Seyla (00:01):

Thank you, everyone for joining today’s episode of the, How Did They Do It Real Estate podcast. I am your host Seyla Prak and today’s guest. We have Gino Barbaro. Gino is an investor business owner, author, and entrepreneur. He has grown his real estate portfolio to over 1400 multifamily units. He is the co-founder of Jake and Gino, a multifamily real estate education company that offers coaching and training in real estate founded upon their proprietary framework of Buy-Rite managed right and finance right. He is the bestselling author of two books, wheelbarrow profits, and a honeybee, and graduated from AIPAC Institute of professional excellence in coaching, where he earned his designation as a certified professional coach. He currently resides in St. Augustine, Florida with his beautiful wife, Julia, and their six children Gino, It’s a great honour to have you on to our show is two days, and we really appreciate you taking the time to come on and teaching our listeners about your journeys and your business. So I cannot wait to dive in into our conversations today. So it’s a great honour to have you on today Gino.

Gino (01:14):

Thank you, Seyla, the honour, and the privilege is all mine to be on. I’m really glad to be on and just to, you know, share the journey of why multifamily, how I got into it, how a regular pizza guy started out with a small little complex and was able to scale over to 1500 units. So thanks for having me on.

Seyla (01:29):

I cannot wait. So how about we can start by, can you please share a little bit more about your backgrounds and how did you get into real estate to begin with?

Gino (01:38):

So for me, I graduated college years and years ago when I graduated there weren’t that many jobs out there. So I went to work for a corporate. I went to work for AIG and re-insurance accounting, and that was like watching paint dry for a year. I struggled, I hated the job. And I finally said to my dad, dad, you own a restaurant. I want to get into business. I want to become an entrepreneur. Let’s open our own business, right? Let’s open up our own restaurant. So back in 1994, I bought restaurant with my family. I own that restaurant for over 20 years did really great. The first 10, 15 years, the economy was different. You know, there was no Uber, the internet wasn’t strong. It was more of a place where people would go out and eat. There was less competition. There wasn’t a whole foods making food out there.

Gino (02:19):

And there wasn’t grub hub and Uber eats the business was very profitable. Once the great recession came in 2008, I call it the pandemic, right? Everything shifted, eating habits, shifted technology, shifted, everything shifted in all of us. Small mom and pop entrepreneurs were sort of getting left in the dust. To be honest with you, I said, I’m working harder and I’m making less. I need to do something else here. At the time I had four kids, so I’m like, I need to generate more revenue. So I started looking into real estate. Now I did what everyone else does. I ran in head first, took massive action. I really didn’t educate myself. I lost money in a couple of deals. The first one was a mobile home park. The second one was a strip mall in New York. Didn’t know anything about either, either a niche.

Gino (03:04):

But I said to myself, after the second one, I need to find something that works. And I was gravitated towards multi-family because I had bought a fourplex years ago. And I said, I like this space because people need a place to live. We call it a basic human need, right? Food, clothing, and apartments. I like the fact that I can sort of do it passively. I don’t have to do this full-Time. I can have 20, 30 units and manage a passively or part-time while I have the restaurant. And then eventually when I get enough units, I can leave the restaurant. Right. I didn’t want to fix and flip. I didn’t want to do single family homes. So I said, let me start with this multi-family I went out and I got a mentor. I said, I’m going to learn how to do it the right way.

Gino (03:40):

So, you know, Jake, and I like to say, education times, and action equals results. If you’re taking massive education, sitting on the side-lines, you’re not going to get what you want. If you’re taking massive action and not being educated, you’re going to do what I did and make a ton of mistakes. So once I coupled both of them, it really worked out for me. It really worked one. As I started learning, I started taking action. And for me, the blessing in disguise was meeting Jake back in 2009 at the restaurant, he was a pharmaceutical rep. He was doing drug orders forms, I’m catering orders to the doctors, right? So I’m like, okay, you want to get out of what you’re doing. I want to get out of what I’m doing. Let’s figure out how we can invest together. In 2011, Jake decides to say, I’m leaving New York.

Gino (04:17):

You know, I’m out of here. I hate these taxes. I hate the weather. And he moves to Knoxville, Tennessee, while I’m still up in New York. I’m like Jake, when you get down there, let’s look at some deals because it’s a different market where you are than where I am. 2011, Knoxville is still emerging. It was one of the first four cities there merged out of the recession, right? It was still a, you know, a secondary tertiary market really underneath the radar, but it was a lot of growth potential. And I said, the per unit costs, there were low. I said, the, you know, the expenses were low and it was a cash flowing market with appreciation. So we started looking, it took us 18 months to find that first deal in 2013. And then after that, our second deal, three months later. And then after that, you know, we just, we just kept buying.

Gino (04:54):

But for Jake and me, we got into multi-family because we both wanted to leave our jobs. And we both looked at multifamily as a way to scale a business, right? Jake and Gino, we say, we create multifamily entrepreneurs. That’s what you are when you’re investing in multi-family real estate. You’re not just investing in real estate, right? You’re investing with the ability to scale up, to buy multiple units, to hire people, to help you out. And then eventually you start talking about multiple streams of revenue, whether it’s an education company, whether it’s a syndication company, whatever that may look like, but you just need to start somewhere and look at it and treat it as a business that’s scalable, which is a completely different thing. And single family homes or fixing and flipping where that’s a hardest space to scale up because, you know, buying six, seven, eight, 10, 15, 20 homes scattered throughout for the small investor, it’s very hard for, you know, a hedge fund doing it, buying 300 homes. That’s a little bit different, but Burford, a small time investor to buy single family homes all around. They’re harder to scale. They’re harder to manage. So start out with, you know, three or four Plex. And then from there like Jake and I did just continue to scale and continue to buy.

Seyla (05:54):

Thank you so much for sharing that background. You mentioned that you met with Jake at the restaurant and you start having that conversations. And how do you know that Jake was the right person for you at a time?

Gino (06:09):

All I prayed a little bit, right? I mean, it’s always for me, I got into bed partnerships and I’ve gotten into great partnerships. It always falls upon me. I don’t want to blame anyone else. That first deal I’d do with the mobile home park. That partner was horrific. He was terrible. He created a syndication. He was fraudulent. He was negligent, but ultimately it was my fault. I didn’t do due diligence. I didn’t fly down to their property. I didn’t really vet him because my friend had introduced me to him. So even though that partnership was terrible, I have to bear a lot of the responsibility. So when I look at a partnership, now I look at it as value based partnerships, Jake and I both had the same desire. We both wanted multifamily. We both did not want the shiny object syndrome or one day he’s doing single family homes.

Gino (06:52):

Then he goes to self-storage. We both stayed in our lanes. We both committed to its long-term. And we both had very similar goals. Then you get into the expectations. I knew it, you know, early on Jake was an extremely hard worker. He was the only pharmaceutical rep that would come in that had his lunches planned out for the month. Whereas most of them would come in and say, the day before I need a lunch to go to the Bronx while I don’t have a delivery person for the next day, he was very planned out. He had very set goals. He was much regimented. He was a hard worker, everything that I embodied, right. That’s what I wanted. And you know, throughout our 10 year relationship that we’ve had, I’ve never heard my partner say once to me, you know, I’m too busy to do that.

Gino (07:29):

You know, I’ll give you an example. On Friday, we had a refi that was going through this past Friday. And this refunds me going on for three months, Friday is been a nightmare to work with. So Friday comes and they decided to say, hey, you know that there’s supposed to be a window there. You have a sliding door. So what did Jake do? He didn’t call me and complain all what he did was he went out, he went to 15 different areas to find the window. He put the window in. He actually got the inspector to come on Friday afternoon to inspect the window, to see if it was inspected. Freddie comes back and goes, you know what? We’ll wait until next week. But the point is, Jake did not complain. He made it happen. And that’s what I look for in a partner. And then when I have to do something, whether it’s coming on a podcast, writing a book, speaking to an investor, I don’t make the excuse that I’m busy.

Gino (08:10):

We both handle each other’s affairs. And when we need help, partners are there to help each other out. We hold each other accountable. That’s an, a big piece. The expectation piece of who’s going to do what the accountability piece of I’m going to do this. And you’re going to hold me accountable to it and really setting goals and vision for each other is really important. Then on top of that, you really need to like your partner, because I’ve already spoken to him multiple times today. I’ve been on a coaching call with him. I’ve done a podcast with him this morning. We’ve done. We went through a closing today, so I’m have multiple touch points. So if I don’t like my partner, it’s not going to be great relationships. So you have to have some type of respect. And I think, you know, an enjoyment to work with them on top of all those other characteristics that I’ve laid out.

Seyla (08:51):

Oh wow. That’s really powerful Gino. So finding the right partners is either break or making the best business out you know, growing the business. So I’m glad that you met with Jake. And,

Gino (09:05):

And let me add, let me add one thing to it also the other thing is just because you’ve gotten into a bad relationship or bad partnership, doesn’t mean the next one has to be, it don’t have that assumption that limiting belief that’s saying, Oh wow, I can get it. The partnerships, I can’t find one. No, that’s not. That is not always true because you go through some, some rough spots and you don’t, but multi-family is built for partnerships because there’s so many different responsibilities, whether you’re raising capital, speaking to the investors, whether you’re doing day-to-day operations, whether you’re managing the property, where you’re at, whether you’re asset managing the property, whether you’re underwriting these deals and going out and looking for deals, there’s so many different, you know, duties and responsibilities that you have. It just blends perfectly to putting a few people together to create these partnerships.

Seyla (09:47):

So, Gina I want to ask about, you had experience in restaurants, in Mobile Park and single families. And when you met with Jake how did you decide how did you come up with the ideas of, you know, multifamily is the right one and we should be investing in multifamily and why should invest investors invest in multifamily?

Gino (10:11):

There’s a couple answers to that. The first one, I think it was a little bit of luck. And the second one was Jake had met a doctor. One of the doctors that we were supplying food to his name was Dr. Nash up in Putnam County, New York. And he was the one of the last doctors back in 2008, 2009, 2010 that was not selling out to these big groups, medical groups. And Jake asked him when they Dr. Nashi, why are you not selling to these medical groups? And he says, you know what? I’ve got enough real estate that I don’t need to sell. I like to be a doctor. I like to serve my patients. I don’t need to do it. And the light bulb would offer Jake and said, okay, tell me more about this real estate and Dr. Nashwan own real estate all up and down the Eastern seaboard, where he was in New York.

Gino (10:50):

You own properties in North Carolina, you own properties in Florida, single families, you own multi-families. And for Jake and I, the idea of owning multi-families was really, was really powerful for us because we both had full-time jobs. We both had demanding careers. And our first deal is only, only a 25 unit property, which trust at the time was really big. But listen, you have 25 units in one location, you need to go collect rents. You need to do some kind of repairs. It’s all in one location. It’s a lot easier to manage, especially when you’re starting out. Then all you need to do is to buy another property. Our next property, three months after that was 36 units. So within six months of our first deal, we’re at 61 units. We’re right on the cusp of being able to hire a full-time property manager, full-time maintenance person to take the business to the next level.

Gino (11:33):

And you know, multi-family for everyone out there, you know, you see when it’s done throughout the pandemic, if you know, you’re, if you’re in a decent market that hasn’t shut down, you’re in like in the Southeast corner where we are you’re in Atlanta and Georgia, North Carolina, parts of parts of Carolinas, Florida, Tennessee, the economy stayed pretty good, right? Collections have been up. People need a place to live right now. So I think multi-family going forward. If you look at the demographics, whether they’re millennials or baby boomers, they’re deciding to rent more, you know, home ownership is on the decline and it will be on the decline. The millennials are not buying homes with all the student debt there’s, they’re starting, starting houses and house formation is starting later. So the renting more, it’s just a much more attractive option nowadays, if you’re a transitional worker or someone living in California, but they can live in Dallas, why would you buy a home? You just rent the home and go anywhere you want. So I think it’s, I think it’s also habits. It’s also the ability, the affordability. I mean, you rent, and you don’t have to fix anything. I just think there’s so many things that are attractive to renting for this millennial, for this generation right now that it’s going to be a niche. I think that in the future is going to be in high demand.

Seyla (12:42):

So Gino, I want to ask so you mentioned that your first deal was 25 units and a couple of months later, you got another 36 units. One of the things in multifamily is having the funds always in capitals would you be able to share of how to secure private funding and what are the best practices that the investors or the sponsor should do?

Gino (13:07):

I love that. So for me, when I started buying properties, we talk about Buy-Rite manage right and finance. Right. I only one, I only knew one way to buy the buy by myself. I didn’t know what syndication was 10 years ago. It wasn’t a hot topic. I just learned owner financing. Right? I didn’t know anything about JV or doing other partnerships. So all I knew was Jake let’s get together. Me and my brother let’s go look for a deal. Right? And on that first deal, we were able to secure owner financing on that first deal, that the seller was able to carry back a 10% note. So the bank gave us 80% of the financing. We came up with 10% of the financing and they hold a note for 10%. So on a $600,000 purchase, we only needed around $75,000 with closing costs to get into that first 25 units.

Gino (13:50):

Right? And ironically enough, the market has come back to where I think seller financing the next 12, 18 months is going to be favourable because you’re going to see a lot when, when the cycle turns where the financing gets more difficult and a lot of landlords have equity, sometimes you can’t get that financing. So I think owner financing in the next 12, 18 months in this part of the cycle is going to be, it’s going to become much more attractive and much easier because you have a lot of mom and pop, you know, landlords out there that through these eviction process through the managing of this, they’re not going to be there with their numbers, right. And they’re going to try to sell and Fannie and Freddie are going to go, Hmm, I don’t think so. Occupancy rates are low. You’ve got a lot of infections, but you have these motivated sellers they want to sell.

Gino (14:28):

So owner financing is going to come back. So that’s one of the tools that you can use right now, going forward, learn how to use creative financing techniques, whether its master lease options or seller financing. One fantastic way. The second way I partnered up on that first deal, it was just me, my partner, Jake, and my brother, Mike and Mark, on the second deal. I brought my partner now, Mike, onto the deals. So there’s four of us on that. Second deal is 36 units. He had the balance sheet, Mike, he had the strong net worth, and that allowed us to buy our third deal, which was a $4 million deal. And then from there, we’re able to refinance the proceeds and roll them into the next deal. So Jake and I, and my partner, Mike, have been able to refinance over $11 million from our portfolio and continue to buy no Lamborghinis.

Gino (15:11):

No, Ferrari’s no vacations. We just kept putting in an investing. And, you know, Seyla, if you can think of it as a conveyor belt, you know, a conveyor belt, the first year you buy one property, you put it on the conveyor belt. That conveyor belt is moving. You want to continue to add assets. So by year two and year three, you’re starting to have liquidity events, whether you’re selling that property, refinancing that property, whatever it looks like, and you’re going to get a chunk of cash and putting that back into the business, multifamily like any other business is a long-term endeavour, right? It’s like the farmer planting the seed and hoping that after watering it and taking care of it, that it produces fruit. And that’s what we’ve been fortunate for Jake and myself, we continue to be diligent. That’s why it’s a long game.

Gino (15:50):

And staying on that road, staying on those shiny object, continuing to invest in these assets and you know what, putting the money back into the business. And then from there creating those multiple streams. But after that 36 unit, we just continued to buy just the three of us right up until a thousand units. Then we hit the thousand unit barrier. My partner Jake is like, maybe we should try a syndicated deal. So with syndication, you bringing on limited partners. And at first deal we syndicated. I always tell everybody, when you syndicated deal, don’t go big, try to do a smaller deal. We only did 136 unit deal. On our first indication. It was a $6 million deal. We had to raise $2.6 million for it. And we’re fortunate enough on that first deal that we had already grown in an investor base. We had created a bunch of substance relationships through our seminars, through our, our online platform, through our podcasts, that we were able to raise that money, you know, relatively easy, you know, like within 48 hours where we were able to raise that money.

Gino (16:42):

And it was good because that first indication has a lot more moving parts when you’re buying a deal. Just with the, you know, just with a partner, a lot easier. When you get syndication, you have timelines, you have to recreate documents. Then you have to raise the capital and make, you know, a lot more moving parts. But when the deal is smaller and it’s less complicated, that’s where I advise people to do. But getting out there right now, sale is the time of the market where you’re underwriting deals. You may not find deals right now, but this is the time when you start talking to people about the opportunity and start growing your investor base. Because when you find a deal, if you don’t have the investors, the money’s not going to come to you. You need to have that substantive relationship before you find a deal. And that’s pretty hard for people to understand, but always go out there source for capital and source for deals at the same time. So when those deals come, you have those relationships.

Seyla (17:26):

It’s a great information and great insights. And Gino’s I want to ask about right now is, and in terms of the market what, what do you think is it still good times to buy at this time? And what do you see in terms of the markets coming, especially in 2021, now that we have a switch over to a new precedent and how, what do you see in the next six months or a year down the road?

Gino (17:55):

That’s a great question. I mean, we just had a podcast this morning with a gentleman named Brian BOLO. He’s from ITR economics. He’s an economist he’s been around since 1987. And when I spoke to him, I didn’t expect to hear the answer that he gave me. I asked him the same question. So this is from an economist from, he’s been in Congress for 40 years. He is very bullish on the economy right now. He’s talking about GDP growth is amazing. Bouncing back from COVID, he’s talking about, you know, unemployment’s down below 6%, he’s talking about all this pent up demand, right? And he’s talking about the stimulus, how it has not even trickled into the economy yet. So we’re not having inflation yet. Inflation may be coming in the next two years because that money is not working its way through the system. So he’s very, very bullish on, multi-families very bullish on real estate and I am bullish, but I’m looking at it from a value perspective.

Gino (18:41):

I’m looking at the bid price and the ask price, what sellers are asking and what buyers are looking to pay that is getting bigger, right? That Delta is getting bigger and I’m trying to make numbers work. But a lot of institutions right now have money to place. There’s a lot of capital out there. And to me, they’re overpaying, but they’re underwriting for different parameters than we are. They have family office money. They’re looking for lower rates of return. They’re looking at three and four caps. So they’re looking for that. They’re looking for institutional assets, assets that a little bit newer. I think long-term, there’s always going to be demand. I think multifamily has that aspect where you go to the tax benefits, where you have the ability to cash flow. If you’re buying gold sale and you’re putting it in your vault, it’s not producing a yield.

Gino (19:20):

If you’re buying multi-family, you have an asset that is going to weather. The storm of inflation comes your heart assets, going to inflate, right on top of being able to produce a yield on top of being able to keep up with inflation, because when inflation happens, rents typically tend to rise right on top of that, you have, you know, principal pay down and you have those tax benefits. So there’s so many, I mean, amazing benefits with multifamily that I see long-term, it’s going to be it’s it to me. It’s going to grow. Now. You also said, Brian also said in the pockets about stocks, he’s thinks the economy with the stock market is still going to elevate for the next 12 to 18 months, because that’s where the money is flowing. If you could see where, when he’s flowing in and flowing out, that’s where you make your money. Money is still flowing into the stock market. And I think money is still flowing into real estate. Now the big mystery that I don’t know that I can answer is, is, are we still going to have institutional money and also foreign money? We’ve had a lot of foreign money coming in from China coming in from South America and Europe investing in multi-family. If that continues, then you’re going to see these prices continue to elevate. Does that make sense?

Seyla (20:21):

Yep. That makes sense. I’m in having a lot of day’s money’s coming in, like outside the United States [Inaudible] money is, and including institutional money is coming in. And like you mentioned earlier, the Delta for the deals that the asking price and what the seller is willing to pay, the Delta is getting higher and higher and the gap is getting bigger and because every day is as I can see. So thank you so much for that insight. That that’s really like great insights for us and our listeners. And

Gino (20:57):

One of the things though is we don’t know what’s going to happen when January 1st comes or the eviction moratorium is going to be pushed longer, or all of a sudden these are people going to get evicted in certain markets. I mean, we’re Tennessee is we have strong collections. So, but in certain markets, so the collection’s going to be weaker. So these assets going to go into be a little bit more distressed? A lot of these markets that we’re looking at, they’re not because collections are strong. Jobs are still there. People are migrating to those areas. Now, if you’re looking at other areas, like let’s say its New York City where rents are falling and population is leaving and they have a tough time with your tax base. That may be a little bit harder. So we’re looking, I’m trying to look at it from a micro level, from a macro level. It might be a little more difficult, but from a micro level, when you’re looking at certain markets, you’re there, those markets you can, you can say, wow, I don’t see prices really dropping in there because there’s so much demand. Take Florida. For instance, we have a lot of new Yorkers buying down here. We have a lot of capital. Why would you want to invest in New York City when taxes are crazy? The affordable housing laws, that money is flowing from New York City and going and finding itself to different markets. Most of them are in the Southeast, believe it or not.

Seyla (21:59):

Yup I review some of their reports and I saw that a lot of migration getting out of New York to the South East States and also it’s for the West. A lot of migration is going away from California State and go into like Arizona is Texas, you know, Morgan. And a lot of people are moving away from these high tax States right now to all those market. And so Chino I, I want to ask one of the things is that once you start your business and you buy in your multi-families, how do you identify some bill multiple sources of revenue for that business, but you’ll be able to share what are the revenue sources out there to be generated from that business?

Gino (22:50):

Sure. I think the first thing that everyone needs to understand, like I said, multi-family is an entrepreneurial venture. It’s a business. So for you to scale a business, you almost have to lose the identity of the person you are when you first started. Now let me explain. When I first started with Jake is the [Inaudible]. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. I’m going to cut the grass. I’m going to do the books and you need to do that. When you first started out of business, you really need to put a lot of sweat equity. What kind of, what kind of business do you want to build? You want to build a business that if you walk away from it’ll collapse or do you want to walk away and create a business where you can implement systems and putting people in the right place to help you with that business. And it can become more and more passive as you want. And then we want to do the latter, right? We want to be able to create a business that had systems in it, but how do you do that? You have this, you have to go back and we’ve been done a lot of coaching with scaling up coaches with traction and all, you really need to learn how to build a business and how create systems. So when you’re starting out and you’re building the real estate and you’re getting the 30, 40, 50, 60, a hundred units, you need to start hiring right, and really need to start hiring. And how do you hire? The first thing that you need to do is really create core values and a culture for your company. If you don’t have core values for your company, if you don’t have a culture and a mission statement, you’re not going to attract the right people.

Gino (24:05):

I mean, that’s the bottom line is we always talk about the three things, people systems and culture. And that is what allowed for us to scale up and to create the Jake and Gino community for the education and to have the core values to on-board our students into the platform. And then from there, you’re creating a culture for the residents in the property management property management is another lever that we created. Not everyone goes to the property manager, but they can create an asset management company, right? If they’re syndicating. So the property management for us, we started out from the very beginning to manage our own assets because Jake ones get out of his job. So generating that property management revenue helped them get out of his job real quick. But then he continued along because he liked that he liked control of the property management.

Gino (24:48):

There’s a positive to that, where you get great control, you get more cash flow per door, but there’s a negative. You have a company where you have to hire employees and you can’t scale up. We only have 1500 units because we have the property management. You know, if we didn’t have it, we did third party. We’d probably have a lot more units because we’d been able to scale a lot quicker. So there’s a trade-off there for us. We love property manager. We love diving into it and creating the systems and creating the business around that. And then from there we created the syndication company where we said, you know what? We’ve got all our students, we’ve got investors, let’s start raising capital and let’s start buying deals through a syndication model. And that’s what we ended up doing. So you have the property management, the education, which is great.

Gino (25:27):

And then we have the syndication company and they all work in a really nice synergistic way, right? So if you can come into the Jake and Gino ecosphere, we call it the Rand family of companies ran property management, ran partners and Jake and genome. We can serve you in one of many ways. If you want to learn from us, we can teach you. We can also become investors with us also. And you can, we can also buy deals from you or with you partner up with you. And then the property management helps with the vertical integration because it puts all three of them together. And our investors know that we’re vertically integrated and we manage our own assets. So that gives them, I think, a lot of comfort to be able to invest with us.

Seyla (26:02):

Thank you so much, you know, and another questions I have for you when you first started and you move into the multifamily space and you were still all in your restaurant business at one point, do you know that you are ready to get out and full time to do time a multifamily space?

Gino (26:22):

So when you start saying to yourself, I’m doing this menial work when I’m putting this other deal together, I give you an example. I was remembered. This was in February, March of 2015. I am in the restaurant, I’m in the shed, in the right, in my restaurant, putting away to go containers. I’m putting with a flower and it’s made, I was, I’m doing basically $12 an hour work. I’m doing minimum wage work. And I’m on the phone with my partner and we’re negotiating an $11 million real estate deal. And that’s when I said to myself, I’m doing this work here. That means this, but I’m doing something here. It means that now is the time to leave. So, you know, as far as like a number, I think everyone has to do a budget and figure out what their burn rate is, how much money you need to make per month.

Gino (27:02):

If you get anywhere near that. And you’re really seriously about leaving. Now’s the time to leave. Now, that being said, you don’t have to get into real estate. Full-Time quit your job and burn the ships from day one. I didn’t do that. I had six kids. So I did it slowly. I needed a proof of concept for myself. Also, that being said from the first deal that I bought to, when I left the restaurant, it was only three and a half years. So you can do it within a five-year timeframe, but there’s needs things to be done. Like I said, joining a community, really learning how to underwrite deals, really finding those partnerships, really finding investors, buying quality deals in reinvesting the capital and five years seems like a long time. But let me tell you, five years goes like that. And the, the reason why I wanted to leave the restaurant was I knew there was so many more opportunities out there for me.

Gino (27:49):

The education company started to grow. I was doing podcasts and meeting other investors. I was able to underwrite more deals when I needed to go to Knoxville, to look at a deal I could do that. I wasn’t tied down to the restaurant. And for me I remember leaving and saying, wow, my identity was tied to the restaurant. So it was a little bit weird first leaving there. Because everyone knew me as the pizza guy. They didn’t know me as the real estate guy. And that was probably the hardest thing for me to do is to leave my identity. It was always tied to that. I didn’t do that for 20 years. Right? The name of the restaurant was Gino’s treasury. Everyone knew me Mahopac. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I decided, Hey, I want to move to Florida, get a clean slate, start new.

Gino (28:27):

And that’s what I ended up doing. I ended up moving to Florida because I wanted to buy assets down here and making my home base. Unfortunately, when I got here, I didn’t buy anything because everyone told me prices were inflated. So I listened to everybody and we continued to buy Knoxville, but you’ll know when you start investing and you start making some money, as far as cash flow and you start reinvesting it. And then all of a sudden you see a little liquidity event. And then all of a sudden you say, you know what? I can start at an asset managing these things and I can start buying into the deal. And you start making that money. You get close to where your Burn rate is. That’s when you say to yourself, it’s time to leave. And it’s just a leap of faith. And I had everyone tell her, I have to tell her when this to out there. If I had leaped and I had crashed and burned, I could have always gone back to the restaurant. I could have bought another restaurant. I could have started another restaurant, but if I had never left, I’d still be there. So I’d have a ton of regret. So if you’re on the ledge right now saying, you know what, I’m about ready to leap. I’m not sure if you don’t leap, you’ll never know where you land, right? But if you don’t leap, you’re always still where you are. So take that leap of faith. And I promise you, once you do that, and you say to yourself, there’s no looking back. You’ll put so much effort and energy into it that you will succeed. And you know what, if you don’t, you can always return to your old life. I could always pack up my bags and going back up to New York and found another restaurant and done it again. But I’m just fortunate that I took the leap and I had an, had an amazing wife that said, you know what, let’s try this. That was a big key for me.

Seyla (29:48):

Wow. That was really powerful. That was really amazing stories. Thank you for sharing with us and our listener. And so [Inaudible] and lastly, I wanted to ask you about your new book, the honeybee will you be able to tell us and our listener a little bit more about the book and the title, the honeybee, what does that mean?

Gino (30:09):

Sure. I’ve got it right here for all the YouTube viewers. I mean, for, for us, when we wrote the book we won, we were very inspired. I was very inspired. Jake was, we both were, but from the richest man in Babylon, it was a parable. It was an easy book to read simple laws. I think the creating wealth, you don’t over-complicate things. Right? So when we wrote this book, the honeybee, we wanted to write a parable, right? And if you think of the honeybee, the honeybee is a worker. All the honeybee does, he’s programmed and she’s programmed to go and make honey just like the nine to five worker, just like all of us who go to work. We don’t think about what we’re doing. We’re just going out there and getting paid. But who’s the owner. Who’s the wealthy person transactions get paid and make you get paid?

Gino (30:48):

Equity makes you rich. The rich person is the one who owns the honeybee. Right. He owned the honey, right. And Tom is the honeybee in the story, right? And Noah in the story is this, the sales rep that meets Tom. And he learns throughout the story, all the parables, it’s really talking about building complimentary streams of revenue, Tom, over the years built this amazing business. And we never really get into what Tom built. But I mean, no was flabbergasted. He couldn’t believe how wealthy Tom was. He looked like a regular person and all he was his hobby was, you know, curating bees. He was creating honey and Noah. When he first started out, started out with renting out his basement as an Airbnb. That was his first source of revenue starting small. And that’s what Jake and I did. And then from there buying another deal and every time he had a problem, he would go back to Tom and Tom would give him a lesson in the book.

Gino (31:38):

Finally, no was overwhelmed and says, I can’t do this. How do I do this? One of the lessons that Tom said is who can do it for you? Then he had the idea, Hey, let’s create a property management company. Let’s help out and get a manager, a maintenance tech to help us with this. And then one of the big lessons in the story was that Noah goes out and he looks at a restaurant it’s called Buster’s bistro. And he says, I’m going to invest in that restaurant. So he ends up investing the restaurant, knows nothing about the restaurant business and loses all his capital. And Tom said to him, well, why did you invest in a business that is not part of your core business, right? The restaurant business wasn’t if he had bought the land to the restaurant, that’s another thing. If you bought the building, but he invested in an asset that he did it on the stand.

Gino (32:18):

So one of the, one of the biggest lessons to creating complimentary streams of revenue is to stay in your lane. Like I said, multifamily education, syndication, they’re all complimentary streams. And no, as he goes on through the story continues to build assets and continues to build his empire. When finally at the end, is that just about building your empire, but I guess creating legacy, making money matters. One of my mentors says, and that’s what Noah ends up finding out. What is his big, why, why are you doing all this? Why are you creating an empire? And at the end of the story, it’s revealed that what, you know, what he does with his money and how he leaves it to charity and how he builds a living legacy with it. So it’s a nice, real story about the growth of a person who stuck in the w nine to five job and ends up growing up in creating this amazing business over time.

Seyla (33:00):

Wow. I can’t wait to read it. Now. I’m going to have to try and get one today and I’m going to read it this weekend and Thanksgiving weekend, some carriages straight on waiting your book.

Gino (33:13):

Seyla if you let me just give my email address is Gino@jakeandGino.com. Anybody who’s listening to this, I’ll email them a PDF copy of it. So I’ll even email you a PDF copy of it. So you guys can read it. And it’s enjoyable. My, I have three children one, three children, one 15 year old and 18 year old and a 21 year old. They’ve all read it. The 12 year olds read it also. And the nine-year-old is going to read it, you know, in the next six months. So it’s an easy book to read with the family. And it gives lessons really about life. It’s really questioning. Why are you going to work? There’s nothing wrong with going to a w nine, nine to five job, and right? There’s nothing wrong with it, with a W2 job. Just most of us approach it that it’s just like, we that’s what we do. Just question it. Why are you doing it? What is your big why? And then if you can figure out your why you’ll figure out how to do it,

Seyla (33:57):

Gino, thank you so much for offering that to us. So we appreciate that. And we’ll email you right after

Gino (34:06):

My pleasure.

Seyla (34:07):

So Gino you already owned 1200 units in both tied families buildings. And you already wrote the books multiple books, successful books, you own a coaching program. You own you know, the education company. What is next for you?

Gino (34:25):

For Me and Jake. The next thing is just to continue by buying really good deals. I always stress to everybody. No deal is better than a bad deal. Continue to underwrite diligently, continue to look at opportunities out there and buy deals. That make sense, right? That’s the number one thing. I’m not looking to get another thousand units by the end of the year. I don’t care about unit count. I always tell people, revenue is vanity profit margin is sanity and cash is King. I don’t care how much I’m grossing, how much we netting on these properties. That’s what we’re really looking for. So just scaling up the scale of, for size and for ego. That’s not what we want to do. We want to buy really great deals. I think the next thing is Jake and I have been on a mission to create new financial education for young, young adults.

Gino (35:05):

And for even teens, right? And young adults and their parents. So we created, we created the youth Academy. So, you know, we always say people with financial intelligence can change the world for the better. So our youth Academy inside the Jacobs, you know, community has been one of my things that I love to talk about because it all starts at the home. It all starts with educating our young. We have a problem in this country that people are so financially illiterate. They don’t know what to do with their money. They don’t know how to spend their money. They don’t know how to create good money habits. They don’t know what skills they need to create. These are all of the things that Jake and I are teaching in the youth Academy, because before you can even talk about money, you need to have the right habits and the right thoughts about money before you can learn about what money has. So that’s one of the projects that we’re really, really passionate about going into 2021.

Seyla (35:48):

Wow. I cannot wait to learn more about you Academy. I mean, so like you mentioned, we, we are not being tied finance in school in general. So I graduated got my master degrees, but no, not things about finance and until it started picking up personal finance books and listened to podcasts and educating myself and reading a lot of blogs, I don’t know anything about finance. So, and that’s why I’m very excited. And once that’s coming out, I’m pretty sure as that would help a lot of parents out there and, and a lot of youth out there. So I’m very excited about that. So Gino how has real estate investing impacted your life so far?

Gino (36:31):

Or for me, I mean, I’ve grown in my net worth by probably 10 fold. If not more, I’ve been able to create that passive income. And I’ve been, I guess, able to everyone talk about word financial freedom. That means something different to everybody. And to me, financial freedom is not working, you know, and going on a beach and retiring me, financial freedom always meant that I was financially secure, that I had enough money to live off of. But then again, I wanted to work when I wanted to, where I wanted to, with who I wanted to and why I’m working probably more now than I was the restaurant, but I’m really enjoying my work. I’m really helping others. And for me also being a role model to my children, letting my children see what kind of investor I am, what kind of paradigm, what kind of charitable person I can become by utilizing money.

Gino (37:12):

And just telling them money is only a tool we’re not here to accumulate money. We’re really here to have an abundance mind-set to grow the money, to share it, to be stewards for the next generation. So that I think has really helped me with the real multifamily with real estate. That’s what real estate has allowed me to do. And to continue to grow my wealth, continue to build my passive income, my pastor streams of revenue. But there’s a real reason why I’m doing that. Really being a steward of my money, teaching my children and teaching the Jake and Gino community that they can have the same exact thing with multi-family. If they treat it as a business and they look at it as a long-term endeavour.

Seyla (37:46):

What is one thing that you know now about real estate that you wish you knew when you first started?

Gino (37:52):

Well, I keep harping on it, but really knowing that it’s a business, right? Because when I bought it in the very beginning, all I thought it was toilets, tenants trash. I was thinking about the $20 menial work, where I was painting doors and I was fixing faucets and that kind of stuff. That’s not where the money is. You can pay for all those menial tasks, 25, $50 an hour. Your duty as an investor is to buy quality assets, to buy them in great locations and to buy them with cash flow potential and then reposition them and either sell them. I always thought also say that it was a long-term investment that I have to hold on to these properties forever. Not always. You have to really learn what the market cycle is right now. We’re selling a couple of assets because there’s so much equity in these properties that even if we refinance them, we won’t be able to cash flow with them. There’s a time where you really learn the four parts of the market cycle and how to utilize those four parts of the market cycle to your advantage.

Seyla (38:43):

What is one thing that sets their successful people apart in the real estate investing business?

Gino (38:49):

I think very simply anyone who’s successful in life in general can focus. They’re not on cryptocurrency one day. They’re not on self-storage and the next day they pick something and they stick to it and they really learn it. Right. I think what I’ve tried to do in my career the last 10 years is to learn how to do something than to actually do it. And then finally to teach it and by teaching it on the third part, you become a much better investor and you learn even more. So I think anyone who’s super successful out there is got the determination, the focus, and they commit and then figure it out, right? Because no one knows anything in the business. When they first start out, everyone out there is winging it. Those people who take the chance to learn something and to say, you know what, not to set the expectation of I’m going to buy a hundred unit property.

Gino (39:32):

My first deal, I may only buy a duplex, but great. I bought a duplex. What’s my next deal? Oh, a six unit. Great. What’s my next deal? Oh, a 10 unit. And just to continue to persevere and continue to have the patience and continue to grind it out and not looking at it as a failure. But what did I learn from that opportunity? I think that really sets apart successful people from people who are failures, being ultimately responsible for your actions and for where you are today, if you’re not successful or where you don’t want to be today. Why is that? There’s a reason why you have to look at that. And that was me back in 2008, when I read T Harv, Eker and secrets of the millionaire, mind, I’m reading the book and he’s saying, it’s your fault? And I’m like, it’s not my fault. It’s the economy. It’s the president. It’s the pandemic. It’s whatever it is. And it wasn’t, it was ultimately me. I didn’t have the skills. I didn’t have the talent and I wasn’t bringing enough value to the marketplace. That’s what it really comes down to in a capitalistic society. And that’s where we get value from. And once I learned that lesson of responsibility and focusing on how to become better and focusing on what to do, everything changed in my life.

Seyla (40:31):

What tools or techniques have you used to improve the efficiency of your business or personal life?

Gino (40:36):

I mean, for us simply Google docs, Google sheets, creating systems. I mean, that’s the number one thing. Every time you do something in a business documented, whether you shoot a loom video, whether you put in a Google doc, documented. So when you start hiring out, you don’t have to be there to replicate it. You can teach somebody and then it’s handed off, right? Start delegating those responsibilities that don’t bring you back a lot of money. I love bookkeeping, but I can get a bookkeeper for 25 bucks an hour, 30 bucks an hour. Why am I doing that when I should be out there looking for deals and raising capital from investors? So doing that is really, really important. And I think, you know, marketing is, is sales is one aspect of it. Marketing is another aspect of it. Every entrepreneur needs to know how to sell.

Gino (41:16):

And you know, we employ a tactic of selling called finding impact together. We use same side selling. So basically if I’m looking for an investor and they want their money back in two years where we’re long-term investors, we need to find impact together. How do we work together? We’re not a really good fit. So it’s the same thing with education. We sell multifamily. You want to get rich in six months or 12 months. We’re not a good fit. We’re not going to sign that person up. So learning how to sell by offering value and by knowing what your prospect or your customer wants is going to bring you to a long way. You’re not even selling anymore. You’re just offering opportunities. You’re out there trying to find people to fit with the product or the program or the, or the, whatever, whatever you’re selling. That to me was revolutionary. That’s when I said to myself, this Jake and Gino community can really work as we’re out there looking for specific type of person who wants to put in the hard work, who’s got a vision and who who’s financially capable of doing this business.

Seyla (42:05):

Gino, thank you so much for coming on to the show. We appreciate your time, your knowledge and wisdoms. And we appreciate that. You come on and share with us, you know, your journey, how’d you get started with multifamily and why multifamily and how to secure private finding talking to us about your book how to build a business how to generate multiple resources of revenue from that business and the commitment to be successful and to know yourself, know your why, and, you know, take that leap of faith. It, you, you don’t take it. You will be regretting it. Of course, you have to access your own personal finance and audit situation everyone’s is different. However, if you don’t take that lab, you don’t know where it’s going to take you. So I really appreciate that. And I’m pretty sure our listeners will find a lot of our use in dab. And I talk about like four pages of notes. I really appreciate all the insights. And of course and finally, you talked to us about the market cycle. You talk to us what to expect in the next six months or late next year is what’s going to happen. So I really appreciate all that insight. So if our listener wanted to find out more about you and your company and what you do, where can they go?

Gino (43:26):

Just very simply go to Jake and Gino.com. We have the Jake and Gino channel on iTunes, where we have our four podcasts that we share weekly. And just go to the website. Website’s got blogs, it’s got articles. It’s got a place to, if you want apply or mentorship with us, if you want to invest with us, tons of resources on that website. So just go check out that website. And if you have any questions for me directly, just email me Gino@jakeandgino.com.

Seyla (43:48):

Thank you so much for coming on today’s and your time. We appreciate you.

Gino (43:53):

My pleasure. Thank you. Take care, everybody.