How to Scale from 1 Rental Property to 100+ Units

0:00 Today on Commercial Real Estate Secrets, most investors buy one or two rental properties and then get stuck. Today we're breaking down how investors actually go from one rental property to maybe dozens or even hundreds of units. We have Mr. Gino Barbaro. Gino is a multifamily investor, father of six. Mr. Gino Barbaro, thank you for being on the show today. Aviva, thanks for having me on. And the question of scaling multifamily, let me jump in because it's an exciting question.

0:46 It's like scaling your family. I've got 6 kids now. You start out with one, then you go to the next and you go to the next and there's so many similarities and parallels to it. Maybe we should jump into that. I think it could be a little bit playful, but it's, it's real life. It comes down to to to to the real life aspects of it. OK. I want to double click into that because I'm on the other side of our first child, right? And now we're thinking, oh, maybe we'll go for two. And what's so funny about the first child is it's so shocking the whole thing and there's so much work. But then they say when you have the second one, it's easier. So how does having children relate to investing in multifamily real estate?

1:30 When you have your first child, there's no manual. You don't know what you're doing. When you buy your first multifamily, there is a manual, there is a coach. You can learn these things. That's one of the big differences, I think when you have children, it's a shocking revelation. It's like what just happened. We were all alone. It was just me and my wife. Now it's I'm never going to sleep for the next 30 years. And that's partly true, but it's exciting and it's something new. And it's the same thing with buying your first rental property. You don't know what the hell you doing. You've never dealt with a tenant before. You've never seen leaky pipes, You've never dealt with mold singing with a child, you've never changed diapers, you've never seen a baby get sick. But you sort of figure it out and you have a spouse there hopefully and you can work together to do it. And then after a few months, the fear is over. You know, for, for women out there, it's got to be traumatizing for the body of my wife's been through it 7 times. So she she seems like she forgets every time, but but it's OK.

2:35 But do you, it's the same thing with the real estate property. Do you I still not forget my first property that I bought. It was a traumatic experience, but it didn't stop me from the second one. And the reason why I wanted to buy that second property was because I knew that was the only way ultimately that I would create wealth. And I had a picture. I was clear on that. And it was the sort of same thing with my second child. I knew that I had a daughter. I'm Italian, so Italians need to have a boy. So I was gunning for the boy, right? That's what I wanted. I needed a boy right 'cause my grandma in Italy is like, oh, Gabriel is nice, but it's not Gabriel. I'm like, I'm letting him down. So I went for the second child and it's the same thing with real estate. The first one was pretty good. I had a taste, but I know that if I could buy the first one, let me figure out how to buy the second one. I had the second child.

3:22 I bought my second property. The second child was incredible because he was a boy. My son now who's 23 years old, just, it was just an incredible experience. We had him at home. My wife gave birth within 4 hours. It was just amazing, right? It was just wonderful. And after we had him, I sat there, I'm like, I couldn't possibly see myself having a third. The Italians were like, you've got two boy, girl, you're all done. And I'm like, I don't know, it's just, it's just an awesome feeling. I like this. I like being a dad. And it was sort of the same thing with real estate. I got the real estate bug. I'm working at my restaurant. I don't really like that anymore. But these deals, I like these deals because they're sort of producing some cash flow now.

4:03 The kids are eating up the cash flow. The real estate's producing the cash flow. There's the difference, right? We have our third child and I can say this in all honesty, I I fell in love with her. I just saw her and I like this girl is she's changed my life. There's something about her I don't know. She's 20 years old now and we bought our third multi family property, me and Jake, 136 units. That deal completely changed my life, completely revolutionized everything that I thought about with real estate. And after the third child, we fooled around for a couple more years. We had our fourth child and with Jake and I from 136 units, we went back down to a 22 unit, but then we went up to a 281 unit. So I guess the whole moral to the story is you just don't know.

4:49 But if you become clear and you understand what your goals and then you understand what your vision is and you understand why you want to scale. I wanted to have a lot of kids because I thought that we'd be amazing parents and I thought there's just, it was just a miracle. And I thought that everyone's complaining about size of families and family life. I wanted to be that person that was an advocate for family life. I wanted to get on a podcast and tell people being married is awesome, having a lot of kids is awesome, but I want to live that life. And it's the same thing with real estate, multi family. I wanted to get out of my W2 job. I want to create an amazing portfolio. I wanted to do all of that. There's no manual and you just start to figure it out, but it's one deal at a time. It's one kid at a time. And I think as you have your children and as you put your multi families, everyone is unique, everyone is different. There's going to be a lot of pain in there, but ultimately, as you look back on your life, you're the one regret Aviva that people tell me is that not that they didn't buy more multi families or they didn't have more money. The vast majority of people honestly will tell me is they wish they had more kids.

5:51 That's what I've heard. And I'm here to tell you it's not easy, but man, it it is really it could be a lot of fun and it could be really an amazing feeling being a being a dad. I. Was to say I was humbled by the experience of having a child, right? My, you know, my whole existence was success and monetary progress. And then I had a child and I everything turned on its head and and that's humbling because when you think that your fundamentals are AB and C and then suddenly they're XY and Z, maybe there's more to life than. The first. That's wonderful. But the month?

6:31 Certainly helps. It's important. It's so important. And I think people, I've become a money coach because of that same example. I think there's such toxicity around the conversation around money and around the emotions around it, around having it around making it around spending it, around saving it, around the fear, the anxiety, the scarcity. And for me, once I started my journey, that's why I got into multifamily because I was afraid of not having enough money. And then I ultimately understood, well, OK, money's great and all, but I don't want to be in this job that I hate and having my kids see me in this job that I truly hate coming home, being grumpy all the time and equating work and, and, and money and, and not enjoying it. That's sort of why I pivoted into multifamily. I found the niche and I found the vehicle that I loved. And I'm like, I like this vehicle. This can create wealth for me.

7:21 I'm creating great housing for people, but I'm also creating great jobs. We've got a vertically integrated company. So it fit all of my values when I looked at, you know, investing in multifamily. OK, so a little elephant in the room. Just a little one. Just a small one here on Commercial Real Estate Secrets. We love warehousing. We're in. We're warehousing folks. Tell me why you have chosen multifamily over maybe something triple net if you will. Excellent question. When I started out, I didn't have capital or a lot of capital. For people who invest in triple net, it's an excellent way to preserve wealth and to get some type of dividend, some type of yield monthly.

8:10 I think the investor who has a significant amount of capital and wants to diversify into triple net, it's wonderful. But if you're starting out, you don't have the capital to invest in triple net. I I needed to create capital for me. Multi family was comfortable because I was in the restaurant business. I saw it as a customer service experience. I like to deal with residents and I like to deal with people. So it was a natural progression for me. In my infinite wisdom. It's a place where people need to live. You can't buy it on the Internet yet, so it's a basic human need. I just saw that years and years ago and I'm like, well, you know what? I had already been stung by the strip mall where you go into recession, you you lose space and the Internet was taking that away. Warehousing is phenomenal.

8:54 If you come down here where I live in Florida, there is so much industrial being built right now and what Trump's doing with all this money coming back in and manufacturing is going to come back in and we need to control the supply chain because of what happened with COVID. It's going to continue to grow. I think warehousing is awesome, industrial is awesome. I just didn't get into that niche. What I want everyone to understand here is pick a lane. I picked multi family. It was an amazing vehicle for me. I became an expert. I'm here to say pick one. Mobile home parks, self storage, industrial. Learn it really well, understand it really well, get really good at it, and then when you're good at it, you can dabble into other other ponds. OK. Well, I want to say something about your pond. We do a lot of research on what people search on the Internet and then we create content around it. Multifamily investing is the most searched YouTube asset in commercial real estate.

9:50 Why do you believe that is? Because it's gotten sexy #1 #2 cost segregation has just exploded this whole industry. Back in 2017, the JOBS Act came out and you had bonus depreciation. Everyone wanted the depreciation. And that's when you saw assets start to really accelerate. And I think #3 it's just when people look at it, it's sort of tangible. They can sort of understand it. And it's gotten a lot of great publicity. Everyone's talked about renting versus buying. And I think for, for our space, that's what's taken off. I think it's those three elements that have really taken off.

10:33 And unfortunately, it's brought in a lot of people into the space that don't understand that you have a child, you need to raise the child. We have six children. I just can't have them and say bye bye, I'll see you in 20 years. You can't do that with multi. You can do that with triple net. Maybe you can do that a lot more with warehousing, but you can't do that multifamily. It's a baby. It needs to be raised. It needs to be coddled. You need to operate that multifamily. You can't walk away from that multifamily. You know, people on the Internet want to say triple net is, you know, passive and, and and it certainly requires a different level of, yes, filling. But I would be remissed. Yeah, I would be lying if I said that it was passive. And believe me when I tell you we still get the calls even though it's net, net, net.

11:17 It's really not, right. It's like what you put a new tenant in and the HVAC unit goes out and the lease says they're responsible for it and they're a small business. You're not going to make them pay for the HVAC unit. That's. Right, I agree. Nurturing. I agree. OK, so I want to talk about scaling. Scaling can be sexy and I want to talk about that, but I also want to talk about the other end of the spectrum, which is it can be dark. Tell me about your relationship with scaling units and as it relates to investing in multifamily commercial real estate. I want to zoom out and I want to share with you.

11:59 Before I got into multifamily, I was the quintessential mom and pop restaurant owner. I had one restaurant for about 20 years with the family. We did really well until we didn't. 2008 comes around and it's just we're not doing well. That's when I got into the multi family space. What I did wrong with that business was I had no systems, I had no processes. I had no core values. I had no mission statement, I had no vision. I was the technician. As Michael Gerber would say, there's nothing wrong with that. I just thought that I was the entrepreneur. I created a business to support myself, not create a business to support for the employee or to support for the customer or to create value for the marketplace. That was the difference.

12:45 I was it was all about me, me, me. Nothing wrong with that, but at the end of the day, you're not going to become super wealthy doing that. And it's going to become after a while, you're going to become the the I'm a person, I'm a do this, I'm a do that. I'm a gets burned out and I got burned out and when I got into multi family, I had a different vision because I was already skewed. My dad was an old school Italian guy. We did it his way. You couldn't scale. So I had that paradigm in that business. That's just that was just my limiting beliefs. When I got at the multi family, it was sort of different. Jake and I got together. We didn't know what we didn't know. We started acquiring assets and and what I did was I realized that that real estate and I think every niche of real estate, you have to view it as a business.

13:27 It's not just accumulating assets, You're not just being a landlord. You need to have processes you need to have, you need to have systems. Every multi family that you buy is a cash flow generating asset business in and of itself. Every single one. When you look at it from that perspective, things start to change and they started to change with me when we started accumulating different places, different areas and Jake started managing one, then the other. Then all of a sudden we've got 100 units and it's like, why? We can't do everything ourselves. We need to hire and then we need to bring out a maintenance tech and then, Oh my gosh, HR and you start growing and you don't come out of the womb knowing these things. You have to invest in scaling the company. I, it's, it's a painful thing for people to hear, but that aspect, just like buying a multi family, I think people need to invest in their education.

14:15 I know AI is going to help you out a lot and all, but AI is not going to hold your hand and tell you to go to work that that's, it's not there's, it's just not going to do that for you. We ended up working with two companies. We ended up working with Traction, Gino Wickman and we ended up working with a company called Scaling up by Verne Harnish. For us, we started implementing the tools and the systems and the processes that you need to start building a viable company. Because ultimately I'm not of the belief that I want to pull myself out of the business completely and, and go to sleep and go on. I, I don't want to do that, but I want to do things that I really love to do. I want to be on these types of podcasts. I want to write articles. I want to talk to investors. I want to really, you know, engage the team, but I don't want to lease units.

14:58 I don't want to do a lot of that stuff. And and the systems in the processes that you build are supposed to extricate you from those, those tasks that produce less revenue and put you into those tasks that A you like and that B can, you know, push you forward. I love talking to brokers. I love underwriting deals. That's where the value is. So when you start building processes and systems, build them to help you to run your business and build them to help you put yourself into a situation with jobs that you like. And I wasn't doing that with that one stop restaurant shop. I was every everybody, but as Jake and I started scaling wow, there's a lot of things that you can look at when you scale and core values and mission statements and all of that. We started building within our organization.

15:40 The things that I lacked with the restaurant, I started implementing in the restaurant in the real estate business. It's funny, I also come from a restaurant business background and I could talk to you about that all day. But the point I'm making is it is hospitality even you know what we do today, it's hospitality tenant facing. I, I broker, it's hospitality client facing, management facing. And boy, I'm grateful I had that experience because of what I learned. But I imagine now we're going to talk about the dark side of scaling or maybe scaling too fast, right? That, you know, there's a downside if you are.

16:24 OK, let me tell you something. Here in town, there is an infamous landlord, so infamous that during the presidential debate when Trump was running for his second go, he brought up the Venezuelan gangs. Oh, yes, yes. In this apartment complex and that owner has a few properties around town and yeah, he's let him just, it's just horrendous. It's horrific, right? It's a Shonda, as we would say in Yiddish, so talk to me about the dark side of scaling multifamily or even scaling too fast.

17:06 I just think people when they scale, they outgrow their infrastructure and, and and that's that's the issue. When you have 100 units, you have enough infrastructure and you have enough systems and processes for that. Now we're vertically integrated, which means that we have our own property management team, we have our own asset management team. We buy, we do everything internally. So if we decide tomorrow to put on another 1000 units onto our portfolio, well then all of a sudden we need to hire another 10 property managers. Try doing that during COVID. Good luck. We need to turn all those units. We need to get you anything. We need to have CapEx. It just puts a lot of stress on the system, especially when you're younger and you're smaller. So what I want anybody listening to this right now is ask yourself number one, why are you scaling and #2 actually, what is scaling?

17:54 I heard it from Mike Mccallowitz from Profit First. I think he said scaling very similar to when you grow a business, you're scaling it. You're not actually adding any other employees or you're actually adding systems to scale. You're not just growing revenue by just adding, you know, use. You're literally adding systems and processes within it. If you can do that and scale, that's great. But if you're talking about scaling and adding additional units, you need to slow yourself down. You need to understand what your revenue goals are, what your profit goals are, and then you need to start looking at what your KPI's are, what your key performance indicators are. And I'll give you a perfect example of this. For us, our key performance indicator that we've been tracking for the last three years is profit per unit. We don't care about anything else. What is the profitability of our company? Now that drills down into if I want to scale, I can't buy every deal in the market because there's very few profitable deals in the market.

18:52 I'm not buying deals for asset management fees or for acquisition fees. I'm buying deals that's going to put money in my pocket. So all of a sudden the scaling slows down. So understanding what your KP, Rs are and what you're trying to accomplish is important. Now, if you're younger and you're saying to yourself, I need to scale because I need to create equity and I need to create momentum, different, different conversation that you're having in me, then it's probably appropriate for you to go on the scale. But then you need to understand, you need to align yourself with people who have done it before. Because once you start adding units and start adding infrastructure, there's going to be a lot more problems. There's going to be a lot, you're going to be a lot more support. And if you haven't built it, it's going to be challenging. And it's interesting.

19:33 Viva I, when I say 1900 units that we own, if you go back to 2011 when we started, that was 15 years ago, that's 100 units a year. If you think about it, it, it, it's not an overwhelming or daunting number, right? You don't have to go, you know, it takes you a couple years to get some units down and it takes you a little, a little bit of time. But for us coming back to it, it's our KP is, it's our profit per unit. That's what we're focusing on. So the dark side is scaling is if you scale too quickly and you don't have your systems in place, things will implode. And you're seeing that going on specific. And multi family when it comes to operating these assets, they don't have the operational efficiencies of the operations built to be able to manage these properties. OK, say I'm a broker and I'm going to toss you over an OEM not for memorandum.

20:23 What are you looking for as a professional multi family investor? Love that question. It depends on where you are in the market cycle. When we started back in 2011, we're buying old crappy properties. They were trading at 20% of replacement. Our first property we bought at $25,000 per unit. There's a lot of upside now where we are on this part of the market cycle. The old assets are still trading at pretty low cap rates compared to the newer assets. So for us and for any professional investor out there, the question is I'm looking for a deal. The question should be what's a deal for you? I want anybody listening to this to start creating a buy right criteria.

21:05 So when I speak to Aviva, the broker, I'm going to go Aviva. We're within three hours in Knoxville. We're looking for median incomes of at least 50,000 bucks. We're looking for two bed townhomes if you have them. We love that vintage is really got to be a little bit newer, hopefully 1980s and newer. We're looking for assets that are maybe the 1% rule. If I can get an asset that's trading for 1200 bucks in rents for 120A door, we're looking if they have washer dryer hookups, we would love that. We love this part of the town, not this one. You see how crystal clear I'm getting now this doesn't mean that I'm not going to look at a 1960s asset, but if I'm going to look at older asset right now I have to make sure that that price point is really inexpensive and really where I can hit my target. That's what you need to do as a professional investor. You need to be able to create your own buy right criteria depending on where you are in the market, because Denver's criteria to buy assets is a lot different than Knoxville. Your price per unit is a lot more. Your tenant base is a lot more median incomes are a lot different.

22:04 The the city itself is different. So that's she need to understand, you need to understand your market, then create specifically a criteria when you're looking for assets and then conveyed that to the brokers. And then when one deal comes up like that, Aviva is going to remember Gino and go, oh, there, I got a 72 unit in Knoxville. It's medium comes like 54. They do have washer dryers, one beds. They got 21 beds and 42 two beds. I'm not sure if you like that, but this deal looks like right up your alley. What do you think, Gino? That's what you should do when you're looking for, when you're looking to buy assets in multifamily. I I think any asset itself specifically, but multifamily for by right criteria is you need to really become crystal clear on what you're trying to buy. Yeah, of course, right. If you don't have a path, if you don't have a goal, how could you achieve it?

22:51 It seems pretty, pretty logical, doesn't it? But you'd be surprised at how many people don't have that set up. I was at an event a couple years ago with with a bunch of syndicators. How many I show hands, have a buy right criteria and everyone looked at me like deer in the headlights. They didn't know what I meant because they're just looking for deals that fit a certain IRR. But when you when you become and you're looking at these deals and they all look similar, but you're not becoming an expert in any one of them. Why do we like 2 bed townhomes? It's because they're an apartment home. Those residents stay longer. It's a much nicer unit. Why do we like washer dryer hookups? Because it's a great amenity. People want to have washer dryers and man, if they have garages, it's another 50 bucks a month and they love it.

23:35 They'll put their stuff in there. They'll stay longer. Why is the newer vintage? Newer vintage? Because I want to have less CapEx. I hate aluminum wiring and I hate casting and plumbing. So the newer assets, I don't mind it if I get it for the right price. But these are things that you need to think of. Now I know in Denver, you know a lot of older assets. So you take that into consideration. You have to put that into your CapEx budget and say OK, I have to budget for this because these assets are older. But understanding that and going in eyes open is going to make you much more successful investor in the long run. Sure. OK, it's interesting. This is a kick I've been on last week. I get all these calls about all these different scenarios and when I start to hear the same issue, I, you know, I start to think, OK, what's going on here? An issue we're having in town.

24:21 You're talking about vintages. There are an abundance of C Class warehouses in town. 20,000 feet for lease. OK, so it used, you know, you used to not be able to get a 20,000 square foot warehouse for lease in this town because for a ton of reasons all of a sudden there's a ridiculous amount of inventory for lease. And I think to myself, OK, why is there so much C Class 20,000 square foot inventory and go, oh wait, they have built an unbelievable amount of A class and the smallest unit you can get in these A class units because of the column spaces is 20,000 feet.

25:04 You know, landlord A in C Class and landlord B in A class, they're asking the same rent. So why would the tenant go to the C Class facility? And you know, they're, you know that that's my answer to the problem. What are we going to do with these C Class facilities? These at as we continue to develop newer product, what happens to the older product in multifamily? It's crazy that you asked that because that's what's happening right now in a lot of the markets. Rents are going to drop ultimately until the A classes get filled and there's a ton of concessions.

25:45 There's average of like 5 weeks of concessions across the United States. The problem is when that delivery gets absorbed, which is probably by the end of this year. You know, I love experts. Experts have been wrong about everything, whether it's inflation, whether it's jobs. We have no experts in this country. We just have people who like to spout bullshit. My opinion, like they've been wrong about everything. Like I mean like you what you're following the war right now. Everyone has an opinion. Give me facts. No one can give you facts about anything. So you know, the whole delivery was supposed to be done. We're supposed everything was supposed to be absorbed now, but there's still delivery coming online. But we know there's no nothing getting built. So when all of this gets absorbed and by the end of the year when those people's leases come doing the A's, they're screwed because they're going to go back to market and they're going to go, oh, it's not 1800, it's really 2300. So they're going to have to drop back down to the C's and the C's are just going to go going to go back up on rents. But right now the C's are having an issue. And if you bought AC to four cap, you have problems. That's the issue you're buying it with with negative leverage. And that's where the issue is.

26:45 That's why a lot of these assets are coming online and they're thinking that they're going to get four and five caps when really it's like 8 and 9 caps right now because rents are stagnant, if not dropping. That's the issue that we're seeing. And the market will correct itself at some point as as building slows down and as everything gets absorbed, those A's in in the warehouses will get absorbed. And once they get absorbed, there's no more space. They're going to have to go to the C's. And what's going to end up happening is those landlords in the C space are going to sell at a discount to Aviva or to Gino and Gino and Aviva's going to go, OK, we need to really massively upgrade this place to an A style place. They have to spend a ton of CapEx and then they're going to have to do that. Then they can match and or we buy them at a material discount and drop the rents and we can continue to survive that way.

27:31 That's the only two scenarios that I see. No, I I agree it's a fascinating time. It is. And I don't know if if this is like just the natural cycle of real estate or if this is, you know, specific to today, but fascinating nonetheless. I think there's so much noise out there. They were so hypersensitive to everything. When I started back in 2011, there wasn't that much. There were no mentorship groups. There was no multi housing news. There just wasn't. There's a few publications, no one was. All I hear is CPICPICPI. Everyone's talking about inflation now. When I was growing up, no one know what the hell inflation was like. We're so sensitive about every single thing and I think it moves the needle and I think that's what I love about real estate.

28:19 I can't make a snap call. I'm in this deal. I, I once I bought it, there's no liquidity and that's a great thing because most people left of their own devices, left of their emotional problems, they're going to hit the button and exit when they probably should have stayed in that deal. So to me, if you can just cut out the noise, buy a good asset with a pretty good vintage that has the possibility for you to add value to cash flow to get some type of long term debt over the long run, you will make money with that model. You just will. You're just going to need to take a little bit of time and you're going to need to be able to operate that asset. Yeah, my dad is in the real estate business also taught me everything I know.

29:00 He always says the most you can do in real estate is nothing. And and by that he doesn't mean, you know, let it deteriorate, but he means be patient. Just hold it and be patient and weather the storms. And you know, today it might feel like it's all time highs and you might want to sell. And tomorrow might be like the bottom and you might really want to sell. But you just act level headed. Like you said, remove the emotion, stay level headed. You will win. It's just there's no party at the end of it. It's interesting that you say that those C Class operators in industrial, if they were true investors and true at business, they would have seen the A class coming online and they would have sold a couple of years ago and now they could have bought back, right?

29:47 But if you're operating it and it's your business, you'll put on a hold on. That's part of the business cycle With real estate, understanding the market cycles and understanding that if you don't have long term debt, if you didn't buy it a good basis, there's a certain time that you do exit these assets and say, let me take some equity off the table and we put some equity on the sidelines. I think that's the emotional component, the real estate where people are like, oh, I got to buy and hold forever. You don't have to buy and hold for every unless you're buying an asset in a good market that's a stable market that's growing that you can see yourself while rents are going to be accelerating into the future. That's that's not something that's truly old that you can actually operate. That's where people don't understand what the different market rate cycles and interest rate cycles.

30:29 That's where people get mixed up with real estate. Speaking of getting mixed up with real estate, what's the biggest mindset shift you see investors need in order to scale their portfolio? Well, it's I'm a do this and I'm a do that. What gets you to 100 units will not get you to 500 units. And that's really hard because I'm sure you've been through it when you started your business. You have to bootstrap. You have to do everything yourself. And your ego gets in the way. And you say that I can do it all by myself. It's all me. No one can do it better than me. No one can cook that chicken parm better than me. I'm the best chicken. I can make meatballs like you would not believe. And the problem is you're probably right, but you're, you're the one going to be doing meatballs. I could only make 30 or 40 lbs of meatballs a week. But if I get married to help me here, I can make 300 lbs of meatballs a week.

31:23 I think that's the mindset right there where you need to let go. You need to have some type of trust, but you also need to learn how to sort of train people and sort of create those systems and with baby steps. And I think that's the problem with Jake and I hit 100 units. We just realized we can't do everything. I mean, a quick example, we started a podcast back in 2016. Jake abhorred editing. He edited those podcasts for like 2 years. It's not like it is now. It was really hard to find an editor, but he just hated it. We couldn't scale. At some point, he had to let it go. He finally let it go. And it's the same thing in in in the scale of business. He hated bookkeeping. At a certain point, you have to let it go and you have to say to yourself, is it a cost or am I recouping some of my time and isn't an investment? I think that's the mindset shift right there. Cost for its investment.

32:14 Yeah, it's interesting. I you know my my video editor Bruno will be smiling when he hears you say that because we're in the same camp. Bruno's my paisan, Bruno understands. So I have to ask you, you know our last question here on commercial real estate secrets is what is your commercial real estate secret? My secret is you need to connect with people. I love AII love texting, I love emailing. But I need to connect with Aviva. I need to get on the phone, I need to go meet her. I need to tour properties. I need to build a relationship to me, and that's in any business, whether you're raising your six kids, whether you're talking to your wife, whether you're talking to your team. I think that's the secret of life. I think we crave connection and we just what we crave a bond. And imagine if you could create a connection in a bond with two or three brokers in the Denver market that will call you every time a deal pops up or let you know. Or you can reach out to them and say, hey, I'm looking for a credit union.

33:21 You have one for me. I mean, that is incredible if you could do that. So to me, the secret is just try to create connection. Try to do as you say and say as you do. Be honest, be transparent, but create a connection with other people in the industry. The more you give, the more you get I. Feel that's right? I agree. And I have been reminiscing over, you know, I'm, I'm eclipsing 10 years in the business. We've done a lot of work. The absolute best part of my job is the connections I make with people, these weird friendships that make no sense. And right, it's like, why do I connect with this person so much?

34:04 So, and then you figure it out eventually, you know, I, I connected with a landlord here in town and a very, very Long story short, we come to find out our family came over on the same boat to America 75 years ago. Really, yes, and we we knew we were like, oh, we're there's something weird here. We know each other and then we after spending time figuring it out, so Oh my God, we've been our, our blood has literally, literally sailed across the world together only two generations ago. So. That's so cool, isn't it? Really cool.

34:46 But yeah, it's it's the and it's like that, like money can't buy that and money can't replicate that feeling. And AI can't replicate that feeling either. And you know, you talk about AI, it's like AI is amazing. It's going to underwrite your deal. But when something falls out, when the shoe falls on the other side because it missed something or somebody missed something, it's not going to take the punch. It's not. Is AI going to, is AI going to tell you it's a 1985 build worth his 1965 build? Is there the little nuance where all of a sudden can rents really go up 3% or can they go down 1%? Like AI can really do a great job, scrape a lot of the data. But to be honest, a lot of the data is they're just aggregating data.

35:31 Is the data even correct online? So if you're using AI, just make sure that the data is accurate. Make sure that the median income is accurate, Make sure that the rental comps are accurate, Make sure that the expenses they're pulling are accurate. That's there. There's, there's truth to that. So AI is great. It can help you brainstorm. It can give you ideas, but it doesn't come up with this ideas. All it's doing is it's aggregating data from elsewhere and bringing it together and presenting it to you. You're the one who's supposed to go on, say, is that true? And where can I poke holes in what it's giving me? Yeah, well, Gino, nothing like a little human connection. Yeah, I really appreciate your time today on the show. Thank you, had a great time. For all the listeners, where can they find you, follow you, connect with you, etcetera?

36:17 Two places, Jake and Gino, and we have a family company called barbaro360.com. I'm working with families on money, coaching on teaching them to buy real estate, and the Jake and Gino channel has all of our podcasts as well. All right. Well, for the listeners, head over to Jake and Gino after this episode or to barbaro360.com. Gino, thank you for being on the show today and for everybody listening. We'll see you next week. That's a wrap for this week on commercial real estate secrets. If you found value, do us a favor and subscribe, leave a review and share it with a fellow commercial real estate lover. For brokerage services or to connect, visit warehousehotline.com.

37:09 I'm Aviva. We'll see you next week.