Gino Barbaro and I dive into what it takes to become a master player in the multi-family game. We go into detail on topics such as: what mistakes beginner investors make, why you want to start investing, property management techniques, hiring staff, how to get a headstart, and much more. This episode is PACKED full of incredible learnings from one of the investing legends.
Gino Barbaro and I dive into what it takes to become a master player in the multi-family game. We go into detail on topics such as: what mistakes beginner investors make, why you want to start investing, property management techniques, hiring staff, how to get a headstart and much more. This episode is PACKED full of incredible learnings from one of the investing legends.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. You have to look at everything from the investor's mindset. That means utilizing leverage, liquidity, and control.
2. Start with the "Why?". If you have reasons and clarity they will reap rewards.
3. When you're managing a property you need to be in constant contact with the management company. Weekly calls and "pulse" emails containing KPIs.
4. Every property should have its own management budget.
5. What are your core values? Use these when hiring staff, using vendors, and working with partners.
6. You need to know the market. Know the expenses, taxes, and operating costs.
7. Speak with community bankers and property managers to learn about the market and gain knowledge on the market and costs.
8. It's a "people business". Tenants leave due to bad customer service and bad landlords... not rent increases.
9. Turn into that fear and head into it, despite having it.
10. Challenge your limiting beliefs.
Resources Mentioned
Limitless by Jim Quick - https://www.limitlessbook.com/
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg - https://www.amazon.com/Go-Giver-Expanded-Little-Powerful-Business/dp/1591848288
Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman - https://www.amazon.com/Never-Lose-Customer-Again-Lifelong/dp/0735220034
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill - https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Napoleon-Hill/dp/0449214923
Honeybee by Jake and Gino - https://jakeandgino.com/honeybee/
About Our Guest
Gino Barbaro is an investor, business owner, author, and entrepreneur. He has grown his real estate portfolio to over 1400 multifamily units. He is the co-founder of Jake & 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.
He is the best-selling author of two books, Wheelbarrow Profits and Family, Food and the Friars, and graduated from IPEC (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching) where he earned his designation as a Certified Professional Coach. He currently resides in St. Augustine, Florida with his beautiful wife Julia and their six children.
Steven Pesavento 00:05
This is the Investor Mindset podcasts and I'm Steven pesavento. For as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with understanding how we can think better, how we can be better, and how we can do better. And each episode we explore lessons on motivation and mindset for the most successful real estate investors and entrepreneurs in the nation.
Steven Pesavento 00:26
One of the most important pieces of success in multifamily is successful Asset Management running the business running that property. Well in today's episode, with Gino Barbaro, of Jake and Gino, we dive deep into Asset Management most importantly, the mindset you need to have to succeed in multifamily what it really takes to go out there and get started. And this is coming from somebody who has bought and directly owns nearly 1500 units. That is a syndicator as well that has taught hundreds and hundreds of people how to go out and buy multifamily and runs one of the top multifamily podcasts out there you're not gonna want to miss this episode. So let's get right to it
Steven Pesavento 01:16
alright guys, welcome back to the investor mindset podcasts. I'm excited and grateful today I have Gino Barbaro in the studio today. How you doing Gino?
Gino Barbaro 01:25
Steven, I am doing great. Thanks for having me on.
Steven Pesavento 01:27
I am excited to have you you guys know Gino from his best selling book wheelbarrow profits and the honeybee. And he's the founder of Jake and Gino education platform that helps others achieve financial freedom through multifamily. They own 1500 Plus units. They're direct owners, as well as syndicators. They've got a top rated podcast for multifamily. They've been doing this a long time. And they're really really good at it. And I'm excited today because we're gonna be diving into one of the things that Jake and Gino are the best at is how do you actually manage these properties and run these businesses super effectively, to make sure that you as the investor make great money and your investors on the partner front make great money as well. You ready to get into things? You know?
Gino Barbaro 02:13
Yep, let's jump right in.
Steven Pesavento 02:14
Well, I I've been looking up to you for a long time. You got a lot of success here. But why don't we start out by taking a look back earlier in your life? What events or influences from your childhood shaped who you are today?
Gino Barbaro 02:27
Well, I was very fortunate to have two great parents. My parents are immigrants from Italy. And that shaped my whole entire life. When people talk about working smart. And I worked hard as a little kid, I had the paper route. I was the entrepreneur when I was little, I was working two jobs, I went to college came home on the weekends to work. So working hard was instilled to me was part of my DNA, then I ended up doing something stupid and opening a restaurant. And that just made it even harder, right? Really difficult, hard work. My problem was that I never really looked at it as a business. Right. And that was, that was the unfortunate incident for me. I really got ingrained in the day to day, and I wasn't really working, you know, you know, on the business, I was working in it too often. And that was my path for the first probably 20 years of owning it. You know, at the time, 2530 years ago, you could work one business and make a lot of money and have a great living. I think 2008 comes around that changes everything. I mean, they were always talking about go to school, get a good job up until that time, you could but once the great recession came, everything shifted for me. And all of a sudden I said, I've got to learn how to run a business. And that's when I met Jake. And that's when things started changing for me because you know, the investor mindset podcasts, it's a great title. Because everything you do in life, whether you're investing in yourself, whether you're investing in an asset, whether you're investing in multifamily, you have to look at it from the investor's mindset. What does that mean? It means leverage, liquidity and control. And when I was running my business, I didn't I didn't look at it that way. I looked at it as I like what I'm doing. But I have to do everything, the IMA mentality, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. And when Jake and I came across the people, systems and culture that we always talk about, that's what really made the business change and made the business flourish. But you know, going back to me meeting Jake back in 2011, we decided, hey, let's start investing in multifamily. I had done some bad deals and in self storage, and I had some done a bad deal in a mixed use building in New York and I said, You know what, I want to do multifamily. I just want to do some type of passive income and make a couple bucks on the side of my restaurant. That's where my short term and long term goals were. I didn't have this big vision, right. Jake moves down to Tennessee, thank god him with the Tennessee Knoxville. We started buying there. I'm like, there's some great opportunities down here. You know, knowing about the market. I didn't know anything about market cycles. I didn't know any of that stuff. All I knew is I wanted to buy assets and make money. So for us fortunately, we started in 2013 bought our first deal. But Steven it took us 18 months to get that first deal. A lot of hard work, networking with brokers, not knowing what you don't know. We didn't know syndication. We bought it. ourselves, we learn owner financing all those things took us 18 months to get that first deal. But ironically enough after that first deal, three months later, we bought our second deal. So it's just starting. And you know, the message I like to give everybody out there. Everyone's always asking me, Is this the right time to get in the multifamily? And the answer truly is, are you ready? Are you ready? The book behind you start with why what is your why? You know, Jim quick says reasons reap rewards. That's a huge statement. Listen to that slip that resonate with you for a second, do you have a reason for doing it? I did. I have six kids, I've got a lot of mouths to feed, I've got a lot of college to pay. So that restaurant was not going to do it for me. So multifamily was that passive income vehicle that I thought nothing truly passive about it, unless you become an LP investor, and you get to that level, but you don't start out that way, you have to put in your lumps. So everyone out there become clear on why you're doing something, even when you're investing in the stock market, or you're buying crypto or whatever that that vehicle may be. Start out with the why start out with reasons. And if you can have reasons and you have clarity, they will ultimately give you those rewards. Does that make sense?
Steven Pesavento 06:07
Man so much to unpack there, so much wisdom, I hope you guys hit the rewind button, re listen to that one, two, or even three times, because at the core of what you're saying is you've got to just get started, that things are not perfect, you're gonna get your lumps. But if you've got a clear purpose and you've got that drive, then there's no wrong time to get started in real estate. There's no wrong time to get started in multifamily. Regardless of whether you're going the direct ownership route, you've got the cash or you've got the hustle with some backers behind you, you're going syndication the end of the day, you need to just get out there and start doing it. Because when you do, it can create that true freedom that we all dream about. That we all know is possible once we've been in that, but there was a time I'm sure you can remember where you didn't think that that was possible.
Gino Barbaro 06:51
Mm hmm. It True. And you know, another thing you don't know what you don't know, right? I think Mark Twain said, you know, whatever you do you whatever, you know, you do know, but there's things that you don't know that you just you just don't know, like when I started, I didn't know anything about syndication. I didn't know any of my raising capital, we bought our first 1000 units by ourselves, we were able to refinance, and roll the Proceed procedures, the money into the next deal, able to refi and roll over 9 million bucks. So our first 1000 units were done by ourselves. Could you imagine Steven, if I put a little gasoline in there and syndicated a dealer to early on, I didn't know what I didn't know. And some people out there, they may have an inordinate amount of capital to start with, right, they have a lot of money, they may want to go and do this full time, I would challenge them and say, Hey, let me go out and find that education program where I can learn how to passively invest. And I can learn how to do it full time. Because when you start you may not know about investing in syndication passively, that may be the route for you, if you're a doctor, if you're an attorney, if you're an accountant, and you have a demanding job, but you have additional capital, it may not be wise to to tackle this full time. But you still need to learn how to underwrite a deal, you still need it not to analyze a market, you still need to know what a sponsor looks like and how a sponsor is. So that takes education, education times action equals results. So it's really dangerous, you may have a lot of money, don't be fooled into thinking that a person has a lot of money that they're educated or wise, they may or may may have made money in one way or may have you know, gotten it as part of it, whatever, wherever they got it. If you're going into a new endeavor, you really have to focus on learning that endeavor and chunking down and ultimately figuring out do I want to do this full time? And if not, it's okay. There's other ways to invest in real estate. Yeah, so
Steven Pesavento 08:33
So I know that when I was getting into real sad, a lot of limiting beliefs about getting started about education, but all these things add a big fear about spending money. And then I finally did because a partner of mine, was convinced that this mastermind was going to help unlock so much for us and I've been in the single family space for three years did 200 deals, you know, half of them being flips before I shifted my focus to multifamily and specifically syndication. But if it wasn't for that mastermind, I would have never been able to do what I was able to do so quickly. At what point did you realize that education could really help unlock it and then it's worth it to spend a little bit of money on mentorship
Gino Barbaro 09:13
for me early on right after me those couple of mistakes with my deals, I said, There's got to be a better way. I didn't even know what a cap rate was, and I'm buying multifamily real estate. I'm like there's something wrong with that picture. So I jumped on right away and got a couple of coaching programs. I got a couple of mentors in the multifamily space. But for me, Steven, I think one of the biggest turning points for me was getting certified as a life coach, go into life coaching school, opened up everything for me and I went for the personal development. I didn't go because I wanted to be a life coach. And ironically enough, my wife a couple years ago said, you know, what do you do? What do you really do? I said, I really help people. And when she came to the first event that we had, she was amazed people coming up to her and going, if it wasn't for your husband, I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't have quit my job and she was she's like, wow, what do you do? I said, take some life coaching so she became a certified life coach. marriage coach. And now ironically enough, both of my children, my 17 year old, my 20 year old, are both taking the same program she took. So for me, that was like the turning point, I love doing that. Because like I said, it ultimately gave me the clarity from going from 40 units to 1500 units. After becoming a life coach, he was like, Okay, I want to do this, I want to know how I'm going to do this. And also just learning all the other skills, like like listening skills, like asking those empowering questions, like learning about those energy blocks, and those limiting beliefs and the assumptions in life. Those are all really powerful, because nothing's easy. And you're gonna come up against a lot of trials and tribulations. And for me having that background and being able to say, Hmm, how do I how can I look at this differently? You know, what, what am I doing wrong here? Like, do I really need money to get into real estate, not always, you can partner up with people, you can raise capital, you just need to know how to add value, like the book behind you, the Go givers, you know, adding value to the side. So for me, I think coaching was one of the biggest turning points in my life.
Steven Pesavento 11:02
Yeah, it can make such a big difference. And so let's think about this as like a brief little short coaching session on asset management. Because for so many people that are focused so much on going out there and underwriting the deal and talking to the brokers or marketing and, you know, finding a way to get in front of those, those opportunities, and maybe they're worried about raising that capital. But once we close on that deal, it's actually I think, the most important piece, are we going to manage that? Well? And are we going to be able to make sure that we can hit our business plan? So where do we start? Where do we start with asset management, and making sure that we're actually going to be able to execute the plan that we that we set forth? Before we bought this property?
Gino Barbaro 11:43
I love that's a great question. We teach the proprietary three step framework, we teach the buyer, right, the Manage rate, and the finance right now the buy, right, and the finance writer both fixed in the wheelbarrow. Right, once you do the buy, right, you've got it, it's done, you bought the property, the finance, right component, whether you doing community bank agency, bridge debt, once you have that financial component done, it is done that manage rate is the constant wheeling in constant motion. Now I can give you listeners a checklist or questionnaire to ask third party property management, when you're going out there and you're soliciting for third party. I think the first thing Steven is to say, Do I want to manage this myself? Or do I not want to hire a third party property management? There's no right or wrong answer. For us. We're vertically integrated, which you'd said previously, we are controlling the asset ourselves or property managing ourselves. And we are actually managing the quote unquote, manager, we're having the asset management side of it. For Jake, when he we bought our first property, he wanted the property manage the first property, he wanted to learn the business, then he actually fell in love with the business. And that's why we continued to property manage, I think one of the most important things when you are managing your property is you need to have weekly rhythms, you need to have weekly calls and need to have quarterly priorities, you need to be in constant communication with the property management company. And if that's what your employees, whoever that may be, that's the most important thing, the most critical thing, at least the weekly call doesn't have to be hours long, it could be 15 to 20 minutes, I think the second thing that we do that makes us successful for our company is we have what we call our weekly Pulse, we'll send out a weekly KPI list. And this is really important because you want to hold everyone accountable. You want to be able to, you know, catch the problems, you want to be proactive in life instead of being reactive, being proactive. So at the end of Friday, around four o'clock, our managers send out a weekly pulse. And what does that entail? It talks about each individual property we have, you know, it'll talk about the number of units rented, it'll give an occupancy, It'll even give it an economic occupancy because there's a difference between a physical occupancy one that's physically occupied, and one that's economically occupied, like right now during COVID. I'm sure not all the tenants are paying, so your economic occupancy, occupancy is going to be less. So that's an important number to know, why do we have 100 units that are physically occupied by only 90 Economically, that's a number that you need to catch on the front end. Another we like to see is delinquencies. We want to see our delinquencies clear up by the end of by the end of third week, if not property managers can be out there texting, residents say, hey, we need to collect our rents. And other than that we have we use out there vacant and rented, we want to know how many units are vacant, that are on rented vacant that are rented. So I can also share that document with you. We have that pulse that we send out. And it's important that you need to over communicate with the property management, there's something going wrong, you need to stay in front of it.
Steven Pesavento 14:28
That is huge, right? If we can get our KPIs right, and make sure that we're tracking to those we can tell when there's different issues that are coming up along the way. Why is this number up? Why is this number down and be able to track to that so you're getting that information from your property manager or from your internal team on a weekly basis? And then are you just rolling all that information up in for your whole portfolio or how do you analyze and work through that info that you take? Taken? Yeah, so
Gino Barbaro 14:55
we we do a per office so each office has around 200 units In the portfolio having 600 units is around seven or eight different offices. So each office is responsible for their own pulse. And then we roll it up. And what we've done since COVID, we've done something interesting. We've done a daily tracker of collections, which is really important because we want to know where our collections are. So March by March 1 March daily, so we were tracking them daily for the portfolio. And we saw that March look really good. Right, then we tracked April, April looked really good, that we tracked may may look good, except for there's a couple a couple of areas in Louisville, Kentucky that are that are down 5% from last month. So we know that so we can actually address that say that the the property managers what's going on? Oh, by the way, Louisville's a little bit more lacks on evictions, you can evict tenants right now in Louisville, whereas the Tennessee portfolio, they're a little bit stricter. So you can see the different dynamics. But as fiduciaries of these people have these investors that we have, you need to you need to have that information. So when you have when you get an investor call, you can say hey, we've been tracking daily collections, we're on top of it, we're trying to be as proactive as possible. There's, you know, in this in this type of economy, this type of climate right now, what are you going to do? You're going to try to be as proactive as possible, you can try to send out texts, you're going to try to send out reminders, and when we can start evicting guess what we're gonna start evicting.
Steven Pesavento 16:14
Yeah, no, that that makes so much sense. So, on a weekly basis, we've got that down, we're kind of clued in on what we're going to do there. when issues come up. How are we addressing those from an asset management perspective? Now you guys are managing in house. So obviously, this information is going out to your property manager, but assuming it's probably it's similar, if it's third party management, how do you guys solve problems based on those numbers to make sure that the whole portfolio keeps moving in the right direction?
Gino Barbaro 16:43
I think you have to assess what's going on at each individual property, you need to have processes in your your property management or your asset management. One of the big processes is a turn. How are you? How are you calculating? When you're turning a unit? Do you have the five day turn? How much is it costing per turn? I think another thing we should really mention is every property should have its own budget, you should be doing a yearly budget and sticking to a yearly budget and convey that to the property managers. Where costs dollar 10 per square foot for flooring. Why did you pay $1.30 per square foot? a ceiling fan normally cost 40 bucks? Why are we paying 100 bucks for a ceiling fan? Painting an apartment a two bedroom and standard should cost between four and $500? Why did you charge $600 And get $600. So setting up those budgets for each property. And like I said, that accountability piece, they'll have the framework. And you know, you don't this doesn't happen overnight, you start out with one property, you're not thinking with the end in mind, I think one of the most important things that all the listeners need to do is they need to have some type of property management software, whether it's an AppFolio, which is much you know, for larger portfolios, but you can start with a platform like building, it's got a it's a great asset management tool. It's all in house, it does maintenance requests, you can actually lease units on there, it does daily reporting, it's a great platform, you can actually talk to your at your tenants on there, you need to start with that we started out with QuickBooks, you know, back in 13, the building wasn't around and AppFolio was just a little bit too much of a stretch a little too expensive for us. And it wasn't relevant for 25 units. But there's so many different platforms out there that you can use. And if if nothing else, get on there and start using it. Because you can grow into these platforms. And they will, they're great. They're great, because you can send out reports and you can generate numbers on those things quickly. So I would definitely recommend that.
Steven Pesavento 18:23
So you get a set of processes going we've got budgets for manage these on an individual level, but it's rolling up to the portfolio. Those are definitely some key things. What are some of the big areas that you see newbies make mistakes on or even experienced investors?
Gino Barbaro 18:39
Yeah, that is a great question. So what I would focus on everybody listening to this, get a pen and paper when you don't want it with this with listening to this, sit down and really ponder what your core values are. Because we hire and we fire on our core values. And Jake was a corporate guy, and he poopoo them when he was working for somebody else. But now that you're creating your own business, you need to hire the right people and put those butts in the right seats. And for us, we didn't have core values when we were smaller, but you need to you need to start when you're small because these core values can translate into your vendors. If you're dealing with a vendor that you don't like and they don't adhere to your core values. You know, there's something off you get rid of that vendor, for instance, our ADP payroll is killing us. We don't like that vendor right now. We're not working with it. And why? Because unweaving ethics, they're not people first, they're not growth mindset. They are not adhering to part of our core values. So sit down and figure out what your core values are and what your mission statement is. Ours basically is the growth mindset. Like I said, People First, unwavering ethics make it happen. And the last one is Extreme Ownership. We want everyone on the team to have Extreme Ownership if something goes wrong, not a big deal. Let's own up to it. Let's try to create a and solve the problem. And I think growth mindset for us is also huge because as we go To the 21st century, and you know, there is so much information and knowledge out there. But we have to continue to grow and learn because there's so many different types of technologies coming online and so many things that we need to learn as property managers, as investors as educators. So we're growing and learning, we want our team to be able to do the same.
Steven Pesavento 20:19
Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. The values are so key, because otherwise, you might have somebody who can do a great job, but they're not representing you, or your company the way that you really believe they should
Gino Barbaro 20:30
be. And I think a couple of the mistakes, I think when when investors are starting out, they really don't know the market. I mean, you really need to know what your market is, you need to know the job growth, you need to know the path of progress in the market, you need to know where you want to invest in the market, you need to have your own acquisition criteria sheet, what do you like focusing on? What are your buying parameters, what your what's your cap rate, what kind of cash on cash returns you're looking for. And one of the biggest ones that I see all newbie investors is when they get a t 12. They'll look at it and we'll look at the expenses and they won't know what the expenses are in the market. And they'll say these expenses of $3,000 per unit, that seems okay, or they'll do the 50% expense rule, there's no such thing as a rule of thumb in life there is, but you're gonna get hammered by it, you need to know in Knoxville expenses are about $4,500 per unit per year, you're going to need to get that granular. Because if you don't, you're going to underestimate your expenses, your NOI is going to drop and you're gonna lose money all from day one. And when you take the property over, make sure that you have updated property taxes and your insurance insurance, it seems like in multifamily is going to go through the roof in the next couple of years because they had been under charging. And I think with all these different situations, whether you're in Houston with the flooding, whether you're in Florida with the hurricanes, and elsewhere, I think insurance multifamily is actually going to take a little bit of a hit. So when you're underwriting deals, make sure you know your get down the expenses, and you really become granular. And you know, I'll give you another example, you're in a certain market, the south side, water can be $500 per unit, all of a sudden, you go to the west side, and they've got more taxes, and water costs more. So make sure you get to be that granular in your marketing, you understand how much it costs to operate and run. And that's why budgets will help you because you create a budget before you take a property over, you know exactly what the expenses look like.
Steven Pesavento 22:16
Yeah, that's one of the things a lot of new folks run into is they feel like, well, I'm following all the best practices, but how do I actually go out and find out? Well, what are the expenses in my market? How do I find out what are some of these specific neighborhood challenges that I might face? Where do they find that information to you know,
Gino Barbaro 22:34
join an education platform and get coaches, that that's probably the easiest, and the quickest way Seriously, that's how I really learned. The other way you can do it is basically one of the ways that I found was really, really excellent is getting community banker on board and going to the community banker saying, hey, I want to buy some deals, the community bankers, my community banker actually told me, If you give me a trailing your CI, three in rental income, I could probably build out the expenses for you because I can understand what the market is. Now he's a really savvy dude, they actually invest in MultiFit. And they actually have the, you know, their portfolio lenders, so they know the market really well. So maybe you lean on them. The other the other aspect is go to a property management company and start interviewing a few of them and asking them, you know, what does a typical see property in this market costs run expenses per unit in this type of the market, they should know that because they'll have any kinds of properties that they're met, they're managing, you know, realtors, brokers, they may know they may not know they may give you throw your number, but I think property managers and I think the community bankers will have a much more granular approach to it. Because what do community bankers do all day, their underwriting deals all day. And whatever property managers do, they're there running the properties all day. So I think those two resources should definitely help you out with that.
Steven Pesavento 23:45
Yeah, that's so useful for all the listeners here. What else do people need to know about effectively managing these assets after you've taken them down?
Gino Barbaro 23:54
It is a people person business. So when you're managing, it's all about customer service. People will leave not because you're raising the rents because rents have been going up. They will leave Stephen because Stephen didn't fix my stove. Stephen didn't listen to me. When I made the maintenance requests. Stephen just ignores me. Stephen doesn't hear me that's where they leave because the customer service is not there. You look at Apple, you look at some of these other companies that have superior customer service. My partner Jake loves Chick fil A. Why are they so popular? Why they have that amazing brand, because it's all about customer service. And we like to say in the BNC space, that's the often forgotten, you know, people out there that are just not served. They're underserved because they're taken advantage of, you know, they're going to live in the apartment. They're not going anywhere. So they're underserved, and there's not their customer service there. So I would tell everybody, you know, we use a gentleman named Joey Coleman, and he wrote a book called Never, never lose a customer. And it was an amazing process. It opened my mind up to the fact that there's a customer journey where you want a customer to go into this journey, and to walk through it and go from a phase called the assess phase where he's figure, he or she is freaking out to work with you all the way up to the advocate phase where they become raving fans. If you can create that system in your asset manager slash property management, you're gonna be so successful in business.
Steven Pesavento 25:11
These are some great tips. And at the end of the day, it really is a people business, right? Like, we're we're going to be extremely happy with service, even if it's not exactly what you want. If somebody treated us well, and we're going to scream and complain and kick to get our money back. If we don't feel like we got what we deserved. So we've made it to the growth rapid fire round where the questions are quick, but the answers don't need to be. Tell me Gino, how would you define success and what is success to you?
Gino Barbaro 25:39
While Success to me is success, thinking about how I would phrase I achievement is something that you get done successes, I think of feeling like I feel successful now in my life, because I'm doing what I want to do being a role model for my kids. And I'm working with who I want to when I want to where I want you, to me that success and really working towards your sole purpose. And having that abundance mindset that to me is success.
Steven Pesavento 26:06
And how do people go about finding what that sole purpose is?
Gino Barbaro 26:10
Wow, a lot of work. People have to work on themselves. It's difficult. You might not like the answers. It's all our responsibility pulling back that onion, right? Once you start peeling the layers, you're like, Man, I didn't think I like myself there. But that's okay. Because once you realize what you don't like, you can work on it, right? So people are afraid, don't be afraid. We are all broken. We all have issues. But if we can work on ourselves, and take that responsibility that I did make that mistake, but how do I make it better. And if we can take ultimate responsibility for ourselves, we can actually start figuring out what the solutions are. When I'm blaming Steven for a problem. I can't find the solution. But I'm like, you know, Steven, not your fault. It's my fault. How do I fix it? How do we fix it together? That's how we can progress in life.
Steven Pesavento 26:51
Turn into that fear and head into it despite having it such a good such good advice there. For so habits, what are some of your Keystone Habits, the things you do on a daily or weekly basis that have led to some of this success.
Gino Barbaro 27:05
For me, it's about planning, I have to plan my day, I have to plan my week, I have to know what I need to get done throughout the day. And for me also, it's transitioned the last couple of years into focusing on things that generate revenue in May, they may not generate revenue today, but they're gonna generate revenue three months from now or six months from now, how long would it take me to write the honeybee didn't take me a day or two days or a week, it took a long time. But every act that I did towards that, whether it was recording or writing, or researching all those activities lead to generating revenue. So that's what I have to you have to focus on what's going to generate revenue and what's going to move the needle and then plan accordingly.
Steven Pesavento 27:43
Such good advice and what's a book that's impact your life the most one you're excited about right now.
Gino Barbaro 27:48
I'm reading limitless Believe it or not by Jim quick, just just almost finished reading it and one little tip read with my finger something so simple. I've got another probably 50 to 60 words a minute that I'm reading and if you think you can increase your reading by 25% You can read another book book and a half a month. It's an amazing thing. So I think his book is awesome, love limitless. But I think everyone out there should read Napoleon Hill's book Thinking grow rich. I mean, that's just that is just the Bible. For all the Guru's out there. We've all stolen from Napoleon Hill. And he's amazing. It's an amazing book.
Steven Pesavento 28:18
And it's amazing because Napoleon Hill stoled from all the smartest, richest people, and put it all together for us to steal from him. So rip off and duplicate my friend. Exactly. And that limitless book, I've heard amazing things. I haven't had the chance to sit down and read it yet. But it's a breaking down the personal development side along with how to make your brain work the best. I just think that's got to be such an awesome book. Yep,
Gino Barbaro 28:42
no, it is. It's great.
Steven Pesavento 28:43
So from an inspiration standpoint, what impact have mentors made on your life? And how do you recommend others go out and find great mentors,
Gino Barbaro 28:53
I think to go and find the right mentor, you need to resonate with a mentor. That's why you go out and listen to podcasts, see how they are. It's value based decision making. It's almost like going out to find a partner. If if your partner doesn't resonate with you doesn't have the same goals as you does have the same beliefs, ethics as you you're probably not going to work well with that partner. It's the same as the mentor, find out you know, what that mentor brings in his life. He's flashy, he likes cars, and that you're into that great if you like, want a mentor who's more of a family person who's focused on family and relationships, great go with that person. But I would say with a mentor, go find someone who has the results that you want, ultimately, if you want to get into multifamily, and you want to learn how to do it, find people in that space. And I think ultimately, there's so many books out there, there's so much reading out there I love T Harv Eker because for him that responsibility book, The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind for me changed changed because I ultimately was saying to myself 1015 years ago, you know, the great recession comes you know, I can't make money this business, you know, this economy stinks. And then he I look around and he's saying, you know, there's other people making money out there so they're not making excuses. So for me, that was a light bulb. That light bulb was often said, ultimately, wow, we are all in control of our lives.
Steven Pesavento 30:04
That's amazing. And so finishing on purpose, what drives you to live your best life every day?
Gino Barbaro 30:09
Oh, it's my family. I love what I'm doing. I want to be a role model to them. I ultimately was thinking about this the other day, I used to go to work, not too happy. I used to come home a little grumpy. And I worked hard. Now, I don't want my kids to see and put work and grumpiness and hard and not pleasurable, in the same sentence. So for me doing what I'm doing now, I really like and I think my kids see the attitude and the belief that I have the ability to help other people, they see that that's work. Instead of seeing dad go come home, tired, annoyed, not feeling he accomplished anything that that's that's what's given me the spark in life to continue to do what I'm doing, because I love it. I love getting those emails from students saying I quit my job. I love getting those emails, students saying, Hey, we just closed the deal. I mean, our students are over 6000 units right now. And counting on deals closed. So for me that that's exciting. And it's part of the abundance mindset, where years ago, I would say I can't teach anybody what I'm doing. They're gonna take away my deals, too. That's great. If they take my deal. That's great. There's other deals out there. And I don't need to do deals. So it's come full circle for me.
Steven Pesavento 31:11
That's really inspirational. And so the last thing I'll ask is, What do you want to leave listeners with? You know, we talked about a lot of things, you're clearly a person of some profound mindset, have some great beliefs. What do you want to leave folks with so they go out in the world and do something great.
Gino Barbaro 31:27
So right now, I want everyone to think about what their limiting beliefs are, really chunk down what your limiting beliefs are, and challenge them and then start surrounding yourself with other people that you want to be around because if you're around people, and your peer group is telling you hey, you don't have to work and multifamily is risky. The book limitless talks about it you whatever you think you believe in, you're going to believe that if you think as Steven said he was doing 200 flips, which is freakin amazing and unbelievable. He can't get into multifamily. Come on man. 200 flips ism is an amazing accomplishment. He saved himself I can't get the multifamily that he's going to believe that that's his limiting belief. So go out there challenge your limiting beliefs and look at life coaching, take a look at it. And see if it makes sense for you. I know it will start working on yourself and start doing things differently. If people are gonna call you crazy people think that's all nonsense. Let them say that because the majority of people are not doing the right thing anyway, so be different.
Steven Pesavento 32:23
That's so so great. Well, thank you so much for being here with us. Where can people find out more about you? Or get in touch?
Gino Barbaro 32:31
Stephen, I appreciate you having me on. I mean, just go to Jake and Gino comm we've got tons of blogs. We've got as you can see behind me for weekly podcasts on there go to the Jake and Gino channel. You can go to Jake and Gino comm Ford slash honeybee and check out the honeybee on there also.
Steven Pesavento 32:45
Yeah, show on that book. I've been meaning to read this. I know you you released honey bee. Tell us a little bit about it before we part ways.
Gino Barbaro 32:53
Sure. It's just a business parable. I mean, people have been equating it to the richest man in Babylon, which is ultimately one of my favorite books ever. I mean, I wrote it my 11 year old read it. She understood it. She liked it. So kudos. So it's just basically a business parable about a disaffected sales guy just like Jake who is stuck in the rat race and he wants to get out of the rat race. And it talks about his journey from buying, you know, an Airbnb to buying a duplex to start scaling up to start adding complements or streams of revenue. And then ultimately, the comes full circle becomes charitable he is he is a charity. He has an epiphany. So it's ultimately just getting out of that rat race and just adding complementary streams of revenue to whatever business you're in.
Steven Pesavento 33:31
What a great book to read to change your mindset and to realize kind of what's possible guys. So please do support Jake and Gino will include links to all this in the show notes for you guys. And Olivia, as I always leave you with a reminder to live a life worth inspiring others and you can do so today by taking action by changing your beliefs by putting some of these some of these strategies into place in your own life and heading towards that true freedom through real estate that we all know is possible. Thanks so much, you know.
Gino Barbaro 34:00
Thanks, Stephen. Take care everybody.
Steven Pesavento 34:07
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