Effective Strategies for Scaling Your Real Estate Business

Today’s guest is Gino Barbaro. 

 

Gino is the Co-founder of Jake & Gino, a Multifamily Investor, educator, and Operator with over $280,000,000 in assets under management. Their students have closed over 71,000 units and have $4 Billion in Deal volume!

 

Show summary: 

In this episode, Gino Barbaro shares his journey from the restaurant business to real estate investing, emphasizing the importance of understanding the business before scaling. He discusses the benefits of using your own capital, the current market conditions, and the opportunities that arise from motivated sellers. Barbaro also highlights the importance of education, partnering with experienced individuals, and creating a strong organizational culture. 

 

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Intro ([00:00:00])

 

Gino Barbaro’s real estate journey ([00:00:55])

 

The pros and cons of syndication in real estate investing ([00:02:54])

 

Opportunity in Seller Financing ([00:08:36])

 

Challenges with Seller Financing ([00:08:52])

 

Targeting Mom and Pop Sellers ([00:09:14])

 

The surprise lessons from people in the coaching program ([00:16:44])

 

The type of people they attract to work with ([00:17:20])

 

The importance of managing and scaling a real estate business ([00:18:24])

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Connect with Gino:

LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/company/jake-and-gino/

 

Web: http://www.jakeandgino.com/apply

 

Connect with Sam:

I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.  

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/

Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com

 

SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f

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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:

Gino Barbaro ([00:00:00]) – Bigger is not always better if you don’t know what’s going on underneath the hood. So thinking about it as not just an investment, not just a piece of land or a piece of real estate you have out there, but that is a business you have right there and learn how to run that business. And once you learn how to run that business, then go on to the next one and start learning how to scale and put systems in that real estate business.

 

Intro ([00:00:21]) – Welcome to the how to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we’ll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:00:34]) – Gino Barbaro is the co-founder of Jake and Gino. He’s a multifamily investor, an educator and operator with over $280 million in assets under management. Their students have closed over 71,000 units and have $4 million in deal volume. Gino, welcome to the show.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:00:49]) – Sam thanks for having me on, brother. How are you doing?

 

Sam Wilson ([00:00:52]) – I’m great, I’m great. It’s good to have you back on the show.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:00:55]) – It’s been only 700 episodes ago or so that you were on the show. For those of you that didn’t get to listen to episode number 137, go back and check that story out or that episode out, and you’ll get to hear Geno’s kind of introductory story where he tells how he got involved in real estate. Gino, I won’t ask you to rehash all of that today, but there are three questions that I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me, where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:01:21]) – Before I do that, please don’t go listen to 137. I probably sucked five years ago. I’m not that great now, but I was really bad back then. I’m assuming. Anyway, the answer to your question, I completely forgot because. So who am I? Name is Gino barbaro I was in the restaurant business for 20 something years. I met my partner Jake Cinzano back in 2009. We partnered up in 2011.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:01:42]) – We bought our very first deal. 18 months after we did that, we bought a 25 unit. Since then, we’ve been able to scale the majority of our own capital only three syndications. We own 1800 units right now, so we’ve had an amazing journey. Just 1 or 2 great deals of the year refined those deals being very boring because creating wealth is not a dopamine hit every day. It can be really boring for weeks at a time. And then all of a sudden something happens and it’s just being steady. Creating a business, creating processes, creating systems, hiring great people, having a great team is what has allowed us to scale to over 1800 units.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:02:16]) – That’s really cool. I love the what you’ve said there about only having three syndications and doing a lot of this with your own money. That honestly is something, and I know it’s probably not in the cards for me in the near term, but it’s something I’ve thought a lot about where it’s like, man, the not having the responsibility of needing to report to investors, tell them what’s going on, or even even being responsible to make sure that they get their returns hit, because I’m probably willing to accept some risk and maybe some downside that maybe I’m not willing to accept for my investors.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:02:47]) – So what’s been your thought process behind keeping that? Only to three syndications with investors.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:02:54]) – Sam, when we started back in 2011, there was no raising capital. The economy was terrible. We know we didn’t know syndication was that was not that buzzword. So we bought our very first deal using seller financing. And that’s what’s going on in the market right now. Seller financing is back. So for those of you that say, hey, I like to use my own capital, maybe buy a couple of smaller deals. I mean, people out there will tell you, well, you got to go big. You got to get economies of scale. That 25 unit property that we bought ten years ago for $600,000 is currently probably worth a little over 2.5 million bucks, right. It’s it’s generating between 8 and $10,000 in cash flow every month. And the reason why it’s doing that is we bought it, right? We refinance it. There’s not a ton of debt on it. And when you look at it, rents went from 325 bucks back in 2013 to over $1,100 today.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:03:44]) – So it is, it is it’s a little bit of a waiting game. But that’s okay. You wait. But that’s 125 unit little crappy deal that I own. 33% of it because Jake and my brother Mark are partnered up on that deal. So that one deal has put my first child through college, my second child is graduating, and it’s my third child and everyone’s out there. It’s only a 25 unit deal. Do one of those a year for the next three years, and then by year five you’ll be thanking, you know, going I’ve only got 75 units but $200 profit per unit. You’re talking a nice 15,000 bucks in cash flow. You don’t have to be overwhelmed by the numbers in this business. And there’s no right or wrong answer. I’m not here to tell you to syndicate or not to syndicate, because syndication allowed us to build that business with investors, allowed us to get on a platform. It allowed us to create some kind of acquisition fees where we put back into the deal.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:04:32]) – We saw that that model wasn’t for us, because all of a sudden we had capital to do our own deals and we’re vertically integrated. So we’re not looking to buy 5000 units a year. We’re looking to do 2 to 300 units. Really good. Jake and myself, at this point in our lives now, syndication is an awesome tool if you’re looking to scale, if you have very little capital to start out with, or if it’s part of your overall strategy, you can still syndicate deals and you can still go buy 25 unit deals, 75 unit deals, JV with somebody. Why can’t you do them all? Because I’m going to tell you right now, Sam, it may be difficult to syndicate in the next 12 to 24 months if you’ve got capital calls, if there’s investors out there who are skittish, it may be hard to raise money. So this may be the time to jump in and say, hey, I’ve got my partners here, let’s JV on a deal, let’s do a seller finance deal.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:05:17]) – So learn all of the strategies in the multifamily, know when to use them and know what your goals are. And make sure that every deal that you underwrite aligns with those goals.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:05:27]) – Yeah, absolutely I like that. And you know, raising capital is getting immeasurably more difficult. I mean, I’ve not heard anybody come on the show here in the last six months and they’re like, oh, man, 2023 has been just super easy to raise money. People are just flush with cash. No, people are holding it tight and they’re going, oh, crud, we don’t really know what’s coming down the pipe. So let’s, you know, let’s let’s sit tight with our cash and just wait. So that’s that’s a really interesting point, Sam.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:05:53]) – You say people are flush with cash. There are a lot of people with cash. They just don’t want to give it to you and me.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:05:58]) – That’s it. Yeah, yeah. Let clarify. Yeah, exactly. You know.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:06:01]) – And I don’t mean to cut you off, but I think that’s an important thing.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:06:04]) – That’s what happens when you go into recession. People are become afraid. That’s why asset prices drop because there’s less money in circulation. People are holding it then that’s why the government doesn’t like that. That’s why they like lower interest rates. They want more euphoria in the market. When there’s more euphoria, one of two things happens. Asset prices do go up, but it is easier to raise capital. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have a ton of deals and easy cash. You know one of them is going to be lacking. So right now it may be the capital is lacking, but go out there, continue to make those relationships. And long term you’re going to be all right with raising capital.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:06:36]) – Absolutely, absolutely. But while we’re on this, let’s talk about what your views are in the market. I mean, you mentioned, hey, you should have all the tools in your in your tool belt ready at your disposal, from seller financing to syndication to using your own money to whatever it is.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:06:51]) – But what are you where are we right now in the market, in the cycle, and what are the opportunities today? And what do you see coming coming ahead?

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:07:00]) – I can tell you what we’ve done over the last year. In January of this year, we closed on 132 units in Knoxville. It was we had $450,000 seller finance note as part of that purchase. July we closed 105 units, and now in December we’re closing on 96 units. So for us 300 units this year, excellent. Last year we had a total of maybe 80 units spread out over 4 or 5 deals. We had like a 16 unit deal. We had a 22 unit deal. So now we’re seeing the opportunities are in these larger assets. Years ago, the last two years, they’ve been more difficult for these larger assets because you had private equity, you’ve had a lot of people come in with bridge debt and take a lot more risk. We’re not bridge debt for us is buy right, manage right and finance right. And that finance right component is if you’re trying to do short term debt, you’ve got to be very, very careful.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:07:49]) – Because when interest rates do rise, if they have their there’s there’s a problem. And that that’s what’s leading into the opportunity. There haven’t been a lot of deals out there over the last 6 to 12 months. They’re going to start coming because right now there’s a lot of distress. A lot of people are just saying to themselves, here, here’s the keys back, back to the bank. And there’s a lot of quiet. There’s a lot of hush hush going on right now. But I think from what I’ve been hearing from a lot of operators, a lot of people in the business, that there is going to be a wave of distress coming, and that’s a good thing. And that’s a bad thing, because the bad thing is, it may be hard to go out into, you know, get debt on these things because debt starts pulling back. So you may have to come up with more of a down payment. Terms may not be as great. But then there’s the seller financing component, which we’ve already used once, and we had a second deal in the contract that had seller financing.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:08:36]) – So. The opportunities are self-financing, and I think the opportunities are that deals will come. And it all comes down to a seller’s motivation. If a seller is not motivated and can hold on, they’re not going to sell. But the ones that need to sell, that’s where the that’s where the the opportunity is going to be.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:08:52]) – The ones that need to sell, I would imagine, to have debt terms that are not favourable. So how do they do seller financing if the debt they have is just bad? I’m going to call it bad debt, but that’s the wrong term for it. It just has terms attached to it that are no good. So how does a seller do seller financing with debt attached to that property? That is not favorable.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:09:14]) – They won’t that’s that’s not the type of seller financing deals that you’re going to be looking for, which you’re going to be looking for are the mom and pops that have been holding on to these deals. We’ve got a deal that’s coming up in January. We’ve been hunting these people for three years, and all of a sudden they decided we want to sell in January.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:09:28]) – Well, why January? Well, what’s going on in the world right now? We’ve got a war in the Middle East. We’ve got Ukraine that’s been going on, we’ve got inflation. I don’t believe the GDP numbers for a second. I don’t care what you tell me. So I’m looking. All these people are seeing things. Two years ago they were saying to themselves, Jake and Gino, go fly kite. I love this real estate thing. I don’t need to sell because if I sell, where am I going to put my money? Now the paradigm has shifted to like, oh, Jake and Gino, we still have health problems, but I think we want to sell because we just want our capital back. We don’t want to continue to lose. And that’s where I think the mindset is. And these these owners have owned the property for a long time. Their mom and pops, they’re about $200 to $300 below on market rents. They haven’t kept up. And they’re the ones who have a lot of equity in this deal.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:10:12]) – That’s where the seller financing are going to come in place. So when you’re out looking at deals, make sure you look at those kinds of deals that you know what? They’ve got some equity in them. They’ve been they’ve been held by the same individual for 7 or 8 years. The deal is you’re talking about they’re going to be worked out by the bank or the banks taking those things over, or you go in as an operator and say, let me work directly with the bank, see if we can create some new types of bank terms so you don’t get dinged on your foreclosure. I can take the property over. And oh, by the way, your LPs, they may get written down on this thing. So it’s one of those things where it’s going to go deal by deal specific. How do you provide value to that transaction? How can you help that general partner team without losing everything? And how do you help the bank by keeping this deal going. The problem is a lot of these general partners didn’t operate these properties properly.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:10:58]) – So if you’re a team that can actually manage these properties, run these properties and get them back to where they were, I’m sure that banks want to work with you, and I’m sure that general partnerships that have been sunk and having problems, they’ll want to have that conversation with you as well.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:11:10]) – Yeah, absolutely. Here’s here’s an interesting thought from a broker actually, that just interviewed this before I jumped on this show with you in New York City. And he was talking about how a lot how this kind of downturn, slash potential downturn is very different than the last ones, in the sense that he said the way that banks are handling distressed debt is very, very different right now. And maybe you can give some insight or some color to this from what you’re seeing is that previously it was like, okay, hey, you know, we’ll get this off of our books, we’ll foreclose, we’ll then sell this off, he said. Because of SVB. And what was the other bank that went belly up thing that sure.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:11:49]) – There you go. Yes. Those two banks. He said, you know what we’re seeing a lot of banks do now is it’s real hush hush like and things that are distressed, like things are things are trading kind of, you know, under the radar. If you see any of that go on right now where banks are working stuff out with really, you know, flying the flying the flag. Tell everybody what they’re doing.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:12:07]) – That’s a great point. I’m not sure. But I know I’ve been talking to a lot of individuals in private equity. I spoke to somebody the other day. He has a quote unquote, what he calls a rescue fund, but more of a philanthropic where he actually keeps the GPS in on the deal, cuts them out drastically, but but keeps them in. Right. And I think he says he’s underwritten over $1 billion worth of transactions in the last three months, underwritten. And he says there is a lot you he says you’d be amazed. And what happens is when people are in a general partnership and there’s three or 4 or 5 general partners, the communication start breaking down and then they wait till the last second and then there’s nothing that they can do.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:12:43]) – And that’s what he’s seen over and over and over again. And it really comes down to the health of the bank. If the bank is healthy, they can work it out. So they can work something out with you. They can take it back. But if the bank is not healthy, they’re going to foreclose on you. They’re going to get that thing off their balance sheet, and they’re going to get rid of it one way or another. They want to be made hold of this thing. Banks don’t want real estate. They’re in. They are in the best business on the planet. They’re securing their loans with an amazing piece of real estate, and they’re making ten times on their money and lending out money that they don’t even have in their vaults. On top of that, why would they want to own real estate? You know, that’s that’s the way I look at it. I’ve learned that real estate is not a good business when you’re a bank.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:13:23]) – I like that. That’s funny. That’s absolutely funny.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:13:26]) – A great way to put that. And you’re right, it is not a good business when you are the bank, because that’s not the business they are in. Very, very cool. You’ve given us some insight, both on the way you guys have been taking down deals, the way that you can buy 25 units a year and really make a meaningful difference in your financial and your life future. We’ve talked about kind of your views on the economy and where things are heading. What what are some what are some other things here that we should really talk about, kind of relevant to what you guys are working on right now that you feel like listeners should hear?

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:13:57]) – Well.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:13:58]) – I’ve really been stressing to people that if you’re going to get into multifamily, are you going to get into any kind of investing? Please invest in your education. I’ve had that Maserati Mike moment where I always share with people. Back in 2005, I met a guy. His name was Mike. He drove into my parking lot at the restaurant.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:14:15]) – He’s driving a nice gold Maserati, and he said, invest with me. And I actually met him through a friend and I invested in his deal, and it so much wasn’t the deal that was bad. He was bad on top of that. But I didn’t understand the investment myself. So I put 170 grand in a mobile home park. Year and a half later it blew up. And do you think I learned my lesson? Didn’t went and did a went? And second investment was a strip mall in New York. I didn’t know that either. And for me, that’s when I got serious in 2008, I said, I need to find mentorships, I need to find some type of process or some type of framework. I didn’t have one, didn’t know one. And when I met Jake in zero nine, it’s like, okay, I’ve got a business plan, I’ve got an understanding of how to invest. And when we came up with the buy right, the management and the finance right after our first deal, it’s something where it’s a repeatable process.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:15:03]) – You’re looking at deals, and the only thing that really to us changes is the market cycle. As you’re cycling through the market, you may buy different kinds of deals, but you still have to focus on managing these assets and you still have to focus on financing them properly. Things change years ago, who would? A multifamily with a credit union. I think it was unheard of five years ago. Now credit unions have really don’t say taking them by storm, but we’re doing our first deal, the credit union, in December, because all of a sudden, community banks are they’ve gotten a lot more expensive. All of a sudden they’re calling loans because they need to go borrow funds. People are pulling money out of banks, remember, they’re putting in T-bills and they’re putting money in other, other areas where they’re not in the community bank. And, you know, you’re looking at Fannie and Freddie. Their rates are a lot higher. So what people need to understand is there’s a process or framework to invest in anything, learn the process that fits what you’re trying to accomplish and then follow that process.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:15:54]) – Don’t jump into something without having a plan. Don’t go into a forest without a map. Get the map and then go into into the forest. People ask me, hey, do I need to make money and then join a program? Or I need to join a program and then make the money? And for me, if you can’t, if you don’t join the program, how are you going to learn how to make money? You’re going to make so many mistakes you’re going to make. And I’m talking from personal experience here. You’re either going to learn on the street, are you going to learn in the classroom? And I can promise you the classroom is a lot easier to learn a lot quicker. And man, when you have people who’ve done it, you just, you know, you mirror their success. Success leaves clues.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:16:32]) – Oh, it absolutely does. No. And there’s no doubt, and I can attest to that. Having had partners, coaches, friends that are way ahead of me in certain asset classes and said, hey, come, you know, just bring your experience to the table.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:16:44]) – Partner with me on this from experience, have them review the deals ahead of time. What what we’re buying. It’s like, oh, I would have totally missed that. Well, there was 50 or $100,000 mistake. Thank you. And it’s simple. Just simple phone calls. And all of a sudden you’re just like, oh golly, man. So I hear you. That’s that’s really, really powerful stuff. Now you guys have a really cool coaching program, no doubt. What are some things, though, that maybe have been some surprise lessons that you’ve learned from people that have come into your group where you said, oh man, this is something I’ve learned from people that didn’t expect.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:17:20]) – I mean, I think it’s the type of people that we attract. I was always out there trying to convince people that multifamily is the best vehicle. It’s a great place to put your money early on, and that’s a hard boulder to push up a hill if I’ve got to convince you and then you come in, I don’t want to be convincing people.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:17:37]) – So the people that we love to work with are people who are single family home investors, people who are fixing and flipping. They know real estate’s great. They’re just in the wrong vehicle to create long term wealth and to scale. For the most part, there are some people that can do it really well, but it’s a lot harder with the single family home space. So what I’ve learned is you have to be you have to believe in the vehicle and behaviors are belief driven. So if you’re already doing it, oh man, this is great, I think, Holy crap, I’m already doing single family. What do I need to learn about multifamily? There’s certain differences. I think the second huge component that I learned over the last few years is investing in real estate is an entrepreneurial venture. I don’t care what anybody says at Jacobs, you know, we say we create multifamily entrepreneurs. And what do we mean by that? As you start scaling your portfolio, you need to learn how to implement systems.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:18:24]) – You need to learn how to manage. Right. It’s not just sexy about buying these deals and financing these deals. You have the child. It’s a lot of fun. The process of making that child. The hard part is raising that child. And and it’s I’ve had students join us. Go. I don’t know how much money I’m making in a month, but I’m still buying deals. I’m like, time out, can you stop buying deals? And let’s figure out how to manage these assets properly, because you’ve got a lot of people have dopamine hits. They keep buying deals, keep buying deals. They’re not managing what they have, but they’re but they’ve been taught, hey, bigger is better. Bigger is not always better if you don’t know what’s going on underneath the hood. So thinking about it as not just an investment, not just a piece of land or a piece of real estate you have out there, but that is a business you have right there and learn how to run that business.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:19:11]) – And once you learn how to run that business, then go on to the next one and start learning how to scale and put systems in that real estate business.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:19:19]) – That’s great. I like that, and that is man, that’s a temptation. I think for everyone. I think I think all of us on some level are probably deal junkies where it’s where it’s always fun. It’s always fun to see the next thing coming. But I think managing, like you said, is probably one of the biggest components. It’s probably overlooked. Let’s talk about that for just a second. What are some things you guys have done systems wise, managing your own properties that have made all the difference?

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:19:44]) – Big shout out before I answer that question to Mike Dillard, big fan of Mike Dillard’s. I’m finally getting him on the show. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him, check him out. He has got a passive income course, and the reason why I’m mentioning him to you is you talked about deal junkies. If you’re a deal junkie out there, it’s all about the neurochemistry.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:20:01]) – It’s all about the neuroscience that’s going on in your brain. And one of the one of the one of the happy drugs is endorphins. Mike Dillards talking about this. He actually explained it to me. The four happy drugs. I’m an idiot. I couldn’t understand that until Mike was watching the video. You got oxytocin, you got endorphins, you have dopamine and you have serotonin. So the endorphins are important because if you’re a deal junkie, endorphins are more of like the status kind of drug. When you buy a deal, you feel like you’re important, like you’ve got that extra 30 units. It’s really important and it’s part of our survival. And I’m not saying it’s a good or bad thing, but let’s pull back and say, well, why are we buying this next deal if we haven’t done really good on this past deal? Let’s take a look at why are we making these decisions. And it’s important to understand what’s going on through your neuro, through your neurochemistry. So go look up mike Diller, everybody.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:20:48]) – You’re going to love the dude. He’s really makes it. He just lays it out so easily for you. But to answer your question specifically as far as manage, right, when you’re managing these deals, it’s either third party or it’s managing it in-house. And you need to look internally at yourself and say, yes, I want to own 3000 units the next five years. That may be difficult if you’re going to manage yourself, because when you manage yourself, you need to hire employees and you need to scale that part of the business. When you’re using third party, you have a lot less control, but it’s a lot easier for you to scale because all you’re dealing is managing the third party. You’re not managing employees per se. For us, we just started out buying our own deals and managing our own deals. Jake wanted to get out of his W2, so he’s like, I’ll manage our first property. He liked management, so he continued to to manage along our deals. There’s a couple of things that you need to do when you’re scaling a management company or you’re scaling a business.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:21:43]) – And I think the first thing that you really need to sit down and understand is you need to create some type of core values for yourself and every, every entity and every organization needs to have it. And the reason why I know that’s true is I had one restaurant for over 20 years. It was a good restaurant in New York, excellent restaurant, but I couldn’t scale it because there was no mission statement. I was not a leader, and I really didn’t have any core values in that business. When Jake and I took over, we got stuck around the 300 unit mark. That’s when we decided to, you know, do some scaling up, do some training with Gino Wickman. We did some work with Vern Harnish, and all of a sudden we started working on our core values. And from there you start creating a culture. You start being able to actually understand how to grow your business. And without those core values, how do you hire? How do you fire? How do you look at vendors, investors? That whole thing starts to become more crystal clear and who you want to work with.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:22:39]) – Back at the restaurant, those days where, hey, that employee sucks. It’s his fault. It’s her fault. It’s never was never my fault. But I never set any expectations with the employees. They didn’t know what to follow. They weren’t any quote unquote rules. There was no culture there. And it felt more like a transaction. They’d come to work and they get paid. But that’s all it was. You know, with I think the entities that we’re creating, I think our employees are bought in. I think they really enjoy working with us. We have something called the Golden Ticket Club, where if an employee works for two years with us, they’re able to invest in our deals dollar for dollar. That is an amazing. And I don’t think a lot of people understand that. But they’re investing dollars. No fees, no nothing. You’re investing alongside us. So you put $10,000, you have X percent or whatever. The deal is worth going forward because we want them to materially participate in that deal.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:23:25]) – I want property managers to see the business model in action. So when we refi that money out and they get that big check, it’s like, oh, this is what business is all about. And when they have ownership and you hear a property manager go, it’s time to raise the rents. You know you’re doing a good thing for yourself, but also for them because they understand ownership. They understand owning something and being part of something.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:23:46]) – That’s really, really cool. I love that, and that’s and that’s not the answer I would have expected, to be honest with you, is defining core values and mission statement. That’s not not the one I would have would have predicted. You’d say, well.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:23:59]) – What did you think? What was what was your prediction?

 

Sam Wilson ([00:24:01]) – I don’t know anything outside of, you know, building systems or, you know, whatever it is, there’s a there’s a dozen other answers that you could probably have given, but those I think are where you’ve started is, is is an excellent foundation.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:24:14]) – So I appreciate you taking the time to really shed some light on that. You know, this has been a blast having you come on the show today. I appreciate you coming back on for a second episode. It’s been been a good time. I’ve learned a lot from you. If our listeners want to get in touch with you and learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:24:31]) – Jake and Gino go on there. You see all the podcasts, all the books, all the website, all the how to shows on there. Just go to the website, Jake and Gino and check us out.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:24:41]) – Jake and Gino. I’ll make sure to include that there in the show notes. And Gino, thank you again. I certainly appreciate your time.

 

Gino Barbaro ([00:24:47]) – Thanks, Sam.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:24:48]) – Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen.

 

Sam Wilson ([00:25:01]) – If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.

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