Can Steve’s Sales Training Help You Build a $1.5 MM Wholesale Business While You’re in College?

Steve Trang: Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today we got Gino Palumbo with Ferocity Assets. He flew in from Atlanta, Georgia to talk about how he's on pace to do 1 and a half million this year and he hasn't even graduated college yet. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trang, sales trainer for some of the top home buyers in the country and I'm on a mission to create 100 millionaires. Question I get all the time, how do I become one to 100 millionaires?

The information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. Take consistent action, and you will become one. When you hear a nugget, please type in the comment section. And after the show, identify your single biggest takeaway and focus only on that for the next seven days. If you get value today, please tag it from below or share this episode right now.

That way, we can all grow together. And this is a live show, so please ask your questions for Gino to answer. Ready?

Gino Palumbo: Let's get it.

Steve: Alright. So first question is, what got you into real estate?

Gino: So what got me into real estate was YouTube, YouTube University. Now I saw a ad one day, late twenty eighteen. I saw an ad for Max Maxwell, one of his videos. And my whole life, I've been going back and forth. I used to sell shoes when I was 10, 11, buy the Kobe eights.

It's Christmas edition. That was my famous one. Bought it for, like, $1.50, sold it for $2.20. You know, at the time, 12/13, I thought I was a millionaire. So, yeah, that led me on a whole journey of being an entrepreneur, selling stuff from China, buying cables, charging cables, coolers, headphone.

I would sell and this is senior year doing of high school now. I was doing this from all throughout high school, doing garage sales before Gary Vee made it popular, like, five, six years ago, and just grinding it out. So the only reason I bring that up is just to show you, like, as soon as I saw something hot, I'm I'm going all in taking action. So I saw a wholesaling, again, Max Maxwell, and I just dove in. I mean, I watched countless, countless videos.

But the important thing there is, as soon as I saw them talking about bandit signs, went on dirtcheapsigns.com, bought me a 100 of them quick. Right? Just so I could start taking action. Because, you know, if you just watch the videos and get analysis paralysis, you want to question where's the contract out, where do I how do I find a buyer and all this? So I made sure.

I was like, hey. Let me just jump in here and get going. So, again, I started there. I end up finding YouTube, Disruptors, the podcast through there. But, again, that's how I started, just from YouTube.

Steve: So were you on YouTube, like, trying to figure out your next, like, your hustle, your business, or were you just watching some

Gino: I think I was just

Steve: one numbing thing and you just saw a maximum

Gino: I mean, I probably was getting click baited. I was doing all different things. I mean, probably watching just stock. I used to trade stocks a lot, for about I found it when I was 18. I had to use actually, before I was 18 because I had to use my parents, all their info they're watching.

And so, you know, I had to use their info to sign up for accounts. I used my mom's because my dad wouldn't let me put he wouldn't let me have his record on there. So I used my mom's stuff, and, again, trading stocks. I'm always looking at different things. And so I happened probably just again, I was just I wasn't looking for it.

It found me, if that makes sense.

Steve: The first thing you saw was a Max Maxwell video Mhmm. And you got hooked. And this is you were in college?

Gino: I was in college. Sophomore year. Fall, like, it was, like, September, October.

Steve: And then the first thing you did, dirt cheap signs, bought some bandit signs. Exactly. And what'd you do with that?

Gino: So since I did that, my actually, my, my best friend too at the time was filming a movie, John Paul. Mhmm. And we usually did a lot of things together. So he was in a movie right now. It's actually on Netflix, full count.

Little plug there for him. He was doing that movie and I found this. So I just took the action, like you said, and I started putting them out. Now the reason I brought him into this is during that, I probably put out 50 signs. And this is again so say I bought them September, probably, like, twentieth, got them October 1, put them out, you know, that that he probably came back October 3, you know, whatever.

Right? So we put out 50 already before that 50 with him. And so we just put them out, got a call up probably ten days into it. And now, I didn't know what to do. You're right.

We were already I was already cold calling too. Right? I wasn't just putting out signs. I was doing little, like, fist bows. Mhmm.

I was just trying to talk to people. And again, like, we all were. We were I wasn't that good at it. But, at least, you know, I knew I had to just keep going. So, again, that's around October ish.

We get the call in, let's say, October 15. Go to the appointment. Right? The guy I answer the call and the guy says, okay, Gino. What is your guys' discount that you charge for your, you know, services?

I was like, 70%, you know, because I'm so used to the 70% ARV, RevRel. So I said 70%. And this house is in at the time and again and I was kind of new to I was a sophomore in college. I was living at my school. It's Kennesaw.

Right? So if you know Georgia, it's in Kennesaw. But again, I'm new to that town. So I don't even know what's hot in Kennesaw. I don't know, like, the areas.

Right? So it turns out now it's the hottest area, like, where this house was and probably top three in the state. Anyway, so I get the he called him up. I tell him 7. He says, okay.

I was like, oh, shoot. Is that easy? He said, come out and see it. So we go out there, we go out there to see it, but then remember, point seventy minuteus repairs Mhmm. Minus your fee.

Steve: Right.

Gino: So he wanted he was willing to take a discount of 70%. So he's like, my lowest I would go is $2.10. It was like $3.20 is what he thought. It was whatever the numbers are. Right?

So he's like, I will take $2.10. He's already said that. Right? So $3.10 to $2.10, whatever the numbers work. And he then, but then I then I got there and it was needed a lot work.

Right? And wasn't that it was a complete junker, but it was just 19 eighties. No one touched it since. So I was like, I gotta put you know, I'm looking at the calculations. It's 2,500 square feet.

Oh, it's this amount of square. I said, oh, that that mine is 60 more grand. So $2.10, I said, oh, that's $1.50. I gotta put my fee of $10, $1.40. It's not gonna work.

Right? So I tell him I have to be at, like, 01:40. Obviously, he doesn't take it. So fast forward, we're still doing things a week or two later. I said, let me do this actually now.

Let me call up some buyers, just build my buyers list, and just see let me just run that deal by them. Right? So I kinda did it the didn't have it under contract yet, but was, you know, marketing, which don't tell anyone that. Don't do that.

Steve: And this is not being recorded.

Gino: Yeah. This is not recorded or anything. So anyway, so I got a list from ListSource. And, again, from Max Maxwell's videos, found cash buyers. Right?

Just looking cash sales last twelve months. Got, you know, individuals. Right? I didn't know how to do LLCs yet. So I just saw individuals that bought, Skip traced one.

I was calling 05:00 on a Friday. Got a hold of two or three that become cash buyers for me now. One that actually bought this. Right? So I called him up.

I said, hey. I got this deal, for $2.10. Right? Because I knew that he would go down to 200. He already pretty much told me that, but I still said I'm at $1.40.

It's not gonna be though. So I got him. I said, hey. I got this deal at, like, $2.10 or $2.12, like, marketing it out as. It's this area, this is I'll be there tomorrow.

I was like, oh, freak. I don't even have the contract. So I immediately call up the seller. Right? Because, again, I thought that had to be at 01:40 because of that, formula.

So I called the sellers. I said, hey. Can we meet tomorrow at 10:00 knowing he was coming at twelve? Mhmm. That's the buyer.

Get him up. Call him up. Any way it works out, we lock it up at two hundred thousand. Literally, when we're walking out the door with the agreement, the buyer comes in. This guy, his name is Anwar.

He was the seller. I remember it like the, you know, the like it was yesterday. He knew what pretty much what we were doing. Older guy, but he was very nice. He was he understood.

He said, after we closed, he's like, Gino, I knew I was just helping you guys out and just starting. And I didn't tell him I just started real estate. Right? So he could tell. Anyway, the buyer comes in.

I tell him, hey. Don't talk to the seller. Don't talk to I was so scared. You know, at the beginning, and still people come up to me today and they're like, Gino, how how do you do that? How do you do a showing when there's a seller there and your buyers?

Like, they are gonna talk. Mhmm. So I was scared. Fast forward, everything went well. The guys negotiate I asked was asking again, like, $2.12.

They said, no. We can only do $2.10. I was, heck yes. $10. I'll do it.

We closed in a week. Mhmm. This was, like, Thursday, Friday. Friday, I got the agreement with the buyer and the seller. Closed that next week because he knew the seller was still trying to test me.

So he's, like, we I wanna close on Friday. So we end up closing one week, and that would that's what again, this is and so I closed it. Let me give you a timeline. I end up closing my first deal, like, November. It was, like, closed, like, November, something like that, around that time.

So it was, like, within a month or two of starting. Yeah. And I know that's lucky. Right? I know some of the biggest guys we know them.

Took them nine, ten months. So I'm grateful for that. But as soon as I saw that, then it's

Steve: So proof of concept.

Gino: Exactly.

Steve: Did you stop doing all the other stuff, the the wires and so you went all in on real estate.

Gino: Went all in on real estate. My stock stuff, I'll be honest, failed the year before. I lost, like and the guys are out there. I lost, like, four k in art class high school year. So that made it to, like, freshman year of college.

And, again, remember, this is sophomore year. So I was doing stocks. I was still selling stuff, garage sales, things like that, making some money here and there. Right? But then, yeah, as soon as I saw that, I'm going all in.

Right? Yeah. So that's when we went all in. And I know I, like, I ramble on talking, but you just interrupt me, Steve.

Steve: So you did your first deal about six weeks in. And what about after that? Like, what were, like, what were your next deals? Like, were they as simple, or did it become more

Gino: No. So we we hit a we hit a roadblock. Right? So John Paul comes on. He was my partner at the time.

He comes on and we are dialing probates. Right? We saw Max Maxwell. Pick your niche. Go into it.

Right? His was probates too. We went in it. Our county site, the county we were in, they had the phone numbers. We were dialing, dialing down.

Now, we weren't good on the phones. We didn't know how to solve problems really as well then. Right? We didn't know about the probate process. I learned.

I sat with it. Anyway, we did that from November to December, and I had finals all during this too. So I'll be honest, December wasn't our, like, most active month. Mhmm. But this November, December, we had nothing.

I was like, oh, gosh. And this is harder than I thought. Right? Obviously, I just got lucky. You know, my first deal, you know, was a little lucky, I guess you could say.

So come January, that's not till our next deal. Mhmm. And that was from a bandit sign.

Steve: Alright.

Gino: Again. Right? So, we figured out, we're like, alright, we got to stop. We've been doing this two months of calling probates and we were still putting up bandit signs during that time, but we're like, like, we gotta shift. I mean, we're not getting traction.

Right? So on this marketing source, cold calling probates. So then we decided, hey. Come January time, we got that other pro or the other, bandit sign deal. And then we started then doing spending money on list.

Right? Because we weren't spending money on list. We're using the county's free numbers for the probate deal. So that's when it transformed. This is 2019 now.

So it's really when I say, like, I I really started it, like, going into it. It was soon as that January 1, I set my goals. Watched a Brent Daniels video. I was I was with my family on vacation. I remember this to the day.

And it was, like, planning out your next ninety days. Again, this was 2018 to 2019. Saw it, like, end of the year, and I saw I set the goal, like, 90. My goal was the first three months of 2019. Mhmm.

I didn't hit it, but fast forward, I didn't hit it. But I started taking more action. And, now, like, buying lists and stuff and actually investing money more into marketing. And, you know, I remember my first list I bought, I was scared. I was like, oh my gosh.

It's a thousand dollars. You know? And then skip trace. I thought, oh my gosh. But so, again, I I just kept growing, scaling slowly, slowly, slowly, and just adding up.

And Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: So second deal in January. We connect in Dallas.

Gino: Dallas. In March.

Steve: Yep. We live 19. So at this point, you're subscribed. You're following Max Maxwell. You go to We live.

And that's where we connected in, in Kong.

Gino: It's Kong. And, normally so

Steve: it's crazy to me. So, like, I mean, you actually started your wholesaling business after I started this podcast.

Gino: Oh, really?

Steve: So it's it's kinda interesting that the the journey. So let's talk about your education side because this is one thing that, you know, Darren was on the show about a month ago, three, four weeks ago. One of the things he said was, like, you know, Gino is so, well versed. You know, he's he's got his systems more dialed in than a lot of different operators, and we're like, yeah. It's kinda crazy because he's still just a kid.

So let's talk about your your journey as far as education because that's the one thing that I've always pushed on is that Mhmm. You know, I've invested hundreds of thousands. I think, you know, I haven't tallied it recently, but it's over 300,000

Gino: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: You know, in in personal development, education, so on. So let's talk about your journey inside this education space. What was was WeLive your first event?

Gino: WeLive was my first event. Event.

Steve: Okay. So then what did you do after WeLive?

Gino: So WeLive, I invested in that. I think it was, like, $900. Right? $900 into that. I think my next investment was I'm trying to think about it now.

I would say it was probably it might have actually been when it came to yours, that next January. Because soon as I saw proof of concept, right, again, at that time in March, a thousand dollars was a lot to me. I closed I think I was on my third deal maybe. Mhmm. Or right after that, I closed my third deal.

So I'm still looking at it like, hey. Spending money is costing. I wasn't in the right mindset. Right? Over the summer, I'm watching a bunch of podcasts.

Over the months, hey. Invest in yourself. Invest in yourself. Now, I probably bought a lot of different courses. Right?

I didn't go into a mentorship. And so, really, I joined you guys. Yeah. Right? So I knew that I saw all the stuff Steve's been doing.

I know we're fast forwarding. So I'm just showing you the the education curve. I would say Max Maxwell, Steve trained sales training, sub two, Tiffany High's course, Collective Genius, Private Money course

Steve: with

Gino: Steve Schenck, with Steve, Eric Brewer's course. So, you know, this again, I spent tallied it over. It's over $30,000 mostly last year too. $20.19 last year. Mostly last year too.

And what I look at it as now, and that's what we're getting to, is I wanna make sure I have this enough information available to me to be the very best I can be. Mhmm. Right? When I see new things like that, and I know, again, you got to voucher who you're investing in. When I know these are serious people and these people are doing the business and they're and they're teaching this or they're doing this, Eric Brewer is doing 300 plus deals.

Why wouldn't I spend, you know, the $2, 3 whatever, you know, the $3 into it? Why would I do it? I learned one thing. One wholesale deal. Our average wholesale is about 15.

I made seven x. Mhmm. Why wouldn't you bet on yourself too? And, again, you're educating yourself because I think this is very important. I wanted to share too.

Me and Chandler talk about it all the time. I our integrator now and operator. And we talk about if we go broke, we go to zero tomorrow. What we have in here doesn't go. Right?

Right. And we feel like we're set, not for life, but we feel like we can the knowledge we know now, we can go and start JV'ing with people. This even take away my connections. I know how to build relationships. I know how to do a novation agreement.

I know how to find private money lenders. And, again, these are all the the courses I invest. I know how to do subject to thanks to PACE. Right? Yeah.

I know how to do all this stuff. So I wanna be I wanna know that stuff because think about this too. I mean, not only do we invest money, we learn it, and we use it now, but you also gotta think of it as a tool for the rest of your life. Sales training. Number one thing.

Steve's sales training. Everyone right now, disruptors.com, sign up. It's a little shameful plug for Steve. But you learn one thing, especially sales training, you can use that for your whole you can use that in grocery stores, use that at the garage sale, you can use that anywhere you go. Like, I'll still push away Steve's met I'll still go negative.

Talked to my girlfriend, she catches on now. They go to different, you know, restaurants. You can try it on them. They'll catch on. But then, you know, garage sales, flea markets.

You're at the I'm at the restaurant. I'm saying, there's probably no way I could get a free, you know, side. Right? You can ask my my buddies. They'll say, yeah.

He does it all the time, and it works. Right? So I

Steve: would I, there was something that happened with Massage Envy. You know? We we had COVID, and we paused our account. Right? We didn't wanna go with with COVID and everything else.

And so I guess they always are calling me every once in a while. I was like, hey. Your account is you know, you're you're you're overdue, whatever. It's like, no. We paused it.

Right? It's like, okay. And then they'll they'll pause it again. I guess my wife didn't respond to them. And so, like, I did the same thing.

It's like, you guys probably can't fix that. There's no way you guys can restore her credit. And they're like, well well, yeah, I guess we can restore her credit.

Gino: Exactly. Like, it's it's a useful tool to rest. That's one thing of the sales training. That's one little tip out of hundreds. Right?

Steve: So So that's awesome. So yeah. And you were we connected through Dylan. So you were following

Gino: Dylan Dylan. Dylan.

Steve: You were following Dylan.

Gino: Yeah. Nashville. Shout out to Dylan. So yeah. I mean, I saw again, if I see something like like that and I see, hey.

What is that mastermind about? What is this about? Do my little research and I'm in. Right? I'm going into it and I know and, you know, I'm not gonna go broke over it.

Let me say that. But I'm I know I'm gonna make the smart decision. Hey. You know, this amount of money, and I know what I can make from it, just your return on investment. Yeah.

That's how I look at everything now, especially with the business. Hey. Is this an investment? You know? Hey.

People think of marketing as as expenses, and this is a big thing I wanna bring up too. And I know I'm always talking about

Steve: Sounds good.

Gino: Sal and Carlos. Right? Carlos Reyes and Sal Shakir. I was watching podcasts, and I still do every single day. But when I was watching them about 2019, my first full year, I would listen to their podcast and they would stay on there.

And I remember the one time they said this is that every, you know, don't look at marketing as an expense. Look at it as an investment. And that sounds so like, oh, yeah. That's but I wasn't doing that. I know I wasn't doing that when I first started.

Steve: No. It's a different mindset when you first

Gino: started. Exactly.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So going back to Eric Brewer, you know, I just wanna touch on him real quick. Yeah. So we did the Novation thing.

We launched, like, six, seven months ago. And it's crazy to me. Like, you got a guy who's doing 400 wholesale, 400 retail a year. Right? And we talk about it and we we announce, you know, brewer method.

And we had, like, four or five sign ups. And, like, for me, it's like, I will pay $2,000 so I can talk to this guy once

Gino: a month. That's what I'm saying too. Like For

Steve: me, it's like a no brainer, but that's not how everyone thinks. So the other thing that I I I I remember too. Right? Because we did a sales call. I called you.

Right? You applied. I called you, and we did the whole thing to to to get you into the mentorship. And I still remember, like, wait a minute. This guy's in college?

So one of the thing I see a lot I see this more on TikTok, but a little bit on Instagram as well. It's like, how do I what do I do if I'm 16 or 17? You know? Should I go to college? Should I not go to college and this and that?

Can you talk about why you're in college when you when you're making money?

Gino: So why me personally might be different than someone else? Me personally, I was lucky. My parents were able to fund my college. Right? I didn't go into any debt.

You know, they wanted me to, to graduate college. Right? So, they didn't go to college themselves. So, they saw that as, Hey, Gino. We're gifting you, you know, a free education.

I didn't want to, you know, I'm thankful for that. Right? So that was one reason. The second reason for me is my grandpa that passed away March 2019, right when I started doing real estate. He was loved, you know, every bit of it, he loved.

And he one of the last things he said to me was, Gino, you need to you finish school. Because my dad was telling him because, again again, these are my first two or three deals that March timeline. I'm like, I'm getting out of school. I'm gonna go. Because, again, I'm halfway through college at this point, sophomore year.

And I'm like, I'm gonna go. And then so he's telling my grandpa and my grandpa said, no. I want you to finish.

Steve: So you your grandfather's dying wish?

Gino: I get that was one of his last few things he told me for real. Okay.

Steve: So that's pretty tough to

Gino: So, yeah, I'm I was I was in. Alright. So forget sorry mom and dad. I was going no matter. It's it's for grandpa.

Now, you know what I mean? So, that was the main reason why I did. Now I see, you know, kids asking and and they they always come up to me, you know, they're saying, oh, should I go it's really it's it's as easy as saying, hey. What's best for you? Right?

If you're trying to be a doctor and, you know, everyone says this, you you gotta go to school. You're trying to be you're trying to be an attorney. You gotta go to school. Right? But for me, you know, the entrepreneur mindset, I knew, hey.

Even though I'm still in school, I said, I'm I'm going in. You know? I'm going I'm focusing on this. Like, there's no excuse. If you're in school and then people that are actually in school now, I don't have enough time.

First off, I know 99% of them are using Chegg or Quizlet. Right? I'm taking their test. Right? So, I mean, there's I know you you can make time.

There's time so many places, you know, like Gary v says, you can work from even if you're going to school, you know, nine to five, you can work, you know, seven to eleven. Right? So what I have to tell them is, first, what is what would you like to do? What do you see in your life? Right?

What do you want to do? And I know that's very easy to say. But, you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to see from their end of it, you know, if they're full on that you're gonna bet on themselves, take the take the chance. Right? I tell people all the time, if they're if they're really invested in themselves, you won't fail.

Right? You won't especially in this business. And I saw Pace talk about this too on Jordan Belfort just recently and it hit to me too because he was like Jordan said to him, hey, are you do you think that someone can do this just that they just go hard and they try to do do you think they could a 100% succeed in pace? Of course, a thousand percent. That's how I feel too.

Yeah. A thousand percent on this business. If the only time you fail is when you quit. Mhmm. That's it.

Right?

Steve: So going back to the college thing, if you do if you if your parents and your grandfather didn't pressure you, you, you would have quit college. Alright. And then likewise, if you had to pay if you had to rack up student debt.

Gino: For me? Yeah. No. I'm not going to school.

Steve: Not going to school.

Gino: But it's my mindset. I knew that. Right? Plus because

Steve: you're an

Gino: entrepreneur. Yes. Right? You Visionary mindset. If you had to go

Steve: to school for wholesaling, it might be a different story. But you don't have to.

Gino: For sure. Exactly.

Steve: Right. What do you what's your major?

Gino: Finance.

Steve: Finance. Finance. And you have a finals next week?

Gino: May 3. I think it's next Wednesday. Yeah.

Steve: And you officially graduate college when?

Gino: July 31, I think.

Steve: Trips me out. Totally trips me out. Alright. So then let's just talk about let's just jump into the meats and potatoes of your business then. What is your business looking like right now?

Because you're on pace for one and a

Gino: half. Yes, sir.

Steve: Alright. So what what did q one look like?

Gino: Q one revenue was $3.95.

Steve: Okay.

Gino: Our our marketing expense was, I believe, around with TV ads, I think it was around, like, 95.

Steve: Mhmm.

Gino: We run a pretty tight ship in terms of our VAs or in terms of our, excuse me, our payroll. Right? We have VAs. We have I think me and we were talking about I think we have seven or eight. I could lay them all out.

Like, we have three cold callers. We have one designated texter. We got one dispo slash texter. That's 5. We got an admin for Chandler.

That's 6. We got three lead managers. 789. So we have 9. Three lead managers.

Steve: And Chandler and and and,

Gino: Jared are

Steve: in the next room.

Gino: Yeah. Next room is our acquisition manager, Jared. We have operations integrator, Chandler, and Brandy, Dispo.

Steve: Right.

Gino: She's in North Carolina.

Steve: In Georgia.

Gino: She's in North Carolina. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. Alright. So what kinda volume are you doing as far as, you know, to get to $3.95 for q one, what kind of volume are you guys doing?

Gino: So, I know by month, actually, what we did. And it was, like, we had a we started off a little slower. 60 I think it was, like, 68 in January. 80 in February. So we're at one fifty.

And then we did, like, two forty come March because we had three big wholesale deals closed, a flip closed right in, like, actually the March. So it's gonna be, like, that the February mark. But yeah. So we hit two forty come March. Huge March.

Huge March.

Steve: Right. Okay. So then for the people listening that wanna, you know, follow your footsteps, you see you talked about how much you spent on marketing. What are the channels that you like the best?

Gino: Okay. So we've stuck to since that 2019 mark, we started excuse me. We started with SMS. That's our favorite channel. I know a lot of people say it's dying.

Mhmm. It's our number one channel. Right? It was, like, last year, I think it was 10 x. We spent about $50 and we made over 500 with it.

Steve: And then for people listening, what texting platform was that?

Gino: Launch Control. Launch Control, we did all last, started January 2020. Next one's cold call. We love that too. It's slowing up a little bit for us.

Me and Chandler actually just that was our level 10 medium this week. It's just it's slowing up a little bit cold calling, but we cold call. And then TV, we just started in November. Mhmm. So TV started out very slow.

Steve heard about it. I would always tell Steve, like, gosh, man. This is but I knew it was stay consistent. And now in the last week, we locked up five Yeah. From TV.

So those are our three. That's it. And other than, you know, we stood for the first year and a half. It was just those two, cold calling and, SMS.

Steve: And I wanna talk about the the the is it the the stomach control? But I don't I don't know what the right word is. But how much are you spending a month on TV?

Gino: It's about 23,500.

Steve: And then you you you started in the middle of the crazy reelection.

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: Or what not reelection. What did they call it in the The runoff. The runoff. Right? Two senators.

There was more money, I think, pumped in during the runoff than during the entire presidential election. It was, like,

Gino: I think, the highest funded

Steve: Yeah.

Gino: Runoff in history, you know, for the two seats.

Steve: And here's little Juno trying to advertise at the same time.

Gino: Yeah. No. It wasn't a it wasn't what was expected. Uninspected. Right?

Steve: Yeah. And so, I wanna talk about this because a lot of people could look at that and, like, quit.

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: And you were uncomfortable.

Gino: I would I would say so. Yes. I was uncomfortable.

Steve: You wanna talk about those challenges?

Gino: Well, so we spent roughly, I think, it was per I mean, we spent probably $40.50 grand from November to December, zero deals closed. Alright? So you're looking at me. I'm a little weary about that. I was anyone would have that in their stomach.

Now, we did have a probate deal. That was a 30 k or that was along the path. So I wasn't scared at all times, and then that deal fell through because of different things. So, again, $50 loss. But I still saw it as, hey.

I gotta keep I gotta keep going. Right? We're still smart with our numbers. We still knew our numbers, but I had I had models to look at. Right?

So I had Ryan Pineda. I had, you know, Darren, obviously, he's doing it. Right? Darren running that.

Steve: In this market.

Gino: They're doing it in Phoenix. So I knew it's possible, right? So I took it and I said, hey, let's just give it some time. Give it some time and, we're monitoring numbers. Don't worry.

We're looking at our numbers. We know we're losing $50. And so, you know, now it's paying off. Let's just say. Now we have the in queue from TV, just in those five contracts, it's roughly probably around $101.20, at least.

It might actually be more than if we if we

Steve: wholesale them. Yeah. And then, you know, you and I have had personal conversations, right, about whether TV makes sense or not. And I was pushing you

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: To be the face. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because initially, you were not the face because you wanted someone that was a little older looking.

Gino: I was yeah. Yeah. I was because, again, me getting on here. It probably wouldn't look that good that a 21 year old at the time, especially, I was I don't know. We didn't know how it was gonna work.

So we said, hey. Let's just use Doug, on the commercial. And not that it didn't work because we still closed deals coming, you know, January, February, but I switched over in March. That's what you're bringing up. And Steve was helping me out because I was still stressing about all the paying them in or paying the, you know, every single month and, you know, just that the situation.

But Steve was telling me, Gino, one, he told me get on the commercial, which I'm on the commercial, and, two, he just was keep, you know, making me feel TV's the way. You build a brand, build a brand, build a brand. And so Yeah.

Steve: Well, so that's the reason I'm talking about it because you're in Atlanta for a while.

Gino: Right? Yeah.

Steve: You're 22. You might be doing this for another twenty something years.

Gino: Hopefully. Yeah.

Steve: Right? So for me, it made sense for you just to be the face because you got and for everyone listening. Right? If you're doing TV, maybe you break even on TV. But how many JV deals are you getting?

Gino: Yeah. Exactly.

Steve: How many referrals are you getting from realtors? How many referrals are you getting from other wholesalers? Yeah. Exactly. So that's kinda it's kinda hard to to track, but that's the reason why I was pushing you on it.

Gino: Yeah. That really helped me because I would think about that. I was like, damn, Steve is right. Because if I break even, I got the brand. Right?

People come up and I have people saying, oh, Gino does and they like you said, other wholesalers see that, hey. Let's JV with Gino. He's a real you know, he's on TV. Right?

Steve: Yeah. You got credibility. And I think you said, like, your friend from high school or someone reached out to you?

Gino: Yeah. There a lot of them, like, reached out to me and they're saying, oh, I saw your commercial. What are you doing? Like, all this stuff. Like, they didn't know because

Steve: Right. So Thanks. You know, we always push, like, like real estate. But, man, you're on TV saying you're doing real estate. Like, everyone's like, okay.

Maybe we need to send you no deals. Exactly. The other thing too is going back to investing yourself and, you know, I may this is totally self serving, but, we got Pace who was here just a moment ago. Yeah. Exactly.

Right? And we got Eric Brewer. So and we got private money. So you're you've learned all these different tools as well. So someone that's doing TV with a cash only option

Gino: Exactly.

Steve: Doesn't have as much ability to capitalize on it. So you wanna talk about how you've been able to leverage, sub two and how you've been able to leverage Novation with TV.

Gino: Well, so for that instance, it's just now I can put out at least three offers and even four. Tell you one, we're hitting cash, cash, cash, cash, cash. Right? We want to get cash if possible. Cash doesn't happen and we're in somewhat in the range, we'll pitch the novation.

Right? So there's got to be a reason we come up from our cash price like Eric talks about. Right? So we offer someone 200 for a cash price and they're at $2.30. We might go up to $2.15.

But the only reason we're gonna go up to $2.15, mister Seller, is if you give us these terms. Right? You give us these novation terms. You let us put it on the market. We'll give you your cash or 200 and we'll do all the, you know, terms.

I'm not gonna pitch it here, but, hey, we'll do all that for you, but it has to come up to $2.15. Right? So that's another way to do it. They still say no. Well, then we go into terms.

Right? We go into saying, hey. Can we do owner finance? Can we do subject to? And again, that's from PACE, Eric Brewer from Novation, and Steve's sales training for cash.

Right? Getting them low. Right? Using tactics. Anchoring, price anchoring, all that stuff.

Right? So, and fourth, the boring retail. Take Steve, the broker. But, yeah. Then four, we pitch to retail.

Hey, I think your best bet is just to list with a realtor. Okay. Yeah. Do you or do you have a realtor already? Alright.

So this four gives us now I got four tools in my tool belt

Steve: Alright.

Gino: Versus a new wholesaler. You one cash offer. Right?

Steve: Yeah. So then, I wanna transition something a little bit different here is, partnerships. So everyone that thinks I hate partnerships. I wanna be clear. I don't hate partnerships.

I just think they're challenging. It's another layer of difficulty to add. So Sure. You started initially with a partner.

Gino: Started with John Paul, my still one of my best friends.

Steve: Yeah. So you wanna talk about some of the challenges that you did not foresee and then how you guys were able to resolve them?

Gino: Yeah. So I like I like that you brought this up. This is very important because now and when when you're trying to look for a partnership, make sure that partner and you guys are kind of like yin and yang. Right? Me and John Paul are both visionaries.

We both had the mindset of growth, growth, growth. Right? So in the beginning, it's great. We all have growth minded oriented. Right?

But then, what I mentioned earlier in the podcast, John Paul is also an actor. Right? So John Paul, when it came down to it, we worked well together. But think about it. What's the visions?

Right? John Paul's vision was be Brad Pitt a fight club that he likes

Steve: I mean, there's nothing wrong

Gino: with it. There's nothing wrong with it. I wish I

Steve: was Brad Pitt

Gino: in that. Exactly. Right? So the definition would be Brad Pitt, my definition would grow the wholesale to 10,000,000 a year. Yeah.

So when I look at now partnerships, I just look at it and say, hey. What are the visions? And how can you help how can we help each other? Right? So our visions were off.

Long story short, we'll go into how we how we dealt with it. Another important thing is reading the book Traction. Traction is gonna let you know, hey. What's a visionary? What's an integrator?

Since me and John Paul had the same mindset, it was kind of two working the same. Right? North and North, you know, that doesn't doesn't go together. Right? It doesn't attract.

It repels. So what we thought saw is, like, when we started looking at the business model and we started breaking our charts down every who does marketing? Who does sales? Who does operations? Who does finance?

We were kinda good at the same thing. So what about that other side of the it's it's not good business. Right? Yeah. It's not as good as it could be.

So we just didn't you know, again, that's what happened. Visions didn't align. We do it all 2019, all 2020, and we decided we said, hey. You're getting bigger in acting. Real estate's picking up more.

It's gonna be harder if we do this even farther down the road. Right? We should probably work on, like, separation or, you know, end the partnership just because, again and he understood a 100%. John Paul is a as a friend, you know, he's couldn't ask for anyone, but he understood where we're all coming from. Hey.

Your visions didn't align. And, you know, we parted ways. Did it, you know, paid them out. Right?

Steve: Yeah. So And but it's also difficult because you Very difficult. We could do this now or we could do it later.

Gino: Exactly.

Steve: But it's gonna happen. So it's better to do that. Like, did you have to, I don't know, do some breathing exercises? Did you have to pump yourself up to having No.

Gino: I mean, it's pretty fair because we've known each other since we're eight. So I mean Eight? Eight for baseball team. T ball. So we've known each other for a while.

Right? So it wasn't like, JP, I need you gone. Bye. See you later. I was like, JP, you're you're trying to be a, not you trying, but he is.

He's got a movie too coming up, another one. So you're you're an actor. Right? Your your goal end goal is to be Brad Pitt, right, or be a top actor. Right?

So my vision is real estate. How is that look five years down the road. You're it's not gonna it's not gonna work. And he understood that. So it was it was a very mutual agreement, and we're both you know, it's both it's I think we're both happy.

Right? So

Steve: That's good. Alright. So Corey Guzman says ATL stand up.

Gino: Hey. Let's go.

Steve: Let's see. This is a long question from drone optics. How do you set up your wholesale team from cold callers to people who oversee them to other people's that run your wholesale business after you begin to scale away from being the one who does the cold calling. So I guess, really, how do you transition so that your business runs without you doing the day to day grind?

Gino: So I guess just start one at a time. Right? Start at what you're working. Right? So I was good in sales.

I still am the sales manager. I will look over all the sales. We train every morning. So I I stay on sales. Right?

I'm not good at the operations and marketing. Why? Because I'm I'm a visionary. Right? I'm not it's not my best use of time.

Right? I'm moving too quick, whatever. So I I made sure, hey. First, let me get some of that admin stuff up. Everyone starts with a data admin.

Right? I'm not pulling lists and put into the skip tracer and all that stuff. So we hired a VA first. To answer his question, I would start one thing at a time and what you're worst at. Right?

What you're not as good at because that's gonna alleviate you from that task. So you can focus on, for me, calling sellers. Right? So, again, my best advice would just be take your time and don't see a lot of people scale fast and or they try to hire as many people, but make sure first you've done every single thing in in that position. Right?

You've done every job. Yeah. And then slowly work your way, work your way, and then, again, hire the right people. That's a big easier said than done. We know, Steve.

Yeah.

Steve: It's challenging. And it's funny because you say, like, you're this visionary and you're not really in the details, but you've shared with me some of your SOPs. It's like the best SOPs I've seen. Right? Like, everything's well documented, branded.

Right? Ferocity in the

Gino: top corner. Let's shout out Chandler for that one.

Steve: Yeah. So much credit to Chandler. But still, you know, to say, like, you know, maybe you feel like this is not a strength. You hire someone or you brought someone in

Gino: Yeah. Exactly.

Steve: Who can fill that role and not just fill that role, but fill that role at a high level.

Gino: Exactly. Yeah. So Chandler, he's our integrated operations guy. He's my right hand man. You gotta find the right people, put them in the right seats.

We know his more of an integrated profile. And like Steve said, he's also a state champion. Shout out, Chandler again. He's a state champion wrestler. So as soon as I see someone like that, I think those that's gonna be someone that's gonna try to take

Steve: the studio. You look for someone that's excelled somewhere else. Exactly. Yeah.

Gino: I wanna see that they're, you know, high level.

Steve: So maybe after this, I need to talk to Chandler. How much can

Gino: take them from me?

Steve: Robert Sturbel, asked, do you maintain a spreadsheet of all your personal development spending? Do you know?

Gino: To be honest with you, no. But I do have spreadsheets of our marketing, of all of our other expenses. Right? I, like, I just did a quick math. Like, it was 30 plus thousand.

I think it was, like, 33, 34,000 I spent in that. Again, it's an investment. How much did it make? It brought me here. Not only that, it brought me doing, again, with your mentorship, forget here, it brought me, I tell people all the time, it's made me probably over $200,000 that I can measure using Steve's sales training.

And what I mean by that, and I know he's standing in front of me, so Steve walked out. No, I'm just kidding. So, what I mean by that is there's been deals that I've used the tactics, and I can measure them, that we were gonna lose. Right? Whether there's other wholesalers involved, other people other people involved, wholesalers, realtors, or they ghosted us.

And we used tactics that Steve taught that brought them back. I can measure those deals. Right? It's it was over 200,000.

Steve: It's crazy. Like, that last mile.

Gino: For, again, excuse me, for spending, you know, the $15.18 grand, 200,000, I mean, you gotta look at it like that. Right?

Steve: Pretty good ROI. Roger Vierra wants to know, why not go to BiggerPockets and get the same knowledge for free?

Gino: Well, you do you have the time for that too? Mhmm. So, yeah, there's gonna be knowledge. You can find some of that stuff. But what's it what's the gentleman's name?

Steve: Roger.

Gino: Roger. So you can go to BiggerPockets. That's what I did. I went to YouTube. I did all this research.

You can do that. But it comes to a point now when I want to learn how to do a novation deal, I had a guy doing three seventy five deals. I get a call with him every single month and I can learn directly from him. It's your time and your energy is just like this. Guess what too, Roger?

No one can measure your relationship with him. Yeah. I've built relationships with a lot of guys like you know. It's just because I did not just their course or and some of them, I didn't even do their I was already friends with them. Just because you built that relationship, it leads you different avenues.

I can call up. I could text these people, and I can ask them for advice that is priceless, you know? Right? What did you guys do? How did you do on this?

You can't really measure that. So at the same time, you gotta invest in yourself.

Steve: Right. The the other way to look at it too, I mean, just forget the the, the course itself aside. Put the course aside. Yeah. Yeah.

One thing I I look at is, I've heard someone say is you can buy your way into the right room. Right?

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: And so, like, you can call Eric Brewer. You can call Pace Morby. You can call Steve Frank. You can call Ren Bartlett.

Gino: Yeah. Exactly.

Steve: You've got a pretty good Rolodex.

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: Right? So it's not that you couldn't learn this from BiggerPockets. No. No. No.

The other thing too is, for me, I I I've seen this from other people that insist on learning free, which is nothing wrong. Right? Like, this content is free. Is that when you insist on learning free, the confidence behind that knowledge. Right?

Like if Eric Brewer says this is how you do a novation, you're doing that exactly to a tee.

Gino: Exactly.

Steve: Right? If you find it in a Facebook group, here's how you do novation, you're like, does it work? Yeah, exactly. There's that certainty, that conviction that you need to move forward. Stratton says what's up.

Gino: Big Stratton. Strat daddy.

Steve: Yep. So let's see what else is there. So we were talking about your team. A lot of sub two fans.

Gino: Yeah. Sub two.

Steve: Ben wants to know if you could have coffee with someone dead or alive, who would it

Gino: be? Oh. If I could have coffee with someone dead or alive, who would it be? I don't know. Let me think about this one.

Hold on. I would probably say Warren Buffett. I mean, a man speaks for himself. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Gino: I would just like to talk to him, not even just by investments, just by his mindset. Mhmm. Build a relationship with him, you know?

Steve: Right.

Gino: Not just pick his brain and just go out. I would like to just have a relationship, see how he's how he's dealt with things, right, difficulties, problems. You can just learn from that. Right? That's what I would look at into it.

But, yeah, I would say probably Warren Buffett.

Steve: And Dylan Williams says Gino is the man.

Gino: Big Dylan.

Steve: Again, Dylan's the one that connected us originally.

Gino: Exactly.

Steve: Corey Guzman wants to know how are you tracking the KPIs off of TV?

Gino: So we get Darren's company, he the management his company manages. They'll track and they're tracking every, you know, molecule into what commercial, what time it was, how many leads came into it, all that good stuff. What we do on our side is we're tracking how many leads came in, how many calls or attempts to get a hold of them, how many appointments was that. Out of those appointments, how many contracts. Right?

So that's what we track. But to get into your if you're asking in-depth, how they the TV, we have Darren do that. It's part of his management, and he does a real good job of that in breaking it down what commercial, again, what channel, what

Steve: Yeah. It's crazy that what what Darren does for the money. He he's basically an employee for those guys. It's nuts what he can do. Dylan wants to know what changes have you made recently to adapt to the increased volume?

Gino: Increased volume in marketing?

Steve: Increased volume in business. Right? I mean, you've got you're doing more deals.

Gino: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: You're gonna be breaking something. Yeah.

Gino: Exactly. So How are you

Steve: adapting to it? So what

Gino: we're doing constantly, and it's very simple to say, is just looking at where our loose ends are and trying to fill them. Right? So to answer Dylan's question, we're just constantly looking, you know, not just to hire people, but to fill our loose ends that might prevent us from scaling even higher. Right? So, for example, right now, we just switched to Salesforce, Stephanie Better, she was here last week.

What we're seeing is that this is our problem right now, is that our lead managers aren't making as many calls as they were on Podio, with our smartphone because they can't have the dialer is not as effective. But at the same time, it might be too effective that the one in left main because they're talking to more people. So what we're trying to figure out now is, hey. We usually had them call in about 80 to a hundred hundred people a day, the lead managers. Now they're calling, like, 40 or 50.

They're getting the same. They're better response rates talking to even more people, but our feeling is now, hey. We have a 150 leads. You know, there are a 100 leads they might missing here and there. So to answer Dylan's question, it's just constantly checking on where our loose, you know, where our loose ends are and trying to fix them.

Right? Just to keep up keep up with the scale.

Steve: And then, Robert Carrillo wants to know what list are you targeting right now?

Gino: So, that's Chandler Integrator. But I would I know for sure our bread and butter is absentee. At this point, we're sending out about 30,000 texts, and it might be even more. Chandler, you'll if you guys see them on my Instagram page, you'll you could ask them. But we're spending a lot on data.

And and you know, Steve, is you can't really get granular with that data when you start texting and cold calling all

Steve: that stuff. Not when you get a big volume. Is that 30,000 per month or per day?

Gino: Per month. Alright. But that's new prospects. So we do follow-up text. I mean, Chandler, again, we're running you over the thousand, like, text a day on

Steve: twelve to 15. Text messages a day.

Gino: New prospects.

Steve: Got it. I love that. Warner wants to know, are does, your commercial have your sexy stash in it?

Gino: No. It doesn't. I couldn't scare away the kids. I couldn't scare away anyone. Unfortunately, not.

Steve: And then, Stratton wants to know how long it took to grow one.

Gino: To grow the stash? Mhmm. That's a good question. I would say from this point I would say from this point now, it's probably been two

Steve: weeks. Really?

Gino: Yes.

Steve: My goodness. Alright. So Claudia wants to know how or do you plan on going virtual out of state?

Gino: That's a tough one. That's actually one of our issues list for the long term right now is, hey, what are we going to scale to other markets? Right now, technically, in Georgia, we run a pretty virtual market, right? We're locking up on the phone, which is a whole other conversation, locking up on the phone. Dispo, we just we hire our, I guess you say, boots on the ground, but our friends to go show the homes, take pictures.

So do I think it possible? Yes. Down the road, I could see us scaling to other markets for sure.

Steve: Okay. So to expand on that, you guys are doing virtual. Darren says don't do that. Ryan Pineda says don't do that.

Gino: Not only that too. This is it. You got Darren. We know their numbers. Right?

Millions. We got Eric Brewer, millions. We got Wren Bartlett, millions. We got Ryan Pineda, millions. You got these guys doing that.

So now that's

Steve: another difficulty.

Gino: So I'm not perfect here. What I've been talking to Jared acquisition is we gotta go on to more appointments. It's just how are you gonna be that's stupid for me to I have these big guys, these players, all going in person appointments. Why wouldn't you? Now, I think a lot of them run the TV model.

They're not doing the SMS and cold call as much. Right? Mhmm.

Steve: I think they are.

Gino: Oh, okay. Well, then, it's true me. But I I what I mean by that is that for us, I mean, what I mean by that is we gotta go on more appointments. That's it, man. So, I mean, that's why we're working.

We're still work. We're getting new acquisition guys. We're trying to work in that model. Hey. If we're close on something and we can't get them on, we're gonna set that appointment.

Steve: And I'm not saying that you're doing it wrong. Right? Because we're going to Oklahoma City, and we're gonna be doing a virtual.

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: And Darren looks at me like I'm crazy. So I'm not saying I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm just asking what the thought process was.

Gino: Because that's what I think about. I I just told someone yesterday this. I said, look. These poor guys are doing this. And I always tell them, like, what am I doing?

You know, like, if you can work a mix, we know the other guys are doing hundreds of deals a month, you know, that are doing on the phones. But at the same time, like you're saying, Claudio, the scale it's just, it's, that's a tough thing right now too. In person and not in virtual. That's something, that's another difficulty we got. These are all the top, like, three difficulties we got right now.

So,

Steve: guys, we're at 50. So, if you guys can share this, let's share share this in some other Facebook groups. Share this so that other people can learn about this. I mean, I think it's interesting, right, having someone that hasn't graduated college yet, doing the kind of numbers he's doing. Ben wants to know the the CRM that you're using.

Gino: So the CRM we're using, we just started using left main

Steve: Mhmm.

Gino: From Salesforce. Salesforce and the workspace is left main. And we've used them now. We've we used Podio for forever. Now we switched out the last month.

I'm gonna tell you it's night and day difference.

Steve: Why did you switch?

Gino: Well, the big reason why I switched is because the people that I know, all the guys we mentioned before doing millions and millions, literally said, I would have I would have not have done my CRM, my Salesforce. They spent they spent hundreds of thousands. I would do this one. Hey, this one is so when I'm hearing the big guys doing that, just like the education, I'm taking action. Yeah.

Right? Because these guys know what they're talking about. And not only that, our Podia wasn't we weren't I knew we had some limitations on it.

Steve: So what were those limitations?

Gino: A lot of it was automation. With Salesforce now, it's just quick automation and also user ability. Right? One, the software in Podio or the system on Podio would shut down. It would, you know, go offline.

It was slow if you had a lot of apps open. All these things played into how many times we could call, and this one now, it's all in one string. We can email. We couldn't email Podio, or at least we didn't, you know, have the integration. Email, you can text.

We could do it on Podio, but it wasn't has you know, this one gives a notification. Perfect. Right? Text, we can just the click to call is just as good as smartphone was. Running comps, pulling up Zillow, just as for me, it was just user ability and that what you could build on sales.

And I know your wife, she's a big Salesforce, you know, what you can do on Salesforce. If we're trying to grow this company to, you know, grow it, we're gonna need the systems to grow it. And I knew if I'm seeing guys making $5.07, $810,000,000 that are saying, I would have done this. That's my perfect chance. Let me go in.

And let's say this too, the price.

Steve: So, yeah, the price is stupid cheap. Let's talk about, taking action. Right? Because Max Maxwell Video, boom, bandit signs. We jump into the call, he signed up.

You heard about CG Select, you signed up. Brewer Method, signed up. Sub two, signed up. And then you hear about Salesforce, he bought it. There's a lot of moving fast.

Do you have any challenges with shiny object syndrome? First.

Gino: I did for sure. And so I started looking and paying attention to your podcast and you talking about the not chasing that, the one thing. Right? I got the book for actually Chandler to our interview. I've now I look at everything and I'm saying and Chandler will tell you again, he'll say, gee, no.

Chandler will tell you again. He'll say, Gino. I'll tell he's like, Gino. He's coming up with ideas too because he has he is, you know, martial

Steve: martial visionary.

Gino: Yeah. And he I'll tell him, real estate, real estate, real estate, real estate. So I for sure had shiny out everyone, you know, we have looking, hey. Let's start a cold call team. Mhmm.

Let's start hey. Let's do a title comp. I've been thinking of but I realized, I say, hey. Look. Let's think about this once we hit 5,000,000 a year.

Let's think about this when I'm completely out of the business. So now I try to prevent myself. But to answer your question, I did have shiny object syndrome. Now I try to I'll be pessimistic a little bit, and I don't like doing that. But I try to shut down a lot of things.

Steve: So then how do you do the fast action taking?

Gino: For me, if I know that these guys or these people I'm looking at are teaching something that's because it's not a whole business model. Right? It's helping my real estate model. If it's like, if Steve, you said tomorrow to start renting cars, I'll say, no, I'm good, Steve. I'm good with that.

Right? So when I'm seeing subject to, I know that's gonna help my tool belt, acquisitions, novation, that's gonna help my tool belt. Private money, it's gonna help me take down homes. The collective genius is gonna help me be around better people in the real estate industry. It's a no brainer for me.

Right. If I see someone again, car rental or e commerce. Right? Mhmm. I'm starting now just no.

Let me focus on this. And if I am gonna do that, I'm making sure someone's put in place so I don't have to do that. That makes sense. Right?

Steve: Absolutely. Now that makes total sense. Let's see what we got on the YouTube site. Oh, we got a lot here. So are you doing virtual?

We already said no. Finished college using Chegg, c h e g g.

Gino: That's it right there. That must

Steve: be a news thing.

Gino: To keep it down low.

Steve: What percentage of net profit do you get to keep? This is from Sena Finest.

Gino: I would say I know our net profit last quarter wasn't as good as we wanted. Mhmm. It was, like, 40%. Mhmm. And then now I'm the full owner.

So so, you know, you do the math. But it was about 40%. Last year, it was, like, 65. But the problem we have not a problem now. The good thing to have is now, you know, that TV didn't pay off in those early times.

So that really brought down our net profit. Now it's coming up again. So, I mean, that's that's that's it right there. But just trying to keep, that's my on my rocks is to keep our over that 40%.

Steve: REI Diaries wants to know how will they find your commercial?

Gino: Watch Judge Judy at 2PM. No. I'm just kidding. It's it's at, I could it's on Atlanta's local channels. Yeah.

You don't

Steve: have a YouTube of it anywhere?

Gino: Oh, it's on my Instagram.

Steve: There you go.

Gino: You can look at my Instagram. I'll give it at the end. Yeah. You can see it. Sorry about that.

Yeah. Go on my Instagram.

Steve: So this is, not Zoa. This is Rain brought to us by our guest.

Gino: Yeah. Brought to us by, actually, Jared too. Yeah. Acquisition manager.

Steve: We needed it after running this morning. Oh, let me let me touch on this. I run Monday, Wednesday, Friday in Gilbert, 05:30.

Gino: Mhmm.

Steve: I post about it on Instagram. Only one person runs with me. Like, if you lived here, would you be running at 05:30 in the morning?

Gino: I would be getting up at 04:30 if I had to.

Steve: Yeah. Because you did this morning.

Gino: Yeah. Exactly. Right?

Steve: And so, like, you got Eric Thomas who who says, like, you know, only if you wanna become wealthy as much as you wanna breathe, right, will you become wealthy. And, like, for me, it's mind boggling. Right? Like, I'm not a multimillionaire, but I got one. Yeah.

Exactly. And no one

Gino: wants to run

Steve: with me. What I mean I remember

Gino: you always post and you're like, you and pace. You and the pace and you guys just run and said, you would say no one's here. So are you guys this is this is again, this goes to the relationship side. I actually look at it and they'll tell you my friends are I look at it when I went to meet with Kong. Mhmm.

I'm not asking them business stuff. I'm talking to them personally. Mhmm. When I'm meeting with, you know, any big time or any guys in general, I don't I don't want, like, pace too. I'm not gonna be asking about subject.

I'm not gonna be asking. I wanna build a relationship. Mhmm. And so what's the perfect way to do that? Hang more time with them and especially not in the office.

Right. So if you guys are running, I'm going. Like, I texted you last right before I went to bed, I was like, oh, yeah. Steve runs in the morning. Let me text him what time.

Gave me the address. I got we all went. Right? Right.

Steve: So Hey. You brought your whole team.

Gino: Brought brought all the guys with me.

Steve: Yeah. So it's crazy to me that no one else is running, in the morning. So then Usman wants to know, how do you know it's the right time to go to my sales training?

Gino: How did I know it was the right time? Well, I knew one thing is that I knew I was leaving money on the table. I was I was the only one closing the deals. I knew I was good, but I knew I was missing out on sales. And how I knew that as they would be selling with another wholesaler, I didn't know how to handle that.

Oh, okay. No. We can we can come higher price.

Steve: Right.

Gino: I just knew that at the time that even though sales is my I like to thought that was my best thing in the business, I knew there's always room to grow. Right? There's always gonna be more things you can learn. And and so I saw your stuff, and my friend Dylan Mhmm. Speaking of him, he referred me.

He said, yeah. It's great. You know, not only is it sales training, you get the mastermind call with Steve one o not one on one, but with in a pretty small Zoom group. Right? And get to, you know, pick his mind not just on sales.

So I was no brainer for me. Right? Signing right up.

Steve: And then Dominic Baca mentioned here, he just, fired himself from his nine to five. So congratulations. G Subman Nafai. 24, wish you knew about credit cards. Burned through 17,000 mentorship marketing with no deals in six months.

Any tips for another young guy trying to get back into the game ASAP?

Gino: Any good tips? My first tip would be take action, but you did take action. It just didn't work in your favor in that point. So what I would do is go to someone in your market, find who's doing deals. Right?

Who's the top guy in your market? Who's one of the top guys? And for me, what I would do is I would work for free for that person, personally. I would work as and I don't know what position you're in. Obviously, it's easy for me to say that because I'm 22.

My my parents would take me in if I went to zero. But work for free because if I had guys and I do have guys, or interns. We have interns now. And they come with us. They work for free.

And when I see that as a business owner, I know I wanna have these guys long term. Right? That that vision. So, again, to get back into it, I would be trying to work for someone that has done this business and succeeded and work for them if you had to for free or work for them discounted price. Again, I know it's easy for me to say, but, just to show them You learn how to work VA, how to hire what's the price on that?

We don't know. Right. You know? Right? So Yeah.

Steve: We can spend money, go learn from somebody else, or we can work for

Gino: somebody Yeah. That's why you're famous.

Steve: And not have to spend.

Gino: Yeah. Exactly.

Steve: Learn on someone else's dime. I mean, like, I started at Intel. That was my first, job out of grad school. And, man, they have a great training program. You can learn a lot of corporate stuff now.

I'm not saying this stuff translates well, but you get to learn from somebody else versus spending money putting on your credit cards. Ron DeLal wants to know, can you do novations in Texas? So do you know the answer to that question?

Gino: I would say yes. I've seen people do it in Texas.

Steve: So I'll answer that question. Yes. You absolutely can. I know someone that's doing double digit novations every single month in Texas. Benjamin wants to know where did you hire your VAs?

Gino: So my VAs, I first got my first ones from Upwork and outbounders.com. Upwork and Outbounders. But now, I haven't went to go hire or put an application for a VA probably in a year plus because we're getting referrals referrals. We have three three of them that are in Venezuela. They're all friends.

That's why. We started with Eric. He's our lead manager. We have the admin, one of the best admin. Perfect.

Just an integrator to Chandler's right hand. Mhmm. And then we have our tech so answers questions. I know I like talking a lot, but referrals now. But Upwork and Outbounders.

Steve: Christopher Johnson wants to know, should you learn sub two first or wholesale?

Gino: Me, personally, I would say wholesale. Yeah. First, I wanna learn the principle, the main you know, the what needs to go into it, start building the cash. Mhmm. And then I would start diversifying and seeing how how I can give the cash.

Now I know how wholesaling works the whole process. Yeah. Let me focus. So sub two, it is very, it's challenging. It's not it's very, you know, I don't know know what expert not expert level, but you know what I'm saying.

It's

Steve: Level of difficulty.

Gino: Level of difficulty. But PACE also gives a way to make it look and if you learn from PACE, it it's a lot easier.

Steve: Yeah. If you learn from PACE yeah. So I'll just touch on this real quick. I think wholesale is easier to learn

Gino: Mhmm.

Steve: And and execute, but you have more opportunities it's up to.

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: Alright. So you gotta balance it. I I think pick one, go hard. So then wants to know how are you doing deals then in 02/2019 when you started? I kinda talked about it.

Gino: Yeah. I was it was me and my partner, and we had one VA. Didn't hire our first caller until July year.

Steve: Yeah. So just screw up, really.

Gino: Yeah. Screw up.

Steve: Any plans on having a mustache handlebars?

Gino: I'm not well, as soon as I get on the plane to head back, my girlfriend's gonna make me shave it. So you guys are seeing the prime of it right now.

Steve: Joe Masius wants to know, how are you training your cold collars?

Gino: So our cold collars, I train with, when I onboard them, I train for them for sales for about three days. And then every week, I'm monitoring or every week, we role play and I look at their calls. And then on top of that, we also have, my buddy named our boy boy Paco Mhmm. Nicaragua. He also does a lot of the, what's it called, listen to the calls, like management.

Steve: Quality control.

Gino: Quality control. So yeah.

Steve: And then, Claudia wants to know, do you guys close on every property if you contract it?

Gino: We only time we never close on them is title issues. Right? So we're I've and, again, there's other things that go in. Sometimes you offer the repairs. We're doing virtual.

Right? So we can't let me say this. If it's unreasonable, and again, Steve's saying, you know, sellers are liars. But if it's if there's a way we can do it, we're gonna do without any price reductions. I know people in our market that will literally purposely price reduct every property, and they'll they're making videos on it.

I'm not gonna say any names. So I would never do that. Alright. Because if I would lose money if I had to on a deal Yeah. If I had to sell it.

Right? But we're every deal, we try as best we can. And, again, sometimes the guys will say it's in good condition, and it's complete wreck, and we have to ask for reduction. Now I think there's been one or two Mhmm. In the last year out of how many deals now?

Like, 65 60? Something like that's it. But that's not title problem deals. That's just deals that we missed calculated on.

Steve: Alex Bobby wants to know about the transformation puppy.

Gino: That's that's his name on Instagram. Alex. I actually just bought a 17 unit with Alex. Shout out transformation puppy. We closed on it Monday.

Steve: Let's talk about that 17 unit.

Gino: So 17 unit SMS lead, launch control. Been in talks with them since October. 900 k he wanted. We ended up contracting it and buying it for $7.89. It's in a rural area of Georgia.

Mhmm. 17 units. Gross rents are 9,100 right now. We think we can raise it to 10,400. That's on our, agenda.

And our total debt on it with taxes and insurance PITI is 4,600. Mhmm. 4,600. Might be even a little less than that. Sorry.

I just we just got it. So 4,600. So

Steve: you guys are keeping it?

Gino: Keeping it.

Steve: Awesome. Good for you. Sure. Do you have a partner right now?

Gino: No. I do what I do, do is that I do profit split with my integrator.

Steve: Got it. Alright. Let's see what other question we got here. Steve, when is the next sales training? Our next one's in June 11.

So send me a DM about that. Christopher Johnson says pace does make it look easy. Pace

Gino: I know.

Steve: Pace is like Tiger Woods. Right? Like, if you're good

Gino: Michael Jordan.

Steve: Yeah. It just looks easy when you're good. But it also comes down to reps. If you guys actually remember the very first episode I did with Pace Yeah. He talks about how he wants to go on as many appointments as possible so he can be the best.

Gino: Yeah. Right?

Steve: That's a different mindset.

Gino: And we would probably say he is.

Steve: I would say he's, what was it? I've I've said he's the Michael Jordan. Right? It's it's when talent meets hard work meets coaching.

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: So, so Tyler Hurst, if you're ready in a partnership, you're a visionary partner's not an integrator. What's the best way to find an integrator?

Gino: Personally, how I found it, I'll this might not be the best way. This is how I did it. Right? Steve, you can put your input. I know Steve's a lot he's a lot more educated on this than me.

I just look for people around me that I knew. Not that it's a bad thing, but they didn't have the entrepreneur mindset. Mhmm. Right? Not a 100% at least.

Right? So they're looking at it as that's okay. That's all that's probably what I really think is I looked at people around me. It's easy for me to say again because I just found our good friend. He's actually a roommate at the time.

It was me, John Paul, and him. And so it's kind of easy to find when you've seen him every day. But, When

Steve: they live with you, it's

Gino: really easy. Exactly. So I really I probably can't provide as good advice as Steve as could do on that subject at least.

Steve: And then what do you believe is the best way to compensate, the integrator?

Gino: So we talked about this before. How I do it is profit split. So a certain percentage of the profit every month. That's what I feel is the right way to do it because it's hard to measure, like, an acquisition commission and stuff. But if you see you're hitting your goals, your rocks, and all this, you know, your quarterly goals, you gotta go, you know

Steve: So profit share. So then most importantly, what's your top three top three books for mindset?

Gino: Top three books of mindset. I would say How to Win Friends and Influence People. I would say Millionaire Next Door. I read some of that in the in the book of Babylon or what's the The

Steve: richest man

Gino: of Babylon.

Steve: The richest

Gino: man of Babylon. A lot of those are just and I'll be honest, I'm not the most avid reader. I need to get better on that. Those are probably the three books I've read in the last attraction. Yeah.

But not happy about that. But still, it's,

Steve: You know what? Like, I I I'm a very big reader. I love reading. But at the same time, like, you put yourself in a position to learn from other people that are also learning. Right?

I mean, you get to see Gary Harper once a month.

Gino: Yeah. Exactly.

Steve: Right? Like, you're in a really good spot because of the position you're in because of the position you've put yourself in. Andrew Cherry wants to know what are your thoughts on digital marketing?

Gino: I'll be honest. I'm not that TV is about, obviously, digital as you can get. Mhmm. The reason I like it a lot, especially TV is what we know, is not only in Facebook ads, you get credibility. I feel like TV is the ultimate credibility.

Right? Because you got billboards. Right? You see the billboards. You see them.

But if you see someone on TV, what I feel is the credibility factor on it. And that's why I guess you could say, oh, digital marketing, there's credibility because you see that person on, different things. But other than that, we'd only do TV digital marketing. I know you, Steve, have a little bit you're doing also PPC and stuff like that.

Steve: PPC and Facebook. Yeah. What's your biggest struggle right now?

Gino: Biggest struggle right now is this second, is that problem with the lead managers.

Steve: Mhmm.

Gino: It's just fixing that to make sure that we can get it we can contact as many people as possible. I would say that's my big like, that's our number one to do right now is to do that. You know? It's to make sure that they're whether that's hiring more people or figuring out a better system.

Steve: How do you stay motivated?

Gino: How do I stay motivated? I guess I shoot goals. I mean, what I do every single and I I haven't been doing it as much lately, but I have a journal, the Bigger Pockets journal, funny enough, actually. The intention journal. Mhmm.

So I get my three. Their theirs is their goals, but actually match with my rocks and my business. Right? If you guys read traction, that's my number one recommended book. I know that was common too.

Put your book you'd give. But traction, I put my three goals for the quarter on there every day. I write that down Mhmm. So I can visualize it. Now every day, not only do I write the ninety day goal, I write the monthly goal down.

Then I write the weekly day goal down. Then I write down, hey. What am I gonna do today? Mhmm. So to stay motivated, I was chasing.

I'm chasing. Right? Yeah. I'm looking. And and not only only that, you know, it's also personal too.

I wanna have freedom. I wanna achieve these goals.

Steve: Yeah. You're talking about, traveling the world.

Gino: Yeah. That's the goal.

Steve: Let's talk about that. Yeah.

Gino: I've been I went to Europe when I was 16. Lucky enough, my parents, they took me and my family, three sisters, only boy. We went to Europe, and it's, it changed my my life right there because it just opened my eyes to everything. Like, I'm just such a United Georgia, where I'm from, is, you know, when you go out to Rome where we were at, you know, went to it changed my life, like, seeing different things. So, yeah, my goal for graduation, and I graduate again July 31.

My goal is, like, by August, mid August, is to head over in Europe, try to stay for a year. That's the goal right now and just travel around. You know, we do a virtual, you know, model. And that's what I pretty much do now anyway.

Steve: And I think Chandler said he was planning on coming along.

Gino: Chandler might come along. Yes. Chandler's actually running a big race. That's why I have to go the fifteen fifty miler. We know.

Steve: So that's crazy. What is your superpower?

Gino: I would say my superpower, is talking building relationships, I like to think. I feel like I can go to someone and build some common ground, some relationship with each other, you know, whether that's new seller. I'll ask them where you, you know, where are you from? Minnesota. Oh, that's where my sis or that's where my girlfriend's mom's.

Hey. Do you know I'll find a way to connect to someone. And it's funny because, like, how do you how did that come from? Oh, you like this color. You like this shoe.

You like this sports team. I think I my biggest strength is just building those relationships with people.

Steve: Something I see a lot in pace as well.

Gino: Yes. Exactly.

Steve: Yeah. I remember he was talking about he met with this seller who had this tattoo right here on her chest, and he started talking about that tattoo for twenty freaking minutes. And I think that kinda looking at your, you know, your predictive index, right, your persuader, if I remember correctly, which means you're high b. So for those of you guys watching here, that's a high I on the on the disc. So you're just great at just connecting

Gino: Yeah. That's what

Steve: building relationships. What is the greatest lesson you've learned?

Gino: I would go back from and especially is it real estate related? I would say a 100% that marketing is an investment and not an expense. As soon as you get that out of that you can actually start growing. And that's what I feel is my biggest thing I've learned. As soon as I knew that, I said, let's go.

Steve: Yeah. And I think that, again, just going back, like, that's it sounds obvious to people that know it.

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: But it's, an epiphany if you didn't know that. Exactly. Right? It's it's totally mind changing. Yui wants to know what does your morning routine look like?

Gino: My morning routine? Mhmm. It is I it probably better be nightly because I I'm not really much of a morning I would go to bed at, like, 12:30, 01:00, 02:00 watching YouTube videos, mostly real estate. I'll throw in some Joe Rogan stuff and then just get my mind off things. But morning, I wake up around, like, 09:00.

We do our sales meeting at 09:30, and then I'm into calling, helping run an acquisition school, stuff like that. So not much of a routine, I would say, unfortunately.

Steve: Tyler wants to know, do you guys in Venezuela lock up deals on the phone?

Gino: No. They don't lock up deals on the phone. They're all lead managers, so they set the appointment for us, the acquisition managers, to do it.

Steve: And Andrew Cherry wants to know, if you were starting out now building a cold calling team, what would be the first thing you would do?

Gino: The first thing I would do with building a cold calling team, obviously, other than getting cold callers. I would probably if I'm starting out brand new again, if I had no money, I'm watching as many videos on sales training as I can. Brent Daniels does a good one. I would be doing that. If I had money, I would be doing disruptors sales training because you gotta find a foundation for them.

Mhmm. You gotta find what you're gonna be talking about, what you're gonna train them on first, and then you can that's that's basic, you know, the cool thing. Training them up, making sure you have the right people. And, that's what I would do personally is I would then just dissect sales training.

Steve: And I'll talk about mindset as well because you could kinda, like, take it easy a little bit. You could.

Gino: Me?

Steve: Yeah. But whenever we're messaging, you're always watching something. Yeah. So, like, we talked about this. You're listening to the recordings from sub two.

You can't make it during the day. Exactly. So you watch it after hours. This is like your wind down.

Gino: Yeah. I would tell Jared to be laughing right now because I tell him, like, you're driving. You're going to the you better be watching Pace closing a sub two deal. He's like, I'm listening to country music with the windows down. Yeah.

I'm not doing that. Right? So I tried to every any free chance I got put up on there, YouTube video subject to any education, some disruptors. It's just recapping because if you, you know, if you like the business that much, and let me not let me say this too. I also love, you know, just putting on some music sometimes and just letting the striving and not thinking about anything.

So but at the same time, I try to put as many effort and hours in education. I've been doing it for seventeen years in school. Yeah. You know, people think about that. Right?

They're like, yeah. I don't wanna wash this. You I don't wanna go through this core. I don't I'm gonna take my for me, especially, it hits home. Seventeen years in school.

Right? And you're telling me that I can't watch and learn. That's something that's actually gonna make me money. Like Yeah. Going to make me money.

Steve: Yeah. But I still think it's a mindset thing there. People are like, okay. I've I I worked hard today, you know, after 7PM. I could just take it easy.

Frank Cava. Right? He's a guy, another Collective Genius guy. And I love, you know, his interview question. It was like, you know, like, tell me about yourself.

You know? Someone said, I'm a hard worker. And, like, before he'd be like, oh, you're a hard worker. And he's like, okay. Tell me about being a hard worker.

You know, like, what do you do after you put your kids to bed? And the guy says, well, you know, take it easy. He's like, okay. Are you that hard worker? The guy says, yeah.

After I put my kids to bed, I'm going back and watching sub two videos. I'm going back and watching the sales trainings. Right? Okay. That guy that guy, watch out for him.

Gino: If my girlfriend's watching right now, she'll tell you. Like, he's he's like, I'm addicted. But I'm like, give me some slack. Alright? I will drop it.

I would do something, but she'll tell you I won't get off my phone and start, you know, texting sellers or texting people.

Steve: Well and, again, every people have asked me, what what what does everyone in the show have in common? And it's the obsession. Right? And someone could say, you know, maybe you're taking too far.

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: Maybe. But you wouldn't be here. And you wouldn't have the success if you weren't obsessed, with the business. So I'm gonna let you think about what you wanna leave the listeners to with to leave with while I make a couple quick announcements. Guys, if you get value today, please like, subscribe, share, comment.

That's what helps us get the algorithms to push our content more so we can help more people create more millionaires. Next week, we got Brian Davila. He's gonna be coming in, talking a little bit about future flipper rookie and how he, I think, is Ryan Penida's first mentee and what he's done with that information. And then we have our workshop, on May and our sales training on June 11. If you're interested in the workshop or the sales training, send me a DM, and we'll I'll send you the right information to, check that out.

What are the last thoughts?

Gino: Two ones right now. One, you can never fail unless you give up Mhmm. In anything. That sounds, again, obvious, but you can never fail, you know, if if you don't give up. Two, invest in yourself.

Because I know Steve keeps saying, you know, on this education, I mean, invest in yourself. Because, again, what is your return on investment? I'm looking right now. I'm if I'm struggling all with sales, I'm going right to disruptors.com, and I'm gonna I'm gonna try to sign up. Right?

Because do you have are you trying to grow? Because, again, you can learn this stuff a lot of it on YouTube, but being hands on with the the the one teaching you and it I'm gonna be honest. I mean, obviously, Steve's does better than than what's on YouTube, but it's the mindset of you're ready to grow, invest in yourself. Because, again, it goes back. The stuff that's in your head now, it's not leaving.

Your money might go in your bank account, but this isn't going anywhere.

Steve: Right.

Gino: Right? So that's why, you know, we see a lot of millionaires, they lose it in some, but they'll come right back. And it's all in here. So that's my best thing. Whether it's nine Steve's, whoever sales training, whatever training, I think it's the best thing you could do is invest in yourself.

Steve: So yeah. Doesn't have to be with us. No. Right? It doesn't have to be any other things that you

Gino: can promote. Probably not

Steve: a good fit. Might not work. But something, investing in yourself. And, you know, I look back, and this is your last thought, but I'll just do this real quick. You know, I'm in some rooms that are amazing rooms, right, guys that are crushing it.

Like, they're just murdering the business, doing 30 plus deals a month. And I'm not at 30 deals a month. Right?

Gino: Yeah.

Steve: But I get to be in this room because how much I invested myself all the way up until this point.

Gino: That's what I'm saying.

Steve: So opportunities are available to you. If you invest in yourself, it's unlimited. So if someone wants to get a hold of you, how did they do that?

Gino: So my Instagram handle is Gino, g I n o, underscore rei underscore ATL. We have a YouTube channel. We're starting to pick that up now. I'm gonna start investing in some of that content, and that's Gen z Real Estate. Gen z Real Estate.

And then finally, Steve told me not to do this, but I'll give you guys my phone number.

Steve: Pull a Pace Morby here.

Gino: Pace Morby. I knew what it gave, but at least try to if you text me, just let me know where you're from and your name so I could save you in there. It's 770 Steve isn't like it. No. (770) 756-3964.

If you could, you know, again, just put your name and where what state you're from so I could save it in there, and I'll be happy to answer any questions. If you could, follow me on Instagram and YouTube. It has a little courtesy, but, you know, at the same time, just hit me up. I'm happy. I'm not gonna be able to respond right away probably, but, you know, I'd love to help out because that's what people did for me.

Right?

Steve: Yep.

Gino: Built the relationships. They helped out with me. So that's my best advice.

Steve: Awesome. Thank you.

Gino: Big Stevie.

Steve: Thank you guys for watching.

Gino: Appreciate it. Can't nobody touch us And yeah, we about to give you game Shout out to Steve Trane Real estate disrupt us They cannot touch us And And you don't have to look no further. See right here, you're gonna learn everything. Shout out to Steve Train. Jump on the Steve Train.

We real estate disrupt us.