Unlock the secrets of shifting from restaurateur to real estate mogul as Gino Barbaro takes us through his transformational journey. Gino, alongside his partner Jake, has not only constructed a multifamily real estate empire but also empowered students to acquire over 76,000 units and generate $5 billion in deals. Our riveting conversation digs into the importance of preparation and strategic finesse in real estate transactions. Gino's personal tales and actionable advice serve as an incredible resource for listeners looking to secure their own financial freedom through property investment.
Step into the world of mindful investing and discover how a change in financial perspective can foster personal wealth and happiness. We tackle the myth that big is always better in real estate, and Gino provides insights into smarter investment in smaller properties, emphasizing the perks of positive cash flow and intelligent refinancing. The episode transcends mere transactional talk and instead focuses on cultivating a 'happy money' approach, where joy and positive energy stem from your financial decisions. Gino and I also share our experiences influenced by legends like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins, affirming that it's not just about acquiring wealth but also about the personal growth and value creation along the way.
Journey with us as we navigate the often-turbulent waters of real estate investment strategy and financing. Gino's expert dissection of the Federal Reserve's policies offers a sobering perspective on the market's future and the necessity for sound management. Moreover, we dissect the wealth-building mindset, from treating each dollar as a tool for asset acquisition to understanding the cardinal rules of wealth creation. Gino doesn't just stop at the discussion; he extends an invitation to connect further through his podcasts and books, ensuring that listeners have all they need to join the ranks of the wealth-conscious community he champions.
This episode is brought to you by Premier Ridge Capital.
Sign Up for our Newsletter and get our FREE E-Book where you'll learn everything you need to know about creating financial freedom through multifamily syndication.
Visit www.premierridgecapital.com now!
Introducing the 60 Day Deal Finder!
Visit: www.MartinREIMastery.com
Use the Coupon Code: WEALTHYAFfor 20% off!
This episode is brought to you by Premier Ridge Capital.
Build Generational Wealth As A Passive Investor In Multifamily Real Estate Syndication!
Visit www.premierridgecapital.com to find out more.
Unlock the secrets of shifting from restaurateur to real estate mogul as Gino Barbaro takes us through his transformational journey. Gino, alongside his partner Jake, has not only constructed a multifamily real estate empire but also empowered students to acquire over 76,000 units and generate $5 billion in deals. Our riveting conversation digs into the importance of preparation and strategic finesse in real estate transactions. Gino's personal tales and actionable advice serve as an incredible resource for listeners looking to secure their own financial freedom through property investment.
Step into the world of mindful investing and discover how a change in financial perspective can foster personal wealth and happiness. We tackle the myth that big is always better in real estate, and Gino provides insights into smarter investment in smaller properties, emphasizing the perks of positive cash flow and intelligent refinancing. The episode transcends mere transactional talk and instead focuses on cultivating a 'happy money' approach, where joy and positive energy stem from your financial decisions. Gino and I also share our experiences influenced by legends like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins, affirming that it's not just about acquiring wealth but also about the personal growth and value creation along the way.
Journey with us as we navigate the often-turbulent waters of real estate investment strategy and financing. Gino's expert dissection of the Federal Reserve's policies offers a sobering perspective on the market's future and the necessity for sound management. Moreover, we dissect the wealth-building mindset, from treating each dollar as a tool for asset acquisition to understanding the cardinal rules of wealth creation. Gino doesn't just stop at the discussion; he extends an invitation to connect further through his podcasts and books, ensuring that listeners have all they need to join the ranks of the wealth-conscious community he champions.
This episode is brought to you by Premier Ridge Capital.
Sign Up for our Newsletter and get our FREE E-Book where you'll learn everything you need to know about creating financial freedom through multifamily syndication.
Visit www.premierridgecapital.com now!
Introducing the 60 Day Deal Finder!
Visit: www.MartinREIMastery.com
Use the Coupon Code: WEALTHYAFfor 20% off!
This episode is brought to you by Premier Ridge Capital.
Build Generational Wealth As A Passive Investor In Multifamily Real Estate Syndication!
Visit www.premierridgecapital.com to find out more.
This is Wealthy AF the ultimate guide to understanding what it truly means to be Wealthy AF. Today, I have really and truly a special guest to me and I'm going to share a story with you guys in a minute and his name is Gino Barbaro. Gino is an investor, business owner, educator, entrepreneur. He's grown his real estate portfolio to over 2,200 multifamily units and transacted over $350 million in assets under management. Gino and his partner, jake, are teaching others how to do the same through the Jake and Gino Show, the premier multifamily real estate education community. Their students have closed over 76,000 units and have $5 billion in deal volume, have closed over 76,000 units and have 5 billion in deal volume. Gino is also a bestselling author of three books Wheelbar Profits and the Honey Bee, to name a few. Gino, welcome my brother. Really is a pleasure to have you here. Thank you, martin. How are you doing? I'm doing fantastic, man. I'm doing fantastic.
Speaker 1:I'm going to start with sharing this quick story how I came to know Gino. So I went to a meetup, guys and you guys have probably heard me mention this meetup in this podcast. It was a real estate meetup, gino, I remember the day that I went to this meetup. Literally, this is how God works, brother. I'm in my car and I'm at the light and you know, when you get this epiphany, I remember what I was wearing, my friend, I was wearing a red hoodie with my company logo on it, and I'm at this light and I can go left to go home, and I'm thinking I could be. It's four o'clock. It's dark in the Northeast in Pennsylvania at this time. Um, on the winter, I can go left, go home, be home in five minutes, or go straight 40 minutes and go to this meetup. And a voice told me go to this meetup, god's got something there for you. So I listened to that voice, you know, and I get to this meetup.
Speaker 1:I meet this guy. His name is Neil. Neil happens to be part of your community. Neil and I become friends. We go to lunch, we become good friends. He's actually been in this podcast multiple times and I'm working on a deal.
Speaker 1:I pick up the phone one day and I call and I call Neil. I'm buying a duplex and I called Neil and I'm like Neil, I want to run this deal by you, tell me what you think. And the numbers are great and I'm like I need a bank. Can you recommend a lender to me and he says before you go to lender, I'm going to share something with you Now.
Speaker 1:Neil is part of Gino's community. He's been listening to his podcast and is part of his community getting coaching from them, and he shares his book, this finance credibility book, with me, which my students if you're listening, you know what I'm talking about. I've shared it with you and this book was shared to Neil by Gino and his community and I got this book and the feedback I got from my bank I created this book, I edited it for myself, send it to my bank and the feedback I got Gino and I didn't share this with you was the underwriter said the reason they're doing this deal was because it was I presented it so well to them and I presented my business plan so well to them. So I want to thank you and I want to salute you for the impact you're having in that book.
Speaker 1:I don't know how many hours I think you said eight hours it took you to put it together. It's impacted. It's probably made me half a million dollars over the years and then God knows how many millions has made my students over the years that I've shared this simple tool with that you guys created. Thank you for that, brother. I just full circle, and here you are. I'm interviewing.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting. You have elite strategists behind you. I think that's probably the elite strategy for the podcast is just proper preparation prevents poor performance. You ended that meeting properly prepared, which a lot of people don't and the community banker was probably surprised, as was mine when I used it back in 2014. Jake slammed it on the table and says here's our credibility book. This is what we own. This is our business plan. This is what we plan to do with this property. This is our exit strategy.
Speaker 2:It had everything laid out in this credibility book and most of us don't want to take the time to do that, but when you walked in there, you were confident. You knew what your business plan was. You made it simple for the community banker to understand that I am a partner with Martin in this deal. I'm giving Martin 80% of the money for this deal. I want to make sure I'm getting that back, and that's the difference. That's why you succeeded. Now, hey, great credibility book. I learned that from somebody myself. I learned it. I taught it. Now I'm teaching it to you. You're teaching it to others. That's how the world works. A lot of this stuff is not. There aren't a lot of new ideas out there. I just think that if we can get these great ideas and we can share them with the world and with people who want to take action, I think that's what makes the world a better place.
Speaker 1:Gino, we are in a time in our country where people are struggling, man, people are struggling. I am fortunate to have reached financial freedom through real estate. I'm lucky, I'm blessed, I'm very grateful to God for that and people are going through. People are struggling in this country and people want answers. Share your story. I know you used to be in the restaurant business. Ironically, I owned the restaurant when I was struggling. I owned the restaurant in 2000. I went into the restaurant business and the restaurant business. I love cooking for my family. If you come to my house, I'll cook for you. I love doing that. I love hosting. And I thought, for some reason, you know, I thought that owning a restaurant was going to be the same feeling. That didn't work out. You work hard, margins are low and it didn't work for me. And that's because I was looking for that freedom. I was looking for that thing that was going to get us free. It wasn't the restaurant business for me. Can you share your story on how your journey, on how you and Jake did that?
Speaker 2:Well for myself. I started out in the restaurant business when I was eight years old. My dad opened this restaurant. When I was eight I went to work with him I wouldn't say religiously, but I went to work with him a lot and I remember getting paid $2 a day and I remember the joy and the pride that my father had back in the 70s and 80s. Remember the joy and the pride that my father had back in the 70s and 80s. You could actually own a small business and do very well.
Speaker 2:Healthcare wasn't what it was Unemployment, all the taxes. It was a different time to live. There was less competition and it was just. I loved it. I loved working with my dad. So when I got out of college I opened the restaurant. My dad's partners didn't want to sell it, so my dad's like let's open our own. And we did. I was 24 years old and I loved it until my dad passed away in 2007. And I had to reflect and say is this his dream or is this my dream? And I just realized this in the past year or so. One of the reasons why I think I really started despising working here was he wasn't there and I had just grown accustomed to him being there, so he was an extension of the restaurant.
Speaker 2:2008 just precipitated everything, when it was just a terrible time to be in business. I mean, people have short memories. That only happened 15 or 16 years ago. The economy was terrible. I pick up a book by T Harv Eker it's called the Secrets of the Millionaire Mind and for me, everything changed. I stopped blaming Bush, I stopped blaming Obama, I stopped blaming everybody. My responsibility the fruits are in your roots. I meet Jake in 2009. He's a pharmaceutical rep taking food orders out of the restaurant.
Speaker 2:I had, at that time, decided to get mentorship for real estate. I really focused on multifamily. In 2011, jake decides to move down to Knoxville, tennessee. We partner up 18 months, not eight months, not 10 months. 18 months later we bought our very first deal, but then, ironically enough, three months after that, we bought our second deal and within five years, we're at five or 600 units.
Speaker 2:So I started on the restaurant business for all the right reasons. I was doing really well. I just didn't understand scaling and I didn't understand those concepts. I was getting to that point because at that time in 2011 and 12, I had started doing a cooking show. I had written a cookbook, I started doing physical products, so I was building a brand within a brand. But, martin, I didn't want to work on the weekends anymore. It wasn't aligning with my values anymore and for me, I just found that it to be a job and I didn't see a future and I thought to myself hey, real estate is going to be here for the long-term. It's a basic human need. I like serving people, so I like having residents and I like having something that's stable and something that can cash flow for me and something that can build wealth long-term. And that's how I fell into multifamily.
Speaker 1:Why multifamily? A lot of guys have mindset come into real estate and I used to be of this mindset years ago you got to own a certain amount of single families and then you go into duplexes and then you own four quads or whatever. And then for some reason people have these limiting beliefs that they can't jump to commercial or they can't start off the gate in multifamily. What are you telling that person and why did you choose to go right into multifamily?
Speaker 2:That is a great question. I personally think that people do what's comfortable to them. So most people who are listening to your show they've probably bought a house before or they know somebody who's bought a house. And it's not that complicated. It's not as complicated as people think multifamily is, and I'll give you a quick example. My daughter just turned 18. She got her licensed massage therapy. She's an LMT Now. The last couple of weeks she's been completely overwhelmed because she's doing business cards, she's setting up a business account, she's going on interviews. This is something she's never done. And I'm like Sophia. I just closed the four unit. I've got three businesses. We're buying a farmhouse next week. I've got all these things going on. I've got the experience. I've done it before.
Speaker 2:And when you're looking at multifamily and you have all of these misconceptions, mark Twain says it best. It ain't what you don't know. That's going to get you into trouble. It's what you know for sure. That just ain't. So If you're saying to yourself I need to be rich to get into the multifamily, I can't do that. That's only for a certain type of people. Hedge funds and rich guys and Jake and Gino can do it, when in reality, our very first deal was a $600,000 deal. We used seller financing for 10% of the down payment. We needed $83,000 to control a $600,000 asset. Oh and, by the way, a year and a half later we refinanced out $183,000 from that first asset, so we almost tripled the amount of money we put in. We own that asset with no money in that deal. We had all the tax benefits right, we had the cashflow coming in and we still own that asset to this day.
Speaker 2:And I think people get overwhelmed and they shut down and they want to do it themselves. Multifamily is a team sport. That's what it comes down to. I was doing it by myself in New York. I had a couple of little duplexes I couldn't scale. When Jake went down, the teamwork that was involved I'm underwriting deals, I'm taking care of the bookkeeping, he's managing the asset. It just worked really, really well. And multifamily is a team sport and I think honestly, I think people are that fear just shuts you down. And if you're going to do it yourself and you've never done it before and God forbid if you'd never done any coaching on it I mean I spent probably $100,000 before I met Jake on coaching because I didn't know I made all those mistakes.
Speaker 2:I met the Maserati Mike, a guy driving a nice gold Maserati pulls into the restaurant and says Gino, I got a deal for you. Great, what kind of deal? It's a mobile home park. Well, my friend introduced me to Maserati Mike. I put $172,000 into that deal back in 2005. 18 months later that money was gone.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't because of the relationship with Maserati Mike although he was terrible. It has to fall upon me. I didn't understand mobile home parks. I didn't know what a cap rate was. I didn't know what a syndication was. I didn't know how to choose a partner. I never walked the deal. So you're either going to learn on the street or you're going to learn in the classroom, and I've learned both ways. And on the street it's going to be a lot longer and it's going to cost you a lot more money.
Speaker 2:And, martin, one last thing you said you went to this meetup. There's so much opportunity today to go to meetups, to go to seminars, to go to events, to meet other people who are like-minded, than when I started and when I started it was in its infancy. There was no meetups, but you still had Dave Lindahl and you had Rich Dad, poor Dad. Those are the big coaching groups 15, 20 years ago, but you had the opportunity and you had books. Now there are so many different forums and venues that you can get involved in and I think, ultimately, multifamily may not be right for you, for your goals or your objectives. Maybe if you want to buy one or two homes a year, there's nothing wrong with that. Don't listen to the gurus out there that are telling you go big or go home. That's a bunch of nonsense. My mantra is no deal is better than a bad deal. We just closed a four unit last week.
Speaker 1:I saw that on your social. Congratulations for that. Thank you.
Speaker 2:So four units are great. We work on profit per unit. We're going to get $400 profit per unit on a four unit. That's $1,600 a month in positive cash flow. We're going to refinance that deal. Have no money in that deal. It's next to a 12 unit home run.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I want to talk to you about what the statement you just made. There's gurus that tell you go big or go home and we might be thinking about the same person 20 units or more. You should start there, don't waste your time with the small stuff. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's where I think that that's kind of flawed a little bit and my thinking is what are you telling Gino Because I know you're also a coach, certified coach what are you telling that person that's got that job, that's making $20 an hour barely making it right?
Speaker 1:Brother, there's a lot of people out there struggling to make it financially and they're like man. I know that 90% of self-made millionaires are made through real estate, but how in the world are you telling me? I just got a deal texted to me right before we started this podcast $575,000. I remember not too long ago where that was a huge number, like a scary number for a seven unit deal. I'm looking at the deal I just called. The guy said I'm interested. I know, because I own a 12 unit now, not far from there. I know the numbers make good sense for me. What are we telling that person that is like you're telling me to buy a $3 million property. How, like, that number is such a big number, like it's such a huge number to like even a million dollars, Like that's a big number. How do I wrap my brain around that? They're scared because debt is bad, we're told, we're taught debt is bad. Unless you've reached that poor debt, debt is bad. They out of debt, it'll, you know, whatever.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of ways I'm going to answer this. I've written some notes down. I think the first thing is if a pizza guy and a drug rep can do it, anybody can do it. That's the first thing. The a drug rep can do it, anybody can do it. That's the first thing. The second thing is you need to understand the relationship you have with money.
Speaker 2:The Psychology of Money is a really important book. Whether you're making $20 or $200 an hour, it's not what you make, it's what you keep. You have to understand the language of finance. That's why I lost $172,000. I didn't know the financial language. I didn't know what a debt service coverage,000. I didn't know the financial language. I didn't know what a debt service coverage ratio was. I didn't know what a cap rate was. Cash on cash what the heck did that mean?
Speaker 2:So before you even invest a nickel of your money, you need to be financially intelligent. When you go to school, you get a report card like Rich Dad, poor Dad says your school, your banker, is going to look at your financial report card and the brokers are going to look at your financial language. If you can't speak the language of finance, then you're not going to get a deal, you're going to lose money. Right, your behaviors are belief driven. That's what Jim Quick says. So if I believe that I can do a 20 unit and I can start on a 20 unit, then great, I can do that. But if people are telling me, and it does make, it is rationally makes sense. But we're not rational beings, we are emotional beings. If you're telling me, martin, that I need to do a 20 unit deal on my first deal, but I can't see myself doing it, I will never, ever be able to do it. So before you even start investing or thinking about it, you need to take control of how you look at money, what your views are with money, because if you're saying to yourself all those rich people, they're evil, they're hoarding the money, well, you're not attracting the money, you are repelling the money.
Speaker 2:I'm writing a book right now. It's called Happy Money, happy Family, happy Legacy. Just started writing the book and my relationship with money has spanned over the last 20 to 30 years. I've shifted and one of the things that when you look at money are you living with happy money, and happy money is money that you feel energized, you like to use, it's your joy. Unhappy money if you have a job and you hate that job and you've got to go to that job every day, that's unhappy money. And look, I've got electricity on right now. I used to look at that bill as man. I can't believe I got to pay the electric bill again. But when you read about stories like Iraq, where they have rolling blackouts and they don't have electricity and we have it here and I've got a pool cleaner coming to my house every week, that's a bill but that's happy money.
Speaker 2:You have to understand what your relationship with money is, because if you are not attracting or you have negative views on it, how are you ever going to be able to get your money and invest your money? It's very difficult. You need to learn that and you need to do some self-development work, some real personal development work on yourself. Why are you investing? What is the reason you're investing? I wanted to invest initially because it was all about making a couple bucks for the six kids that I have, make sure that I had enough money for college, make sure that I had enough money for weddings and anniversaries. When, ultimately, what I'm trying to do right now I'm just trying to invest that money and take the money that I make not go out and spend it frivolously, but enjoy it, but at the same time continue to reinvest that money.
Speaker 1:What are you saying to someone that's listening to us and is saying this is great. What book are you recommending to help them get down that self-development journey? Most of my listeners are people that are about getting better at investing, but what's the first book, what's the first step that you need that, they need to take.
Speaker 2:When I started out in the early 2000s that's when I started my entrepreneurial journey because the restaurant was great, but I saw the writing on the wall I started listening to the old timers. I love Jim Rohn. I love one of my favorites is Zig Ziglar. You know the Ziglar family is still around. Zig is just amazing, just motivational. He's a teacher, he's inspiring. Tony Robbins is great, the coach, the motivator, always screaming. But listen, I've listened to Tony Robbins dozens of times. The same thing over and over again.
Speaker 2:Your input shapes your outlook. So if you're listening to positive, inspiring messages that you're going to learn stuff from, well, the output will show. But if you're constantly looking at TikTok videos and on YouTube and wasting your time and listening to negative news, what's going to happen? Your output's going to be shaped that way. I would start out with those people I mean. For me personally, napoleon Hill is probably the top of the list because everyone basically ripped off Napoleon Hill and took stuff from him. But Napoleon Hill interviewing those wealthy people and really followed the steps that Napoleon Hill laid out in his book. Another one of my favorites is Stephen Covey, the Seven Habits Really amazing book when you drill it down. And my favorite now I mean I've read in the last couple of years two of my favorite books is the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, and I love Mindset by Carol Dweck.
Speaker 1:I mean really I'm going to pick one up the Psychology of Money. I haven't read that one.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's great. It's a great book, really. What he talks about in the book, I'll distill it down for you real quick. Everyone thinks that when they get money they'll be happy and to a certain degree, money can bring comfort and it can bring joy in certain areas. What we're really striving for is autonomy. Money can bring comfort and it can bring joy in certain areas. What we're really striving for is autonomy. Money can bring autonomy because now you said you're financially free, you could do a podcast at one o'clock in the afternoon with Gino, or you don't have to.
Speaker 2:You can choose what you want to do, whereas when I was at the restaurant I didn't have that choice. I needed to go in Tuesday morning. The shrimps were there. I had to clean them. I didn't have autonomy.
Speaker 2:And as you become financially free, you realize that money becomes a tool. Money's a result. That's all it is. You start chasing opportunity. When you're financially free, that opportunity brings result. The better you are at something, the more money shows up. The more money shows up, the better you are at something, and that's the reality. And it's really annoying.
Speaker 2:And you had said earlier oh well, if I'm making $20 an hour, well, think of all these amazing companies that we have today, all the founders. They didn't have money, whether it's Uber, airbnb, facebook, dell, apple. These founders weren't rolling in the dough. They just had massive value that they created. They were solving problems for the economy, for the marketplace. The money got attracted to them. It's not the money that will help you If you're starting out, it's not the capital, it's really the ideas, it's really the person who can create value.
Speaker 2:Then the money just gets attracted to the value. So don't think just because I'm broke, I don't have value. You just don't have skills. And I know because in 08, I didn't have the skills. Everything that I had done up until 2008 was a result of everything that I'd done previous to my life. Once you start learning how to provide value and how to skill up that's why you see a lot of people in their 20s and 30s. They may do well, but they lose. They lose a lot of their money, like I did, because they didn't have the skill. It's one thing to make money. It's another thing to keep money, and that is a big, complete difference.
Speaker 1:When it comes to that Two separate skills you know, I was in my mid twenties, I was a manager, gino at a big insurance company and I remember going to this meeting and I was actually meditating on this the other day. My GM came to mind at the time one of my mentors, one of my first mentors and he said something If you take a poor man and a rich man and you take all of their money away and you give them each a million dollars and you make them both the same, he says the rich man will be rich in five years and the poor man will be poor again in five years.
Speaker 1:And I couldn't understand that and the other day, just for some reason, it came to my mind. It kind of like clicked for me, like, okay, I understand what he's saying. Like if you take everything away from me today, I can make it again because I know how to do it. And not only will I do it, I will do it faster because of my mistakes and what I've learned. I'll do it in half the time. And it really really dawned on me. And to something else that you said I want to share. I also I met this.
Speaker 1:I have this lady that was one of my first mentors, gino. Her name is Kathy and she's the first like really rich person I met. She was, she is my landlord, she still I still rent my office from her and I used to take her to lunch just to learn from her because she was like the first rich person I ever met and she made her money through real estate. She's the biggest landlord in the town in Pennsylvania where I used to live. I took her to lunch one day and I said Kathy, why real estate?
Speaker 1:You have all of these bills, right? This was early in my journey. You have all of these expenses that you have to make. And she says first things first, martin, real estate number one is the only asset that it's actual physical asset, that at any time, every first of the month, I can go knock on someone's door. They have to give me whatever exchange it is at the time for staying on my property, no matter what, and it's every month. That was the first thing. And then she goes to answer your second question.
Speaker 1:When I view money and I'm writing all of these bills for contractors for this, she gave me the most beautiful answer, gino. She said I envision, when I'm writing this check you said happy money, she goes I envision that I'm helping that contractor that's fixing the window, the roof, me providing Christmas gifts for their children, providing food for their table. I envision me paying for the school tuition. This is, and that was just like a such a mindset shift for me. I was like, whoa, that is such a. It was just such a shift for me, which is what you just said about happy money.
Speaker 2:That's an abundance mindset versus this scarcity mindset, and people don't understand that. There's a couple of things that really take off of what you said. That's very important. The first thing is rich people hang out with rich people. Poor people with a poor mindset hang out with victims hang out with victims.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I really hated about the restaurant industry was I didn't want to spend my time talking to waiters and waitresses about drama. I wanted to talk to people about deals. Well, those people don't talk about deals. Those people don't talk about personal. Those people don't talk about deals. Those people don't talk about personal development. They don't talk about getting rich. They talk about nonsense for the most part.
Speaker 2:But I was in that industry and you need to get around the people that you want to be around. If you want to become successful, if you want to get into real estate, well, you need to get into those rooms. You need to invest money to get into those rooms. That people are smarter than you. And the other part is it's so important once again the relationship with money and the relationship with yourself self-love. If you hate yourself and you loathe yourself, you don't think you're worthy of the money you don't think you're worthy of the result. That's another conversation that we can have, and you can see people self-sabotaging themselves conversation that we can have, and you can see people self-sabotaging themselves.
Speaker 2:Well, I tried, not lucky. It has nothing to do with luck. It has to do with the vision. It has to do with the people that you're around. I mean two of the relationships that I've had in my life. I mean other than my parents. If I didn't meet Jake and my wife two of the most important relationships in my life I probably would not be here.
Speaker 2:So you need to be careful with who you surround yourself, with who you're taking information from, and you really need to dial into what your core values are, what values you want to live by, and don't dismiss that Living by what values you choose. I'm determined, I'm committed and I'm hardworking and listen, I'm prepared. I showed up on your show an hour early. So I mean those are just my values that I live by, and when something goes wrong or I don't feel right, it's because I'm not living with the values that I'm living by. And I'm not here to tell you to get rich or not rich. That has nothing to do with it For me. I just wanted to create an amazing business. I wanted to create a business where my employees wanted to come in and enjoy working.
Speaker 2:I wanted to be able to help other people and I think, ultimately, as you become financially free, that's what it really comes down to. You've made enough money, money is great, but you want to create impact and help others, and then the more people you help, the more money you make. It's just really. Life is really. There's so much irony in life. It's really. I'm struggling every day to make the bills and to make ends meet and when I finally do it, it's like okay, I did it.
Speaker 2:And then you start buying things and it's like I really didn't need. I mean, there's certain people that do. But then go back into your childhood. You'll figure out why you're spending money, why you need that dopamine hit to buy the jet or do whatever, and there's nothing right or wrong with buying it. But are you buying it? And why are you building this empire? Is it because you really love to do it or is it because you want to show your dad that you're smarter and better than him? Just do it for the empowering reason. Understand why you're doing it. Understand why you want to get into real estate, understand why you want to make money, and it'll just be so much.
Speaker 1:I don't want to say easier, but there's really a path for you and you're understanding why you're doing it, my friend you said something so powerful and I'm sure that a lot of listeners will relate to this who you're spending time with I talk about that all the time in this show is you are who you listen to, who you spend time with, and for so many years, guys like you and I, we have this desire. God puts this thing in us. We wanted what we want, or what this vision or this goal, and we want to do it and you're trying to figure out. Hence why the only rich person I knew was Kathy, and that was the only person that I was like hey, I need to like. She's the only person that is like one degree separation to me and not her to like me. And I was like Kathy, let me buy you lunch and let's hang out and I just want to spend time with you because I want to understand how a rich person is, how they think and how they do things.
Speaker 1:That is challenging when your circle is small and your circle of friends are just the victims or the people that are happy where they are, or they just want to hang around at the barbecue and there's nothing wrong with this and barbecue and talk about, hey, the next pay raise and how shitty their boss is or whatever. I'm not interested in those conversations. How do you get out of that circle? And where are rich people hanging out? Where are the yous? And means hanging out? If you're just a regular person, how do you like build a relationship People want to know? I know I struggle with this, so I'd like to. I'm asking you for that version of me that might be listening right now, like how do I do that? How do I get you know?
Speaker 2:to hang out with Gino. Yeah, the first step is awareness. Are you even aware that you're being a victim? Are you even aware that you're blaming your crappy boss or the crappy economy? Now, I'm not saying that you're right or wrong, but when you're a victim, like I was, this restaurant's not making me any money. I've got to come in Mondays and work on my day off. There's no solutions.
Speaker 2:It's called catabolic energy. Right, in life coaching there's two forms of energy. One's catabolic, one's negative. Draining will ultimately lead disease. It's got chronic inflammation.
Speaker 2:Now, at times you do need catabolic energy. Someone passes away. You feel like a victim. You need to feel it, you need to be able to grieve, but I mean after a while. If you're still in that state, there's no possibility, there's no hope. The second level is anger. Anger is good. It gets you kicked in, right, you want to get really annoyed, really upset, really motivated. But if you're angry all the time, that's where the country is right now there's no resolution, there's no problem solving. And as you go up, if you really want my answer, what I did, what really helped me out, was the awareness piece was important.
Speaker 2:The second part is I went to become a life coach. I needed the personal development and I wanted to understand what life coaching is. How do I become better, how do I become more aware? How do I become a better listener? How do I get around the people here? And then, when I went to coaching school, I went to a school called IPEC in New York City. It was Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. Since then there's been hundreds of life coaching schools and they're not expensive but they teach some really great skills and get a life coach.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden they'll start asking you questions that you've never thought of. You'll start filling out forms about clarity. You'll start filling out forms about what. You'll start filling out forms about what your goals are. Most people don't even have goals Like why do you set a goal, what's a goal?
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden, you start thinking and you start having these thoughts that you've never had before and it gets to be a little exciting. And then you start to see the future and the possibilities and then you say to yourself well, I want to get into real estate, go to a meetup. If you want to get into real estate, go to a real estate meetup, go to a conference, start listening to podcasts and then all of a sudden you start listening to those messages and it's like, wow, I want to do that. It's one step at a time. A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step and I think really the first step is awareness, aware of what your actions are. Your actions empowering, are they taking you somewhere or are they disempowering you? And I was doing a lot of disempowering actions back in the early 2000s. I was just not in a good space, I just wasn't aware. And once I started taking control of those actions, things started changing for me.
Speaker 1:I love that. I want to. I'd like for you to tap into a little bit when it comes to real estate. You and Jake have this framework and I'd like for you to share it here with my listeners, with our audience, on real estate. And would you mind sharing that framework? Yes, share your framework and why it's important. I love that framework. By the way, I live by that framework that you guys have buy right and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:It's so important because we call it the map or the process. I have life before Jake and then I have life after Jake. Life before Jake. I was scattered, I was not focused, I had no process. What's a deal? What's not a deal? What kind of market? No process. What's a deal? What's not a deal? What kind of market? What kind of niche?
Speaker 2:When I met Jake, we decided on multifamily. We bought our first deal and then we realized that multifamily and I personally think that any real estate investment and I even think buying a business focuses on three pillars. We call it the buy right, the finance right and the manage right, and we can think of it as a wheelbarrow. Jake was sitting out in his lawn one day. He saw a wheelbarrow tipped over and he's like, wow, the two back legs. One of them is buy right and one is finance right, and the wheel is the manage right. It's in constant motion. So when you're looking at an investment or buying a business, you need to be able to buy it and finance it properly. Those two are fixed. Once they're done, they're off the table. Then you need the systems and the processes and to be able to manage the asset. And if you want to get into real quick what buy right looks like before I met Jake. What's a deal? Well, what's a deal for Martin, who has maybe 50 units, versus what was a deal for someone who has no experience, is going to be vastly different. You need to create a buy right criteria and focus on that. Buy right criteria For us right now it's median income.
Speaker 2:What kind of area are you looking for? What kind of market are you looking for? The number of units that you can possibly own, that you can possibly afford. The number of units that you can possibly own, that you can possibly afford. What strategies are you going to implement? Do you know how to syndicate, raise capital? Do you know how to use creative financing, master lease options? That's the other part of your buy-write criteria. You're looking for unit mixes one bedrooms, two bedrooms, three bedrooms. Are you looking for brick exteriors? What kind of amenities do you want in the property? Do you want washer dryer hookups? Amenities do you want in the property? Do you want washer dryer hookups? Do you want garages? It can get as really crystal clear as you'd like.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, it does change through the market cycle. You need to know where you are in the market cycle and that's in any real estate. Some market cycles you can buy homes and flip them real quick. Some you can't, and it's the same thing with multifamily.
Speaker 2:When we started out in early 2012 and 13, nobody was raising capital. It was difficult, the economy stunk and there were deals on loop net. Well, wow, we're getting back to that point, aren't we? There's deals on loop net right now. Deals on loop net, yes, sir, and nobody can raise capital.
Speaker 2:Everyone's complaining about how capital hard it is to raise Now. The only difference now is that there's an extra six or $7 trillion floating around and there's not as much supply, but there's not a lot of demand either, because a lot of these people who have syndicated deals violated the finance right portion of the framework, which is long-term fixed rate financing. Everyone got crazy and got stupid on bridge debt and it's not their fault. It's the result of having low interest rates for the last 10 years. Private equity has cheap money. We're addicted to cheap money. Cheap money needs to find the return and it goes out and it gets really, really risky and really speculative and it gets into bridge financing and that's what ended up happening.
Speaker 2:You violated the finance right portion of the framework and oh, by the way, the manage right portion. People are syndicating and raising capital. Multifamily and real estate is like raising a child you don't just have the kid and you neglect it. You've got to raise it. For the amount of time that you have, understand what your exit strategy is right. If you're going to buy and hold for a long time, you may not buy an older asset, you may buy something that's a little bit newer. But if you're exiting, make sure you manage the asset properly and then you manage that exit properly as well.
Speaker 1:I want to get into the current state you mentioned. You mentioned LoopNet, so I want to talk to you about what are you seeing in the streets. We're seeing we're starting to see some deals. I believe we're looking at deals and we're starting to see deals and we're like, wow, how is that? But, like you said, we're also having challenges with finding capital, like everyone else in our space. But there's deals out there. What are you seeing and what are you projecting the market to go from here? We have the CPI report just came out this week, a couple of days ago, and the feds went again. You know they went. They got gunshot again. Oh, maybe we'll hold hold rates higher for longer. And for those that don't know, rates impact the finance part is the most important part of our, one of the most important parts of our business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only way you can predict this by looking back and I've noticed is very few times in the market cycle where you have capital and you have deals, you either have a lot of deals and no capital, or you have a lot of capital and no deals, and right now it's getting more challenging to finance deals because banks were really pretty 65, 70 LTV as the last couple of years. Unless it was this bridge debt kind of thing, the Fed should have raised rates sooner. It was before the 2022 elections, the midterms. They should have raised rates sooner. But I personally believe that they held those rates because they didn't want the market to tank, because they didn't want the other side to win and listen. If the Republicans were in power, they would have done the same thing. So I'm not blaming one side or the other, but what that ended up happening is when you get 11 rate hikes and the market gets shocked and they're telling you there's no inflation. Come on, guys, you just printed a quarter of the entire money supply in the span of a year and a half. It's sitting on the sidelines. When people in COVID were making a hundred grand a year, they were saving $35,000 a year of that money. When COVID started, the average person, when they make a hundred grand, they typically save between five and 6,000. So you have millions and billions of dollars sitting in the banks just waiting to be released and you're telling me there's no inflation or they can't predict it, or it's transitory. To me it's criminal what they did, but that's just understand the history. And then, as rates get up so quick, it shocks the market. And when the market gets shocked like that, all of a sudden operators are like well, am I operating this deal? Rents are supposed to continue to rise. It really is market specific because we're in Knoxville, tennessee, and we haven't seen rents really drop. We've seen rents stabilize. People are still moving to that part of the country.
Speaker 2:So if your market is losing population and you have all these builds coming online so that you have an imbalance, you're going to have problems. There's going to be some buying opportunities there, but there's some markets that you still have a lot of population growth. You still may have some type of supply shortages, and that's some markets that you still have a lot of population growth. You still may have some type of supply shortages, and that's what's interesting right now with the single family homes. I mean someone told me the other day that BlackRock bought 44% of all the single family homes this year or last year. So you have a lot of those going offline and people can't buy homes.
Speaker 2:So for us in multifamily it's great. It's still cheaper to rent than it is to own a home and demographics for renting it's just much more favorable than it was years ago. As the baby boomers start to exit, they're going to go back and rent. The millennials are having households at a later date. They're starting to form, they've got a lot of student debt, they're not getting married early enough, so there's a lot more people in the space that are renting homes. So for me, long-term multifamily is going to be okay.
Speaker 2:The only thing I'd say Martin, I mean live by these words you can always buy real estate in any part of the market cycle. You cannot always sell real estate. So if you are a motivated seller right now and you have to sell because you got caught with short-term financing and you've got to refive but you can't, it's very challenging. So don't think hey, real estate goes up for the long-term it does. But if you don't have the proper debt on it, you may be caught in a downturn, like people did in 08, 09, 2010. And what's happening right now? That's the problem, that's the risk in real estate right now.
Speaker 1:That's so amazing that you said that I, literally before our podcast at 10 am this morning, I got a five unit. We got a five unit. We purchased last year a fire property, we rehabbed it, we rented it, we had bridge net on it, community bank, and we're in the middle of the refinance. She calls me this morning and she's like hey, martin, so we appraisal got done and we'll have it by next week. Blah, blah, blah. But I have a couple of questions. And she was like how do you want me to structure the deal? She goes the debt right and I go okay, here we go. So she's like do you want me to make it a five-year balloon? And she wants, she goes, amortize over 25, balloon in five. I said I said no way, I said absolutely not. She was like well, you have a partner and and you might want to sell it. I said we're going to, we're going to sell it eventually. But, um, I'm going to consider me.
Speaker 1:The conservative guy put me in a five-year cause, you know it's commercial. Put me in a five or seven-year fix, amortize over 25, but no balloon. Because I don't know. And the reason I said that I don't know where we're going to be in the market cycle and I need to make sure that we can weather. If we sell it, we sell it, then great, but I need to make sure that we weather the storm, no matter where we are in the market cycle. We could be five years from now, gino. We could be killing it. We could be back to the top of the market again. If the rates go down, we're going to see real estate come back up. What are your thoughts on that when rates do go down, because I think eventually they're going to have to go down because they're going to break something.
Speaker 2:First thing is we've used loan to cost, so what we do, we'll go to a community bank. Our last deal was with a credit union. They'll give us 80% of a loan to value but then 80% of the rehab into the loan itself and it's a five-year term. So we do have five years. So it is short term. There is bridge, but within the next five years there may be interest only, typically for two years, which is great. There may be a prepayment penalty for year one and maybe something for year two, but it's small. So look at the loans of cost.
Speaker 2:The second thing is it's very simple to see how real estate works. You have the cost of capital. When your interest rates were 3% and you had a preferred rate of return to investors at six or seven or eight, hey, you can get a deal that's cash flowing, 10% cash on cash return, and you could basically make that deal work. Well, now, when rates are at seven and you have a seven or eight, you know prep rate that you have to return to your investors. You're at 14 or 15% cash on cash that you got to make. The deal doesn't work. That's the problem. That's what's happening. So interest rates are a really I mean a driving force. They're meant to rise to have the cost of capital go up, to slow the economy down, to slow the demand down, to slow inflation down. That's the Fed's main priority is to handle inflation. Inflation, really, the definition is an increase in the supply of money. Now the byproduct of that is typically higher prices, right? So their job is to try to tamp down prices.
Speaker 2:I wrote down here 60% loan to cost cost of capital For us going forward. There's not, oh, 60%, that's what it was. 60% down deal flow from last year. So there's not as many deals hitting the market right now because sellers are starting to realize I have to have a come to Jesus moment. My broker told me last year that I can get a million dollars last year. Well, rates aren't where they were last year. I can only get 700. So if they don't have to sell, they're going to try to hold on and hold on for dear life.
Speaker 2:It really depends upon if banks can continue to do these workouts for a lot of these owners. Your debt is coming due. Can we rework it? Can you extend me for another six months? How much longer can the extension work? You saw the 10-year treasury just jumped the other day.
Speaker 2:Everyone's predicting lower rates. They will come. Lower rates, it's just part of the market cycle. The problem is, if you're trying to bet your business cycle and your investing strategy on when that happens, you're going to lose because you just never know what's going to happen. So for me that's really important.
Speaker 2:But I would say that cost of capital drives everything and if you're making a deal work at these interest rates now, can you imagine the next 18 to 24 months when rates get down, back down to four, four and a half, when you refinance that out? I mean the party is going to continue. Yeah, yeah, That's-. I see you smile. Yeah, I see the drool. You go with the drool of your mouth over there because I'm waiting. We needed 300 units last year when we refi those things life changing. But the business model is not just about hey, I'm buying this deal, it's okay, when rates go down and I refi, it'll be a great deal. Then it's got to be a workable good deal. Now that icing on the cake 18 months later, if and when rates do go down.
Speaker 1:I want to add to that. I was on the phone, my banker. I called my partner and I'm like hey, uh, well, here, here's the situation, blah, blah, blah. Of course I went with this. I told her this is what we're going to do and he was like we almost sold that asset. And I said no, and I want to share this with you and I want to get your thoughts on it.
Speaker 1:You know there's 1.8 million immigrants that came into a country this, uh, during this administration, Right, and we have to house those people. Yes, we have to house those people. So we almost sold this asset. We had an offer and then I was like maybe not? And I said to him well, the best thing that we can do is that we didn't take the easy way out. We need the cash. We held on to the asset and that we're buckling down because this problem that's here. The government's got to solve it. We have to solve it as a country, has got to solve it. We have to solve it as a country.
Speaker 1:And if we're positioned in a place that we can solve for this issue, that just multiplied by 2 million that asset, we could be having this conversation in three to five and saying, man, are we glad we didn't sell that puppy because it went up to seven or $800,000, regardless that the interest rates are a little bit higher?
Speaker 1:And we had that same conversation of like, hey, man, when the interest rates do come down, the deal still makes sense for us, we still cash flow very well, we still do very good because we bought it right, but we made the decision to sacrifice now. And this is the difference with, I believe, with wealthy people, with rich people and poor people, is that rich people have the ability to sacrifice to short-term pleasure for long-term gain, versus poor people tend to like they need that instant gratification and that's not. Listen, I've been poor, I come from nothing, gino, so I know what it's like to get your tax check and want to go buy that car, right, because you have a shitty car and you just you want to go on vacation and you don't have that discipline yet. And we made that decision to no, we're not going to sell, we're going to hang tight because we see this, we're studying the market, we see this problem and we want to be part of that solution. I want to get your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:I would go so far as to say it's not poor versus rich, it's poor mindset versus a wealthy mindset. I've got a dollar here, jake, and I call this a baby money soldier. I've written a book on it. A baby money soldier is any dollar that comes into your life. It's yours. Now, what do you do with that baby money soldier? Some of it's used for operation expenses. You're going to need food, clothing, you need to live. Some is used for luxuries, no-transcript money. They're taught 401ks, 529s, retirement plans that's the way to go. The wealthy, what do they do? I am a product of this because I used to be able, I used to be in the middle. I had all the 529s, I had all the retirement plans. They take this baby money soldier. They save it. They save that baby money soldier to buy an asset that will pay for the event, that very first deal that I had with Jake, that 25 unit that we still own. That's put two of my kids through college. And guess what? I still own that event. I still own that asset. There's four more kids to go to college. It's going to continue to pay for them. That's the big difference between the mindsets. They understand how you actually utilize your baby money. Soldiers, they don't all go to battle. You put some on the side. They're in reserves.
Speaker 2:The rich and the wealthy like to use whole life insurance. I've got several whole life policies. It's a cash management, it's protection, right, it's an opportunity cost. Why would I put money into a 401k that I have to wait till I'm 60 years old, that I have no control over and hopefully, when I'm done, third of that's already wiped out? Why don't I have that in something like a whole life policy where I can borrow against the policy itself? Pull the money out. The money's continuing to work uninterrupted. And oh, by the way, I have a death benefit, so if something ever happens to me, I'm protected. But I've got this money here. I use this money to go buy another asset, that asset. Now I have two assets. Now I have a whole life policy and I have an apartment building. Let the apartment building pay the asset, the loan, back from the whole life. And guess what? Pay the asset, the loan, back from the whole life and guess what? I've got two assets.
Speaker 2:You tell that to someone with a poor mindset. They'll think you're nuts. They'll think you're crazy. I thought it was crazy too.
Speaker 2:Until I started doing it, I'm like, wow, why don't they teach you that? Because they want to teach you that. Because they need consumers, the wealthier producers. We're always thinking about making things better. We're thinking about producing and whatever comes out of that production we consume, whereas the poor mindset, all they do is consume. They make money and they consume it as quick as possible. And that's once again to understand the psychology of money, understand the relationship you have. Why do you need the dopamine hit? I'm not judging a person because it makes you feel good. Some people use food. Some people feel good. Some people use food. Some people use drugs. Some people use alcohol. Some people use sex. Some people use money. What is it that's triggering you? Why are you doing that action? And if you're not even aware of that, you're just going through life, not even thinking about it. And there's rules to money. Baby money, soldiers. Is the rule to creating wealth Simple? It's not rocket science. But if you don't know the rules to creating wealth, you're never going to create wealth.
Speaker 1:I love that. Is there any books and I think I know the book that you, where you've got this concept front Is there any books that anyone can read that you would recommend? You gave us a psychology of money. I'm going to check that one out. But anyone, any book you can recommend to someone to read on where to get started with this mindset? I'll share one while you think about that.
Speaker 2:Mindset. I like Mindset by Carol Dwight because it talks about a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset, because if you have a growth mindset, you'll take what I just said to you and go. I can see that working. I don't really know, but let me try it. But if you have a fixed mindset you can't be wrong. What Gino just said is nonsense. That can't work.
Speaker 2:Money making money I only have $30,000 I'm making a year. Well, listen, we all started there. I mean, I didn't come out of the womb making money. I came out of the womb working for my dad and when I went to work at AIG, I was making 25,000 bucks a year and 8,000 of that was used for commuting. And then I realized, wow, I'm never going to do something like that. I need to start my own business. So I started like you. Just, relative means understanding and you need to be able to save. If you can't save money, if you don't have that ability to defer your gratification and this is something we need to teach our kids If it's always about instant gratification, you always need to feel better and you're going to be really disappointed in life.
Speaker 1:It's a muscle. It's a muscle, gino, and I had to develop that muscle. And I actually developed that muscle after I got into real estate. It was like, okay, I know. And my mindset was there's something that happened in my head. I don't know what it was. Something happened in my head. I guess I was tired of being broke. I guess when you're tired and you start reading, I read the Rich secrets of the millionaire mind another green book but something happened to me and it was like, okay, time is going to go, no matter what, that's right, time is going to pass. No one's been able to beat time. If time is going to go, no matter what.
Speaker 1:If I keep doing the same crap that I've been doing, I'm going to get the exact same result. So I might as well start buying a piece of real estate and start doing these things that I'm listening in these podcasts and I'm learning in these meetups and all these things that I'm learning, and next year I'll be a little bit better. And then the following year I'll be I keep buying and I'll be a little bit better and a little bit better. And no matter what, even if it takes me 10 years to get financial freedom, at least I'll get there. That's right. If I keep doing this right and I keep this, I'm going to keep getting the same results and I'm going to keep getting the same pain.
Speaker 1:That was the biggest shift for me, as it pertained to that hit right, like you were saying, that dopamine hit of wanting to what I want and I want that car. I want to get this thing, I want to get that thing. Now I got this little commission. It's just something to share. That got this big commission. Let's go do this thing instead of no, no, no, no. We're going to invest our money and we're going to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow and if you do that over time, it's just going to, it's going to pay off.
Speaker 2:One of my mentors shared a story with me real quick. You know, you can picture and imagine yourself in a boat. You've got Niagara Falls a hundred feet upstream. You don't have a paddle, you don't have a boat. What's that called? That's called, you're screwed, you're done.
Speaker 2:But the real tragedy, he says, of that story, is what about if someone had told you 500 feet up shore that there's Niagara Falls up ahead? You could have prepared it for yourself. And that's where you are right now. Right now, after listening to this podcast, you're being warned. If you do nothing, nothing wrong with it, just understand that's a tragedy because you've been warned to take different actions, to take different steps, and for me that's how it was in 08. I just knew I kept doing the same thing, like you. I'm like I'm going to keep getting the same results. And once you become aware of that and it's uncomfortable to do different things I mean, I think, the quality of your life, I think, as Tony Robbins says, it is due to the degree that you can become uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:The more uncomfortable you become, like any other muscle, the more you're going to learn. And the fact that, wanting to be right and needing to be right, you're going to lead a really miserable life and you're going to be all by yourself. Talk about no growth, having to be right all the time. I think making mistakes. We're conditioned not to make mistakes. We go to school, we're supposed to get A's. I mean, the best learning is when you make a mistake and you can learn from that mistake. Oh, what's two plus two? It's five. No, it's four. Let's learn. Why is it four when you made the mistake? And instead we get points off for making something. Getting a mistake, whereas if you're an entrepreneur, you're in business making mistakes is the only way you're going to learn something?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. It's interesting because I was having that conversation with my partner this morning. We're like, hey, we did this deal and I remember all the things we learned in this and this. And we were like, hey, man, we spent, we went over budget from what we originally thought $75,000, gino, like we went over budget a lot. And we were like, luckily we bought right number one, we're still going to be able, we're going to be in good shape. But what did we learn? And the conversation was like, hey, man, that was our tuition. Guess what Next property that we buy? That's like, like even remotely close to this. We are going to have a checklist like this, this, this, this and this has to get done in this order. If not, you know, because we already know we learned, we learned from our mistakes. My brother, what haven't you shared, or what haven't I asked you that you think would bring a tremendous amount of value to the listeners that you haven't shared yet.
Speaker 2:Before we wrap this up, If you want to change the world, go home and love your family. To me, it's that simple. I do this for the kids, I do this for the wife and I do this for the Jake and Gino community because I think family is so important. I think the family unit the mother and the father is so important. I think us as men, we have a responsibility to be leaders, to be providers for our family and to be role models, and the next generation is going to be affected by what we do. So if you really want to make change in your life, make change at home first, because you're going to be sending out those kids into the world. You want them to go out there prepared. You want them to become leaders.
Speaker 1:Spoken like a true man's man. Very well said, brother. I love that. I love that. I love that If people wanted to connect with you people wanted to listen to your podcast, people wanted to get your books, people wanted to follow you on social. Where do they find you? How do they connect with you, gino?
Speaker 2:Please share with us Jakeandginocom. It's the hub for everything. You'll see the podcasts. You'll see the podcasts. You'll see the books. If you want to email me, gino, at Jake and Ginocom, I'll send you a free copy of Wheel of Our Profits, pdf copy. Perfect.
Speaker 1:Perfect, you guys heard him here. Thank you, gino, for coming on. It's been my pleasure, it's been my honor to have you, man, and you, like I said, like I started in the beginning of the podcast, you have had tremendous impact. Your podcast, you guys, are doing a great job. If you're listening to this podcast today and real estate is something that you want to get into, I highly recommend you go and check out the Jake and Gino podcast.
Speaker 1:What I love about their podcast and I'm going to give you a plug here, brother, just because I do listen to your podcast what I love about your podcast is that you're not only talking about there's only a few podcasts real estate podcasts out there that do this. You don't only focus on the aspect of the real estate and the deals. What I love about you guys is that you guys focus on the most important part, because the mechanics. Tony Robbins says success is 80% mindset, 20% skill set equals 100% success. The mechanics is easy to learn, but the mindset part. You guys spend a good amount of time teaching people. You, specifically Gino, spend a good amount of time teaching people about mindset and helping people with the mindset, and I am totally, I am totally in alignment with that. And that's what I do with my students is I tell them like I'm going to teach you how to do all of these things. This is just math, it's easy. We have to conquer your vision, we have to conquer your belief system. That's what we have to conquer. This stuff is easy. This is just things.
Speaker 1:So, if you want to create wealth through real estate, really, guys, check out his podcast, the Jake and Gino podcast. They're everywhere. I know you guys are on all the platforms. They have really good content and these guys are the real deal. They're really teaching total alignment and values and what they're teaching and the way they're teaching it. It's not just because, like we talked earlier, right, it's not just about the hey, go get a hundred units and there's guys out there doing those podcasts but you can't, they don't connect, they don't connect Like I can't connect. You guys do a great job at connecting and really talking to the working class folks. So thank you for what you're doing, brother. Thank you Really, really appreciate you, thank you.