How To Invest Clearly as a Passive Investor | How To With Gino Barbaro

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome. My name is Gino Barbaro, host of the Jake and Gino show. And we've got a special guest today. We're doing a how to show. The gentleman's name, Pat Zingarella, what a great

[00:00:12] name. And more importantly, he's even got a better company, a better concept. Company's called Go Invest Clearly. And I spoke to Pat a couple of weeks ago, and I saw the passion that he had behind the

[00:00:22] company that he's creating. And I said, Pat, I need to get you on, I need to have you share what you're building. So without further ado, Mr. Pat, how we doing brother? Yeah, we're doing great.

[00:00:31] It's funny, you bring up the name before we get started. When I was in high school, the local newspaper actually wrote a newspaper article about me having the greatest name in high school football.

[00:00:40] Didn't talk about my skills, didn't say I was a good player. They just said I had a great name in high school football. So that was my claim to fame growing up. You got into real estate and

[00:00:52] I love the platform, Go Invest Clearly. Tell me, why did you start the company? What's the company all about? Yeah, so the company in and of itself, the main value prop is we're here to help LPs

[00:01:05] get beyond no like and trust and start verifying the things they're hearing in media and from GPs. So it's essentially a review site for funds and syndications. It is a directory of every GP that's

[00:01:19] ever existed. And then LPs that provide undeniable proof that they have invested with that GP have the ability to write reviews on them. And so the mission for the LP is you can go here, you can

[00:01:31] create a short list based on your criteria. You can read reviews from other verified experiences to help with your decision on whether or not you want to pursue an investment with that sponsor.

[00:01:43] We've also are in the process of building out of a deal directory, which we have an API or an automation connected to the SEC. So every time a 506c deal is filed, it pulls the deal onto our

[00:01:54] profile. We match the deal up to the sponsor and really gives the LP a full view of the market. Because what we've seen is that the data is very fragmented. You have to join a thousand mailing

[00:02:07] lists in order to see and compare deals. It doesn't all exist in one place. So we actually built this because my background came from a software consulting sales. And I worked for a major

[00:02:20] company that had a subsidiary that did this in the software world. And so during that time, I started investing in real estate on my own, buying small multifamily properties, going through the disastrous experiences of not knowing what you were doing, but still making the leap.

[00:02:36] And I ended up connecting with someone who was quickly becoming a personality in the space. And let's just say I knew, liked and trusted that individual, pursued an investment alongside of that individual, and it turned out horrible, absolutely horrible. And I was able to warn

[00:03:00] my inner circle about not going down this path because it wasn't published. And this individual was becoming the guy in all of the communities. And later to find out, I guess it turned out to

[00:03:16] be fraud, the fraud spread. There was like 60 other investors that this individual took advantage of. And in my mind, I was like, okay, if something like Invest Clearly existed, I probably could have prevented a lot of bankruptcies, disasters and so on and so forth. So post that experience,

[00:03:31] I launched a sales consulting business while I was investing in real estate. And one of my clients actually sold a credit investor lead gen to GPs. So they were a digital marketing company that hyper-focused on generated credit investors for sponsors. And I would spend time with like 10

[00:03:47] GPs, all that focus on the same asset class within a week. At the same time, I was considering becoming an LP myself. And I was like, I have absolutely no idea what the difference between

[00:03:55] guys are. I'm a smart guy, but everyone's saying the same thing. I don't necessarily understand. So I started looking for content online. How do I evaluate these guys? How do I make the right

[00:04:04] decisions? And I found that every single piece of content was actually created by a GP, books, blog posts, everything. And I was like, how is this going to help me? It's like, hey, here are

[00:04:15] the top 10 things to ask me when you evaluate me. And so we decided to take... That's what launched the idea is we took what we knew in the software world, combined it with my personal experience,

[00:04:27] and then combined it with what I wanted to... What was missing during my evaluation that bred and best clearly. It's interesting, Pat. There's a couple of things I need to really extrapolate from what you just said. Anybody listening to this, know, like, and trust is not

[00:04:43] an investment strategy. It's a hope and a dream. Obviously, you have to know the person, but how well do you know them? I mean, you do want to like the person. I mean, I don't know. I want to be

[00:04:54] in business with people that I like. I want to have a beer with the person. I mean, does that mean I don't invest if I don't like them? Not really. Taking this in totality and the word trust,

[00:05:02] you know, that word trust, what does that mean nowadays? You have to do background checks. You got to get on a plane, fly out to a GP's property, maybe call up their third party property management

[00:05:11] companies, walk some of their other deals, get an intimate knowledge of their team members. Pat, I really need to rip this down though, because I'm going to take you to task a little bit.

[00:05:20] What did you do wrong on your deal as an LP? What mistakes do you think you made early on in that first investment with that fraudster? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that wasn't an LP investment, but it was essentially like a wholesaler that controlled the process. But

[00:05:39] it's hard to explain, right, without me going into too much detail. And there are reasons why can't yet, I will be able to soon. But did you know what I did wrong? Is that what it was? One

[00:05:47] of the things was no liking trust, correct? That was exactly that. That was all it really was about, right? It was, I knew I can trust the guy actually, the guy came to my home, right,

[00:05:56] like stayed at my house at one point, I was his first employee, I moved out and lived with him for a little while. And the hardest thing about the trust was every basis of trust that we think

[00:06:06] of when it comes to the mistakes we make, okay, the influence on social media, the influence in commedia, eventually, they were are they writing books, like is everyone looking up to this individual, there's a lot of confirmation bias around the trust factor that kind of took me away

[00:06:22] from the depth of due diligence I should have done because there was a level of overtrust. And there wasn't social proof beyond social influence that I felt I could turn to to help like, break down, I guess that miss, I don't know direction I was going in.

[00:06:44] That's actually interesting. And you made a great point. If I'm a general partner, I'm writing articles, I'm creating content based on what I'm trying to sell you. So that's not really a great place to get educated. That's why Jake and I were creating this passive investor

[00:06:58] pro because we have no bias, we don't want to raise money from anybody. We're here telling you as a limited partner, how to invest. And the reason why we're doing this is we want strong limited partners. And we want strong general partners. We don't want crappy deals funded,

[00:07:12] because crappy deals when they're funded means their price too high. And Jake and I can't go on buy deals because these prices are too high. And then it brings down the market. And then

[00:07:21] when you need to raise capital from LPs, they're not there because they're all behind around the water cooler, saying Pat, these guys, these deals are killing me, I'm losing money in these deals.

[00:07:30] So if you have a stronger LP, you will have a stronger market because you won't be overpaying will be being based on fundamentals. And I think that's truly important. You know, where can the

[00:07:39] listeners get ahold of you? Where is your website? Give me some details about the website details about how far are you are long into this process as well. Yeah, the website is go invest clearly

[00:07:49] that got sorry, go invest clearly.com. I'm also on every single social media, I'm getting better at it really working out. I'm no, I'm no Gino yet, but we're getting there. We my email address

[00:08:00] is Pat at go invest clearly.com. But in terms of the age of the company, we're just over a year old, I would say we've been building it for the majority of it. So we built the website for like

[00:08:09] a year where we were talking to LPs talking to GPS making sure we were doing it right. We launched hard in November. That was about three months of everyone that was telling us why the website was

[00:08:17] broken and everything wrong with it. So we went back to the drawing board did like a second launch in February. And that's when we really started, you know, doing pedal to the metal outreach and

[00:08:27] getting it going. Pat, before I let you go, you need to let me know what a couple of some a couple of things that LPs on the platform are complaining about because as we spoken off camera, for the

[00:08:37] majority of them, we've gotten a lot of, you know, really positive reviews by general partners, and people when they come organically, they're the ones who start complaining. But what have you seen? Is there any similar threads or common themes that limited partners are really upset

[00:08:49] about? Yeah, absolutely. The number one thing people bring up is communication. It is communication even above returns because communication lack thereof poor communication. The refusal to acknowledge something is going wrong is an indicator of everything else that's coming.

[00:09:04] Right. And so so one of the when I started interviewing LPs, no one cared about being a quarter of a point off on their IRR. It's like what is happening? Right? Why is it happening?

[00:09:15] And what are we going to do to fix it? They want they want to know what's going on. Like that's the biggest thing effective communication. Obviously, no one wants to take a bath and

[00:09:21] lose their full investment. I'm not saying that like, that's not being brought up. But the number one focus right now in conversations is how are things being communicated because it affects future investments as well. Like are you disclosing publicly in your marketing material? Or are you

[00:09:34] still just continuing to raise as the deal that I'm in is going under? So number one is communication. Wow, I love that. And Pat, it's a testament to you and what your what your group is building,

[00:09:46] because I want everyone to hear this. I think that community is so important. That's why we've created the Jake and Gino community. What Pat and GoInvest clearly is clearly doing here is they're creating a community of LPs. And when you start investing, you're always focusing number

[00:10:04] one on the sponsor, number two on the alignment of interests, what we say, and number three, we focus on the deal. That's the last aspect. But to have that community and to be able to go on

[00:10:14] to Pat's website and be able to look at general partners, and just get objective views, you may get some positive, some negative, but it's important. And that community will actually help you in the long run to be able to analyze the deals, analyze the opportunities. And when

[00:10:29] you're part of a community, there's a little bit of accountability there, you're on there, you're saying something about a limited partner, or you're saying something about a general partner, you're like, Oh, okay. And it gives you the opportunity. I love the fact that you're actually

[00:10:40] getting in and getting the 506Cs, all those on there. Because right now that you're right, the market is fragmented. It's very difficult to get a lot of the information out there. So I think that is a huge, huge selling point. Any final words before we sign off?

[00:10:53] No, that's it. I mean, the community is the big part of it. Everyone always asks me how do I incentivize people to write reviews? And the easiest response is I cannot. If an LP is willing to help

[00:11:04] de-risk or encourage investing with another GP that has to come from the LP. And every review they put on there, it's also a review that they expect to read to help with their due diligence

[00:11:16] in the future. It's all that community based similar to what you have going on. So Pat Zingarelli is a sales executive. He's out there making it happen. He gets in the business with somebody, guy sleeping on his couch, hanging out with him,

[00:11:30] doing deals and feels comfortable. But the no like and trust only works so far. When the market's going great, it works great. But when it doesn't, it doesn't. And that's how GoInvest Clearly was

[00:11:40] born. It was born out of a need to have limited partners, have a place to be able to have an honest and open communication and dialogue about the general partners out there. And that's what

[00:11:52] GoInvest Clearly is all about. Pat, I want to thank you for being on today's show. Yeah, thank you, Gene. What's the website? Where can people reach out to you again? GoInvestClearly.com. Thanks, brother. Yeah, thank you.