From the restaurant business to single-family to multi-family real estate investor

Gino Barbaro is an investor, business owner, author, and entrepreneur. As a real estate entrepreneur, he has grown his portfolio to over $100,000,000 in assets under management and is teaching others how to do the same. Gino Barbaro is the co-founder of Jake & Gino, a multifamily real estate education company that offers coaching and training in real estate founded upon their proprietary framework of Buy Right, Manage Right & Finance Right ™. When starting their real estate investing career, most investors initially think about buying a single-family property (whether that's one home or a condo) and renting it out. Multifamily, though, is an entirely different story. Few people have experience buying an apartment building, let alone being in charge of running one. How does multifamily compare to single-family investing? In today's episode Gino shares insights on being a multifamily entrepreneur and syndicator.   Episode Link: https://jakeandgino.com/ --- Transcript   Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, what is going on? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Gino Barbaro, and he's going to be talking to us about being a multifamily entrepreneur and syndicator who used to be a restaurant owner. So let's get right into it.   Gino what's going on, man, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I appreciate you coming on.   Gino: Michael, thanks for having me on. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We're going to talk a remote investing seems like an all you single family, people out there. Come over to the dark side. The dark side is multifamily. I know it's the pie in the sky out there but trust me if the pizza guy and the drug rep can do it. Anybody can do it, Mike.   Michael: I love it, I love it. You know, so I know a little bit about your background. Give all of our listeners who might not be familiar with who you are, where you're coming from, and what is it you're doing in real estate today.   Gino: When people ask me that my wife always says Gino, you need to expand upon your background and I'm like, I hate talking about myself and I could spend the next 30 minutes talking about myself because I'm not a young dude anymore but real quick. I'm gonna give me the 32nd overview. I got into real estate, probably out of college family. I went into the restaurant business and it was awesome. The first 10 years the restaurant business back in the early 2000s. Late 90s was phenomenal every business was great back then you could actually have an you know, a middle class lifestyle that way we were having a small business 2007 hits my father passes away and I went to work with my dad since I was eight years old. So I was in the business with him. I saw him every day and at that point, I start saying to myself, and I've shared this story a couple times in my living his dream or is it really my dream coincided with the Great Recession of 2008 all of a sudden, I'm working harder.   I've got freaking GrubHub I've got Uber I got all these things delivering you can buy Taco Bell for three bucks was gonna come on by Geno's pizza. You know, I mean, the competition was fierce. I was losing the appetite for business because I didn't have a business. I basically had a job. How many of you out there feel like that have a small business and I didn't understand core values. I didn't understand how to scale a business. I had one restaurant, and I met Jake. Fortunately, in 2009, he was a pharmaceutical rep getting food out of my restaurant and delivering it to doctors’ offices but that was starting to end because of Obama's Sunshine Act. So that started waning and Jake says to himself, I'm leaving New York, I'm going to Knoxville Tennessee, and me is the proud New Yorker says where's Knoxville didn't know where it was back in 2009. I didn't and he goes down there. I would open a laptop. I'm like, dude, you got some deals down here. Let's start looking at deals and at that time, I was fortunate because I just started my mentorship program. I started investing in education. I knew the business aspect of it. I had done a few deals prior that were terrible. They weren't real, they weren't multifamily. There were other real estate deals and that's why I decided to really get focused on the education aspect of it. In 2011, we get together and partner up, it takes us 18 months to find that first deal. We closed our first deal in 2013. The rest is history in like five years, we were able to close 1500 units and we're sitting at around 1600 units right now with you know, one syndication and the vast majority of our portfolio is owned by just me, Jake, and my partner, Mike and some of our, you know, employees are investing in our deals but you know, I guess probably the most important thing I left out as I've you know, husband, wife, a six, my wife, we have six kids, homeschool of six kids, I've got a 23 year old down to a seven year old and you know, everyone always asks, what's the why do you do what you do?   You know, always said that's the big question, Simon Sinek and for me, it's not really anybody can say family and it's really important, obviously, the family. But for me, I wanted my kids to have a really healthy understanding and a healthy relationship with money. I wanted to be their role model, I wanted my kids to see me that I love my job and I want to sit here in the studio, love what I'm doing. I also want my kids to see that we can create impact in our lives and really work towards our sole purpose and I saw that as multifamily as being that that vehicle. Now if I was educated enough where I was more intelligent enough younger, I could have done that with the restaurant. I just didn't know how to set up the business and with the restaurant, I still would have had to work on the weekends, I still would have worked the holidays. It was a different lifestyle. So I think multifamily is just gives you that amazing lifestyle. It gives you the generational wealth and it's also given me the ability to create legacy skills for my kids. I'm not going to give my kids a pile of money. I want my kids to work and to learn those skills and to be able to say hey, dad, you know what real estate really is a business so you can become an entrepreneur doing this and here's what you need to do and I want to translate those skills into my children and as well as the Jake and Gino community. That wasn't 30 seconds Mike I'm lying. It was probably about six minutes but I try I'd my best bro.   Michael: You're pretty close. So, you know, rewinding the clock a little bit, you said you did a couple of deals that didn't go so well, and then you kind of ended up in multifamily. So talk to us a little bit about what those deals were and then how did you end up with multifamily, like, how did you come to that conclusion?   Gino: A person with money meets a person with experience, the person with the experience gets the money and the person with the money gets the experience that was made in the first two deals and, you know, it's one of those things where one of our coaches says you either pay for your education in the classroom, or on the streets and unfortunately, I paid on the streets and looking back at it, it was, it wasn't my fault. The first deal, my partner was terrible. He was probably bordering on criminal, we had a syndication going on, but it wasn't a syndication but at the end of the day, I am 100% responsibility junkie. So it was on me not to do due diligence, it was on me not to flower to the property, it was on me to invest in a deal. So even though it was his mistake, ultimately, I had to take responsibility and that was a shift back in 2008. When I read the book by T Harv, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, I understood that your fruits are in your roots and if you don't take responsibility for your actions, I mean, shame on you. I mean, I made a big mistake, I should have never invested in that first deal. That didn't stop me again. It's my second deal in 2000, late 2006 had extra money lying around, we bought a building up in New York, what are the wrong part of the cycle, wrong market, blah, blah, the list goes on and on made a huge mistake on that and then I ultimately said, Listen, I've got a four Plex that I invested in years ago. I liked the small multifamily. I can do it part time while I'm working the restaurant and I like dealing with residents and it's an asset class that I understand renting out. I don't know anything about commercial leases. I don't know anything about mobile home parks. I like the basic human need, its food, clothing and apartments. I like that my brain can understand that and that's a pivoted me over multifamily and didn't know anything about syndication.   They just knew that if I keep buy a couple of these a year, refinance my money out and continue to, you know, build a portfolio, there was no burr that you know, 10 years ago, 50 years ago, there was just a refi and roll. That's what we call it and that's why I got into it and I love the model. I love the simplicity, I could do it part time. I didn't want to get into single family homes, because I didn't want to fix and flip I had the job already. I'm like, how can I pay for my kids college and how can I pay for my retirement and how can I pay for their weddings and I'm like, well, I know what wealthy people do. They don't save for the event they save to buy an asset and that's why that's what ultimately shifted my mind and are they I'm gonna buy these assets. I'm going to start building wealth and I'm gonna let these assets pay for these events and that's why to me multifamily was a natural fit because I did not want that nine to five fix and flip mentality, work all that I'm already making transactional money, how do I get that equity and how do I build my wealth at the same time and I thought multifamily was a fantastic vehicle.   Michael: I love it and just for our listeners, let's clarify something when you say multifamily. What is it that you mean because there's obviously the small multifamily and then commercial multifamily. So it's clarify for us, what do you mean?   Gino: For multifamily to me, it can be duplex, you can go out there and buy duplex that's a multifamily to me maybe if it's for commercial purposes, five units and more is commercial. But crap. I mean, I bought a four Plex back in 2002. I sold it in 2019. That little bad boy cash load for me every month, I use it as part of my business one of the garages, I was paying myself 1500 bucks a month for to rent it because it was a it was a storage unit there as well. I would store the stuff in the restaurant there, I had rentals coming in, I was able to leverage it where hey, you have to plow that driveway, you plow my driveway, give me a break. So that four unit paid me really well over the years I use that as far as cost segregation went. So you stack a few of those little multi families and the sky's the limit and I want everyone to really think about this process that we were talking about. I'm talking about the conveyor belts, we were coming out with this trademark. It's called conveyor belt of real estate and what it is it's an imaginary conveyor belts in front of you picture in your mind, you're starting to buy assets, or you're starting to stack these assets on this imaginary belt, and it can be a two unit. Then next year, you buy a six unit, then it's a 12 unit and as these assets start to matriculate, and you start to get equity out of them. What do you do with them, you either refinance them out, pull the pull the equity out, and put it into the next deal, or you sell it, or you continue to hold it but you want to start putting assets in that conveyor belt. It doesn't matter how big they are, it matters how well they're going to do for you and just starting, if you're waiting to buy assets, you're waiting for the next correction, it's never going to come you have to be ready when you're ready. I was ready in 2011 with Jake, I said I'm done. I need to start and in 2013 everyone's like oh the deals are great back then GDP suck. It was a 1% rents back then for a one bedroom worth 350 bucks. Now rents that same apartment complex for 995 plus rubs because we still own it. So evaluations have exploded. There was no syndication back then. You couldn't you couldn't read was money back then who nobody was giving you money to buy multifamily cap rates were high, because there was a lot of risk in the market because the economy was terrible. So don't blame circumstances or where you are in the part of the cycle. Great Investors, whether you're in the stock market, real estate, self-storage, you're making money on them when the market goes up and when the market goes down.   Michael: Yeah, no, I love that and you know, you said something that I want to come back to because I love the strategy. But you said rubs rent plus, rather in Santa Ana five plus reps, what is rubs for all of our listeners,   Gino: Sorry about that. So rubs his ratio utility billing system and what happens is a lot of these Mom and Pop owners when they have a property, and it's all bills paid, so let's say a little 10 unit apartment complex, and there's one water meter, well, the owner traditionally pays for all of the water on the on the property, because there's no separately meter. So instead of separately metering it, what you would do is you'd buy the property, and then you say to yourself, okay, the water bill is $1,000, there's 10 units, I'm going to split up and pro rata share each one of those and let the residents pay for that and it doesn't seem like a lot of money. But if there's 10 units, and let's say the water bill is 50 bucks per unit, 50 bucks times 10 unit is $5,000 a month of 50 bucks times 10 is $500 per month, and then times 12 is $6,000 a year. Now, $6,000 a year at a 10 cap is $60,000 in value at a five cap, it's $120,000 that you've just created in value on a little 10 unit apartment complex.   Do you think you can get rich doing that once every couple of years? How many pizzas do you need to make to make 120 grand? You don't know, I know there's a lot of flour and a lot of sweat doing that. So there's so many ways to make money in multifamily and that's just a little 10 unit apartment complex. We've done that with 300 unit apartment complexes where all of a sudden, you're billing back. That's your billing, you can't build back more than what you're collecting. But you can build back for water sewer garbage trash, so you can collect it all back and obviously if the market allows it in Knoxville, Tennessee, where we are, it's traditional up in New York, we can't do that I had an oil tank for a four unit complex and my four units. That was just one heating bill. So what I did it I raised I raised the rents on average about what it was costing me to do that. So either way, you need to get it back to the residents, because they're the ones who are utilizing it and obviously, the most amazing thing happens socialism doesn't work. All of a sudden, they're seeing that they get no water bill, guess what? Water consumption goes down. So not only is it good for you, it's good for the environment, people.   Michael: Yep, no, I love it. I love it and people always make the joke, you know, the owner is paying for the heating in the wintertime, windows open heats on 80 degrees in the house and it's like come on.   Gino: And that's it's real, Michael that that I mean, I drove by that place on or when I had it back in 2015. I drove by one day putting stuff in, it was 22 degrees out in New York and I see the window up and I go up says I go Bros and they're like, Hey, there, it was 84 degrees that throws in Jamaica or something. I'm like guys, really, and they're not paying for the heat, because just kicking along. So for those of you out there, what I ended up actually doing was I ended up bringing the thermostat to the basement and putting the thermostat in the bait leaving the thermostats upstairs, but putting the control downstairs in the basement. So I had the control set. So then they couldn't touch with the controls and I was I was able to control all of those three apartments from that thermostat that was located in the base because after a while, it's like you get fed up with it and that same apartment complex I had all of the electric on one electric meter for the three units and I would always drive into that place my father would always tell me show you that the lights on the old Italian guy, the lights on the Dekoven are what are you gonna do? I'm like, Dad, I paid I paid the electrician six grand they get it a whole new panel and everything and that was the best six grand respects I shut my dad off.   Actually got I actually got electric consumption down. I pushed the electric onto them. So there's a ways that you can you can you can, you know, save the multifamily and you talk about a single family home, you can do that with one unit. But can you imagine if you have a 50 unit complex, are 100 unit complex. I think with entrepreneurs, the more problems you solve, the more money you're going to make. So the more residents you serve, the more units you have, the more money you're going to make and that's the dawned on me when we thought when we bought our first 25 unit property it was like wow, I 25 units in one location Jake is doing his pharmaceutical thing I'm doing my pizza thing. We can manage all 25 of those units, you go to the complex once and collect rents there you're showing units there. Every unit is very similar. So it's very easy to scale that you know where the hot water heaters are, you know, where the you know, one or two roofs on the property one or two landscapes grasses to cut hot water heaters. It's all very similar. You're buying basic boxes, and it's so easy to manage and it's so easy to scale that model as opposed to single family homes. Now if you're doing single family homes, congratulations because we've got a bunch of students in our community. I mean, there's one guy Andy and Scott, and they're both from Scotland. These guys amazing. They bought 100 they're up to 100 single family homes and it dawned on them maybe I could be doing something different.   Amazing, they're managing themselves and they still got a W two job one of them, kust the I don't even know how exactly, it's amazing. But to do all of that, you could have bought 100 unit complex and had the same scalability and had the same results. But you don't know what you don't know and that's what happened, me and Jake, we thought, hey, four units, let's do that we're great. 25 units, great. But once you start buying these assets, you start seeing, and I'm sure a lot of your guests have said, this is just numbers on a paper, right? That's really what it is, your behaviors are belief driven. If you think you can buy a 20 unit, you can, if you think once you've done that, you're like, oh, I've done that. Let me push the envelope and go to a 40 unit, then you can believe you can do it, then you'll end up achieving that it really does limit us sometimes when you think you can't do something is everyone's always saying to me, well, what's one of your regrets. One of the regrets was I should have probably started buying 100 units early on, but I didn't have the skill set, I didn't have the mindset to do it. So wishing I would done something and actually doing it are two completely different things.   Michael: Yeah and I think that makes a ton of sense and I'm a big believer in that too. But do you know, let's touch on like the mindset, because so many folks in our community, both on the rootstock side in the Roofstock Academy side, are very comfortable with single family because they understand it, they lived in one or they've owned it as their primary, they maybe never owned an apartment building or maybe I've never lived in an important thing. So if for whatever reason, there's this mental hurdle that needs to get overcome to make that leap. What does that look like and what have you seen work for people in describing and kind of coaching people through how to make the leap from single family to multi?   Gino: Michael, that's a great question. If I had to stop and think for a second, I think multifamily tends to be more of a team sport, or a single family, people are more comfortable owning three, or four, or five or six, and they're doing everything themselves and unfortunately, there's a book called Built to Sell when you're buying single family homes scattered about you don't have anything really that's I'm not saying that that's sellable, you can still package it. But there's not an intrinsic value. As far as if you're having these apartment complexes, where you're looking long term and saying, hey, I have this 40 unit here, this add to here, much easier to sell, they're more of a business and it's the much higher multiple. When you're looking at it, I would say if you're really afraid of getting into the multifamily space, first thing I would always recommend everybody to do is what I did, I just go out there and pay for your education. I say invest in education, but find a mentor, find a group, find somebody who's doing it at a high level that you really respect that you really admire and the accountability piece that comes with it. Once you spend money on that you're going to show up for those calls, you're going to come to these events, you're going to do the work you got you're going to follow through with what the coach tells you to do, because you've invested in it.   I think the other thing is start small, I would say think big think as big as possible. But start with a two unit or a four unit. It doesn't matter how big it is. It just matters that you buy something and my other thing is I will probably would not be here if it wasn't for my partner, Jake, I had an amazing partnership and for us, we only needed just me and him. It wasn't anybody else. It was just the two of us. There's groups in our community that have three, four or five people on because one's a capital raiser one's boots on the ground, one's an underwriter, one loves to talk to investors, just start out small and start out if you can't do it yourself, find somebody who's going to hold you accountable. Find someone who has, you know, their, your values aligned with each other, find someone who's going to want to be into multifamily for the long term, instead of someone who's jumping around in crypto and next week is self-storage and the week after his mobile home parks really playing your flag and multifamily, give yourself a couple of months to do the homework and then go out there and start networking and selecting that market is very, very important and once you select the market, start networking with brokers, and you know if you're in a community with other community members who are investing in that market, and like I said, it's important once again, start small, you don't have to start with an eight unit complex. Start with a duplex a quad and what I've seen from students and myself and Jake, you know, very similar, you'll start with a two, then go to a six, then go to a 20 unit, then when you're 20 units, you're like I don't have any more money, well, maybe you'll refi a deal out or you'll start syndicating and raising capital for a larger deal. I think the quote from Mark Twain I always I always mentioned it's not what you don't know that what hurts you. It's what you know, for sure. That just ain't so and what I really mean by that quote is that people like well, you need money, and I don't have any money, or I don't have a balance sheet to get into multifamily and I mean, did Mark Zuckerberg stop from creating Facebook because he didn't have money. He had an idea. He had no money. Michael Dell, Bill Gates, a lot of these entrepreneurs didn't have the money, but they had the idea and they have the experience and they had the systems and they had the knowledge. If you're gonna get into multifamily learn the business itself and if you can understand how to create value in that space, you'll learn how to raise capital for these deals, and you will begin to bigger deals.   Michael: I love it, I love it. Do you know let's talk to that was it Andy and Scott, who are two of your students that have the 100 single families? Yes, talk to the Andes and Scouts of the world for just a minute and they understand clearly the single family mechanics how to buy single family homes. So what we love on the show is really actionable steps and takeaways things that people can go really chew on. So what are the physical mechanics that are different rent for somebody if they want to go buy that quad. It's like I understand single family, what do I have to do differently to go and get into a quad?   Gino: Andy and Scott did something that I don't think a lot of people in the single family space and very few people in the multifamily space do. They have a certain buyer criteria that I don't even think they understood themselves, they were buying a specific house in Section eight with a specific tenant and a specific area with a specific unit mix and I looked at your portfolio and like wow, you guys own very similar with using creative financing. I mean, it's amazing how dialed in they were for us when students start learning the process and this should be for your single family home investors as well or any market real estate market niche understand where you are in the market cycle, we call it the three pillars of real estate because this is really important and no take notes on this because this translates I think throughout all niches real estate, the three pillars are market cycle, their debt, and their exit strategy and you have to understand where you are in the market cycle of your specific market. Because back in 2013, that was a buyers’ market cycle, back then you're buying anything you can you're buying old assets, new assets, old assets, because they're cheap, and there's a runway for you to make money on them. So you can fix them up, buy them cheap, fix them up, and then sell them.   It's very similar to the single family space, as the market cycle gets longer, and there's more risk and these assets are getting older, the older assets, those older houses are probably just as much as expensive as the newer houses. So why buy the older houses with all that capex and all that work, where you could buy something a little bit newer, and you're going to hold it for a longer part of the market cycle. So understanding where you are in the market cycle will help you formulate what you're buying. Right now we're buying assets that are newer, we're buying assets that are in really good parts of the market, because the market cycle right now, if there's a downturn, guess what you're gonna have to hold on to this deal a little bit longer than what you thought I'd rather buy an asset that's a little bit newer and that's in a better market part of the market cycle and a better part of the market than something that's older. So we've transitioned into that. I would also say that exit strategy, understanding what you're going to do with this, you know, a lot of people buying these homes, what are we doing? Are we going to keep them for the next two years? Are we gonna flip out, people just buy a deal because they think it's a great deal? Well, every deal, as our coach Bill Hamm says, you know, wheels up, you're on the air, he's a pilot, you're flying that plane, you don't have to take off, you'd have to buy the deal. But once you buy the deal, that deal is gonna land sooner or later, you're you know, it's either crashing down crashing, you're gonna get foreclosed on, you're going to sell it, you're going to refi it, whatever that looks like. So understand what your exit strategy is and then let's talk about what the debt component is because once you know what the exit strategy is, are you getting bridge debt? Are you getting community debt? Are you getting agency what we talked about Fannie and Freddie and these bigger multifamily deals? Is it going to be shorter term debt, long term debt, we're even using credit unions. Credit unions are really big in this space and multifamily is all of a sudden they've seen they're not banks, they're nonprofit. I don't know how they make their money, but they're getting their way into it and it's really a big viable option.   But once you've taken all that into consideration, you're looking at the three pillars of real estate, you're looking at market cycle, debt and exit strategy. Now let's chunk down what kind of assets you're buying in multifamily, specifically and even single family, what kind of homes where are these homes located and for us, we like to look at median income, because we're looking at median income, we can figure out what kind of renters there are, when we've made mistakes on deals, it's when the median income is lower, it's mid 30s 35, 40. That's when we have problems when we're buying in those areas that are marginal, because unless you know the path of progress is going there, meaning incomes gonna rise. That lower median income means you can't raise rents as much it means the quality of the resident is harder, there's more return on effort. There's so much effort involved in that asset. So be wary of that. So we're looking for specific median income, at least 50 grand we're looking for our for our specific, you know, niche. We love two bedroom townhomes. So if you're if you're a single family home investor, okay, I want to look for three bedrooms, two baths $50,000, median income, this part of the city I like garages, whatever that looks like. So figure out what for your criteria is because when you're looking at a deal, you can just check it off and say that doesn't fit my criteria or hey, I liked this deal. Even more importantly, when you're talking to brokers, you can push it out to all your broker friends and say when this kind of deal comes across your table, call me up and getting crystal clear on more, I guess buyer criteria. We love assets that have amenities in the multifamily space washer dryer hookups, for some reason are really huge.   So maybe in the single family space, hey, you want to have a place with a pool, maybe a little patio, Little Dog, a little enclosure place for the tenants, or maybe having washer dryer hookups in the single family home and offering that amenity as well. So figure out what the criteria is what kind of asset you want to buy. I think that'd be really helpful for anybody, whether they're buying single family homes, whether investing in self-storage, or multifamily and this criteria is going to change. That's why you really need to stay educated because market cycles change. As the market cycle changes. You're going to you're going to be buying assets that are different because as the as goes from a seller's market back to a buyers’ market prices are going to drop, you're gonna see those see assets come down in price, maybe. So looking at those assets more you can pay it's a function of price. If you can pay less for an asset in those buyers markets, you're more willing to buy an older asset because your capital requirements are still there. But you're still able to make money because there's a bigger, bigger, bigger price range where you can go up holding these assets for a little while and refine them is really important in our strategy as well, I did it.   Michael: Gino, you said something that I want to circle back to you were talking about the exit strategy and I love the pilot analogy that you shared a question for you if someone is listening to this, and they're just getting started and they understand that real estate investing is great. It can be powerful to understand the fundamentals. But maybe they're not sure what their exit strategy looks like. They can't think that far ahead. Should that person wait? Is that person not educated enough in your opinion or should they? Are they okay to figure it out on the fly?   Gino: That's a that is a good question. I started not understanding it myself. So don't let that hold you back. I you know, the thing is we it's so hard to be an entrepreneur and to be an investor and to how we will we call the long term mindset, we created a brand called the 100 year real estate investor because what me and you're doing right now, our actions are affecting our kids and our grandkids. That's the reality. So if you're waiting to buy multifamily, you wait five years, well, that's five years that you could have owned something and waiting and waiting and waiting for me. When you buy an asset, it depends on the size of the asset. If you buy a $50,000 home, there's less risk in that than investing in a $70 million multifamily. So it depends what you're starting on as well. Also, that's the that's the important thing. But getting clear on why you're choosing real estate. I mean, why real estate? There's so many vehicles out there. There's so much out there. Real estate is a business and I think people don't understand that I didn't for a long time i Our slogan Jake and Gino as we create multifamily entrepreneurs, that that's the reality when you buying real estate, you're buying an asset, but you're also buying a business. How many investments can you do that with if you can think about it, you're buying a stock, you're just doing an investment as a stock.   But with real estate, you can become a real estate professional, it can really help you immensely on your taxes, you're actually buying assets that you start asset, managing it and looking at it from the from the investors perspective, and you're able to scale up and start hiring people. So you're building the business and then from that, you're able to create multiple streams of revenue from that one asset. So if you have 30, single family homes, you're out there, you're like, wow, okay, I've got 30 singles, I can start an education platform. I can start writing books, I can start doing YouTube videos, I can partner up and I can start lending private money, I can start doing hard money. I can have a little fix and flip business going on. I can get my broker's license, Title Company, why don't I partner up with Sony's as a title company all these different streams of revenue coming from that single family home portfolio. We did the same thing with our mobile with our multifamily portfolio, we started the education company, we started a syndication company raising capital, we have a development company now that will start building multifamily assets. We have 100 year company that we're selling whole life insurance to our you know, students as well to be able to invest in multifamily. So I think when you're looking at real estate, and you haven't started yet, it's an amazing business, learn the whole entire business and the and the opportunities that it gives you because that's why I want people to stop investing in single family and get into multifamily, because you can start hiring out a property manager, you can start hiring out maintenance techs to help you with that part of the business. That's very important but I mean, should you be changing toilets. I mean, when you first started, obviously, when you have six to seven units, you should be really going out there paying somebody to do that and your value is an underwriting deals, your values and talking to investors to invest in your next deal your values and creating another business that aligns with multifamily not doing those tasks that really pay 30 or 40-30 to $40 an hour, which is probably a lot in a lot of markets. But still, that's not what you should be doing. You should be focusing on those bigger tasks.   Michael: I dig it, I dig it. Gino, one more question. Before I let you out of here. You talked about being familiar and aware of where we are in the market cycle or where you are as an individual as an investor in the market cycle. Where are we right now?   Gino: Michael, this is one of the weirdest economies that I've been ever involved in and I'm a lot older than you I just don't when a recession. Can we define what a recession is if you're a Democrat, right? The definition if you're a Republican, you're screaming bloody murder. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm trying to figure out where we are. We've added so many jobs but yet companies are talking about laying jobs off. I just don't get a it's a such a dislocation, the supply chain. I try to buy a car a year out from buying a car, airplane tickets or double hotels or not avail I just I can't figure it out. But I think long term. I'm always bullish on the economy. I'm always I know there's there will be a way for to figure it out. Because if the person is not doing the job in office, that's why we have elections every two years. They're going to vote them out. Someone else is going to come in and things are going to change. I think long term real estate is will always be the place to be because it's an inflation hedge my rents are going up the same amount as inflation is going up or rents have been going up the unfortunate thing you've seen what's happened with the middle class, the middle classes get a paycheck. They've got you know, raises of seven, eight 10%.   A person who owns $50 million in real estate, their portfolio has gone up 10% In the last five years or whatever, they're up 5 million bucks. So it's you know, you have hard assets when all this money has been given to banks, what do banks do with this money, they lend it to people who buy assets, so assets have just gotten this natural swell. So if you're looking at it from the equity perspective, it's amazing and like I said, it is a basic human need demographics are such that the build to rent space has gotten huge because people don't want to buy homes, they want to be able to be you know, wanna be able to move wherever they want to their job trips over, they don't want to fix screen doors, they'd rather rent and that's really bodes well for multifamily and further for the rental space going forward and there's not enough there definitely is not enough of a supply of rentals out there and you saw what happened with rents in the last two years are up. You know, Knoxville alone was up 20% last year, year over year in one year because there's just not enough just be aware of where you're investing. I mean, I think areas that have job growth and population growth are always going to stand out. We love the Southeast Conference. You know, Tennessee, Florida, Carolinas Georgia, great part Texas. You know, everyone says Texas is booming as well. parts of Arizona are doing really well wherever you see migration wherever you see people moving to I would say you know bide here and Michael if you ever speak in the next five years anyone listening to this I'm sure even if they paid a little bit too much for the real estate today. They'll be happy five years from now that they invested in the deal today.   Michael: Love it Gino as we get you out of here if people want to learn more about you continue the conversation learn more about multifamily where's the best place for them to get a hold of you and do that?   Gino: Just go to https://jakeandgino.com/ , we've got an event coming out November 5 and sixth it's in it's in Orlando. It's our fifth conference multifamily mastery five we had 900 attendees there last year. I think this year we're going to top 1000 and it's just an awesome place to get with people who are doing deals who are raising money who are networking you're gonna find your next partner there we've got amazing speakers as well so just go on the Jake and Gino website figure out if you've got the ability we call on it. We always call it the financial vacation for smart people because you're gonna be down at Disney you gonna be hanging out with people and it's great. You bring the kids nine to five you know during the event afterwards you're at the resort you go to Disney so that's our flagship event for the search go to https://jakeandgino.com/   Michael: Awesome. Well, Gino you know, hey, thanks again, man for taking the time. This was super fun, really insightful. Definitely look forward to continuing conversation.   Gino: Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it.   Michael: Hey, you got it, take care.   Alright, everyone. That was our episode a big thank you to Gino for coming on and sharing some really great wisdom with everyone. For anyone who is interested in the space. Definitely go check out Gino and Jake's websites and as always, we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…