BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 60: Rejecting a Scarcity Mindset and Going All-In on Apartment Investing with Gino Barbaro

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

Gino Barbaro was a chef, working hard every day. He made good money and had no debt, but never seemed to be able to save more than 10%. He started dabbling in real estate investing, and after closing his fourth deal worth $11 million, he... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 60, where we interview Gino Barbaro from Jake and Gino.com, wheelbar profits, and the million other things that Gino does these days. I'm more worth more than $10 an hour. I'm worth an $11 million deal. And that's when everything changed for me because I'm like, why am I wasting my time? And that day, August of 2015, when we closed, I said to myself, I'm leaving the restaurant. I don't care what happens. I'm better than working $10 an hour. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order,

invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation, you're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. How's it going, everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Miss Middy Jensen.

How are you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I'm having a fantastic day. I'm really, really, really excited for today's show because we interview Gino Barbaro. I'm hoping I'm not. barbarying his name. But I really like Gino's story. I like how he didn't just stay in his lane.

He's like, you know what? This isn't the lane I want to be in anymore. So he switched lanes. He got to financial independence and now he does everything that he wants to do and doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do. And that's kind of the whole point of financial independence. Towards the end of the show, Gino mentions community. His focus is real estate, as you're about to hear.

And we like to remind people that we have a whole website devoted to help. helping you in your real estate investing journey. BiggerPockets.com has a blog with three or four articles every single day about different aspects of real estate investing, as well as a forum where you can go in and ask questions and get answers for almost any question you can think of in regards to real estate investing and money. And we think that the most effective way to learn and increase your odds of success, if you're interested in real estate investing, is to learn from the deals that other people like you near you are doing. So if you actually go in Bigger Pockets and check out the deal diaries that we've got on there,

you can go to forums and browse around for the deal diaries, you can see what other people like you near you are actually purchasing with their purchase price, the cash they've invested in the deal and any learning that they've had from that, you can go and connect with them about that deal. And if you've done a deal and you want to share that with the community, that's even better. We would love it. You can go on your profile on BiggerPockets.com if you sign up, it's all free, and put a deal on your profile.

You can talk about the purchase price, what you invested in it, the outcome that you got, and share any learning from that. And that's going to help the next person also be successful in real estate. So if you haven't already, go check out those deals

and learn from other people near you. And if you're willing, we would love to have your story and your deal on our site as well. We think it's going to help the next person be successful, which is what we're all about. Absolutely.

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Gino, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going today? Scott, I'm doing great, bro. How are you doing? I am doing good. Thank you for joining us today. Should we go ahead and jump right to it? Where do you think your money story begins?

That's a great question. When I was born, I was born, hit the home run. I mean, I had two great parents. I mean, born in the U.S., born with two great immigrant parents. That's why money journey started. I thought money is working hard. That was my money blueprint, working hard for money. And fortunately, 30, 40 years ago, when you worked hard, you made a lot of money.

You could really do really well. So that was imprinted in my brain ever since childhood. I got into the restaurant business, worked hard, made great money. 2008 comes around, the seismic shift. They want to call it Great Recession. I just call it, wow, what happened? And my money paradigm shifted again. I said, you know what?

I can't work for money anymore. I have to work for financial freedom. I wish I had gotten that lesson a little bit sooner in life. You know, that's just the way the ball rose. And that's, I think, where it started. And I think it shifted in 2008. And here we are 10 years later. And things radically changed for me.

Well, what happened in 2008? What was your kind of financial position going into the crisis or the recession? And what did that look like for you? Well, Scott, you know, when you get to be my age, I was 38 at the time. I had four kids at the time. I had six kids now. I was working harder. And I was making less money.

And that's frustrating for someone who's been doing something for their whole life. I had one restaurant. My family said, we have to stay small, don't take any risks. So I said, okay, you know what? That works. But in 2008 came, like I said, it was working more hours and making less money. I said, I have to support my family. I have to do something to make more money.

So that was coming from my mindset of I have to work for me, me, me. And when you're not financially free and you're looking to pay the bills, that's what happens. You think about yourself. And fortunately for me, I went to life coaching school. That changed everything. It was a radical shift in my mindset, worrying about other people, creating value for others and doing stuff for others really shifted my mindset. And I was just fortunate that I went to coaching school and, you know, rest of history.

So going back real quick to the, you're working harder and making less and less money, are you saying that you had very few assets and that things were getting tighter and tighter and expenses were kind of creeping up and you weren't able to, your income was actually declining in that period, putting extreme pressure on the family. Is that a good announcement? Yeah, that is. That's pretty good. I mean, back in 2008, I mean, I lived in New York at the time. I moved to Florida a year and a half ago. Everything's expensive in New York. My property taxes, I'll give you an example. We're $27,000 for a house. Property taxes is $27,000. That's what my house paid. Yeah, exactly. That's what I felt. I was

pregnant with a fourth child and everyone's telling me, well, you've got to pay for college. They're going to get married. So you have all those pressures coming on you. And now I realize that's all nonsense, right? So even if you're staying even, your family's growing, your expenses are growing. So I was becoming overwhelmed by all these external forces that I didn't feel like I can control. So when you have that fear, that resistance, you feel like you can't control stuff. You're looking for an, escape. So even if the number stay the same, I was pretty comfortable as far as income comes. I had a pretty good job as far as money coming in. But as I said, as the family grows and as New York goes, it wasn't enough. It felt like it was enough. And I felt like a lot of people in New York, I felt like I was

trapped. What kind of property did you have that had $27,000 in property taxes? It was a five acre property in Putnam County, New York. It's about an hour out of Manhattan. The property taxes in New York, it was a nice house. It was 45% square feet. I built it myself. Like I said, I was comfortable in paying the bills. I had a big family. But at the same time, that's what's happening in New York. And as you'll talk about with demographics and the tax law, people are moving. People are moving from those states. So I had seen that coming. And I just said, I wanted to get to warmer, get to warmer weather. So I saw that on the horizon.

And, you know, Mindy, when you're paying those taxes, you don't think it's crazy. You don't think it's ludicrous, right? It's theft, to be honest with you. But when you step outside of yourself and you say, well, what is everyone else doing? How does everything else look? You say to yourself, well, that's not fair. So that's one of the motivating factors that got me out of New York to say, that doesn't look right to me. Let me look at what everyone else is doing.

And I assess the situation. And I said, I think we need to move. I lived in Wisconsin and I paid $14,000 a year in property taxes. it's now my mortgage is, that's like, that's more than $1,000 a month in property taxes. And now my mortgage. Mine is more than two. And you know what the sad thing is, guys, I have six kids now and we homeschool our kids. So I don't even use the public school system.

So I can say to myself, I can rationalize it if you send your kids to school or whatever. The schools weren't even that great. And it just didn't feel like a viable trade. So it's frustrating. That was a frustrating thing for me. I think I'd have to own eight properties in Denver in order to start paying $27. $7,000 in property tax. You make that number real quick, right?

Yeah, my tax is like $1,100 a year. It used to be $1100 a month. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so you said you went to life coaching school. Does that mean that you are a life coach or you got coaching from someone? No, I became certified as a life coach. Okay. But not for the certification, but more for the personal development.

Because listen, you read all the books, you read Zig Zig Ziglar, you read Jim Rome, you read Tony Robbins, you read Napoleon, Hill. You read George Clayson. You read Jay Abraham. You read all the big guys. But when you're reading something, I wanted more. I wanted a deeper dive. I wanted to know every time I hit a goal, why was I wasn't satisfied? Why did I have to go to the next goal? I wanted to know more about being why I wasn't fulfilled and why I think that's the most important thing in life is being fulfilled and happy. And I didn't know why. So I said, let me take this life coaching thing. And I thought at first it was, you know, who, who. But man, take a deep dive. You really work on yourself.

And it's hard to work on yourself because most people don't want to take the time. And maybe they don't want to find out about themselves. So it was really, for me, it was a revelation about what I was going through and why I wasn't happy and what I was doing, why I was uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough. So for me, it was awesome. I loved it. And you learned so many skills. You learn empowering questions. You learn what your why is. You learn how to set goals. You learn how to talk to people. You know how to build rapport. All these things that we're not taught in school, which we should be taught in school that, you know, I learned in life coaching school. What would you say is your top takeaway from life coaching school? One of them is to be interesting to somebody.

you have to be interested because everyone on the planet has an ego. So we all have ego, right? So we want to fulfill our ego. So the thing to do that is I got to talk, talk, talk, talk. And someone's talking. I'm thinking of something to say before they finish talking. Just listen to somebody. Be present when you're talking to somebody and really care.

And that'll come through in the conversation. And they'll be like, hey, you're a cool dude. I really didn't say two words. But if you think I'm cool, that's fine. And just be there for people. I think that's something that we need more of. Wow. That's fantastic.

I think that's a great takeaway. What kind of started changing? What changes did you make after you went through this process of becoming a life coach and all that kind of stuff? What did that look like in terms of impacting where you lived, your income, your savings, all that kind of stuff? So it doesn't happen overnight, right? I figured out what my why was. My wife was my family. So I created a company called Gino's family. We started from the restaurant. I started sourcing physical products. I started doing gardening videos out of the garden, creating garden, you know, growing vegetables with my kids doing videos, bringing me to. to the kitchen, cooking with them. I was selling physical products. I wrote a cookbook. So I was creating another business. That's what I thought was my why was to work with my family. It was a great learning process to learn how to do YouTube videos, learn how to create sales pages, funnels. I lost money on the deal because it didn't work because my brother did not want to go down that path at the restaurant. So I'm like, dude, we can create multiple streams of income by doing this and have a good time and not be confined to just that one income stream from the restaurant. I wanted to do a food truck.

I want to do catering. I want to do weddings. I wanted to write the cookbook. physical products, YouTube videos, education products. It was just a multifaceted, right? He wasn't there. So I said, you know what? I'm out of here. I need to do something else. I got into multifamily. And I had always liked multifamily because the single family space for me didn't work because I had a full-time job already. So I needed to do something as far as being able to do part-time, being able to buy 20 or 25 units in one space and still have the full-time job. Being that 10% entrepreneur where I don't leave my job all at once. Do it responsibly because I have malice to feed. and I just can't say I'm quitting. I'm out of here. I had to create a plan for myself. So multifamily was the ideal vehicle for me. So I started back in 2011 with my partner, Jake,

looking. It took us 18 months to find a deal. It's not like it happens overnight. I was on your site. I was reading. I was doing real estate coaching. I was doing the life coaching all at once. So all these pieces were moving together. And 2013, we ended up buying our first deal together. So you said that you started stepping away slowly. I want to look at that a little bit more because you are one of you people that we've had on the show who have actually completely quit your real job, your day to day. I have to be there nine to five to put money on the table in order to feed my children job. So you started off by in 2013 buying your first multifamily. How did that feel? Did you, did that take any time away from your real job so that you could focus on the property?

Did you have a property manager right away? I need to make something. very clear to everybody. Oh. It's a lot of work. What's a lot of work? It's getting out of your day job. Okay. If you want to become successful, I worked at the restaurant. I was working 55, 60 hours a week. I don't want to make it seem as if, hey, it was all sunshine and rainbows. I worked during the day. I would stop at 2 o'clock in the afternoon for lunch. So this is my typical day. I'd wake up at 8.30 in the morning, 8 o'clock in the morning, homeschool the kids for about an hour, get to work around 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock. I'd do my lunch. Two o'clock, I'd sit down, do some work. emails on the right deals, call brokers, talk to Jake, my partner, talk to my other partners,

two to three. I'd have people coming over and saying, why are you always working? I'm like, this is not work right now. This is my fun time. So, you know, leave me alone. Three o'clock, go back, and then work till eight, nine o'clock in night, go home and do a couple hours of work and repeat the same thing. And to me, I was energized. That was a lot of fun. I understood that that's what my focus was. That's what my why was to create another business to become financially free through the real estate. I realized that. So typical day for me, that's what I was. it was. And so that first property in 2013, we bought it. Great property. A lot of learning experiences. Jake was down in Knoxville doing day-to-day property management. He ran the property day-to-day because he

wanted to get out of his job. So complimentary with two partners. We both wanted similar goals. He hated his corporate vaccine job. He was a selling vaccines. And I just didn't like my job. So it was a great marriage made in heaven, basically. So we bought our second property three months after our first. and then third property a year after the first one. And it was off to the races for us after that. Let's walk through that first deal. How did you finance that deal? Did you have a stockpile of cash that you put together beforehand?

Were you, you know, a strong savings right there? I know you can't finance it with like a conventional mortgage for 25 units. So what we ended up doing was Jake had sold his, he had moved down there. He had actually stopped looking because he bought a house with his wife. I'm like, dude, you're killing me. We didn't even start yet, right? So he ends up buying a house. So we put it on pause for a few months.

Then we come back to this first deal. It was 25 units. It was $600,000. I ended up getting my brother as a partner. We got 10% owner financing on the deal because it was a rough property. It was 25 units all scattered out. And the owners were really motivated. So 10% owner financing and 10% down payment.

So we needed to come up with $60,000 plus closing costs, which was $83,000. We split it three ways. My brother, myself and Jake. So it was $27,000 each. That's how we did it in the first deal. I would have blown up my IRA. I would have done anything to get into that first deal because I knew it was important. And you know, Jay Scott, as he says, you either have zero deals or you have many deals.

You don't have just one deal. So I knew if I got that one taste, if I got Jake over the finish line on that first deal, he'd be hooked because he never had experience with real estate. He was only a W-2 guy. And when you remember him collecting the checks and collecting the cash, which I don't recommend anybody doing. We had weekly rents at the time. He put all the cash on his desk drawing. He's like, this is it. I found the right thing.

Because, you know, the mindset of going and collecting a paycheck every two weeks is different than it's actually somebody handing you money. So when that happens, you know, most of your listeners, that's addictive. When you can actually control your destiny and people are paying you. That's a great feeling. I think he got hooked on that for his deal. So for that $25,000, $27,000 that you came up with. That was just savings from the years prior. That was something that you had a ability to, okay. Yes. Yeah, it was. So one of the things that's really cool about your story is that you decided to go really big into building financial freedom. It wasn't like you're, you know, it doesn't sound like you were

thinking about, hey, how do I decrease my lifestyle expenses to a certain level and then build just enough passive income to walk away to fund that lifestyle? It was no, how do I build a very large portfolio? Why did you approach your wealth journey with that mindset rather than maybe kind of that like minimum viable success rate? It's funny, Scott, that you say that because I think I was building it the minimum in the beginning, just like everybody else. That's what we're taught. We're taught to be minimal. We're talk to cut expenses. But then I sat down and I said when I moved down to Florida. I said, I'm trying to minimize, but why do I have to do that? I mean, I was taught that way. That was my financial blueprint. That was as T. Harve-Ecker says, your thermostat.

My thermostat was set to $150,000 a year. That's what it was. One year I'll make $130, the thermostat's going to go back up to the next year at $150. If I make $180, the next year, it's going to go back down to $150. We all have a financial thermostat. Donald Trump is in the billions. Somebody might be in the millions. Somebody might be in the hundreds of the thousands. We all have that blueprint. And I fell back on it. And that's what my blueprint was. We can all shatter our blueprint. And that's what I ended up doing moving down here. I shattered it because I wanted to really explode my income. I was always taught. And it's ironic. I had one restaurant for 25 years, but I have a thousand units in five years. That makes absolutely no sense,

right? Does it? Or it doesn't? I mean, I'd been doing something for so long. I was an expert at it. But I just was stuck in that paradigm in that box and never looking outside the box. And I think multifamily, I fell into it. The great thing about it is you have partnerships. you can deal with partnerships. Partnerships can help you expand. But I just wanted to get out and become financially free because you read the stories. You know, financial freedom is something different to everybody. For me, it's working hard, working passionately, working with whoever you want to, whenever you want to. I mean, you see Brandon Turner. He's in Hawaii. He's all over places. He's in Oregon, wherever you want to. That's financial freedom. To me, it wasn't a number. It was just doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do, where I wanted to. I'm not working any less now. I'm probably working just as much, even more. I have more responsibilities. but I'm more driven, more passionate. I'm doing stuff that I like. And it's so much easier to wake up on a Monday morning and say, this is what I want to do.

So that's probably one of the reasons why I figured out go as big as possible. And it's not really about the money. Money is not the cause. Money is the result. As you learn once you become financially free, something in your brain called the, I don't know, a reticulator articulating, whatever the heck that is, you'll see a red car.

You buy a red car. All of a sudden you see more red cars. It's just like that in financial freedom. Whenever you appear, you're out there, you see the opportunities. they'll flow to you because you're not worried about paying the bills. You can focus on other opportunities and those opportunities will come to you in your life. That's what financial freedom is. Well, let's dive into that. So you're saying you did start out with that minimalist mindset.

When did that shift? Was that what the first deal? Was that with the second deal? It was the fourth deal. Fourth to the fifth deal. It was a 281 unit deal. It was $11 million. We had 20% owner financing. And this is how many years after the first? This is 2015. This is August of 2015, two and a half years after. Now, I have, I had a partner with Jake and me. Great partner, great mentor. You need to get partners. You need to have mentors help you out. I'm in my shed at the restaurant. I'm putting away those container tins, those tins to go. I'm putting away all the stuff. It's $10 an hour work, right? I'm on the phone with Jake and I'm negotiating an $11 million real estate deal. Two hundred eighty-eighty-one units. And I stopped myself and that was my shift in life. I said, I'm more worth more than $10 an hour. I'm worth an $11 million deal. And that's when everything changed for me because I'm like, why am I wasting my time? And that day, August of 2015, when we closed, I said to myself, I'm leaving the restaurant. I don't care what happens. I'm better than working $10 an hour.

So that was my shift for me. Okay. So besides that $10 an hour stuff, what was your typical day like in the month before? And then what did you shift to in the month after that revelation? Okay. So Tuesday morning, I'd go into the restaurant, clean shrimps. We did about 500 pounds of chicken cutlets a week on average. That's a lot of chicken, right?

500 pounds, 150, 200 pounds of shrimps a week. It was a lot of work. It was grinding work. It was satisfying in the fact that you get something done. It does, right? You get something done. At the end of the day, you get paid. At the end of the week, you get paid.

But you rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. It's financial stupidity because it's just a job, right? But I didn't know that. That's the way I was trained. October of 2015, I said to my brother, I'm going to be weaning off the job. I'm going to take off Monday through Thursdays. I'm going to work Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the restaurant. So Monday through Thursday, I started Jake and Gino and I started the education.

We started writing a book. I started working on the portfolio a lot more, doing more day-to-day with helping Jake out. So I wean myself off. So from October of 2015, March of 2016, I said to my brother, I said, I'm out. I'm done. I've gotten enough. Jake and Gino wasn't making money, but I had enough money coming in from the properties to actually help me out. So my brother bought me out of the restaurant.

And I had to leave New York. I had to make that cut because they would see me at home on the phone. And they say, well, you're not really working. Can you come in today and work? And I'm just like, bothers me. I got to get away. I need to have that separation. So it was a long process for me to do that, you know?

So if I can summarize my own words here to make sure I wrap my head around all of what you're saying, you're in this restaurant business and you're doing the work of a cook or whatever it is in the restaurant that you can hire out, it's unskilled for the most part. You show somebody how to do it once and they can do it, but they can do it within a week, they can figure out how to do it. And you make a decision right there, this is not the work that is my highest and best value. I'm going to hire this to somebody else. I'm going to get out of it immediately. And then within it, and so within a week or two, you're out of doing that. several days a week, and by the end of the month or two, you're out entirely from that line of work in general. And this, and what I think is interesting here, if I'm thinking about

how this applies to your ordinary person listening, this, I think, is probably true of a lot of self-employed people and a lot of entrepreneurs out there, right? But what if you are a full-time employee? Do you ever get, do you ever talk to people that are full-time employees looking to kind of repeat your thing? How do you think through that same type of, because it still applies there. But how do you think through that scenario and how you can get out of doing that kind of work, working for work's sake, working hard and getting nowhere. It's really hard. It's really difficult. You know why? Because we're trained to do that, right? It's like the golden handcuffs. It's the 40 hours a week. It's safety and security. And it always comes back to your why. Like, you know, why are you here?

We all have a sole purpose. There's our sole purpose to have a Monday through Friday construct, which is really a really a human construct. That doesn't make any sense to me. If you really sit back and think about that. That doesn't make any sense. So people have to have a higher awareness, have a higher consciousness of what they want to do. And I've got a lot of people who are really high level earners, really high level earners, but they work 60 to 70 hours a week. They have no control. They can be on the chopping block. So when you work with somebody, let's see your life coaching somebody, you ask them all these questions. You let them fill out a whole questionnaire and work on themselves. And they have to have a sole purpose.

They have to have a reason why. Once you have your reason why, I think there'll be clues and tell tell signs to do how to do it, if that makes any sense. Absolutely. So I think the why is a huge part of it, but I think that a second part of it, I wonder, it was the other income you had created from those first three deals. Do you think you would have been able to go after that why in the same way if you didn't feel that you had at least a little bit of income and cash available for other purposes outside of your day job there? That's a great question because I'm not sure I tried to do with Gino's family. I worked a year and a half to two years on that venture. I failed. So do you see what happens? There's a little pothole in the road. I didn't stop.

I kept going. If it wasn't real estate, maybe it would have been stock trading. Maybe it would have been commodity trading. Maybe it would have been something else. Maybe it would have been digital marketing, some other forum, maybe we've been writing books, but I know who would have been something. I would have found something because at the time, as you can see, most people in their late 30s to 40s are the bloomers. Because midlife crisis, I didn't want to pour. I wanted to figure out what to do, you know, so that was my midlife crisis. So that's what happens. You get to be a certain age when you say to yourself, there's more life than just punching the clock. And I think if you have a higher awareness and you have really good mentors and really good role models and you're listening to those messages every day,

I had been listening to those messages for years, listening to Tony Robbins, listening to, you know, Zig Zigler. And finally, they permeated. And now that I listened to them, I'm like 10 years ago, wow, I didn't hear that the same way that I do now. So as you grow as a person, as you grow with more purpose, you can start figuring this stuff out. Yeah, I love it. And I just think that that is so necessary, all that. And I think it just aided a little bit along. That extra boost comes as you have a savings rate and some passive income that you're slowly starting to build.

that's the ability to make that jump becomes easier and easier and easier and easier. And maybe it's like this thing where the why on its own can be powerful enough for some people. But the why compounded with a bit of financial stability makes it all incrementally easier year after year, month after month to actually go all in like you did after that why. But sometimes people can use that as an excuse too. I mean, like, you know what? I don't have enough cash flow. I don't have income.

I didn't. When I moved down to Florida, I did my budget. I tell everyone get on whatever tool you use. I use every dollar. I use Dave Ramsey. I think if you have very little limited financial intelligence, I think everyone should read Dave Ramsey. I don't think that's the end all.

I think that's the beginning. You need an emergency fund. You need to figure out what your burn rate is every month. I know exactly what I need to make every month. I know what my income is every month. I want to push my income. So budget is used, not just to cut expenses or to actually reallocate your funds. So if you're going out to dinner five times a week, maybe you should go out the dinner

four times a week and spend some morning on Amazon. at least you can take control of what you're spending because you're going to need that in real estate. You're going to need to have an operating expense and a KAPX expense. But you also need to be able to pump your income up because you're going to have different sources of income. You have your earned income. You have your passive income and you have your portfolio income. So those three, when you're doing your budget, I need to make more passive income. Well, maybe I need to write more books.

Maybe I need to get on more coaching calls, whatever it is. You need to do a budget. That's the very first thing you need to do. The second thing you need to do is you need to allocate and create a financial freedom account. You need to save. Now, saving for the sake of saving is not a good thing. Saving for the sake of buying assets is what you need to do. We're taught middle class, me included, that you're saving for a specific event, whether it's retirement, whether it's college, whether it's for something. No, I save to buy assets because when I buy an asset, whether it's a whole life or whether it's an asset like a property,

the property's paying me back every month. I can allocate that and I'm paying my daughter's college from the cash hole for one of my properties. If I had put that in the savings account, earning 2% I'm losing inflation and I'm losing on taxes. But more importantly, when I'm done paying the college, the savings account is depleted. There's nothing there left. That's the big problem. There's bigness number with the middle class, what I was learning. So the other thing is the taxes and the inflation on that money. So it's really important. You start reading these books and taking face value. Dave Rans has got a lot of great information. You should have an emergency fund. You should have your insurance taken care of. You should have a lot of those steps done. But don't

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and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registered Agent.com slash money free. So when you made that decision that day in August 2015 at the restaurant to begin cutting back and then ultimately transition completely out of that, did you have all this in place or as you have some of it in place and then get it all together really quickly and then move on to the real estate stuff? The most important thing that I had in place was my wife who was really

understanding and trusting. So I think anybody who starts this journey really have a frank conversation. So she saw the pain. She saw that I worked on Christmas Eve for 15 hours. She saw that I worked on Easter. I want to go to church on Easter. I'm working, you know. So she saw the struggle that I had and the internal struggle and I just didn't want to do it anymore. So she was on board. She had faith in me, which is great. We gave me a lot of confidence. And me on the same angle, that's why I'm working so hard because I don't want to let her down. So it works. It's a two-way street when you're married. You have to work for each other. So she gave me that latitude. she gave me the confidence in me to take this leap.

And if she didn't, I don't know if I would have been able to. So whether it's moving down to Florida, whether it's leaving the restaurant, whether it's all these steps that I've taken. So I'm sorry, what was the rest of that question? I'm focusing on my wife. That's what happens when I focused on my wife. Yeah, you had the support from your wife in place when you made that transition. You just talked about a budget, an emergency fund,

the savings that you had deployed in assets to produce income, right? What I'm asking is, how much that did you have in place at the moment you left? Right? And it sounds like at least you had a support of your wife. Yeah, I did. And I know, I had the budget working. And I actually went to Dave Ramsey for financial coaching. So I had to learn that after. But I mean, intuitively, when you're an immigrant and your son of an immigrant, you know how to save. You know how to delay that instant gratification. So instant gratification is like one of the biggest death knells of our society. And I'm trying to teach my kids that because if you can't put off something and have to go into debt, how are you going

to invest that money? How are you going to save that money? I just teach my kids. If you can't buy a $300 TV with cash, you don't buy the TV, it's a luxury. A car is an absolute luxury. This is my partner who's a hedge fund trader who makes tons of money and he's actually telling me a car is a luxury. So a guy with that kind of financial intelligence knows that when you have extra money, you buy the car. So you focus on, I didn't have that much debt. I was very fortunate. I had no car debt. I had no credit card debt. I had no student debt. So I was okay in that respect. But trying to get ahead in life, it seemed like putting that 10% away every year was very difficult. It was difficult at the time for me.

Gotcha. What was some of the big achievements that you kind of saw in that first year after you left the restaurant? I mean, I started the podcast and I started writing the book. And all of a sudden, when you have quote unquote free time, you can start doing things that you like. You can start talking to people. And from that podcast, I started making relationships in the space. I started learning who the vendors were. I started going out to meetings.

I started networking with people, things that couldn't do at the restaurant, right? And it was frustrating. I was able to write articles. I was able to send out articles to people. I was able to create the credibility book and actually talk to people about investing and trying to get investors on board. I couldn't do a lot of this work when I was working at the restaurant. What were some of the big financial milestones that were a result of that? You know, was it more deals, income from the business that you created and worked on from there? What did that look like for you from your personal finance journey? Well, I mean, after I left the restaurant, it was just focusing on that

passive income from the properties and collecting more property. So after I left the restaurant, we had closed on a property and it was at 650 units. So we had a lot of units between the three of us. So I needed a big number. Remember, six kids in New York? I was living in a scarcity mindset. I need to kill it as much money as possible. And that's what happens.

You live in that mindset. Enough is never enough. Because the problem is you start putting money in the bank. And what are you saving it for? You're saving it for a rainy day? What the hell? What does that mean a rainy day? You know what I'm saying?

You want to deploy that money. You want to enjoy that money. That's why you're making money. I think you're making it to enjoy it and to redeploying. employing, to reallocate it. So I was afraid at the time. So when I left in 2016, we had about 650 units. So I was on the cost, just barely there. Guys, when you're at 80% of where you should be, take the leap. That's what I say. Take the leap. There's a book called a 10% entrepreneur. Sort of the way through it. It's about people who have these skill sets. It's okay to work on your

W2 job while you're figuring out your financial freedom and your passive income. You don't have to do it in a year or two years. It can take you three years or four years or five years. There's no rush in this. I figured it out. You said you left in 2016. Did you leave your job in 2016? Were you still there for three years? No, I left the restaurant in March of 2016. I left it full time.

So gave it to my brother. I said, you know what? If you want to give me a couple thousand bucks a month because you can't pay me out, that's great. Another form of passive income because he can't pay me out. So I'm making money on that. So I said, I'm done. But so what I ended up doing was transitioning into Jake and Gino full time with the

education side of the business and helping Jake out with the day-to-day manager of the properties that were. located in Tennessee. Yeah, so Revelation in August 2015, transitioned fully out by March of 2016. Yeah, exactly. Okay, I was looking for the timeline because I'm for some reason still thinking we're in 2013. Okay, perfect. So by the time you left completely, how many units did you own? Was that the 650 number? Mm-hmm. Yeah, 650. 650. 650 spread out over several spaces. Are you in one area? Are you investing in one area? Are you investing in When area are you investing long distance?

We are, Jake lives in Knoxville. So I'm investing in the Knoxville market right now. We have 900 units there and we just closed on a property in Louisville, Tennessee. We did our first syndication, 132 units. So we're over 1,000 units right now. But it can accelerate really quickly. I mean, once you start, once you put it down and you start seeing the money come through and you start seeing these deals and you become competent at what you do, you need to do one,

two, three, four deals. After that, it's like, wow, you still get scared. You still get that feeling in your stomach. But you can say to yourself, I can figure it out. So that's what we end up learning. Your first property cost how much money? 600,000. 600,000 in 2013.

And at the end of 2015, you were buying $11 million properties? Yes. That escalated quickly. It did because I had a, my partner was great. He had a strong balance sheet. In multifamily, you basically need somebody running day to day. You need somebody raising capital if you're going to syndicate. You need somebody to find a,

deals and need somebody with a strong balance sheet. Those are the four top things you need multifamily. It's not rocket science. My partner had a strong balance sheet so we can qualify for the loan, which was really huge. He was generous. He lent the business money for the down payment. So we were able to get into a really big deal on our third deal. And timing is everything in real estate. I got lucky with the timing. But, you know, Scott, as you know, it's not really luck. It's taking advantage of what's going on. And hard work equates luck. If I wasn't working hard and I wasn't working towards my passion, I never would have gotten lucky doing that. You can't get lucky if you don't take a shot.

That's right. That's right. How did you find your partner? How do you know Jake? Jake and both Mike from the restaurant. Jake was a pharmaceutical rep. He was doing caterings out of my restaurant. So he'd come in to the restaurant with his sheet. He'd have a weekly, monthly sheet, and he'd be doing caterings for doctors' offices. So he's the only pharmaceutical rep that I've ever seen that was super organized, would say to me, January 15th, I need a delivery down to the Bronx at this doctor.

So I'm like, this guy really knows what he's doing. He left in 2011 because he hated the taxes. He hated New York. He moved to Tennessee and he said, you know what? If I'm down there, I'll look at real estate with you. So I said, when you find a deal, let's get together and let's partner up. So that's how we ended up partnering. And my partner, Mike, was a customer.

So I'd have my chef's chef coat on and I have my pizza sauce on it. So he comes in one day and he's trading commodities. He's a smart guy. And he starts talking about China. So I just reciprocated. I start talking about oil and he looked at me half cocky. like, how does this guy know this stuff? It's because I was prepared. It's because that was the moment that I needed to be prepared to speak to somebody who had extra capital. And I just, I just brought it.

I brought the pain. So we're talking about inflation and all that. And I said, listen, we're doing some, you know, investing down in Tennessee. He had some single family homes up in Connecticut, which they don't cash low. I mean, it's just so he knew the real estate. But from that paradigm, so I said, no, we're doing multifamily's value ads. And he sort of didn't know, educated him on it. And three months later, we ended up buying a property together. That's awesome. What is next for you? Bring my kids to tennis this afternoon. Get up tomorrow morning.

I'm actually starting a coaching program with my wife. She's actually doing marriage coaching. So it's a little bit of a battle because in the first she goes, you know, coaches really don't do anything, do they? You know, joke around me. Now she sees the depth of it, you know, that it's all about relationships. It's all about listening, empowering questions.

You know, people know the answer to their own questions. It's your ability to pull it out, given that safe space to talk. So I'd like to do some coaching with her, group coaching with her. That's something that I think is going to be really a lot of fun. And just to continue Jake and Gino and to continue to buy properties, we started a syndication company where we did our first syndication. And we learned the first one we've ever done.

So it's almost like buying a new property. It's a different business. And just continue to do that, you know. Yeah. So basically you're saying you're in a financially secure position right now. You've got a large portfolio, a good business. Everything's solid there. But you're going to continue doing the work you like to do, which is this new project.

and then continue to buy more and more real estate and talk about real estate because you enjoy that. Is that accurate? Yeah. And I like to include my kids. If they want to do what they don't, my daughter is a sophomore in college. She wants to do youth ministry and philosophy. That's great. I want at least to have her understanding because Catholics, people of religion, sometimes battle with money.

They think money is evil, right? The love of money is evil. Because I tell her, Gab's my daughter, I said, who builds hospitals, who builds churches, who builds universities? I'm sorry. It's not poor people. It's people with money. So if we need to do something, famous priest told me, no margin, no mission.

So let's figure out how we're going to make the money and let's allocate the money responsibly. So we've also started an arm of our company called Randcares because we want to do something charitable. So at our live event, somebody came up and said, hey, you want to start a charity? It's great. So let's start that. So that's another focus that we've got going on. That's awesome. Is there anything else that we should be asking you were talking about before we move on to the famous four here?

always be reading and always educate yourself and always surround yourself with people that you like, people that you admire, people that you want to aspire to, and always be around mastermind groups because you want to be around like-minded people. Man does not attract what he wants. He attracts what he is. So if you're not a good person, guess what you're going to attract? I didn't attract financial freedom five years ago because it was in the restaurant around people that I shouldn't have been around. I'm the smartest dude in the room. Not a good thing. So as soon as I started surrounding myself with the Jakes of the world, with the mics of the world,

with the Dillons of the world, I elevated myself. I think that's really important. I think people need to step out. I think people need to invest in their education. I've spent a lot of money educating myself. You have to have skin in the game in life, whether it's looking at a deal, whether it's investing with other people. You need to really invest in yourself.

And it's not a cost. It's an investment. You'll always have that knowledge. You can always bring that knowledge forward. And don't stop learning. Once you stop learning, once you become an expert, you're done, bro. That's it. So you were self-educating prior to meeting. I forget his name, the business partner you met in the restaurant. Yes, yes. And what did that look like for you? Were you consuming audio books, reading, how did that?

I don't want to date myself, but we're talking like, we're talking like video consets. We're talking CDs in the car. I mean, I did Dave Lindahl's coaching. I did a lot of rich dad coaching. I was on your site. I was reading one book a week. But I think, you know, you've got to read the real estate books. And the mechanics is not really that difficult. I think it's the psychological. Mechanics are 20% psychological, working on yourself, not self-sabotaging yourself, thinking positively all those messages. That's 80% of the gig.

And most people don't do that. Don't look at that. Yeah, I want to just comment because I think that that is the key to getting everything else going, right? Because effectively, you are who you surround yourself with, right? If your readings, Zigler, you know, for example, you're surrounded by hip. That's right. You're surrounded by that content. That's your friend.

That's the voice in your head, right? Everything, when I was working my first job, I started to say, well, I was just listening to lots of content. Like that for me, it was listening to a lot. I also read, but I listened to far more books that I physically read. That's just how I like to consume information. And the voices in my head, my friends for that period, as ridiculous as that sounds, were kind of guiding me towards saying, hey, like, what I'm doing is normal.

This approach to begin building a better life and achieving financial freedom is normal. And what everyone else is doing is not normal. because I'm surrounded by people like that. And then eventually I found a mastermind group, right? I'm sorry, I'm taking over this part of the conversation. No, go ahead. But I found a mastermind group. And then I surrounded myself with more and more people that were like-minded and that I kind of could learn from.

I don't think of as ever the smartest person in the room, but surrounded by people where I'm truly learning lots of things around. And I think it's exact same story. I think it all starts with that self-education piece. If you're looking to really break out into that big success space at some point, it's that relentless pursuit of self-education and then the right people, right? So, Scott, the funny thing is we go to college for four years, right? And after four years, we get a degree. Shouldn't you spend at least 18 months to two years to learn real estate, to learn multifamily before you do a deal? I mean, that's not asking a lot. Is it you spend 150 grand in college? And I just think if you can go out

18 to 24 months, consume as much as you can, maybe you can get a real estate license, maybe buy a duplex, live in one to try to cut your costs and do that and say, okay, this is what I want to do. but don't expect to have it done instantaneously because there's a lot of hard work. There's a lot of work that goes into it. So I think people should be clear on that. Yeah, absolutely. Every bit of information you consume increases your probability of success and reduces your risk of failure to the point where at some point you're going to be capable of taking action with a reasonable probability of success. I think a trick is understand what that tradeoff is, is that 100 hours of content, is it 1,000 hours of content, is it 10,000 hours of content somewhere between probably 100 and 10,000 to give you guys.

That's a very nice, easy range to go with. You're probably capable of making that first action depending on your financial position. But I think that's absolutely right. And why not take that entire education for less than a couple hundred bucks, cost of 20 books? That's all that is. The cost of 20 books. You could borrow them at the library for free, provided you return them on time. That was always my problem.

That's always my problem. I just want to write a check to them every year at the beginning of the year. Here's a hundred bucks because I don't want to use that up. Okay, Gino, this was fantastic. I learned so much and I have like a thousand notes. Ooh, here's a hundred things I have to do. Thanks to Gino. So thanks for the homework project.

It is time now for our famous four questions. These are the same five questions that we ask all of our guests. Four questions and a command, really. What is your favorite finance book? You rattled off about a thousand names earlier. I will give you two. Okay. You can have two.

First one, everyone. needs to read is the richest man in Babylon. Real easy book. The laws. And the second one, which is the guru of all gurus is Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. Read that book now and read that book five years from now. And I will guarantee you be like, wow, there's so much knowledge and so much information in this book. And everyone rips him off. So it took him 25 years to write it, whatever, but awesome book. I love both those books. Yeah, the Babylon book is my favorite. I have not yet read Think and Grow Rich. So I am going to add that to my list of homework from Gino. audio, good. All right. What was your biggest money mistake?

Thing is, when you invest in real estate, know the market, know the sponsor. And the two biggest words in real estate you guys probably know is due diligence. I bought a mobile home park about 12 years ago. The sponsor was not a good sponsor. Should have done more homework. Should have fly down to the property. Should have taken look at the property. And life coaching told me it's my responsibility. It's not his fault. It's my fault. And once I got over that, I never forgave the guy, but I can forget about it. Hey, chalked up as a loss. It motivated me to actually become more educated and take control of my financial destiny.

So I'm glad I lost that money. Really, I'm a guy. Still the guy is. He's still a dirtbag. It is what it is. But I was the one who made the mistake. It was my fault not doing my homework. When you say sponsor, what do you mean by sponsor?

I mean, I know what you mean, but I want to make clear for everybody that's listening. Sure. What happened is he was raising money for the deal. So I was sort of a passive investor. So I was sort of quiet. So he was the sponsoring the deal. He's the one who found a deal. He was running the deal. He was raising capital. And now the way I look back at it, he probably did it illegally because he was creating a syndication. But we didn't have any syndication docs. So that's what you learn. You end up learning that nothing was done properly. Operating agreements were incorrect. So when the deal went south, he lost all his money. He had no money in the deal. It was our money, our investors money. So we lost all the money. So just be careful who you sponsor with, who you partner with, make sure that they're ethical, make sure they're honest, make sure they're moral, make sure they work really hard and make sure they do what they say they're going to do. That's good advice for just life in general.

Okay, what is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Always focus on becoming financially free. Be hungry for that because once you become financially free and your bills are paid, you can focus on anything you want to do. You don't have to go to work one day. You can go to the beach if you want. But I guarantee you, once your bills are paid, you're going to want to figure out what else to do. I mean, once you figure out how to start a business, you can start a business in any space.

It's the same thing. It's replicatable. So that's where we're creating other multiple streams of income because we're able to because we figured it out. So I think anyone young on this thing, become a producer. Don't become a consumer. We're all focused on consuming and consuming and buying products. People who make money are the ones who are producing those products.

So if you can think from a very young age to become a producer, it's huge. Yeah. It's kind of like the, you ever play the game cash flow from Rich Dad education. So like the game is basically like you have a little. little track on the inside, which is the rat race, right? And it's like, you know, get a jet ski, have a kid, you know, it's like very difficult to get out of the rat race, right, to become financially free. But once you get out of the, out of the rat race, you're like on the fast track, right? You know, the outside thing. It's like, meet the mayor, buy a $5 million apartment,

apartment complex, you know, start three more businesses. And it's like the journey really like explodes and begins after financial freedom. And it's like a lot, it's truly parallel to real life. right and it's what you're experiencing right now and it's frustrating you're in the rat race for tons of years right and then you you break out and all of a sudden every opportunity imaginable is available to you and you're able to seize that one by one i need to recommend another book so another book that really helped me out or is helping out a lot of my students book is called stick with it and that and that's a problem right because nowadays i keep talking about where financial freedom to me was a dream you're looking at this dream here you know how hard it is to become financially free you need to reverse engineer that.

So the book shows you how to do that by setting goals, and it has an acronym science where you actually do step ladders. You do daily tasks every day to achieve those goals. And then from achieving those goals, you might pay your first deal. So to me, the dream was that first 25 units. But what did I need to do? I reverse engineer it without even knowing about it.

So it's all about the community you're in. It's all about doing those daily tasks. It's all about keeping it easy. So I really recommend that book. I think it's an awesome book for everyone starting out. Don't be overwhelmed. enjoy the process. I didn't enjoy climbing that mountain as much as I should have. That's another regret that I had. I think a lot of us do.

We're looking to buy the shiny object. When you buy it, no big deal. I'm just being completely honest with you. You feel good for a little while, but that's not what you really should be shooting for. You should be shooting for that financial freedom. All right. One last thing here. Out of curiosity, do you have a formalized goal setting and tracking some sort of formalized plan where you set goals, track them, record progress, that kind of thing. You know, we have weekly meetings. All of our different companies have those weekly meetings. So we have 30, 60, 90, 180, 8 gold.

We have a vivid vision. We have mission statements. For myself personally, I stopped putting passive income numbers. I don't need to do that anymore because that's not my motivation. I'd rather write down my weekly tasks. And at the end of the week, I love for my thing. And I like to write down my weekly wins. Because you have to celebrate your wins.

Got a deal on the contract. You talk to a broker. I did a podcast on bigger pockets. Whatever those weekly wins are, You need to actually enjoy them because they will raise your level of energy. You'll stay engaged and you'll want to continue to do really good. So, you know, go out there. I'm not saying, hey, I'm great on the best, but at the same time, acknowledge that you're putting in the work and you're getting some kind of success from that work.

Well, I had a weekly win. I got to interview Gino Barbaro. Likewise, bro. All right. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Why was Jesus Irish? I don't know why. Oh, why?

He had 12 drinking buddies. he lived at home his whole life and his mother thought he was God. Half people listening are going to love that one. And the other half are going to be okay. That's okay. Sorry.

If I got 50, 50, I'm doing okay. You know what I'm saying? I will say that you got to laugh out of me and most of these jokes are stupid. I'm sorry. Stupid is not the right word. Unenjoyable to me. Yes.

I will say they're not entertaining. Okay. here comes the command. Tell me where people can find out more about you. Please. Very simple. Jake and gino.com. And we have a podcast wheelbarrow profits. You can find me there. Got stuff on there. I love to talk to you. Gino at jacanjino.com is my email. You're going to shoot me an email. I love to talk real estate. Awesome. We will put all of these links in the show notes. And we will link to all of these books that you recommended as well. There's going to be a lot of links in this episode.

That's right. A lot of reading. A lot of reading, right? A lot of reading, but that was your tip, too. Always be reading, always be learning, always continuing to educate and have skin in the game in your life. And there's not a magic formula. But there is a magic formula. Continue to learn. Continue to educate yourself. So technically there is a magic formula.

Don't be lazy. I think that work hard for assets, work hard for knowledge, don't work hard for money, right? Ooh. That's what I'm trying to take away, right? That's the big takeaway. Don't peel shrimp and work hard. I feel like that was productive all day. Dude, I felt great.

Yeah, but I felt great. But at the end of the day, it's like, dude, I got to peel 10 pounds of shrimp tomorrow. It's the same thing again tomorrow. And it's not a really uplifting adventure. You know what I'm saying? That is not fun. Yeah. Although I wanted to cook for me when I come down to Florida.

I'll be in Florida in a couple of months. St. Augustine. That's where I live. So hit me up. I love St. Augustine. You guys have a great brewery. You have an amazing distillery. And then a bunch of other touristy.

It's awesome. It is wonderful down here. I really want to appreciate and thank you guys for inviting me on here. I had a great time. You guys do great work. Fantastic. Keep educating people because that's what I think your passion is. So keep doing it because it's a lot of fun, right? It is a lot of fun. It's great to get those emails. Hey, I discovered because of you. I'm so happy I could share with you. That's fantastic. Gino, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And we will talk to you soon. Thanks, guys. Take care. All right. That was Gino Barbaro from jacanjina.com and wheelbarrow profits. Mindy, what do you think? I love talking to Gino. I love hearing his story. I am at this point in my life where I want to start getting bigger. And his whole show was so inspirational.

Here's a thousand books you should read. Okay. Now I've got, you know, homework for the next month and a half from Gino. But I'm super excited to do it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's always refreshing and interesting to hear from a big thinker, someone who's really going after everything and someone who's achieved financial freedom and is using that freedom to go after their maximum potential. Scott, that was awesome. Shall we get out of here today? Let's do it. Okay. From The Bigger Pockets Money show, this is Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen about to butcher some Italian for Gino. which means see you later, Alligator, if you don't speak Italian or if I totally watch that up. That was awesome. Bye. Bye. Bye.

I know that. That much. Ciao. Ciao.