lot of people did. People were like busking on social media, like entertainers.
In fact, we'll give you access to Gringos Can Dance. Yeah. And if you want to have a great date night with your wife, it's called Flirting on the Floor, Latin Dance Date Night, 21 moves. It's like Netflix and chill, but Latin.
We didn't have anything to do during COVID. I mean, the first month it was like, oh, this is just going to blow over. And we were just having the best times of our life, having dinner and just chilling. And then afterwards, you're like, oh, no, we need to make money. So that was a pivotal point.
So a critical incident had to happen in order for you guys to be like, oh my God. Was the Latin dancing at that time that you guys were doing, you guys were traveling the world, having a great time, you love your life, but was that your only source of income at the time?
It was that and then also producing events. And then DC.
And our shows.
And our shows, yes.
We have 3,000 silent headphones. We have a brand called Shut Up, Just Dance.
So basically everything around being in person.
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