The Wealthy Way: Real Estate, Influence, and Faith with Ryan Pineda | Jake & Gino Podcast

[00:00:10] Hello, it's Jake Senseneo, host Jake and Gino Podcast. Here with my co-host, the Multifamily Mentor, the Coach, Chef, the Father, Six, Best Selling Author, the G Daddy. Gino Barbargine, how's it going? Jake, I'm doing good, brother. How you doing? You got things working, huh? Got things working. Always making it happen, big man. Today's guest has been in real estate since 2010. He has mastered the art of scaling both businesses and influence, investing in over 100 million worth of properties and has over 2 million followers on social media.

[00:00:41] Today, he continues to share his story, inspire others, and teach people how to live the wealthy way. So without further ado, Ryan Pineda, welcome to the show. Ryan Pineda Hey, happy to be here. Thanks for having me again, guys. Ryan Pineda Hey, our pleasure. So we had you on a few years ago. I remember the baseball and you got into flipping furniture and all this stuff. For the folks that maybe didn't hear that, maybe give us a quick recap on that and what you're doing these days. Ryan Pineda Yeah. Like you said, I got into real estate in 2010. Also that year, I got drafted in real estate in 2010.

[00:01:10] Ryan Pineda I'm drafted by the Oakland A's. So I was a minor league baseball player slash realtor. And the reason I was a realtor was because, you know, in the minor leagues, you don't make any money. I was literally making about 6,000, 7,000 bucks a year playing minor league baseball. And so, you know, I'm gone six months out of the year. I'm training in the off season, you know, doing all this stuff.

[00:01:32] Ryan Pineda And so I needed to make money on the side. And so got my real estate license because my mom was a realtor. And I was like, well, you know, it sounds good. I can just do it whenever I want. Ryan Pineda I don't have to work a nine to five. I can train. I can leave, you know, so it sounded great until it wasn't, you know, like it sucks being a realtor.

[00:01:51] Ryan Pineda Also in 2010, it sucked because that was literally the worst time to be a realtor. Great time to be an investor. Terrible time for commissions when prices were at, you know, kind of all time lows for the past 25 years.

[00:02:04] Ryan Pineda And, you know, I ended up quitting real being a realtor after a couple of years because it just wasn't for me. That then led to other side hustles that, you know, I did to make money. One of which the most successful at that time was couch flipping. You know, I had just gotten married and furnished our apartment with Craigslist furniture. And I was like, man, dude, I bet you I could flip this stuff and make some money.

[00:02:28] Ryan Pineda And it just sparked an idea that ended up being my first real successful business. I was making about eight grand a month flipping couches. And, you know, from there, did that a couple of years that then led me to flipping houses.

[00:02:43] Ryan Pineda And I learned about hard money loans and ended up maxing out all my credit cards, got some hard money loans on some deals and, you know, flip five houses, then 20 houses, then 50 houses, and then I was doing 100 a year really quickly thereafter.

[00:02:59] Ryan Pineda And so, you know, flipping houses and wholesaling has always been my bread and butter the last decade. Along with that, you know, it led to other opportunities. You know, I got on social media back during COVID. You know, I felt like there wasn't really anyone talking about flipping that was doing it at a high level. So started making YouTube videos about it, started doing TikToks. Nobody was doing TikTok at the time. And it just blew up.

[00:03:28] Ryan Pineda It took off way bigger and faster than I ever imagined. And, you know, that then led to other opportunities, you know, led to education, it led to services, it led to other products and events and, you know, all these things that we've done over the last five years that, you know, a lot of people would probably know me for. And yeah, it's been a wild ride. So, you know, today, you know, we're still flipping, we still wholesale, I would say we predominantly wholesale at this point.

[00:03:56] Ryan Pineda We've done some multifamily. So, you know, I've done multiple funds at this point, where we've raised, I think over 10 million to buy apartments. So, you know, I think we own over 600 units in the fund right now. You know, we still do coaching, we do big events. We do lead generation now for real estate investors. And yeah, so a few things.

[00:04:21] Ryan Pineda Define for me, Ryan, the wealthy way, because it sounds like something Mr. Miyagi would say on Karate Kid, the wealthy way, what is the wealthy way?

[00:04:32] Ryan Pineda Well, throughout that journey of building all these things, you know, in addition to that, right, I've been married 11 years now. I've got three kids, they're all five and under. So, you know, a very young, demanding family in the thick of it, and we're gonna have more. So, you know, it's like, man, how do you balance all like people just kept asking me, how do you run lots of businesses and make content and balance a family? And then, you know, I do a lot with my church.

[00:05:01] And we have a nonprofit as well. Forgot to mention that for Christian entrepreneurs. And they're just like, how? How do you balance all of it? And I was like, well, there's actually like a system to it, you know, just like anything else, like there's a way to do it.

[00:05:17] Ryan Pineda And that way became the wealthy way. You know, I'm like, this is what I think true wealth is. I think true wealth is not just net worth or apartments or flips or revenue. It's, that's certainly a piece of it. But man, I mean, if you're dead in any other area of life, it doesn't really matter how much money you have.

[00:05:36] I mean, I've seen so many guys, you know, build big businesses and lose their family, they get divorced, their kids don't even know them, they miss them growing up. And I'm like, that ain't it. You know, I ain't trying to be like, I would never trade places with that guy.

[00:05:51] Ryan Pineda You know, then I see guys who, you know, they're chasing all these things. And then, you know, they wonder why they're still void inside, because they don't have any faith. And I'm like, man, definitely wouldn't trade places with that guy. Definitely, considering that eternity is a lot longer than the time here on this earth. So, you know, I realized a lot of people had dead faith. And then health, right? It's like, man, you don't really appreciate your health until it's gone.

[00:06:16] And it just occurred to me that, man, like, if you're making all this money, but you got all these health problems, you would trade all the money to be healthy again. And so it just became this thing where I was like, people, especially in our industry, and business people and entrepreneurs, I mean, I get it. I love business, just like you guys. I love to work. You know, I'm not in this to, you know, I'm not trying to go sit at the beach at 35 years old and do nothing.

[00:06:45] I love to work and build. But you got to kind of put guardrails and parameters and systems in place to make sure you don't like only do that and forget about all the other things. So that's what the wealthy way is all about is teaching you the system to make sure you're prioritizing. It sounds like a structure, right? Is a structure fair to say? And it's interesting that you bring that up, because as you were saying that, there will be other things that will fill the void.

[00:07:12] And I don't want to get super political or anything on the show, because I know that's not what it's about. Not you. No, I'm being serious. But like, if you look over, I don't know, the last 8, 12 years or whatever, you know, there may be a void of religious faith in some people's lives, let's say.

[00:07:33] And what creeps in and fills that void? I don't even need to say it. I think most people out there can know. We can even say politics, for example, may fill that void. And it can get pretty sinister and weird. And people can take some awkward stances. So I think the important thing to what Ryan is saying is, you know, lifestyle by design and structuring things in a way that the right stuff is filling those voids.

[00:08:02] Because if not, things can go sideways pretty quick. You can lose relationships, you know, family can, you know, get upended. And priorities can be upside down. And that does not lead to success. So I like everything you're saying there. No question. Ryan, I am writing a book. I'm going to be launching it in the next month or two. It's called Happy Money, Happy Family, Happy Legacy. And an important component about it is your relationship with money. How would you describe your relationship with money?

[00:08:30] And it seems as if it's an important component, but it's not the end all be all. You're not working to make money. Money is just the result. You're creating impact with money. Have you ever sat and thought about your relationship with money? And more importantly, have you discussed it with your wife? Because, you know, when you get married, you go with spouses. Spouses come with different blueprints. They've heard different things about money. Have you discussed that with your wife? And more importantly, what is your relationship with money?

[00:08:54] Yeah, great question. You know, it's funny, in terms of my wife, we got married very young, you know, she had just turned 21 when we got married. So we were broke. So I had to flip couches and, you know, do all these weird things. So yeah, neither of us like, had really any preconceived beliefs about money when we got married, because we're just so young, we had never made it. Neither of us had rich families, my parents lost it all during the Great Recession.

[00:09:19] Her parents were, you know, her dad made 40 grand a year as a dad and provider for the family. Her mom was a stay at home mom. So they lived in a condo, the literally the same. Yeah, literally the same condo for 30 years. I've never seen anyone do that, you know. And so, you know, neither of us really came, I got to experience what having a middle class life was like until we lost it all. And so I was like, all right, you know,

[00:09:48] we need to be very frugal. We cannot, you know, spend on stupid, frivolous things. We need to really, you know, save and invest in our future and all these things. So we were always frugal from the get go. It wasn't until we started like making some serious money that we finally kind of like, I don't want to say broke that mentality, because it's still a good mentality to not waste money.

[00:10:11] And I've actually swung to the other side where I got very wasteful with money as, you know, I made millions. And then I realized like, no, no, no, there's like a center point that really matters, you know, between, hey, you're making enough money. You got to enjoy life. You just can't save every dollar. What's the point? Right. Right. But how's that conversation now? Because I can see her saying, hey, Ryan, you know, we've got money in the bank right now. Maybe we should save this money because I don't want to lose it again. And you're like, no, honey, listen, I've got to put six figures into this marketing budget.

[00:10:41] We're not going to see this, you know, this money come back to us in the next six months. So there's got to be like, I don't say tug of war, but there's those conversations can be difficult because when you're holding on to that, and I don't want to call it trauma, but having that kind of childhood where it's, you know, you're living paycheck to paycheck and you don't know if you're going to lose the condo that, that really brings back some kind of memory. So you, you getting flooded with money that, that may not change the situation.

[00:11:04] Yeah. And let me, let me be clear, even though my parents lost it all and hers kind of like, like you said, live paycheck to paycheck, basically we were both raised in faith. And so money has never been a thing that we've ever worried about. Like, even when I was making 1200 bucks a month in a minor leagues, I didn't consider myself like poor or broke or like lacking. You know, I didn't wonder how I was going to eat that day.

[00:11:32] Like I just knew God would provide and he did. He provided for our marriage in so many ways. And then he always revealed the next door. Like I didn't think of flipping couches. I'm not that smart. There was no YouTube videos about it. It was just this idea that popped in my head and then boom provision. Same thing with social media. I never wanted to be an influencer. I didn't want a podcast, but I felt like God was calling me to do that. And then boom, look at all the doors that opens.

[00:11:55] And that has constantly been the theme in my life where people think I have all these good ideas, but I'll just be in prayer. And then all of a sudden I'll get a download and I'm like, Oh wow, that would be okay. I could see how that could work. And then here we are. So I would say more creative when you're present, right? If you're in that prayer state versus like you're having this like battle with your mind. I want to go back just for a second, because you said something that I found very interesting that you never felt poor.

[00:12:22] I had had that same feeling throughout my life. And I think there's maybe something that we should, you know, pause on and open that up a little bit because I was definitely poor at times in my life. Like by the numbers, I was poor. I never felt poor. I always had money to spend. So that may sound like a contradiction, but I may have been making 300 bucks a week, but I always had excess money because I budgeted it correctly.

[00:12:46] I just have to think that's very important and it's mindset. And I know a lot of people that go through, I'm so broke, I'm so poor. And they actually, they carry this and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do you think that had a, I mean, it had to, but you want to, you want to expand on that? That probably had a pretty big impact on your development over time. A hundred percent. Right. I tell people this, you know, in the 11 years we've been married, right? We were broke, you know, I'll just talk about like from a financial standpoint.

[00:13:15] Yeah. We didn't have much. We had like a thousand dollars in the bank, you know? And I had to figure out how I was going to make the money each month. Like I didn't know where it was going to come from. Right. But, but God always provided and we always had faith that he'd provide because guess what? He always did. Like I look back at the last 11 years, no matter what storm I've ever been through in life, I've always been provided for. And storms never go like the storms actually just get bigger in your life.

[00:13:42] You know, like in 22, when, when they doubled interest rates, man, I lost millions on house flips, millions of my own money because I paid back all my investors, private money, hard money, everything on, you know, I had 50 flips, 20 million bucks of debt out on the streets, short term debt, you know, when the market turned and guess what? Prices dropped 10%, property sat, interest payments added up. And it was like, dang, this ain't going to be good. You're waiting on supplies, you know, prices went up, like, you know, all the, all the things happen.

[00:14:13] Right. And so I'm like, dude, I got a multimillion dollar gap here to fill. Right. Somehow God provided, you know, and you do this in business throughout, man, you get lawsuits, you get things that you don't expect to happen. You get a slow economy. But some way, somehow I've always been provided for. So, you know, I think for us, faith is the biggest thing that, that plays a role in how we view money. You know, the Bible talks about, people don't know this, but the Bible

[00:14:38] talks about money more than any other subject. Like people don't realize that, right? Because it's the thing that, you know, unfortunately this world runs on. You need money to transact. You need money to have freedom. You need money to, to do a lot of things, um, in life. And, you know, so you, you got to really look at it a different way. And, you know, there's a good Bible verse that I really like. It's Matthew 633, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and everything else will be given to

[00:15:04] you. And so for me, that's kind of how I look at it. It's like, man, if I'm just seeking God first and do what I'm supposed to do, the money will come. And, and, and that may not mean I got to go make a hundred million dollars or a million dollars or anything. It's just, Hey, it's going to be all good no matter what. And that's just how I view it at this point. I I'm reading a book right now by David Green, the founder of Hobby Lobby. One of my children is working for him. And he talks about,

[00:15:31] and I'm shifting my mindset because we're starting a company with my family and I'm starting to believe and I'm starting to really recognize that we don't really own anything. It's all, it's all in God's hands. So David Green believes that Hobby Lobby is owned by God and all the things that come from Hobby Lobby really own the God and he's built a trust and he gives away over half of his profits. And I just love what he's doing. And he says, when a door closes, there's a reason why the door closes because Hobby Lobby almost went out of business in 2012 with that verdict against the,

[00:16:00] with the pharmaceutical companies where they didn't want to do the abortion pill. And I thought it was a abortion drug. And I thought it was just an amazing testament to him saying, you know what, if that door closes and he was looking at enough in the profits from his standpoint, he had 30,000 employees that he didn't want to let down. But at the same time, he was so strong on his belief and he wasn't worried about the money. He was worried about doing God's will. And I think if we can all focus on that, on doing God's will. Do you know what was it? I don't, I don't know the story. You want to just open it up?

[00:16:28] Oh yeah. In 2012, when Obamacare had that mandate that they were forcing companies to provide the birth control pill, the abortion pill, that strictly goes against Catholics, Christians' beliefs. We, you know, and they didn't want to be able to provide that. And he said, you know what, we're not going to do that. And they were getting sued and, and it was good. They were going to be, um, it was a million point two a day if what? And so then it had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court and he was holding off, holding off, holding off. And finally the sisters of the poor got sued

[00:16:57] as well. And finally they won the case. But I mean, if it had kept getting dragged on, he could have lost his entire company. But at his point, he's like, you know what, if that's what God wants, that's going to happen. I'm going to continue to do what I believe. What am I doing here? If I'm going to go against my beliefs and that dude has got my, that's a great story. I mean, like he's an amazing, my daughter walks in there. You can feel the love in that store. You can feel the energy. You can feel the culture, the core values, the purpose,

[00:17:24] the mission statement. That's something that I want to build with you, Jake. That's something that I want to do with our communities, with the Jake and Gino community and with, with our properties. Cause we're, we're, we're sort of doing God's will. We have 1800 apartments. Those are residents in there. You try to serve them the best you can by giving them superior quality. Obviously you need to make a profit with that. And I love the way he's done it. They take a salary. I mean, that money goes back into his thing. And one more thing I'll say

[00:17:49] every month they have a meeting with the family about gifting and donating. And they have them, they have their kids and their grandkids in that meeting monthly, and they're directing their dollars. So talk about making impact with the money that you make. Cause he knows it's not here. This is like, like Ryan saying, you know, that's eternal. We're only here temporarily. Let that money work for you. And I think if you do that, you create more money, you create more impact. Profit is

[00:18:15] the fuel for him. It's not the destination. And I think if more entrepreneurs thought like that, I think it would be, it would be amazing. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, Ryan. Yeah. So I've actually been invited to, to meet David and go to their headquarters a couple of times. In Oklahoma, right? Yep. And unfortunately there was always mixed scheduling, but I'm definitely going to take advantage of it next time. Cause he does it like a couple of times a year for big Christian business

[00:18:43] owners and people like that. And so, and it's all for, like, he just does it because that once again, he's trying to build up the kingdom and empower, you know, much smaller guys like myself and, and whoever. Right. But one thing I'll add that I love that he does and, and, and the heart behind it is, you know, what we're talking about is stewardship. And I had this conversation with my team actually,

[00:19:07] because, um, man, it's this weird dynamic where we're trying to help people be business owners. We're trying to help people own real estate and build wealth and all these things. But also on the other hand, we know it doesn't last forever, right? Like we know eternally it, we don't take it to the grave. Right. Um, but the idea of stewardship is that you actually don't own anything. And that's what he's saying. Hobby lobby is not mine. Like at the end of the day, it's God's. He has just given

[00:19:37] it to me to steward and I have to do the best job I can at growing this thing, creating change and culture and, and donating and using like, I get to control it, but I don't own it. And that's a huge thing that contradicts most of society. And when you start thinking that way where it's like, nah, like, yeah, I, I control these apartments, you know, on record, I'm the owner. Um, but, but then

[00:20:05] you start to think, man, like really though, you're hardcore GMing. You got, you got taxes. Yeah. Okay. You got the bank in line. There's a lot of, a lot of things happening here, right? Yeah. Like even in the grand scheme of things, you don't actually own the apartments, right? Like if the U S gets overtaken, you know, like you don't own them anymore, right? Like you default, you don't own them anymore. Well, if you're in Colorado, you don't own them. That's for sure. Yeah. So it's like nothing in life you truly own. I mean, even if your house is paid off,

[00:20:35] there's, there's taxes on it. If you don't pay those taxes, they're coming for you, right? You go to jail, like they're, they're going to get rid of it. Right. Like I might own this microphone. I might, I don't know. Maybe we'll see. Maybe. Unless someone takes it from you. Ryan, you didn't, you did, you did an amazing interview. I saw a little clip with Ed Milet and, and on entrepreneurship. And he talked about how entrepreneurship has changed. And we went from entrepreneurs being the evil and being the devil to all of a sudden they're the cool kids in the

[00:21:01] block. And when you can launch and you can land the rocket in a little toothpick over there and you can become part of Doge and it's all of a sudden the cool kids on the block. Can you just go into that interview a little bit? And I think there's a lot of hope for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs in this country going forward. Yeah. You know, Ed's a, it's a good friend of mine. You know, that interview was actually the first time him and I really met and sat down. It was about a year ago. Um, and since then, um, he's spoken at a couple of my events. Uh,

[00:21:27] one of which even speaking of that, right? Like a guy like Ed, you know, man worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars has done some amazing things in business and social media. And you know, he's a Christian as well. And when I held my big Christian events called the kingdom summit, um, we're going to have one coming up in April. I haven't announced it yet, but, um, he was like, bro, I will speak at that for free. Like do it, whatever you want me to do. I'm there.

[00:21:52] Um, and so it's like, you know, guys like that just start to understand like what it's truly all about. Um, so I wanted to bring that up about him because people don't really under, like they don't know a lot of things he does. His probably fee is probably like a hundred grand or something, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. At least. Um, so anyways, yeah, with Ed, um, and, and just in general for people watching this, I think that, you know, we're in a world of inflation. We're in a world of,

[00:22:19] um, things are just going to keep getting more expensive. They're not getting any cheaper, right. And wages are not rising fast enough to, to keep up. And so my opinion is everyone is going to become an entrepreneur of some sort. You know, everyone's going to have some kind of side hustle, some other thing that they do, right. Whether that's buying an apartment or, you know, a single family property or flipping and wholesaling on the side, you know, people are going to have to supplement their income some way, somehow. And so I think it's the golden age of entrepreneurship

[00:22:49] because there's more information than ever out there, right? There's, there's more mentorship than ever. Um, there's more tools than ever. It's actually cheaper to get started today than ever before starting a business. You know, like I tell people this all the time. I'm like, you know, I love wholesaling. I think it's like probably the easiest way to get started in real estate. Um, it's the quickest money. It's the lowest barrier to entry. I love everything about it. It's like, dude, you know, for a thousand bucks a month, you could have all the softwares you need,

[00:23:18] all the coaching you need, all the leads that you'll need, you know, systems, you could have everything for like a thousand bucks a month. Like it's crazy that that exists. That wasn't the case 10 years ago, 10 years ago. It's like, dude, where do I find the information? There are no softwares that would make this easy and automated. How do I build a website? How do I get a dialer? How do I generate leads? Like it was all just up in the air and it made it very hard to succeed. But now today

[00:23:44] it's easier than ever to start any business, not just wholesaling. I mean, you want to go start a shop. You can just go get a Shopify and boom, you start selling products today. If you're, you know, you're a designer or something like that. It's crazy how easy it is to start. Before I go to the short answer, uh, section, if I do want to start, what are some of the things that I need to do? Cause I think people get completely overwhelmed. They see that you've got 2 million followers all over social media. I can't be Ryan. I don't even know where to start.

[00:24:14] What are the first couple of things that I need to do to start? Well, first off, you got to decide which path you want to go. So one of the downsides of lots of information is procrastination. You know, people have information overload. Am I picking the right one? I mean, Jake and Gino say I need apartment. Ryan's saying I should wholesale. This guy's saying I should be an influencer. This other guy's saying I should flip couches like which like, so people struggle with that. That's like number one that I've seen. And I've done

[00:24:43] so many side hustles now, like on my YouTube channel, just impersonally, you know, people are like, dude, Ryan, do you think Airbnb is the thing? You know, I saw you doing Turo for a little bit and it's like, dude, just pick one. They all work. It's not like they don't work. It's just, you got to put the time and effort into the one that you choose. You can't do four at once and, and, and try to, you know, start them all from the ground and see what, like, it's not going to work. So the first step is just picking what you're going to do. I want to, I want to, I want to stay with that for a second, guys. I was talking to one of my

[00:25:13] buddies, been friends with him for, I don't know, like over 25 years at this point. And he's throughout the years, he's been, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to get into multifamily. Like, all right. He's like, I'm going to get it. I got the text last night. Hey, you know, not right now, but soon I'm going to pick your brain about multifamily. So, and, and really bizarre. Um, like this was probably 2002, maybe it was probably 2001. One of his buddies from home, we were in college and like, we were out, like I met him one night,

[00:25:42] we're out drinking or whatever. And he, you know, he turned up like in our network via Jake and Gino and he's like buying apartments and stuff now. So I asked him last night through this text, I'm like, you know, how's so-and-so doing, you know, cause I know he started and it was a very intentional question. He's like, Oh, not that much. I'm like, so what's he doing? He's like, he's got eight duplexes. And I'm like, dude, that's fucking great. Okay. Like he started, he's building that he gets to 20. He might be financially free. Like, I don't know the,

[00:26:08] the PPU or the math on his stuff, but, but he's like, ah, he's like, he's like poo-pooing it. I'm like, dude, the key is you got to plant your flag to Ryan's point and get going in this stuff and then start to stack and scale. And I think a lot of people missed that. And, and it was just a like immediate example of that that happened to me last night. Well, you know why Jake, because he's looking online and saying, well, Jake Stenziano has got 1800 units. I've only got eight duplexes. Don't, don't look at somebody who's been doing it. His buddy's got the eight, right? His buddy's got the eight. And the point that I was trying to make was like, Hey, that's a

[00:26:37] great, he's in a great trajectory right now. Right? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Guys, let's take a quick time out to hear from our sponsor. This episode of the Jake and Gino podcast is brought to you by Wheelbarrow Profits, the premier multifamily education community. Wheelbarrow Profits proof is in their results. Their members have closed over 86,000 units. That's over $5 billion in student deal volume. Are you serious about taking your real estate game to the next level? Do you have the confidence to

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[00:27:35] All right, we are back. Earlier, we were talking about expenses and I wanted to ask you, but I'm a pun until now. Do you look at business expenses differently than you do on the personal side and maybe dive into that a little bit? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, business expenses are just investments, you know, at the end of the day. Because we were talking about getting loosey-goosey and you're like, yeah, I went out too far and now I've reeled it back in. So I just wanted to get some real life examples

[00:28:03] of what that looks like. Yeah. Okay. So I've gotten loosey-goosey in both personal and business, right? So, you know, personal is easy to decide what's loosey-goosey. That's like very obvious. You know, for example, I was never a car guy. Okay. Growing up, I never have cared about cars or anything. And it's like, well, you know, you're an influencer, you know, everyone's got a nice car. So then I buy a $200,000 Porsche Taycan, you know, then I buy

[00:28:29] another car. You know, my wife has an Escalade. Then I buy another car and I got a Hummer. And you're just like, all right. Like, I don't even enjoy- Did you buy the old school Hummer or the new ones? The new ones. Oh, dude. Oh, how is the new one? You like it? I already got rid of it because it's just like, I don't need it. You know, like- You should have bought the old one. I bought so many cars over the last like four years that I'm just always trading them. They're like, oh, what are you driving now? Well, today, right now, I have one car, just a Model X. And I love it for the three kids. I don't need anything else. You know,

[00:28:59] I got a six car garage. I ain't going to fill it. Okay. There's a golf simulator in one of them. So, you know, at the end of the day, like stupid things like cars, you know, designer stuff. And you can justify, well, I'll put it on social media and it'll be good for a post or two. And then it's like- Yeah, I'll make money off of it. You know, it'll come back, you know, and you just do all this stuff and you just realize after you have it, you know, you got to have it to realize you don't need it. I mean, it's one thing if you've never had it, you're like, dude, like, no, man, like I would

[00:29:28] enjoy it. But you know, once you have it, you're like, no, this is dumb. So anyways- The car euphoria burns pretty quick, right? That's a very like short- I never cared about watches. I never had a luxury watch until two years ago. And then I had four. And it's just like, what are we doing here? So anyways- I don't even like the way they feel in my body. Like I can't keep one on for more than a day. It's just, it's not my thing. Yeah. Yeah. So those are just like easy examples, right? You know, on the business side of things,

[00:29:54] it's interesting, right? Because when you're constantly growing and you're in a really good market, you know, you're always hiring, you're, you're spending more, you're, you're like pursuing growth. So, you know, um, you build a team, you, you spend on marketing, you invest into lots and lots of deals. Right. And then when the market turns, like I was talking about in 22, you know, you're like, Oh, now I'm cutting checks to, to sell my deals. I'm not getting money back in every

[00:30:21] time I sell a deal. This is not a good feeling. And I got 50 more of these to cut checks on. That ain't smart. And then, you know, you, you know, have all this staff and all these employees and different things. And, you know, you're, you're planning for growth. So you're like, okay, we don't maybe need them right this second, but as we grow, you know, we're going to need them. And so it's better to start training them now and hiring them now and all this stuff. Um, you know, and then long story short, it just, you know, you realize you're

[00:30:46] not in that market anymore. Things are now on the decline. And so, um, you need to go into getting lean and, you know, I never, I guess, understood it until you go through it. Cause I'd always just been in a, uh, up growth, you know, for let's just say like eight years straight. And, um, you know, I, I now understand why people lay, you know, why big companies do big layoffs and stuff. You know, I look at like the, the tech companies where, you know, you hear these things like Elon,

[00:31:13] Elon buys Twitter, right? He lays off like 80% of the staff and you're like, Holy crap. Like, how are they going to, that's crazy. Yeah. It wasn't crazy. They're just fine. You know, like what were the, you start to like, think about it. You're like, yeah, what were like all those thousands of people doing? Cause clearly Twitter's just still running and totally fine without them. Right. It seems to work when you turn it on. Yeah. Like I still see people tweeting, you know, it ain't nothing's changed in my eyes. So it's actually gotten better.

[00:31:43] You know, for most people. Right. So, you know, I started to realize that, um, we had a lot of jobs that weren't necessary. You know, you think they are, and then you just get blown. And the hardest part, man, is cause they're all good people. So it's not their fault. Right. And so, you know, you let people go and it's always a tough thing. So, you know, I would say that, uh, we were bloated, um, for maybe a year and a half and I should have just kind of pulled the plug on it

[00:32:12] way, way sooner. I would have saved myself hundreds of thousands, if not seven figures, like in salaries that, you know, quite honestly didn't need to be there. Um, and so that was a learning lesson of like, man, I see why they just do it in mass. It's just like, yo guys, shock the system once and let's just be done with it versus like, Oh man, it can really kill culture. If it's a constant thing. And then everyone's looking over their shoulder. Like you got to sort of just pull the plug if you're going to go down that road. So, yeah. And it also is this thing

[00:32:41] where, you know, people know when they're not like bringing value, you know, when they don't have a lot to do and you just keep them on because they're good people. And they've been with you maybe for years, who knows? Right. And it's just like, dude, people want to feel valuable. Like they're contributing. And, um, the moment that's not happened, you, you really should, if you have, you know, any kind of, you know, awareness be like, okay, like I'm not really doing much. I should probably, it's probably, it's not going to last much longer.

[00:33:09] That's, it's interesting because there's, for us, it's been a tale of two cities. We have our real estate business where we're vertically integrated. Um, you know, we have the apartments or whatever, and then we have the education business and we've never, I don't think ever actually been to full capacity or scaled out properly on the real estate business. I think we've always been a little bit leaner. There's been positions that we should have hired for.

[00:33:36] We've gotten much better over the years. Don't get me wrong. But I, I, I sat down yesterday. I'm like, we need to hire fucking 10 people for roles that have never existed. Right. And then, and then on the education side to that point, I think we got a little overstaffed, a little over, you know, bloated, if you will, a little bloated, excuse me. And so it's, it's, it's interesting how the, the two businesses sort of have acted differently and I can never seem to catch up in one, but we kind of got over our skis a little bit in the other one. And I don't know, Gino,

[00:34:03] you have any opinion on why that may be like, I'm not even, you know, the property, the property management side is, can be challenging because you're scaling and you're keep buying properties and you don't have to find time to find a maintenance coordinator or a deck crew, or you're looking for somebody to do some, you know, some other maintenance. The construction teams have added on. And then there's like these, Hey, do we want a leasing manager now? And like these, these different positions. So. Yeah. So as you're scaling up, you're trying to, and it's also a function of the economy,

[00:34:32] whereas two years ago, it was really easy to lease apartments. So you weren't focusing on it. Now all of a sudden to lease apartments, it's more challenging. Occupancy rates have dropped and you really need to train that aspect of it. So you're catching up on that side of the business. And that's a core component of the business. You really want butts in seats, heads in beds. If you don't have that, everything else doesn't really matter. So that's why we're sort of catching up on that. And when you're Jake, when you're turning, you know, 300 units in the span of a year, that's a lot of bandwidth going on. And then like, it's either feast or famine. You either don't do

[00:35:00] deals or you do a bunch of deals. So if you're not doing deals, you can't really add on. And when you are doing deals, you don't have time to add on. So that's, I think where we've been caught in the last couple of years. Well, also too, I think, you know, in 2020, 2021, 2022, the education was really rocket fuel. Like it was skyrocketing and now that has pulled back. But now since the market has turned, we've been buying more deals. So there's like, there's that dynamic to play as well. Well, I can tell you guys from being in, you know, just different industries and also the

[00:35:26] same industries as well as you guys, you know, I was telling our students this, like there's the macro environment and then there's your micro situation. And so the macro environment of multifamily was obviously terrible, right? Like, I mean, it was just rough. It was hard to raise money, hard to find deals, nothing penciled. What time frame are you speaking of? I'm talking like 22 when things dropped, right? 22, 23, right? I mean, I know for us, I just was

[00:35:54] like, Hey, I don't even want to buy any more deals. Cause raising capital just got 10 times harder than it was from 2020, 2021. Completely different game. Yeah. Way different game. Right. I'm like, this is hard. Um, now people still grinded through, right? I mean, you guys, I'm sure we're grinding through and it was different. See, we sell fun deals. So that was our time to double down where people that were raising, it was just a different, you know, a way we're in a different situation. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So most syndicators obviously had a really tough time.

[00:36:21] Um, and then, you know, let's just say that's the macro environment. Same thing with flipping houses, right? When rates doubled, I mean, it got really hard. Um, so then you look at the micro environment of like, okay, like my business, particularly, you know, what are our competitive advantages that we have? What are our strengths? And so for you micro, you're like, Oh, well we sell fun deals. Like, so we're good. This is actually going to be good for us. You guys would have been an outlier compared to most people. Cause most people can't sell fund.

[00:36:52] Um, and then, you know, for me, I looked at, well, you know, what, what competitive advantages do I have? Well, I have this big social media platform so, you know, I can make money in other ways. I don't necessarily have to rely on just flipping more houses in a tough market or raising cat. I can sell lots of other things. So that was what I focused on, you know, instead of trying to fight the macro headwinds, I'll, I'll focus on things that I have strengths at. Um, and then when the wind's at my back and things are going good, then we can go focus on both. Right.

[00:37:21] Right. And I would say even in the macro environment, education, um, at the end of 23 now into 2024 has been very negative. Um, and I know all the biggest players in the game. So like, I know exactly what's happening in the macro environment of that. So when you guys say education pulled back, um, it's not even anything that you guys did. It's just overall in the education market. Part of interest, you know, interest rates played a huge role in that, right. For the real estate

[00:37:50] side of things. Yeah. Yeah. And then real estate's its own niche within, you know, the education niche. But, um, I know all of the education niche, let alone from real estate struggled. Yeah. Have you guys read the real deal by James Kahn? No, I have not. If, if you, if you're into business books or whatever, check it out. I'm going through it right now. And there's a, uh, a chapter or two where he talks about, uh, a recession that he went through and sort of how he dealt with it and just, you know, his, his, uh, recruiting

[00:38:18] business was really struggling and you know, how he worked through it. So, you know, definitely a reco if you guys want to check something out. It was pretty cool. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I'll check that out. Um, I don't know, do you know, I think, uh, I think we're at that point. You, uh, you ready to take this home? I would love to really recap the whole podcast. I think it's just an amazing story. The first podcast we focused more on with Ryan, we focused more on the business and what he was doing of his strategies of building a brand. So if you want to listen to the first one, go back

[00:38:47] and check out the first one. But this, this one today, you know, Ryan started out as a broke baseball player and he figured out he got married at a young age. He needed to make money, 7,000 bucks a year. Ain't going to cut it. So I said, Hey, let me start some other businesses. Let me sit down and let me be meditative state. Let me pray to God and see what doors God opens up. And all of a sudden the idea of flipping couches comes into his head that works is making eight, 10 grand a month. But you know what I think God wants me to do greater things and just flip furniture. And he starts wholesaling

[00:39:14] deals. And then from wholesaling deals, he starts flipping deals. And then I think around 2020 COVID hits. He's like, you know what, God, what do you want me to do here? I'm locked in my house. I got nothing to do. I'm going nuts here. I think God plants the seed of, you know what? Whip out the camera and start creating content. I think you really need to, you really need to build your brand and really need to get out there. Start coloring your hair a little bit, start doing things a little bit differently. And then all of a sudden, four years later, you've got 2 million followers. You've been through some bumps and bruises. He's opened some doors. He shut some

[00:39:43] other doors. There's some big learning lessons all throughout. But I think through and through, the mission's been to do God's will. We're here temporary. You're seeking an eternal life. And what's great here, you're trying to create impact here, but you always got your eyesight and you know where the goalposts are. And that's the important thing. If we all know where the goalposts are, we want to do his will here to be able to enjoy eternity. Back to you, Jake. Jake, I guess we're forever going to be general managers after today. We just got to know our

[00:40:12] role. So Ryan, really appreciate you, gang. As always, we believe in buying deals for the long-term thinking decades. I'm Jake. He is the G daddy. We make it happen. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Ryan. Thank you.