Podcast appearances and mentions of jake i'm

As the coronavirus causes more and more schools, more students and teachers are turning to apps to fill the gap. Ross and Jake Whiddon talk about the potential of apps for language learning, the limitations of current software and how apps will influence classrooms in the future.Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone. I'm Ross Thorburn. Welcome back to "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." This week, I'm talking with my friend Jake Whiddon. Jake's a diploma in TESOL qualified teacher. Over the last year or so, Jake has been working for a company that develops language learning apps.As the coronavirus is causing more and more schools to close, and more and more learning switching from offline to online, we'll find that language learning apps are going to be playing a bigger part in teachers' and students' lives than they were before.In this conversation, Jake and I discuss some of the advantages of language learning apps. How they affect the classroom? Where they will be going in the future? Enjoy the conversation.Ross: Welcome back, Jake.Jake Whiddon: Thanks, Ross. Good to be here.Ross: Jake, you are now working for a company that does language learning app. Let me just start off talking about what are some of the potential benefits of using an app to learn language.Jake: Probably, the biggest benefit is the idea of learner autonomy and motivation. If you hand over the power for them, and the control that says, "You can now take control of your learning." You have an app. You can open it. You can play some games. You can see some feedback. You can see how well you're going.It's, sometimes, a little bit more motivating, than if you have to be in a class. All your peers are around you. The teacher's telling what you're doing wrong or right. This is a very personal thing. That's one of the biggest benefits of having an app or online learning does.Ross: I was thinking about this recently with work, and with Katrina was doing in Chinese in front of a group of about 30 people on a conference call is still pretty nerve wracking. Comparing that to standing up in front of 30 people, and speaking my second language, it's much less scary.That's one of the things that people don't talk enough is how much that takes away that the fear within you. You don't have all these eyes on.Jake: Exactly. We should make the very distinct difference. Online learning is still engaging with someone. App based learning is you and the app learning together. Getting feedback, trying things.Ross: Let's talk about that. You mentioned their feedback. Answering a question and getting immediate feedback. If you're in a class, I feel the normal way that would happen, would be the teacher gives instructions for an activity in the course book. The students spend the next 10 or 15 minutes doing the activity. Then, the teacher goes through the answers with them and...Jake: Exactly, It could be the next day. It could be, "Here's your homework, go home and do it." I've got to hand it to the teacher. I have no attachment to what I was doing, once I get my feedback.In an app, if you get something wrong, it tells you instantly I got it wrong. Usually, might give you the right answer. It's very meaningful instant feedback, which is more valuable. It's not like, I'm going to get a high score in my test. It's right now, I want to get this right. It's a very personal thing.Ross: There is a huge difference in ownership there. One of them, I'm passive and I'm waiting for someone else to tell me whether I got it right or wrong.Jake: Which is crazy. Naturally, in your daily life as a child, I'm going to go try something. Climb a tree, I fall off. [laughs] I try again. I'm on my bike, I fall off. What do I do? I jump back on the bike. It's only once, we get with language learning or with classrooms, where we seem to say there's a separation between, I've done something and I'm going to find out whether I did well at it.Really what technology is doing, and software is doing, is it's enabling kids to get back into that really pure way of learning. I got it wrong. I'll try again.Ross: Another benefit here potentially, is that with the classroom version of it. The 10 questions that you have to ask, all the kids in the class are getting the same 10 questions. They might be too easy for some students in the class. They might be too difficult for others. That can become demotivating for everyone except the kids in the middle, right?Jake: It can. Where are you trying to get to here, Ross?Ross: Presently, the thing with the app, or the software or whatever, is able to push questions just at the right level of the students where they're able to get most of them right. But no...Jake: From my experience, I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of developers. Everyone says that they have some sort of algorithm that feeds back and allows kids to see what they got wrong. In reality though, Ross, I don't think that that's exactly what everyone is doing.The simplest form of it is that, "I got this wrong" and the algorithm would know, you got that wrong, and it will feed it back to you. Apps like Duolingo do that.I don't know if that completely is what we're talking about when it's this magic formula of AI, that everyone talks about when they're marketing their products. That's where it should be going. It will go eventually, that each child will be on a personalized learning journey.Ross: Kids are already on a personalized learning journey anyway, in a class. It's just the teaching doesn't match the learning...Jake: Exactly, exactly. What's happened now is that, we can have kids learning on an app and have data on every single interaction. You can get data on, if there's different games in that app, you can find out which games that they were more motivated by. If there's a quiz in the app, they can see the results on the quiz and which games were more likely to lead to a higher score in the quiz.We can see which language points lead to a higher score. If you kept on playing, which games motivated you to play more games later. All these different granular pieces of data that help with the educator ‑‑ it could be the teacher or the facilitator or the company ‑‑ to make sure those kids are actually moving forward their language learning, which then leads to efficacy, which we've never known before.Anyone who's listening has been a teacher in a classroom, they all leave, and they think, "I don't know what my kids really learned today. I know what they said in class. I know what they appear to understand. I know what they got in their test. But I don't know what they've acquired. I really don't know."Ross: Taking a couple steps back, you mentioned the different types of games, different types of interactions that might happen. You have some example? Obviously, a lot of this is based on a lot of multiple choice questions, right? But presenting those in different ways.Jake: Yeah, it's really fascinating. Something that I've learned from the coding is one fascinating thing. All the coding is the same, it's multiple choice. You get an app like Duolingo or any of the apps and it's usually, here's four choices, A, B, C, D. Tap the right button, right or wrong.What I've discovered from where I'm working now is that you can have those same four choices in a variety of ways, which I never realized. Rather than having four colors, just statically on the screen, those could be bubbles floating around the screen. Then, someone has to actually think about it, I can try to touch it and find it. There's more cognitive process happening.It's still an A, B, C, D test. The gameplay is more engaging than just seeing four things on a screen.Ross: This obviously feeds back into the motivation of the students. It's just like being in a language class where if you're doing interesting activities, that's going to keep you motivated and engaged, minute by minute. It's the same on an app. If you're doing the same multiple choice questions, it's going to get pretty boring.Jake: Often now, apps break into two types of learning games. They'll call them accuracy games or experience games. An accuracy game means there is a right or wrong answer. If you get this wrong, it's going to affect the accuracy of your score. There are other types of activities, which might be a song playing, and you just have to hit the words, but that's an experience game.That's input and seeing what happens. But, you're focusing on the input, being not wrong or right. If the word comes up, you hit it. If you don't hit it, it doesn't mean you're wrong. Some learners do better when they're doing experience games a lot. Some do better from accuracy games.What you could have is a different path. Some kids might like to see a song, a dialogue and this type of game. What will happen is, we can actually personalize journeys on the language they're learning and on the game type.Ross: Obviously, teachers in classes will be able to relate to this. You can see different students engaging more with different activities in every class.Jake: Some apps allow you to send out homework. The kids will do something on the app. Then, the teacher can see a whole class aggregate score. They'll know, how well they're doing with a certain lexical set. Say, it's colors. There's a 90 percent on blue, green, red, yellow, but orange, it's a 40 percent. What am I going to focus on in the next class?Ross: Focus on orange.Jake: I'm going to focus on orange, right? Now, the teachers are empowered by the data to be better teachers. They can focus on exactly what the kids need to know and not what they should know.Ross: Find out where the learners are and teach them accordingly. If the app's giving you all this data on where the learners are, that's going to let you do a better job.Presumably also, there's another layer to that. You're talking about the app giving data to the teachers to help the teachers teach the students accordingly. But also, the app's going to use that data to teach the student to...Jake: Exactly, right. Number one, the app already will feedback and ensure that the child, the learner, keeps getting better at that one particular language point. Parents have more information now.Parents used to drop their kids off at offline schools. Two hours sit outside. Come out and they have any idea how well they're going. Everyone's had a parent‑teacher night. Parents meet the teacher. They discuss how well they're going and the teachers feel uncomfortable. They don't really know every detail.Ross: They have 16 kids in the class. You've taught them for four hours. You're really giving feedback on the kid at the back who doesn't talk much, it's impossible.Jake: How exciting is it, that parent‑teacher night, now can happen every day. Not just every day, every hour. Anytime the child interacts with learning, the parent can see exactly how well they're going.The exciting part will be once those apps link parents and teachers up to social media. They'll say, OK, my child is struggling with, this sentence or the past sentence all orange. They'll be able to click on it and find out what all the other parents done who've had that same problem? What do the teachers recommend?The solution for the problem will be instant. They won't need to drop their kid off at school anymore because that learning was become part of daily life.Ross: You hit on one of the things that probably makes a lot of teachers nervous. The idea that apps could replace teachers completely. What's the role of the teacher?Jake: The role of the teacher would change. We already have seen this in STEM. We used to have science lectures, no one does science lectures anymore. That was a thing of the past, that's died. Now what you have is, everyone sends out what you have to learn. You watch a video and when you come to class, guess what you do? An experiment with the teacher.That's all that will happen in language learning. It will catch up to the rest of the world. You'll learn all the stuff. You'll get all your feedback. When you come into class, the teacher will have an activity for you to do. Really push you in the class to use that language.How can I help you interact better with people or communicate better or use your creativity or it's not just the language anymore? It's all that stuff that surrounds it.Ross: This reminds me a lot of an ex‑colleague talking to me about the community aspect of learning a language and that being the thing that keeps learners coming back. If you don't have that sort of interaction with real people, it's really easy to give up. That's the case with apps. If there's not that community aspect, then people tend give up pretty easily.Jake: Think about it, no one learns a language to speak to themselves.Ross: [laughs]Jake: Like in the classroom, no one learns a language to speak to a teacher, you learn language to speak to other people. Offline schools will develop into places where kids and adults can go in, use the language to interact in the community, but the learning will happen with technology.Ross: I feel here it's useful to unpack the word "learning." When we think about the word "learning," we assume that memorizing the words, which is a lot of what we're talking about can happen on the app. Whereas, there's a deeper level that needs to happen. That's the thing that happens in the classroom communicating with real people.Jake: I don't think we'll use the word "class" anymore. The idea of class needs to go because of class implies learning and the teacher. The relationship shouldn't be teacher‑student. It will become, "I've already learned this stuff, I need places to use it and keep developing it."Language doesn't exist in a vacuum without all the other experiences around it. Teachers' roles would expand into making experiences around the language.Ross: Those are the most interesting parts of teaching. Designing the interesting communicative activities and tasks. Talking about culture, facilitating discussions, that's a lot more interesting than holding up the blue flashcard. Getting students to turn it back to you.[crosstalk]Jake: Can I add the point that what's exciting is, as data and coders and language learning have become best friends. What's the code? It's a language, right? Due to social media and Internet and all these connections, all those barriers have been broken down. Now we have computer scientists talking to linguists talking to psychologists.What will happen to teachers is, they won't be thinking about, "This is the grammar point I need to teach today."They'll be talking to psychologists, they'll be talking to other discourses and making that class a more valuable experience for the kids.Ross: You mentioned, psychologists and language teaching and programming. One of the bits where that comes together is, finding the sweet spot of challenge and using gamification. That's a bit of a controversial issue.Jake: The word "gamification" is controversial because gamification can be along the lines of gambling. That's what they base it on. Challenge level and finding the challenge level is what motivates people to keep coming back. If something's too easy, you get demotivated. If it's too hard, you don't come back. You need to find that sweet spot of where's the challenge level?Essentially, that's gamification. Gamification is finding the spot where it's not too hard. It's not too easy. It's just at the point where I want to keep going. There's so many advantages.If you can find the spot where kids or people are motivated to keep learning, isn't that a good thing? But, then they become addicted to the platform that you're using to teach them to do that, that could be unethical, especially when money's involved.Ross: One more time, that was Jake Whiddon. Thank you very much for listening. For more podcasts, please go to the website, www.tefltraininginstitute.com. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.

James: Hey, audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy and you're listening to Achieve Wealth Podcast where we talk about value-add real estate investing and we interview a lot of commercial real estate operators where you can grab a pen and a paper and start learning.    So today we have Jake and Gino from Wheelbarrow Profits. And Jake and Gino own around 1500 units with 1000 of that units were done solely by them without any syndication. And they have another 400 units, which they started syndication and their primary focus is on Southeast market. Right now, the deals are in Tennessee and Kentucky. So, Hey guys, welcome to the show.   Gino: Hey, James. How you doing? Nice to be here.    Jake: Hey, thank you for having us.   James: Yeah. Did I miss out anything in terms of introducing you guys?   Gino: Well, I mean, for me, I've got six kids. I mean that's probably my biggest achievement to date. I live down in Florida. I relocated two years ago from New York to Florida. I'm a certified life coach. I think that's a really big accomplishment for me and I've got a fantastic partner on the other end. So that's what I guess made my success, having an amazing partner, having an amazing person pushing me and telling me, Hey Gino, we need to buy this deal. Hey Gino, you know, we need to write this book. And I'm like, come on, another thing? So having a great partner really will excel you in life. Did leave anything out, Jake?    Jake: We're economic deserters. We left the high tax Northeast for a better life of sunshine and rainbows and I'd [01:54unclear] friend. No, it's been a great ride. You know, Gino and I, back in 2011, started really looking hard at multifamily. We wanted yield. We wanted something that was going to pay us every month. We had very challenging jobs at the time. I was under threat of layoff all the time. Gino was in the back of the kitchen trying to make sure that he could get dishwashers in every night. And ultimately, we knew there was more to life than what we were experiencing and we sought out to make it happen for ourselves.    So we got into the first deal. It was a tough one. It was a 25 unit and we've never looked back. We've done multifaceted, multifamily ever since. We have four core businesses, we have property management, we have education, we have a mortgage brokerage, we have an investment business and over 20 holding companies to go along with that. So we really look at multifamily, you know, being the place to be because we know that it's a basic human need and we've grown our brands all within the multifamily space. And it's been, again, just a fantastic ride. We've focused a lot on culture scale, and growing the business day in and day out. We had an epiphany moment a few years ago that we were working too hard and we're running around doing everything.    We call it the, 'I'm a' mentality. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do everything. 'I'm a' could only go so far. So I'm ahead to bring some friends. So Jake and Gino, you know, brought some friends on and we started scaling up. And you know, we've got some really great people on the team and I think that's one of the things, I get so much of the enjoyment out of it. Cause I see these people coming on really with us and they just grow and they excel and then we've created a home for them.   Jake: And James, more importantly, that only started with a 25 unit property with $27,000 from Jake, myself and my brother, Mark. So that's the amazing thing. Talking about where to start. I'm too young, I'm too old, the market's too hot. I don't have enough money. Those are all myths that people want to tell themselves. What they're lacking is they're lacking innovation, they're lacking education, they're lacking creativity and they're lacking mastermind. Those are the things that I lacked when I used those excuses.    And if you want to use those excuses, that's fine. But we have so many Jake and Gino community members that are in their twenties and they're in their sixties and they've gone out and they're doing deals. So if you want to get into multifamily, you need to educate yourself first.   James: Yeah, very interesting. You guys are really, really vertically integrated. I mean, as you've mentioned, you guys own property management, asset management and also have a renovation team. And you also do some agency that representation right to the test lenders, I guess for the agency, which is really good. I mean I have the first three but not the last one. Question is, I mean, how did you guys do this 1000 units on your own? I can tell you there's not many people who have done like even like a what, 300 units on their own, right? Everybody syndicates, right? Including me; I syndicate, I used to own...I mean I still own some single-family, which I'm selling off right now, but all my deals are syndicated and a lot of people I talk to use syndication. But how did you guys go from that 25 units to 1000 units on your own?   Gino: We weren't that smart, first of all. We thought that's how you had to do it, to be completely honest with you. Because we said, Hey, we got to buy a deal. We'll buy the deal. We buy it, right? The three-step framework, if you see the wheelbarrow behind me, it's buy right, manage right and finance right. You need to do all three of those. We were buying them right and we're still buying the assets right.    It's truly important that you need to buy the asset right. So we buy these assets, we refinanced the assets and we wouldn't go and buy Ferrari's. We'd actually repurpose that money into the next deal. What really propelled us was we bought a 281 unit property. It was $11 million. It was owner finance. The owner basically said, here you go, here are the keys. We actually had about $120,000 come back to us at closing.   Now that doesn't happen every day, but that happens when you're ready and when you are integrated and you know the business model and you know, to take advantage of that. That really, really propelled us because we were able to refinance that property. So to date, we've refinanced over $9 million of our proceeds. We've rolled that right back into the business and we continued to grow that way. But James, to be honest with you, if we'd been syndicating through three years ago, we'd probably be at the 5,000 unit mark, which is maybe that's great, that's not great but that wasn't our path.    We started syndicating back in November because we saw we could create another multiple stream of revenue, create the asset management company, that syndication company, for syndication. And I had five or 600 investors on our platform because of the Jake and Gino brand. I just couldn't utilize them. We didn't have the space so we brought on another partner to start that business and that's been a fantastic business. We've done two syndications, we've got another deal in the contract right now and we're continuing to grow that. And James, as you know, they feed each other. It's just wonderful. You go to an event, you speak, you do podcasts, the education can sell education, sell books, and then you know what, you're positioning yourself as an authority leader. And on top of that, you're bringing investors on board and you're teaching people how to do it and you're getting the deal source. And it's just such a symbiotic, beautiful relationship.   James: Yeah, it's very interesting because I mean right now, like for example, I was told once, I mean you can do syndication, but your end goal is to own some of the units. But you guys are going the other way.   Jake: We started backward, James. I'm going to tell you something, and this is what I want your listeners to hear because it's the kind of thing where a lot of people are afraid of nonrecourse financing. And we'll tell you right now, non-recourse financing has made me rich and it's made Gino rich; fortune sides with him who dares. We took a chance on it. We couldn't even get into agency debt back when we first started. We were doing a lot of deals that would have been qualified for what is now known as Freddie Mac SBL. Okay. We took on the recourse debt. We had a lot of battles on the front end with the banks. I say a lot of times, it's just as hard negotiating the deal as negotiating the deal with the banks a lot of these times.    So we went in, we fought some good battles. As Gino said, we manage these assets, right? And then we were able to take the financing and sometimes we'd finance the deal once with a community bank and then sometimes you'll refinance it again and send it out to nonrecourse financing over time. So we just really did, we focused on buying these things, right. Adding a ton of value to them and then extracting the value, holding the assets longterm, not selling them, keeping the cost segregation going. And really my view of these is that we're going to buy them, we're going to manage them right. And the party is going to keep going because we're not going to sell them off if we're buying a deal in house. If we're buying a deal in house, we're gonna keep adding assets to it. Keep the cost SEG going and keep that party rolling.   James: But what's your end goal is syndication. I know syndication can grow very quickly in terms of unit counts, right? But your shared...   Jake: But it's not about just growing the unit counts for us, right? We want to have a tool in the toolbox that fits every deal. And we were talking before we got on the show today that we just bought a very hairy deal. It's 26 per unit. People were not being taken care of. It's 146 units. We have 40 vacancies right now. We didn't syndicate that. That was not a good deal necessarily for us to syndicate, but I know over time that deal's going to pay us back very handsomely. So was that a deal that we want to syndicate? Probably not. We're doing a deal right now. It's very clean. It's going to be a nice cash on cash return, right down the alley for syndication. We just want to, you know, any deal that comes our way, we want to, if it's going to cash flow, there's going to be an opportunity, we want to have a vehicle or tool to take that down. And syndication is just one of those tools. Find it in house is another one.   Gino: And I think the opportunity we have now, to piggyback off of that, as where we are in the market, in the market cycle right now, you just gotta be careful of what you're buying. You have to be buying assets in pretty good locations, with pretty good rent growth because when the economy slows down, you want to be able to continue to have your occupancy and run 94-95%. You don't want to see rents dropping. So you gotta be careful what you're buying. Would we've been buying these assets three and four years ago? No, the opportunity was more of those value-adds. Now there's less of an opportunity for our value adds because those prices are already built up. I mean, we went and bought an asset in November at 45 a door. Two years ago, it would have been 30 a door, but that's where we are in the market.    So with that value add, it's very difficult because you've got to put more loan to value. So you've got to put more money down on these deals and there's more risk, as going out 18 months or 24 months, if you're not able to make those preferred payments, you know, they're going to come knocking at you. And then the investor's going to say, well, why did we make the draw this and this quarter? Well, we were trying to reposition it for the long game. That's the thing with multifamily. Everybody out there, multifamily is a long game. It's number one, but debt and taxes, number two, it's about having a business. If you're not going to run the business, somebody has to run the business. And number three, it's a long game. You're not going to get paid today or tomorrow. You're going to be the farmer planting the seed, watering the seed, and waiting six months or 12 months for it to grow. That's why it's hard to get into multifamily because people love transactions. This is not so much transaction-based business unless you start getting into it and then a year, two years down the road, you can create some transactions by refing or by selling or by trading up. But when you start out, it's hard because it's that instant gratifying.   Jake: James, I want to say one thing that just piggyback on Gino here and what he's saying is many of you out there may be syndicating deals and we love syndicating. We love buying deals ourselves. Just keep in mind the syndicators that are the most successful are that they understand that the work starts after you bought the deal. Just because you're syndicating, you need to have that one on one connection, even if you're doing third party management. James, we were talking earlier that you know, he runs his own a property management group. That's when the real work starts folks. So you know, whether you're syndicating, whether you're buying in house, tee it up, make sure you're financing it right. Make sure you're buying it right. But then that managed piece, just because you know, you may not be running direct property management, you need to be having those weeklies with that property management, making sure you're nailing your KPIs.    James: Yeah. I also think that the managed portion makes the most money. Do you guys agree with that?   Gino: I totally agree with that 100% because that's where you're going to increase your NLI. You're either going to increase the income, decrease the expenses, create systems and be able to scale. But the problem that Jake and I had when we hit 650 units, we were still just telling somebody this the other day, we were still using rent posts and we fumbled upon that folio and that was the biggest aha moment. All of a sudden we said to ourselves, it doesn't matter how many units you add onto your portfolio, if you're not managing them efficiently and extracting as much value from them, that's going to be a big problem. So I think managing is the most important. It's ongoing.    Jake: There's more to it though, to James' point. Here's why. Once you buy the deal, there's no going back. You paid the money, you paid that price. That is fixed. That's why I always talk about the back leg of the wheelbarrow being fixed. If you finance the deal for 10 years, and I don't care if you have stepped down or you have your maintenance defeasance wherever you want to say, you're fixed, what are the levers do you have to pull? It's the management arm of it. That's the piece that you're going to be able to. Exactly. Right. That's a great point.   James: Yeah. Yeah, so that's why I always tell my friends and my followers in my Facebook group and all the people who come to me; the operations where you make the most money because before you buy the deal you are putting a proforma, right? You think it's going to be like that. You think it's going to be like that. You think it is going to be 3% operation. You think insurance is going to be this much. Right? So it's a lot of assumptions, but once you close on the deal, it's avail game, right? You are like, Hey, you know, now you have every tool in the box to really trap. That's where you really make the money and you, if you really work hard on the operation, you can make at least, you know,  2-3% more than if you give it to a third party management. Because third party management, they have a lot of other issues. It's not their baby.   Jake: You're not the only customer. Here, we're the only customer baby.   James: And they have a different profit center that they need to really make sure.   Jake: And we won't take on other clients. We only manage our stuff because it's ours and you're absolutely right. We're managing our baby, we're making sure our babies are doing well. There are little soldiers out there working for us. We want them to keep returning.   James: Yeah. Yeah. And also [13:28unclear] if you look at even your own operation, I can decide to, let's say my occupancy drop, I can reduce my staff today just by a phone call. Right. And reduce my expenses as well because my income is reduced. Right. So, but you can't do that on a third party. Right. You are like at the mercy of them. Right.   Gino: I agree with that. And you're also controlling; you're controlling. You can add on more employees. You can actually say to yourself, Hey listen, I want to implement this system. I want to raise my rents so you can have real-time. That's what's great about it.   Jake: Even think about the marketing piece. They may be using, you know, apartments or they may be using roof or whatever they're using and you tell them, well, I want you to stop using that. Well, that might be two or three emails or a week-long conversation to actually get that pulled out. And they may tell you, fly kite here, we just kill it.    James: Yeah, we just kill it. Yeah.    Jake: Move on. There's no question.     James: I have to give credit to my wife. She runs the property management side of it.    Jake: She must be a strong woman.    James: She's a very strong woman.   Jake: We should have her on the show.   James: She's at the property today. So I do the underwriting and investor relationship and acquisition and she does the construction and property management. And you need a lot of...   Jake: You're taking it easy, then man. Come on, you gotta get hurt...   James: My work is a lot on the front end. Right? But one it's closed, it's her work. And I do help out a lot too. Right? So, let's go back to a bit more details on syndication was owning, right? Because this is something that I've been thinking, right? Because Hey, you know, I was like you guys when in the beginning, I did a lot of short term loan, bridge loan and we make a lot of money for us. I syndicated, but my investor was so happy with it, he made so much money. But now with the market being at peak and there are not many deals out there, you know, we have to still get good cash flowing. We still do value-add deal, but no more deep value add deals. Right. So I presume that's what you guys are doing, right? Still, value-add deal but no more like a deep value add when you syndicate.   Jake: No, even the one we just did, we were talking about that; we did it in December, it was 26 a door and we're going in new decks, all new interiors and we have a ton of vacancies. I'm not afraid of it. The key is though, since we have our own management group, I don't want to take on five of these things at once because it's a resource issue at that point. We have resources to do one real heavy value add at the time so we're fine having one of those in the mix. But if you start stacking them, you know you really got to add team members and that's when it gets even more challenging. So for our size of scale right now, I'm very good with, you know, one at a time, getting it kind of rolled up. And we kind of we're just coming off the tail end of another one and then we ramped up into this one. So it's been working out for us.   Jake: So the problem with this deal, not the problem, the opportunity with this deal is we're using community financing. We've got an 85% LTV with loan to cost. So we've got 80% of the loan proceeds going into doing the cap-ex work. We're going to refi that property and bring it to the agency once it's all done. So there's the value there. And the only thing was when we bought it, we were able to have economies of scale. It's near a couple of our other assets are, we're able to use maintenance guys on that property. So that's another one of the reasons why we're able to do that cause just added to our portfolio. If this was something I was all by itself in, you know, down somewhere [16:30 unclear] assets, maybe you'd think twice. But there's always other reasons for doing the deal. And that was really one of the important factors that we saw.   James: And at what point did you start syndication? What was the timeframe? Was it like last year, two years ago?   Gino: So we started, we actually when we came off of our first event, I signed up like 30 people in our event back in November of 2017. I said to Jake, I've got all these investors floundering and that's the thing, when you're signing up investors, James, you have an important role. You need to reach out to those investors and you need to make substantive relationships. You need to start giving them value or else they're going to fall off. So I felt compelled to say to Jake, we need to start creating these relationships with these investors. We decided to hire somebody on and become a partner of that company. The beginning of 2018, February, March, April, we started ramping up, took us a few months to find our first deal. We find our first deal in August and that period timeframe for us, our first syndication, getting the PPM is soft commitments, emails.  It was pretty overwhelming and daunting but we did a small deal. It was only $6 million. It was 132 units. It was something where you can like consume and do your first deal for us. We raised $2.6 million in two days because we had all the framework, we were ready to go, we had the investors, they were prime, we had the podcast, we had the brand out there. But one thing with syndication that's a little different is things move really quickly, and it's a little nerve-wracking that you have to get everything in order. You have to get your emails out, you have to have your documents down, you have to have everything in order. You have to make sure that, you know, you get your webinars going and everything's spelled out clearly to your investors. And that's why it took us a little bit longer cause we had never taken money from the investors. So when it's your money and cash flows and come into the month, Jake says, Gino, septic fields scrapped out. We're not getting paid this month. I can deal with it.   Jake: Plus there was a demand thing we had people asking for it. And it was kind of like at some point where they're going to do, we flirted with the idea for so long as either we're going to do it or not. So we gave it a shot.   Gino:  And that's the thing we could have bought that deal without syndication. But I think it was just the ideal opportunity. It was a new market. It was small enough for us to say, you know what, we can handle this with the syndication. Let's try it. You just got to commit and then figure it out. And that's what we ended up doing. We committed to doing it. We worked with a great attorney, Kim Taylor. She walks through the process. We had great team members and then we just ended up pulling the trigger and we ended up closing in November of 2018 and we followed up with another purchase in April of 2019. About six weeks ago, we closed on a deal and at an additional 240 units in that market. So it's a great learning plus. Once you do one, you figure it out, you figure out the ramifications, the webinars, adding the investors on the documents. And then it's just 'rinse and repeat'.   James: Yeah. I think you guys are the example of why syndication exists, right? So syndication is not like a get rich scheme, right? Not everybody can do it. Not like somebody who was doing W2 can or can do, I'm not saying they must do syndication, right? So in my mind, syndication is like a mixture of an experienced operator, right? So you guys have proven that operator and there are some passive investors which want to place that money into this experienced operator, right? So if I'm getting some guy who was coming up from a boot camp or a  2-day course and trying to do syndication that he doesn't have the experience, I mean he might be coached by someone who's experienced, but I think that's where the syndication comes very powerful, right? When you marry people who really want to be passive with people who are really, really good at what they're doing that's where you get the beautiful marriage there. Right?   Gino: Also students who want to raise deals for others. So James, let's say you're coming short on a raise and you say, Hey, listen, I need to get some way, maybe you can get somebody to raise money for your deal. Obviously they have to be comfortable with you as the operator, as a sponsor. And Jake and Gina is a sponsor with a lot of students start that way by raising money for other people's deals, getting in the game, putting a little lower skin in the game and learning how the syndication process works. And then learning how much work there really is and saying, wow, this syndicator is not putting any money in this deal. But there's a lot of work and there's a reason why there's no money going on the GP side of the business. It's they're signing under debt and they're doing a lot of work for this and that's a great way for people to start getting in the business. Raise a little bit of money for another syndicator if they need that platform, then learn that process. And that's how you learn the process and then you can move on and succeed in getting your own deals.   James: Yeah, absolutely. What's the structure? Can you guys walk through the structure of your company, right? Because you have property management, asset management, you have renovation team, you do some kind of a mortgage brokering as well. On top of that you have an education platform, right? So how big is the whole team?   Jake: You know, probably and not including vendors and whatnot, it's probably just shy of 60 people,   James: 60 people. And how many people...I mean, property management would be the biggest, I guess.   Jake: Oh yeah. Property management is definitely the biggest. And you know, I'm really excited. You know, we do these weekly meetings. I'll meet with every property manager weekly. You know, we meet with the managers of the different divisions of our companies and we call them weekly L10s and we're just really looking forward to this year cause we're gonna really bring everyone together. I think one of the biggest things is when you start to scale and you start to grow, that culture piece is tremendous. Last year we did this big whitewater rafting trip. We brought everyone out. So we're looking for another event this year, but we're going to break down the barriers. We're going to get the core values going, get the tee shirts, bring everyone together for an event. And it's going to be interesting because what we're trying to do now is even get those synergies amongst the different companies jamming that much better together. Get everyone walking to the same beat and so I'm very excited about that.   James: And how many of the 60 people, like a property management. Do you have a number?   Jake: Well, we're going to be creeping up close to 46-47 on that soon. So, you know, we'll have a couple on the investment side of the business and then a handful on the continue education side.   James: Okay. Okay.   Jake: Okay. Property management and that's including our renovation team called the cap-ex crew. They are the elite Navy seal ninjas of property management and they go in when others can't, they get it done.   James: Yeah. So your renovation crew is supposed to be, I mean it's in house, but it's not really announced in terms of financial, right, because they're not supposed to be part of the P& L right? Is that correct?   Jake: Yeah. So that's basically going through the property management group.   James: Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's very interesting. And how did you guys...   Jake: He wants to see an income statement now, Gino.   James: Because...   Jake: I'm just messing with you man.    Gino: So James, I'll dive into the education a little bit more. We started the education about four years ago. October 2015 we launched the book with our profits behind me and it was just me basically quit my restaurant and said, Jake, I need to do something. I'm in New York. Let's start a podcast. And we didn't know why we started the podcast. We should have probably started it to get investors. But we just started because we wanted to learn. I mean, how many times can you speak to Ken McCroy or you know, Robert Kiyosaki for an hour, right? I mean, it's just amazing. So that's where we started. And then from that, we said, okay, how do we continue to build this? So we started selling, creating educational products. We wrote the book, we have trainings on Kajabi, we have mentorships, we have coaching.   And to grow and scale that business, I can't be doing one on one coaching all the time. So we hired a community director. We've got an operations manager in that business full time. We've got three part-time, we've got three full-time sales guys. We've got four coaches right now. We have two deal review coaches on top of our accountability coaches. So as you start growing, you commit, you figure it out, you start scaling up. But the real thing that you need to do is you need to get really qualified people. You need to get great people. Like Jake talks with the culture and our culture is basically a blue-collar work ethic. It's we don't want to hear 'it's not my job' because I'm still packing books. I'm still doing $5 an hour work when I have to. And Jake's doing the same thing. And I want that to convey those small startups with Jake and Gino and we're going to be able to expand this. We're gonna be doing weekend events to just start selling more products and we're going to start bringing on more sales guys. And as the community grows, I think that culture is going to be pervasive throughout all of the entire organization where it's like customers first, you know, students first. It's not me, it's we and whatever it takes gets done. I think that can permeate throughout all of the layers and all the multifaceted multifamily. And that's really important. So when we first thought about Jake and I, Jake will tell you, he thought culture was crap and it was working corporate because it didn't serve him. But I think as he sees it, it's everything right now. Because when they see Jake and I working hard and doing that, it just, you're the leader, you're supposed to be part. If you're going to put in a mission statement in words, and I got house rules over here, if you're not following your own house rules, how do you think your employees are going to follow the house rules.   Jake: James, nothing fires me up more than 'it's not my job'. You want to see the roof come off this house right now, smoke start coming out of my ears. That's the one thing that I can't handle.   James: My wife and I get upset when somebody said I do not know, I said, don't tell me 'I don't know'. Tell me, 'I'll figure it out'.   Jake: Or you know, let's ask and work on it. You know, it's like I can handle that a lot easier than 'it's not my job'. Cause that's like a moral and a work ethic issue and everyone else is working so hard and you're going to sit there and say something like that.   James: It's a clash between ownership mentality. I mean, especially with the property management, right, with the ownership mentality and employee mentality, right? Because a lot of times in property management, the people are working with employee mentality, but owners, we are more, we want to see the profit. We want to be really part of the profit center. Make sure everything runs as how we want for the investors. At the same time...   Jake: Gino knows about the blue-collar work ethic. We finished up a podcast with who was the guy that used to be in Bigger Pockets, who was the guy there? It was Brandon and Josh. And we got a video. We were out there one day. A tree fell across one of our assets that we just bought and was laying across the sidewalk. You know, we didn't have anybody at the time to do it. So Gino and I went down there, took out the chainsaw, chop that bad boy up, threw it in the back of the trailer and made a day of it. We got a video, I think it's still out there on YouTube, so it doesn't matter. I don't care what job it is, I'll do it all myself if we have to.   That's not how you scale, number one. That's 'I'mma' mentality. But if it comes down to it, if it needs to be done and there's no one else to do it, I'm going in and I'm going to do it. It's just period.    James: Awesome. Awesome. That's the work ethic, right? Sometimes you have to do it.    Jake: It's gotta get done. Somebody has got to do it. And the idea is to build a machine and put the systems in place to make sure it runs fluidly. You know, every day the best work that I can do is help working on the machine and building the machine. But it's not always going to be there. And sometimes, you know, a bolt falls off and if I gotta be the guy to screw it back on, I'm going to do it.   Gino: I think it's important to say that the machine isn't built from the very first day. From the very first day you're going to grow as a person. So four years ago, I wasn't doing the best work of what I had to do. I was just doing whatever work I needed to do. But now as you scale, and as you're able to do that, as you become financially free, you can start thinking about working on the business as apart as the working in the business. And the first three or four years, Jake and I were really working in the business. And we weren't able to create these multiple streams of revenue. We're just surviving and learning. And that's fine. That's what everyone's progression is. But once you get into it, when you start doing it, you can start transitioning out and start like what Jake said, start creating those systems. But if you don't start with a 25 unit property, you're never going to be able to do what you know, what actually transpires after.   James: Awesome. Let's go to some market selection questions. So how did you guys select this market?   Gino: Well, it's funny, Jake was going down in 2011 he moved down there and I had it on one of my other podcasts with my wife. He went to Knoxville, move there for six months without his wife, struggled. I mean, it's not an easy thing. He left New York, he abandoned New York and I'm up there at the restaurant. I had just met him and I'm like, Jake, these numbers work down here. Let's start looking at deals in Knoxville. His metrics for moving was; there were no state income tax, close to New York, decent weather, cost of living is great. So he moves to Knoxville. And ironically, enough, that's what makes it a pretty good market to invest in multifamily, right?    James: Population growth.    Gino: And we got lucky, we got lucky with that one. But we started investing, we started looking at deals. I think, you know, the Southeast is great. So like you said, we're vertically integrated within three hours of Knoxville. So that's what we're looking. I mean, throw a dart, there are so many great cities around there to invest in that market. We don't want to go up in the blue States, we want to stay. Texas is a little bit overbought. I mean, you know why. I mean, you have been an engine of economic growth there. People are flocking there because there are jobs there because there's infrastructure there and because people want to live there. So, that's what's happening. So I think, you know, as far as us, we just got lucky. We picked Knoxville and now we're able to go out into these other markets that mirror what Knoxville is.   Jake: And in addition to that too, we have a specific strategy that we're looking to be the best customer service property management company for C and B apartment complex. We own some A stuff but it's kind of because the deals worked and we bought it, but we see a discrepancy where C and B operators typically do not have that good of customer service. I love what Chick-fillet does with a $7 chicken sandwich. How are you doing today? It's a pleasure to serve you. How can I help you? It's that great customer service and I truly believe that is a blue ocean. That is our blue ocean strategy. It's going to separate ourselves and we rebrand all our properties, brand as our property management company so that when people pull up, they're going to know that these people care. We believe renting is personal and our residents are our number one priority. Okay, that's what we're about and that's the difference in how we run our properties and I think longterm it's not going to happen overnight. That's a longterm strategy is going to take years to fully implement, but that's the separator from us and the other guys.   James: So how do you guys standardize this? You know, the awesome operator experience for class B and C, how do you standardize it across the organization?   Gino: Yeah. Well, first thing you do is you start going on training platforms like Grace Hill, you start systematizing platforms and training. We're creating our own internal training right now for our maintenance techs. And then we're going to transitional to training our leasing techs. That's really important to have something standardized to train them. And I'm doing the same thing on education. So when we were onboard, as a coach, I created a training platform for our coaches to watch videos and show how to coach them. And it's the same way in anything. You want to be able to have something standardized where they're all playing from the same drum.   Jake:  So I'd like to elaborate on that a little bit as well because, so it starts with the basic stuff, like Gino mentioned Grace Hill. Now we also have a product called Kajabi where we've taken the Grace Hill training and we have, it's basically our elevated in house training that we're putting on the Kajabi platform where we're teaching our guys if they don't know how to do something, we're having level one, two, three and four for maintenance techs, for example. And then there's a YouTube page where they can go on and actually from their phone remotely check the video, Oh, this is how I need to change out this garbage disposal or thermostat, whatever the case may be. And so as we're going through, you're talking to us as we're in the middle of launching this entire customer service training program. In addition to that, it started with Grace Hill. We're moving to down to a Kajabi and we're working with Grace Hill on Kajabi at the same time. Once we're done with the maintenance end of it, and we should be done in the next couple of months with that end of it, it's then going to the full-service customer service piece. We have weekend trainings now. I don't want you to think that we're just starting this, but this is how we have the full-on slot of our strategy implementation. In addition to that, we've started working with Petra, they work with scaling up. I don't know if you're familiar with that.    James: No, not Petra.   Gino: Okay. It's Verne Harnish's book, Scaling Up.   Jake: And essentially, they look at people, strategy, execution, and cash. And you know, we've gone through top grading and making sure that we're getting players on the team. But the one piece of that is we fill our funnels up really full. We have all these ideas that we want to implement. So we have a good strategy, we have good people, we have good cash, but it's that execution piece that we need to get better at. So, you know, while we have an education company, we're open-minded and we know we can always grow and get better. So we're bringing in the best of the best. This is, you know, from everything I've seen, the best scale company in the country and they're working on our business as we work on our business to make us the best customer service property management group in the industry. So that's where we're going.    Gino: The cool thing about the whole education platform is we never would have done this training internally if we didn't have Jake and Gino. Because Kajabi is our online training platform for education. So it just bled over. And I've mentioned that, I said Jake, we need to do these videos to show the maintenance tech when he goes in, how to change a toilet, how to fix a hot water heater. This can all be documented by training videos. So if we didn't have the education platform, this never would have been even been a thought in our minds. And I think the other thing when you are going out as a business owner, keep your eyes open to what other businesses are doing.    My son had gotten a job down the street or at a restaurant and I was amazed at how many applications these people were taking in. They had an ADP platform and I said to Jake, this is another scaling up option where we can start onboarding our employees. And it's just a great tool. So, you know, a tip for everybody out there, if you're in multifamily real estate, see what other industries are doing because you can adapt and pull from other industries and use it to your advantage.   Jake: I want to talk about that a little bit though, Gino, because what we're basically getting with that is we've used ADP for years, but they have, I'm going to call ADP plus. It's their, whatever, you know, higher-end product. But they will give us for all our different brands, we will have a very corporate and professional landing page now. So we have something called the ran pride video. It's showcasing our folks, talking about our culture, which, you know, not have a history of the company video. All of these videos will go on these landing pages. So when potential employees want to look at us, Hey, that's what these guys are about. So we're selling ourselves; let's not kid ourselves, we are in the tightest job market in 60 years. So we need to be recruiting the best people in and we're not going to have a good organization.   So we're doing everything we can to make it a great work environment, get great people in the door and keep them. Because once they come in, we have a very low turnover. But you know, from ourselves, marketing ourselves to the outside world, we need to let them know what we're about. And then as they're coming through, they're putting their W2 information all into the ADP. It's all electronically saved in the cloud and that carries them through. It also has the HRS software so that our HR folks can manage that throughout the entire lifespan of their time with us. So we're really focusing, like I said, on scale culture and operations because, you know, the other things, the people, the strategy, the cash we've done very well with. So it's that execution and pulling it through I think is gonna propel us over the next 10 years.   Gino: And James, do you need it when you have 100 units? Maybe not, but if you're thinking of getting bigger, you're going to have to implement all these systems. Don't be overwhelmed with it now at 100 unit market, just think that you know, as you grow as a person, as you grow as a business person, you're going to be able to figure out those ideas and go...   Jake: Yeah, we're laying the framework to go from 50 to 500 employees.   James: Yeah, that's really good because I know Grace Hill, because I use it as well, we use ADP, but I've never heard about HRS and I mean I know about Kajabi, but I didn't know that you guys are using Kajabi as well.   Jake: So we blended the two together and then we're actually using a YouTube page for the videos so that they can get it right from the app on their phone. And it's coming together pretty nicely actually.    Gino: And there are so many app platforms out there. You can use Lightspeed, you can use Kajabi. We are one of the founders on there seven or eight years ago when they launched. So we've been using it for a while and we just got comfortable with it. There are so many different, you know, LMS systems that are out there.    Jake: The executives within our company, they love building this because they see the need for it. So they enjoy it and they're great. You know, there some of the ones out there filming, well not filming uncle Shawn's doing that, but actually, doing the tutorials on the maintenance or the customer service videos. So everyone's getting involved   Gino: And they're creating the assessments too, cause you want to actually have them watch a video and then do the assessments. So they're creating all that also, which is awesome.   James: So let's go into a deal, deal level detail or how do you, I mean, let's say today you get a deal today, right? From broker, off-market, right? So what are the things that you would look at, look at it quickly to either reject it up? Cause I presume a lot of deals, you guys don't even underwrite it, right?   Jake: We do a quick underwriting. So we're looking for cash flow from day one and the opportunity to force appreciation in the future. So what does that mean? You know, if it's a stabilized deal we want to be, I'd love a six and a half cap, you know, if we're a little bit lower than that and you know, six to six and a half cap, I think we can typically make it work if it's in a good location, if we're going to syndicate that deal and we're seeing, you know, 8% cash on cash, we like that. And you know that typically, we'll take it to the next level and start looking a little deeper.   James: Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. And I presume deep value add, it really doesn't matter on the entry capital, on any of that.   Jake: Let's talk about that. So the deal we just bought, you know, if you're talking about actual is was a, you know, like probably like maybe like a...   James: 2%   Jake: And it was a beat to crap 1970s build. But you know, what are we talking about? Like do we really care what the cap rate is on that deal? No, because we know when it stabilizes the cap rates going to be more like a 12 so it's again keeping your mind open to each deal. What can I do and what's the opportunity with this deal? How do we want to take it down? Is it going to be an in house buy? Is it going to be, you know, a bridge financing, whatever the case may be as an agency? Or is it a syndicated deal? You know, all of these things weave together.  And that's the beauty of this game is that we have multiple things that we can do to extract value and create great things. And so, it gives us an opportunity to have fun with it.    Gino: And James, Jake's speaking up specifically, if we're in the 26,000 a unit, we need to add another four or 5,000. If you're into it for 31,000 a door, I know that that asset in right now is trading over 50 a dor. So I know that that right there is a whole month for us. So that's another way I like to look at the per-unit cost of what we're buying. And I like to look at the expenses. If I'm underwriting a deal, we know that the expense should be 4,200 and the operator is running it at 4,900, you know there's value in there. If there's other income that they're generating, that's only 2%, we know typically we can get 10 to 12% of other income. There's another income, there's another value add right there so we're looking for those.    And you know, you'll hear from brokers every day of the week that you can raise rents, you can raise rents. So I have to spend 10K a door to raise a $50 rent, or can I spend 3 K a door and get that same $70 rent bumps. So you have to really try to analyze the market. And I think the other thing you need to be careful is where you're buying. You know, marginal areas, you're not going to get as much elevation right now and it's a little bit riskier. So, you know, we're just buying an asset right now; if it's in a great location, we'd like it. And Jake likes to say he likes to be your Kroger's Wholefoods and Chick-fillet if you can buy in that location...   Jake: Starbucks, bring it on.   James: You guys do value add, right? So let's say your rehab budget got cut into half, right? 50% of what you have. First of all, let me ask you, what is the most...   Jake: Why did that happen and are we playing the what-if game.   James: You never know. Yeah, that's a good question because I want to, tune your mindset to the question that I want to ask. So what is the most valuable value add that you guys have seen? Jake: What is the most valuable value add? Like what is like did we get the most out of doing flooring? Did we get the most out of...?    James: Correct. Let's say you have a budget got cut. Now you have a small amount of budget.   Gino: That's a great question. It depends on what property you're looking at because some properties may, if you put a dog park and you fix up the clubhouse and you do a good job of the pool, you may not see incremental value on that. But all of a sudden you're keeping the tenants and in your act you have to compete with the property down the street. So on one of our properties, we put a dog park in, we've put a fitness center and we did a nice job in a clubhouse and we actually did a pool and the decking. That didn't translate...I'm thinking, it translate into increased value and increased rents, but it also made be able to compete with other people in the market space. I think landscaping, people don't understand; power washing, landscaping, and painting are three of the most important things.   On our property, when we took over November, we actually had rents at 525; they went to 675. And we saw them in the Google reviews. These tenants were saying, you know what, these people were raising rents, but they care; customer service. That's one of the biggest value adds, customer service. We put out exterior lighting so they feel safe at nighttime. We took care of the landscaping there. We put in a gazebo there. We stripped the parking lot and seal the parking lot. We put in a dog park there. Signage was really important. Not huge amounts of money, but anything to turn the look of the property, the feel of a property, you want to show your tenants and any of your customers that you're adding value and not just going there and raising the prices. At the end of the day, why are you raising the price on me if you're not giving me some type of value?   Jake: I'll dive into it a little bit more too. I mean, the basics that, you know, I feel like that you have to go with a lot of times are, I personally love sheet vinyl. I know a lot of people want to put in the plank and this thing. We have this amazing, it's called nature's trail. If anyone wants to go out and look at it, it's skinny, it's white. So it looks like the barn style flooring, it's beautiful, it's got great, great tones in it. Installed, we're $1.74 a square foot. I mean, that's phenomenal. And it goes in, it looks beautiful. It looks like there's hardware throughout. So if I had to really get down to bare bones and I'm turning a complex, I'm going in with my nature's trail, I'm going in with my proposed gray and I'm going white on the wood. So the woodworks, the trim, and the baseboard, I'm going a nice pure white Sherwin Williams and it gets like a 7004 or something like that.   Jake: And then, in addition to it, the property we did in December, we were like, okay, let's pull back a little bit because we're painting the cabinets. And we saw a little bit of a spike in our available units. So we went back in, we reassessed it, and we said, you know what? It looks too damn good not to, it's an extra 350 bucks. Let's just keep painting the cabinets and then we're back to zero available units. So it's always, I think, and this goes back to what you were saying earlier about being a hands-on operator; looking at these things, looking at your KPIs, saying, what the hell, why do we spike? Oh, it was my fault cause we're being cheap. So we went back in and now we're filling it back up like that.   Gino: At the same time, Jake also, you don't have to spend $170 on a ceiling fan. Maybe you see your supply spiking like they did a year and a half and saying, hold on, this unit doesn't need $170 ceiling fan.   Jake: It's a beautiful $75 ceiling fan. They're beautiful fan blades. You get the multicolor here. So yeah.   James: What do you guys think that, I don't know, this is my experience that I see. I mean a lot of times you can put in Capex and all that, but I think the management itself, just managing it correctly, people are just so happy paying you 50 to $75 more   Jake: But you're talking about customer service then.    James: Yeah, customer service. Yeah, correct. I'm not saying that's the most valuable value add, but I'm just saying in terms of...   Jake: I'll say it. Listen, if you come in and you say it's a pleasure to see you, it's a pleasure to serve you. How may I help you? What can we do to make your unit better? We have this unit today. We're gonna treat you like gold. I'll take that over the new paint.   Gino: Jake also, the other thing is when they call for a maintenance request, don't want to wait six days for hot water heater, you have to get to them.    Jake: You're not going back to the hot water heater on me again; are you? Comeon man.   Gino: I love the hot water heater in my house the other day. 44:20crosstalk] We took over the third property. I remember I was in the restaurant and Jake is sending emails, we're turning units. And we had a client come in and started crying cause we've fixed the stove. He didn't have his stove for how long Jake? It was just like the silliest thing in the world. I mean come on. So, I mean, the customer service is really, when you get a maintenance request, send out the maintenance tech and get it done. You know, that's simple.   James: Yeah. It's just amazing on you to just take care of the tenants or the residents and they are so happy to pay you so much money compared to, why didn't a new ceiling fan you? I mean that's all secondary for me. So it looks like we share the same concept as well. So, let's go back to a bit more personal stuff flow. Maybe, one by one, right? Why do you guys do what you're doing?   Jake: Yeah, I'll get into that. It literally is about control and freedom for me. I am responsible for myself and my family and I was not in a position of control or a position where my family's life was secure. It was in the hands of others and I did not feel good about that. I, ultimately at the end of the day, am responsible for everything that comes into my environment and I need to handle that. Multifamily gave me an opportunity to take control of my destiny. And you know, by adding value to others, I was able to in return receive value. And it's been a phenomenal thing for me because I don't want to be, you know, dependent on Wall Street. I don't want to be dependent on a CEOs decisions. I have a lot of faith and confidence in myself and Gino and I know if we do the right thing it'll come back to us. And again, it's something that I don't ever want to be in a position where my family is worried about, you know, where's their next meal gonna come from. Great thing about all this is we've created abundance in our lives.   And you know, we started something called Ran Carriers last year and we were able to actually feed 10,000 kids for Thanksgiving. And so, you know, we'll see if we can match that or do about 15 this year, Gino. And so it's when you bring abundance into your life, you can't help someone else if you don't have the means to do it. So by us driving the ship, we've been able to create abundance. We've been able to create good homes for folks and we've been able to give back. So it's been pretty special.   James: Awesome. What about you, Gino, why do you do what you do?    Gino: I wouldn't  know what to do if I didn't know what I wasdoing right now. I mean, honestly, I'm pretty much financially secure. If I didn't have Jake and Gino, I could just probably live off of the draws of the property. But that gets to be a little boring after a while. So I'm doing what I really like. I mean, the education, growing a business, I always wanted to grow a business from the ground up. I was wanting to help people out by buying properties and by coaching them in motivating and inspiring them. And if I can monetize on that, it's a home run for me. So I enjoy what I'm doing right now. I mean it took me a long time to figure out, and it's funny cause I feel sad for kids coming out of college. What do you want to do when you get older? If you're an adult and you figure it out by the time you're an adult, you're a little lucky. Most adults can't even figure that out.    So Jake talks about it, you know, don't follow your passion. I mean sometimes if you're passionate about opening a restaurant and that's what you want to do, but sometimes it turns into a job. So you just be careful. You know, if you're lucky enough to become financially free and then figure out what you want to do and do something that you love, I think that's like the most important thing in the world for me.   Jake: He's been humbled right now. The G dad is a giver. He likes helping people and you know, not for nothing. The education has allowed people to buy over 3000 apartment units. And I know that's what Gino gets excited about. You know, it's helping other people and, and it's that giving back piece because it's a tremendous community that we have. And the folks inside the community are all like-minded, hardworking individuals. And I think it's because of the, you know, the sort of persona that we give off and we tell people about the values and necessarily what we're about and people are connecting, they're converting and it's been amazing to watch. And they'll get inside the private Facebook group, Hey, we just knocked out a hundred units today and then everyone gets on and start congratulating, how'd you do it? Let's hear about the deal. And it's become great networking. We'd love to see the continued success.   Gino: The phone calls that you get and the 48:42unclear]  year-round. When a student says, I just left my job, or I'm leaving New York and I'm moving somewhere else. That's really worth a lot, man. Because when you get those emails saying, Hey, you know, you've changed my life. There's something that, you know, you can't replace that; that's something that you can't put a dollar amount on, cause you're helping others and you change somebody's life and you change someone's family's life. And that multiplies in effects of people that they know. So that's really cool. That's one of the cool things about education.   James: Yeah, that's one thing that you bring to your end days, right? So it's not about the money. I mean, you usually forget how much you've made, but the appreciation that people have shown you for you're helping them, it speaks. Second personal question. I mean, this is probably, each one of you can answer it. Maybe you can combine together. Is there a proud moment in your life that you think you will never forget, that that moment really impacted you then and you are really, really proud of that moment and you want to tell their stories to your grandkids?   Jake: Yeah, I got one. I got one coming up now. And it's not about myself. It has to do with Gino as well. We were at the event last year, we had a phenomenal event in Nashville, you know, and Gino calls them the 'do rules'. We had over 500 people there, whatever. And it was all about multifamily for two days and just great speakers. It's our annual event, multifamily mastery. And that it wasn't necessarily anything other than it created an opportunity for my daughter. And she went out there and Gino's kids were there and they were learning business and we had some fun shirts that said like Jake and Gino are multifamily masters or something. But my daughter at the time was three years old, she went out and started networking with people and she actually sold a shirt for like 15 or 20 bucks and then she came over and she was so proud. She hugged me and told me about it and I was able to announce it to the whole room and the whole room like erupted because it was just, you know, it's this little girl going out there and then she was making it happen. So I'll never forget that. And it just is, you know, because of the community that it created that moment for me. So that was very special to me.    Gino: So we'll leave it at that cause I've got so many stories, but that's one story.    James: Take one story.   Gino: I mean one of my proud moments March 1st, 2016 when I left the restaurant and it wasn't because I was leaving a bad situation. It was finally saying to myself that I achieved something that I had been working for forever. I finally was saying to myself, I don't have to do that anymore. I have been there doing it for 20 years, over 20 years, locked in the same job and if I can change after 20 years and having those limiting beliefs and being able to grow and do something different, I think I just wanted to inspire other people that do that. So that was really a proud moment in my life.   James: Awesome. Awesome. We're at the end of the show, why not you guys tell the audience and listeners about how to get in touch with you guys?   Gino: He's the sales guy, so I'll let him shoot.   Jake: Listen, if you can't find this, we're not doing our job very well, but it's really simple. Jakeandgino.com, ranpartnersllc.com if you're looking to invest or rancapllc.com if you're looking into the debt side of things   Gino: and please subscribe to the podcast. We have the number one multifamily podcast on iTunes called Wheelbarrow Profits. We have four shows now. I've actually launched the show with my wife called Multifamily Zone. We have the Movers and Shakers podcast, which highlights a student's success every week. And then we have the Rand Partners podcast on syndication. So we're doing shows, we like going out there as part of our fashion.   Jake: Hold on, Gino, there's more. We're going to give a teaser. So we had the best selling book, Wheelbarrow Profits on Amazon and we're phoning it up this year, right? We've got the honey bee coming out in October. We put a lot of work into this thing. It is a phenomenal book. And it tells a great story and this is not your traditional business book. Gino give a little bit more on that. What would you say about the honeybee?    Gino: It's a parable basically about a gentleman who's frustrated, is very similar to Jake's story. Going around, has a boss, hates his job, and then just stumbles upon an older man who's willing to mentor him and find out that, you know what, there's more to it. How do you have all this? The analogy of a river with little tributaries growing into a big Russian river and it's all about creating multiple streams of income, starting small and making the stakes, and then all of a sudden, five years later, you've created something really great. So we just wanted to translate our success and just have people open up to the idea of that you can start small but create those businesses and then from one little stream of revenue, you can end up having four and five like you do James. And like we do.    Jake: And I'll just leave with this because the one thing that I really picked up from Gino early on in our investing career was to get rid of limiting beliefs. I know it's like a big Tony Robbins thing as well, and people talk about this, but it's so impactful because you know, you'll sit there and say, Oh, I can't do that. Well, you're right, if that's the way you're going to think about it, you're right. I grew up in a super small town on a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere. And that's the truth. And you know, we've been able to grow this business to, you know, over a hundred million in assets and you know, created financial freedom and generational wealth for our families. So there was, you know, literally in the town that I grew up in, you could work at the school, there was a factory that made chairs and you know, my family was like, well, maybe you should be a cop... Gino:  Or a gym teacher.  Jake:  You know, I literally went to school to be a gym teacher because I played sports and that's all I knew. So don't limit yourself because look, multifamily is not rocket science. It really isn't. Get educated. I always say education times action equals results. It's possible for anyone out there to do it, especially a pizza guy and a job rep were able to do it.  James: Yeah, I always tell people, if you think there's no deal out there, you are right. If you think there are deals out there, you're absolutely right too.   Gino: I love that.  James: It's that mindset that you have to get away from. Jake: Listen, look at the deals for two or three weeks and then having them not pencil out, it can be very discouraging. Try two years. That's how long it took this guy and I to get into our first deal. So yeah, I always say, you know, the best thing we ever did, we were pesky. We hung in there. We kept driving.  James: Exactly. All right guys, thanks for joining this podcast. You guys added tons of value and we're happy to have you share.  Gino: Thanks James.  Jake: Thanks James. 

After successfully having a career in the restaurant industry, Gino Barbaro became increasingly interested in the opportunities that investing in multi-family units could bring and the financial freedom one could attain. After conversations with his friend, Jake Stenziano, Gino and him decided to form a business partnership founding their real estate education company, Jake & Gino. Gino Barbaro is an author, real estate investor, and entrepreneur who is the co-founder of the real estate company Jake & Gino. Currently, they are in control of 1,400 units and are passionate about mentoring others to follow their long-term wealth strategies.   In this episode of Multifamily Real Estate Investments with Don and Eden, Gino will share his unique story and path that led him to multifamily real estate investing. He also will talk about the importance of the right mindset into becoming involved in real estate syndications and why having the right mindset is so important.     Highlights:  Gino’s Beginnings in Real Estate  Why Gino Decided to Not Only have a Career in the Restaurant Industry Forming a Partnership Importance of Mindset  Current Projects and Future Outlook   How to Connect with Gino Website: https://jakeandgino.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jakeandgino Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jakeandgino/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transcription Hey guys, I'm very excited to tell you about our new website DonandEden.com. We have put a lot of hours into making the website very accessible, beautiful, and comfortable. You could find ways to contact us for a variety of options if you would like to network, we always want to hear new stories and get to know you better. We would displace some of the past deals we were involved with, you could learn from each of those deals. The important lessons we have also experienced on the website, you would be able to invest with us on our future deals if passive investors, and even as general partners. Today, Don will interview a person who is very dear to both of us, and his name is Gino Barbaro. Gino is the part of the famous duo Jake and Gino who is in control of over fourteen hundred units. Gino will share his story and the path that led him to real estate investing as well as the right mindset you need to be able to do this. Also at the end of the episode, Don and Gino will discuss one of our deals that are coming up, and we are very excited about the development of 28 units in Hollywood, Florida.  So stay tuned and enjoy the episode.  Welcome to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden, where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to multifamily apartment buildings and off-market strategies.  Hey, Gino welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I'm doing really good. Thanks for having me on. Of course, I'm honored. If anybody, I'm honored to have you on the show it's going to be you the person that helped me so much in my career and developing myself as a real estate investor. I've learned so much from you. So I'm very honored as I mentioned. Thank you for putting the time to do this. Thank you. Yes. So you are a very accomplished man, and it seems like your whole life is about doing and creating. So I want you to tell us a little bit about your career how it started and what currently drives you.  Well, my biggest accomplishment, I think, is being a father of six children.  That is by far the most important thing to me, and that's the reason, believe or not why I got into real estate because I was in a tough business. I was in the restaurant business, and it just took a lot of time.  It took a lot of energy, a lot of effort, a lot of long hours and a lot of long weekends working on the holidays- it was difficult, and I was the son of an immigrant. So that's what I thought everyone did. I mean, I was working hard, but I didn't feel fulfilled, and I seemed like I was always away missing those important things with my family. So I was back in 2008, the Great Recession came in, and I was making pretty good money. The restaurant and everything changed, and I said to myself I need to go on a different path. I need to find something different, and I already had a job. So I didn't get into a residential real estate. I didn't get into fixing flips. I tried to get to the multifamily, and I think that was the saving grace me.  Try and get into a multifamily business, buy properties still have the restaurant, but do this on the side and make some extra money because as to have a large family it's a lot of mouths to feed. That was my priority to do something where I can get a little bit of extra passive income on site. And over the years from 2008 to this point continue to buy. Continue to grow. I just got fortunate enough that back in 2016 of March I left the restaurant and I dedicated my life full time to real estate.     That's beautiful. So you decided to focus on multifamily whereas other investors typically when they start they try to focus on single families because they have the conception that this is the safest thing to do and that was our conception when we started doing business in real estate.   But you challenged that and so you tackled multifamily right from the beginning. So tell us a little bit about that? How was it? How difficult was it to get into that arena?   Well,  in the beginning, everyone believes what they think. If you believe it's easier to get into single families, that's what you're going to believe. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone knows how to buy a home so they think, hey single family's easy I can get into it I've done it before.  Everyone hears the word multifamily commercial, and they start shaking their boots, and they think of commercial financing, and real estate is a team sport. And for me, I didn't want to have another job. I didn't want to fix and flip a home. I mean, I love that process, it's a lot of fun. But once you think about all the hours and the time that you need to do a house, the capital gains, the risk factor, and where you are in the market cycle. All of a sudden you've done all that work, and then you've got to go and repeat it; it didn't seem like it was a really good strategy for me. I wanted something that would have at least residual income. I wanted something more I built long term wealth. Yeah, I wanted something where I could have the capital gains to avoid tax benefits there. I want something where I could build a business where it was scalable. So if you're thinking about buying single-family homes take a step back and say to yourself, how is it going to be when I have ten or eleven or twelve houses spread out all over the city. They're all different. It's going to be harder to manage every single one of them if I've got ten homes and three of them are vacant. That's a big vacancy. As Jake and I started on our twenty-five-year property they were all in one location. I was working full time. I could manage these part-time at the very beginning, and it was easier because they're all in one location. There was one landscaping bill. There was one garbage bill. There was one utility bill. There was one roof there. So it was just easier for me. There was an economy a scale thing. There were scalability factors and all those other factors that I've mentioned. It just made more sense.  Yeah. Also when you flip a home it feels like a job.   you make good money. I mean I've done that before, and you make good money. I get a good day you're placing your time so that you can earn money. So it's a good job, but essentially it's a job. It doesn't create residual income for you as far as multifamily does. And also I mean you could get there it’s not scalable, but it's possible. I mean it's possible to hold 20 single families and make residual income, and welfare. But it's not as easy and as convenient so I can relate.  Well, I think the problem is most people like that don't mean effect. It's so much more rewarding to actually buy a house fix it and then flip it three months later and get paid. It's a great feeling right, that's a transaction. It's a lot harder.  using my immigrant background to be a farmer plant the seed water the seed weed the garden take care of it let it grow and wait six months and pray that it doesn't rain hardly ever hail. There's a lot of risks involved that's an entrepreneur's journey because you're holding on and you're delaying the gratification.  Whereas I think single-family homes you're fixing the flipping it's a different process it's a different mindset. You're going to get into multifamily think of yourself as an entrepreneur. You think of yourself as someone who's solving problems for tenants. And the more tenants and problems you can solve the bigger portfolio, the more money you are going to make and the more as you scale bigger and gains the more property and more units the more cost savings you're going to have the more revenue generator rate are you going to have and that's how you start becoming really successful in this business.  Yeah, I agree. So you've entered the multifamily business. I mean a few years back so it's not like you've been doing that for 30 years while you were in the restaurant business. So how did your life change ever since you got into multifamily.  Well I mean for me, the best thing was I went to coaching school. I became a life coach because I didn't know what I wanted right.  I mean, I think the most important thing that everyone on this call has to figure out is to keep becoming clear with our lives, what is the clarity in your life? I didn't want to work twelve hours a day doing more at a job that I didn't like anymore. Now I'm working just as hard, but I'm doing something that I feel fulfilled in, and to me, it's not a job.   I don't even know what day it is today, to be honest with you. I mean the weekends to me are just like any other day or whenever I want to. For me, it was hard because I was working and it was like you said every week the week is over you get paid you start the next week, and it was just boring, and it was not fulfilling. Also when we bought our first property it was exciting because it felt like we did something different. Then three months after that first property we bought our second property. So we had 60 units within the first three months of buying the first deal. It took us 18 months to get our first deal. I mean it was hard out there I had done some coaching I had gotten together with mentors I had gotten together with Jake as a partner. So Jake and I took 18 months to get that first deal. But that second deal came right after the first because we had the credibility. We had met the broker we had understood the market. We had chosen the market and focused, and we had built a team. And I mean things are changing. I started seeing real estate as a business which is what it is whether you're going to fix a flip whether you're going to wholesale whether you're going to master lease whether you going to buy commercially. It has to be treated as a business. And you want to take yourself out of the day to day operations and think more long term and think bigger picture and build a business. And if you can't if you're out there trying to buy a business you can't scale that business then it's not a business, it becomes a job. That's why when you're buying a couple of single-family homes that can't be scaled if that model can't be scaled and you can't pull yourself out of it then it's not a business it's a job.  Here’s some that I learned from you, is the famous scent as you always say that transactions pay equity bill make you rich. That's right. I've learned that pretty well, and that's what we are trying to establish as well. So I know you wrote two books two of which bestsellers. So let's talk about these books a little.  I know the first one is we'll get our profits, and then the other one is family food and the fairs. So just from the titles, I could understand that these are two completely different books. So what's special about these books for you? And how has the experience of writing them?   Well, the great thing about it was back in 2008, I was trying to do something in the restaurant that we call multifaceted.  I had seen back then it was a shift. I mean all of a sudden you have to see trends you have to see what's going on with demographics, and it's exploding now. If you understand the new demographics now we're where people are not going out to eat they want to have delivery they want to have stuff brought into their house. Whole Foods is taking over a lot of it. Trader Joe's a lot of prepackaged foods. I said to my brother we need to do something different here at the restaurant we need to create other streams of revenue whether that is writing a cookbook which is what I did. I wrote a cookbook called family food in the fryers, and I wrote it for a bunch of Catholic brothers where I would go down and do a lot of mission work for and they were terrible cooks. So I said that was the mission, I said let me write a cookbook for them. And I ended up branding the restaurant then we created the company called Geno's family where I wanted to have my family teach other families how to garden, how to grow vegetables, and how to bring it into the house how to cook with them and then what I did with that company as I was sourcing physical products from China where there was cutlery whether it was vertical garden bags whether it was e-books and all that kind of information. And I was creating a little business within the restaurant and career multiple brands or multiple revenue streams. I was also joined tomato sauce selling it.  Unfortunately, as I'm doing that, Jake and I find out while this real estate is pretty cool and my brother was not ready at the time to start transitioning; he didn't see what I saw so since my brother Mark I'm surprised it's real estate. So Jake and I start buying these properties and about at about a year and a half after we start buying. We wrote this book with all our profits. And the reason why I wrote the book is it makes you go in there and research and learn and become a much better investor because even though you're learning you never stop learning is always things changing in the market and I electric let's write this book just for fun. We sat down, and it took us about a year to write the book believe right. I mean we're not good writers, and we're not that smart. So it took us a lot longer than what it should have. But I mean it gave us the clarity on what our strategy was we were buying these deals from mom and pop owners, and we were using the simple buy right manage right and finance. That was our three-legged framework on how to buy a multifamily property. So it gave the clarity, OK this is it let's put it down on paper. And then from there, we said what. Let's start coaching people and teaching people how to do what we're doing. So from that book, came up the Jay congenial program.  Beautiful. So tell us about how you met Jay and the other half of the famous duo Jake and Gino? Well  I mean sometimes people they gravitate towards you. He was a pharmaceutical rep back in 2010-2011, and he was using a restaurant, and he was good friends with my brother.  My brother is handling all the outside of the restaurant his deal dealing with the pharmaceutical reps that he was getting catering from our restaurant going to doctor's offices and selling pharmaceuticals. And when the sunshine came in that all changed the whole health care model changed and he saw that as a threat. So he decided to move down to Knoxville Tennessee, and I said Jake when you get down there let me know, we'll start looking at deals.  I know what kind of person he is, and for anybody out there looking to get into partnership with other people, you have to stop and think of why you want to in partnership with people.  I saw Jake as someone similar to me; he works. Rick is a super hard worker; he's always working. He's always thinking about the next step. He's got value-based decision making where he's got a great core belief; core values are really powerful. He's got a lot of integrity. He's got a lot of ethics, and he does the right thing. So I gravitated towards all of that, and I liked the way he worked because I worked just as hard. So if you're going to partner with other people make sure you look at that make sure you look at the background make sure you look at them saying what. It's not my job, It's not in our vocabulary, It's all about helping each other out. So I met him he went down and like I said from 2011 to 2013 we're looking to buy a property. He ended up buying a house because his wife moved down and then we bought that first property. He is the property manager because he was in the market, so he brought value that way by managing the property. And I was the one who had the experience the education I knew how to read the deals I don't want to raise the money. So I had that experience between the two of us. We just hit it off. We had a great partnership, and we just decided to stick with it. And like I said once you started growing we're like what let's start a podcast. What's the worst they can have. We've just started the podcast, started meeting people, talking to people and just really learning the industry from the inside out.  That's beautiful. So how do you guys currently divide the workload between you two now that you've been in a partnership for quite a while?  each other well.   Well, what ends up happening is there are certain inflection points, in any business, I think after we got off two-hundred units all of sudden Jake said I need to property manager and I need to hire some property managers we had 60 units the third deal was one hundred thirty-six units. So when we had that third deal we started hiring full-time property managers full-time maintenance. So we did that. That was the first step. And then when we hit about six hundred fifty units we decided to hire a regional manager. We just needed more staff. As you start staffing up and at that point, I was doing. I was sold to the restaurant I left the restaurant. Jake was doing day to day in the property management, and I was pitching in.  I was helping out filling out quick books and doing all the reporting. And then when I said Jake I'm going to do the education day in a day full time, there's a lot of stuff involved in the very beginning creating lessons creating videos getting people to come on the podcast. The date you do day to day with the property management. And then from there, those were the two streams of revenue on top of the investment which was the third stream of revenue, so those three streams. A year and a half ago, we decided we've got about 900 investors on our database. Jake, I can't reach out to them and set up thirty-minute meetings and you can either one, or we create a syndication company gets another partner for that which we hired Dillon Obama. He's our third partner. We have another partner Mike on that so let's do that. You have these symbiotic relationships between a syndication company that is raising money in an education company that is teaching people and also fulfilling them over to our syndication company. If they have extra money they can they can invest with us a property management company that runs these investments and the investments themselves.  So as we started scaling up we saw that we'd rather share the pie with other people who felt our core beliefs then try to keep for ourselves because it's hard to start scaling up and picking out what you do what you don't like. I love the education aspect of it. Jake loves the property management aspect of it. Our partner loves to speak to investors. He loves to underwrite deals, so if we can all work on our strengths and grow the business and try to keep it as a multifaceted business where each entity is helping the other entity it works well, and you'll figure that as you start scaling.  That's the hardest thing for an entrepreneur when do you hire somebody else. I mean we hired our first sales guy for Jacob Gino about two years ago 18 months ago and then only three to four months ago we hired an operations manager. We should have hired sooner; we just didn't know you'll figure that out. As you see, you start yourself growing and, you start doing tasks that aren't necessary if you aren't there to generate revenue. That's why you say to yourself OK, I have to pull myself out of this task and hire somebody to do that. Does that make sense?  It does make a lot of sense especially because I'm also in a partnership and I know exactly how important that is to have a mastermind, and sometimes you're not sure about things, and you could talk to somebody about the way you say things, and then they see things differently. And then you come up with the best solution. So it only makes sense to me, and I think it's beautiful that you guys are so symbiotic as you mentioned and that's amazing.  So I'm going to see you be doing that very soon. Trust me because once you have a great system and a great business it's all a communication right. We have something that we call Level 10 meetings every week.  We are on meetings with every single one of our entities and then might take up five or six hours a week, but it's really important to have her be on board. We've done something called scaling up with Patrick coaches because as you start growing if you're going to be an educator you have to believe in your product. You have to go out there and invest in yourself and invest in your company. So for you to grow and you're doing something new you've never done it before you really to go out there and invest in yourself and invest in your company, so that's first and foremost.  But I see you guys doing the same thing? You've got a beautiful model. You already employ virtual assistants amazingly you have a system set up. You are going to be teaching your process and then from that money make what you do the money you make. You replicating put into other investments and you start multifaceted, and I can see the picture already being painted with you guys as well.  Yeah. I mean I think it's what's special about our motto is that we came from the background of being a residential wholesaler. So as a residential wholesaler, you like a multifamily investor on steroids.  That's the way I like it because you're able to do some things that other people are not doing since it's just not a part of the industry.  a lot of people say, hey talk to the brokers and an established broker they should ship which we're doing, and we're doing everything, but the off-market strategies that we are implying are getting us ahead. And I can already see that we're getting to sellers that otherwise, we have never sold the property because they never had even that idea. So you're essentially the broker when you're addressing the sellers directly then you're essentially the broker because you're getting them before other brokers do. And then you're also saving the commissions that they would pay for brokers.  So it makes sense, and that's the best so much value. You guys have so much value that model and what's great about it is that you're in a tough market right now.  Can you imagine when the market cycle resets, and you're going back to the buyer's market you guys are going to clean up? So continue to do what you're doing because everyone always says now's not the right time to get in the market. It's never the right time to get into the market. It's never the right time to have a child. It's never the right time to leave your job. It's never the right time to get married. It's only the right time when you decide is the right time and what you need to do is learn what strategy to employ in that specific market cycle. I mean the real estate comes out three pillars it comes down the market cycle, it comes out to debt, and it comes down to exit strategy. If you can employ all three of those who make a wise decision on all three of those you can buy in any market, you just need to know. So as you'll see as the market resets you guys are going to you're poised to crush it as this market is going down because you've created the relationships you've already spoken to the sellers three or four times so when they're ready what are they going to call they're going to call you because you're already in touch with them a couple of times.  Exactly. I could always see that coming, and what else. When we started doing residential wholesale then a lot of people told us not to do it in Miami. The Fort Lauderdale Miami area because this market is very competitive, and it's very difficult for beginners.  So it was competitive, and it was difficult to get in, but it was very rewarding when not the first deal. So it's the same thing, and in today's market and multifamily, it's hot. But if you get a deal then it's good for you because you couldn't so easily. So there are advantages to this as to every market. And if we're already talking about the market I wanted to ask you a question which I've already preferred. So what do you think are the adjustments that the investors that are trying to get into multifamily or investors that have already done a deal or two in multifamily? What do you think are the adjustments that they should make in today's market?  I have a couple of different ways to look at that question. The first thing is when Jake and I started all I knew was that I'm going to buy a deal on myself.  That's not the only way you need to buy multifamily nowadays. If you have a strong balance sheet and you can be a sponsor on a deal, you can get it into multifamily. If you have sweat equity and you live in a property you live in a market, and you find a deal you can run day to day you can get a deal that way. If you want to find a partner and partner up with somebody you can get a deal that way. If you want a syndicated deal and raise funds for your deal you can get the deal that way. If you want to raise funds for somebody else's deal you can get into a deal that way. There are so many different ways to get into multifamily as I said; it's a business, and everyone that's out there sees these hundred unique properties in two hundred unique properties, and you see all these syndicators out there saying I'm closing two-hundred-fifty units. Yes, they closed, but they had a lot of help from a lot of people raising money. It wasn't just them for the majority of the people. Jake and I raise our funds for our own deal we've had a couple of key people bringing down payments, or we've given them a little part of the general partnership, or for the most part, they are our investors. If we had problems raising the money we would go out and ask you or someone else, hey can you bring money toward deal raise money? You are compensating. That's one way for you to start. I think what people need to do more than anything else is they need to decide that multifamily is for them.  I think once they understand it multiplies for them. And that is the right business model to employ going forward. Because, I guess food water shelter, and those are three basic needs.  You can buy it on the internet yet it's very hard actually to replicate it; there's not enough affordable housing coming online. The demographics going forward whether it's the immigrant population, the millennials or the baby boomers, they're all going to rent more. That's just a fact. Read the book Big shift, a great book about demographics and what's going on if you can understand that you can see what's going on in the rest of the world as far as having negative interest rates as far as people wanting to park their capital in a viable asset. That's why multifold is hot right now, and I think going forward in the next five to 10 years you're going to see that trend continue. Now the important thing is I think you need to focus on a market and you should South Florida is very competitive red hot. Why is that? It's because there's a lot of jobs down there. There's job growth down there. People are moving to Florida I think a thousand people a day relocate to Florida all the baby boomers. That's right. It's the baby boomers coming down, and they're actually selling their houses in New York and California, and cashing out and coming down here buying a small condo or renting an apartment right. And jobs are coming down here that's why. So it's the quality of life. It's the actual tax savings. There's no state income tax, and it's just a great place to live. The people here are great. I moved from here two years ago from New York. I love it. I cut my tax property taxes in less than half — no state income tax. I love the weather. People are visiting me now. This is not the Florida that I knew ten years ago. It's not.  It's going to reach a different conclusion completely, and I think the other thing to finish that point, focus on a market.  That's why the Southeast is competitive because that's where people are flowing. Texas is going to continue for the next five to 10 years because they're leaving California they're going to Boise Idaho, they're going to Salt Lake City, they're going to Nevada, they're coming to Texas because of the tax savings and the quality of life. So focus on a market that you like that U.S. population and job growth continuing on and if we do get into recession those people are not going to buy homes they're going to have to rent. So if you can play buying a place that has enough supply and demand there you're going to have better chances of withstanding any recession.  Yes. So assuming there is a recession you think that the eight class properties are the first ones to get the impact by the big class and the secrets are safer? I think so.  it's really weird, my mom used to have a condo in Deerfield about four or five years ago, we're still going down there every year.  I was amazed at Boca on a ten; there all the new builds that were going on there; the old builds were vacant, and they were putting up new stuff like you couldn't believe especially the commercial. My fear is as we get a slowing down a recession will rebuild us continue to do. They continue to build through the slowdown because they have the permits and that's what they do. So any new stuff coming online. Just be careful in your market take a look at concessions as you see a concession is basically, hey let me give you microwave for free let me give you a month's rent for free. As you can see those concessions going up, that's when you're going to see that there can be softening made in the space. Now what might happen in that a space, it may trickle down into space and say,  what I can get an apartment and be a lot cheaper. I can be where we play in the B and C space, they're not going to be as effective as much because those tenants never really buy homes, and they're not really you can't compete with the 1970s and 1980s build with a brand new 2018 build that has a pool, clubhouse, café, and a fitness center. It doesn't they won't compete there's no competition with mine. So the strategy of buying right, if you can buy those assets right and you can weather the recession the downturn. The only thing that I want to that would worry about in a recession is you're hoping that rents don't decrease a lot. I mean you think occupancy is going to stay in the low to mid-90s but if your rents start decreasing and there's a lot of competition a lot of people fleeing that's where you're going to have problems. But I think space is the first one is going to get affected in the recession.  I agree.  I wanted to tell you about the deal that we've done in Hollywood since the area so well. So everybody is saying that it's so difficult to get a good deal in multifamily. So then there is another very efficient strategy, and we've started to implement it which is to buy lots that are zoned for multifamily based on the city that you live in.  Right, they currently have a single-family on them. Now what happens in that scenario is that it's not multifamily like syndication like the classic syndication, but your dancing with the developers. What happens is that a developer would come over and give you a quote to develop the land for you, and the land becomes the equity. So you bring in the equity, so if you could syndicate the money to buy the land. Right. It's sometimes expensive because some multifamily land that you could work with the developer to develop. That's another strategy that we are implementing currently we're going to build. I believe it's twenty-eight units, but some people say 36. We don't know yet, in Hollywood a lot that we bought. So we bought this thought. We bought it for I would say half the price than what it's worth. Even less so 30 cents on the dollar. And then now developers are coming over, and they want to develop it because the multifamily market is hot. So that's another strategy that I know is good for the market that we are at right now. So I know we've already discussed that, but I wanted to mention it since I love that strategy. So why? Because you're going to have a brand new building that has no deferred maintenance that's going to have nice rents and you're basically in it.  I don't want to see it for no money down, but you're basically in it for a little bit of money down, and your equity is that property, so you've created a ton of value. You're not the classic entrepreneur, or that is taking something you repurposed it; you've taken something, and you've made what we classically call a higher and better use. You've done that. You attract a lot of values from that. And it's market, that's worth something maybe ten years ago. It wasn't worth it because the land was a lot cheaper back five, six years ago but now the land is at a premium. These builders are looking for that so that they come in and they need to split some of the profits with you, but they get that land at a decent price per door they're willing to do that. So any author listening listens to that stretch don't do in Hollywood, don't do it in Miami. You can do it anywhere else in the country, but that's an awesome strategy. Great. Great idea.  Love it. So one of the best ways to connect with you in case anybody wants to invest with you or listen to your podcast go onto our website.  Jake and Gino come on there; we have all the podcasts we do for weekly podcasts.  We have the multifamily zone podcast with my wife and me, just talking about working with your spouse growing the family how to teach kids about money and all that. We do a ramp partner syndication podcast, and we do a movers and shakers podcast with our students highlighting students. We closed the deal, and we have our flagship will our profits podcast and just gone. You can do your outcome. Reach out close there, and just ITunes we are on. We have an Instagram page or a Facebook page, and you can reach out to me. Jake & Gino and general if you have any questions I'd love to talk to people.  Wonderful thank you so much for being on the show today. I appreciate it. And it's always nice and a pleasure to talk to you.  The pleasure is all mine. Thanks for having me on. All right.  Thanks for listening to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden. Stay tuned for more episodes till next time.

Welcome to your oasis from hurricanes and political trash talk.  Enjoy your stay! Also, I have updated our FAQ page with our Google voicemail number.  If you'd like to leave us a message via your phone, well now you can! Introduction - Jake discusses how he's all Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor now, and I tell the horror story of how Hurricane Sandy inconvenienced me.  Jake and I also whine about kids these days and their Halos. I also bitch about tipping take-out servers. Mail Call - Blackstone asks us if we're going to read the new Thunderbolts series (yes) and if we've heard of some vigilante tv shows (no).  Arch also calls out Jake for spoiling Walking Dead and we discuss "spoiler culture" in general.  We also debate on whether the comic book fan letters page is still needed today. Bullet Points - We cover Greg Rucka's Punisher: War Zone #1. It's the beginning of the end, people! Flashbacks - Hey speaking about War Zone, how about some more?  We cover Chuck Dixon's Punisher: War Zone #7-11. It is pure, glorious testosterone. Discharge Papers - I get excited over Parks and Recreation's new season and I tell Jake I'm reading his favorite book, Count of Monte Cristo.  Jake and I also discuss the implications of Mickey Mouse taking over the Death Star, and it eventually turns to a conversation of when we need to let go of our childhood love.  Us nerds, am I right? Jake also recommends 2001 Nights, which is a sci-fi space exploration comic.