101. Strong Mentality and Networking Success in Real Estate with Jesse Futia

Hey, welcome back to the average Joe finances podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni and today's guest is Jesse Futia. Jesse is the host of the wealth science podcast. I was a guest on his show recently. And I gotta tell you it's probably one of my favorite podcasts to listen to right now, especially with the guests that Jesse brings on and fired up mentality that he has when he talks about this stuff, you could tell he is very passionate about it. So Jessie. Awesome to have you dude, welcome to the show,

Mike, this is the, this is probably the greatest privilege that I've ever had to join. What I say is the number one tribe or the greatest team in the world. The average Joe finance family, brother, like I said, it was a privilege having you on wealth science. And I can't tell you how pumped I am to add some value to your family today. So thanks for having me on.

Yeah. Super excited to talk to you and just dive deeper into your story about who you are and what you're doing. So if you could share with me and our listeners a little bit more about yourself and share your story, like, how did this all get started for you? Why real estate.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I, it's a great question. And I think to really fully understand the question, I have to go back to the beginning and share the broad spectrum to build context for the audience. So I'm 26 years old, I'm born and raised in upstate New York. I grew up in incredible family. My mother and father were amazing people and great role models for me. Big sports, household. I was a big time wrestler in high school. And I started wrestling probably when I was five years old. And if you don't know it, going to wrestling tournaments with your dad and stuff, it's a great, father, son bonding. And it's awesome. And you're walking through the gym at, five years old and most fathers are probably telling their kids like, Hey, go out there. The score doesn't matter and have fun, but you. My father's in my corner and he is telling me Mike to go out there and rip his face off at five years old. But, that was the mentality. I grew up in, and it, I bring that story up because it's just gonna build into what we're talking about later of it's made me who I am today and it's made me the man that I am today. But fast forward to getting ready for college. I had a serious knee injury. I tore my ACL and meniscus right at the end of high school. So I couldn't wrestle in college. So I've always been highly patriotic. It's the type of person I am. Like. I'm super grateful that we live in this country and I, no one in my family's ever joined the military or anything like that, but I, that was always something that I wanted to do. So I did ROTC in college. So basically the us army paid, for my college education. And then I owed them a certain amount of time, after I graduate from college. So that was the start of the military career. And then in college, we, we'll get to this later, but I came across an idea. I'd read a. And a spark was lit and the idea of real estate came to me and the idea of student housing was super hot where I was at. And that really just took off with that idea. But I finish off the military piece. I graduate from college. I go into the military, I do a bunch of really cool things. I go to ranger school, air born school, mountain warfare school. I do a lot of really cool stuff. I. Assess to join, the us army Rangers. And that was just an incredible experience to, to be with that organization, to train with that organization and to work with, who I believe to be, some of the most elite men and women in the world. And it was a privileged. Serve there. And now I've left that organization and I've gone onto my next assignment, where I'm at now in Oklahoma. And then I'll actually move up to the Pacific Northwest. Later this year with my wife. That's just the broad strokes of the military and how I've gotten to say going back to that, first real estate idea. I'm 20 years old, Mike, and I'm getting ready to move off campus and I'm looking for a house like so many. Students and these houses and I'm sure other people will be able to relate to it. These houses are just, they're garbage. They're owned by what I call a slum board. Someone who's just ripping money out of the property, not putting anything back in, is ripping the students and the tenants off, someone breaks a blind and they're ripped in their $500 security deposit. And an idea came to me and I was. I think we can do this better. There's all these slum Lords that have this kind of corner of this market. So basically I speak to a couple of my buddies. I talk to my father and I'm like, Hey, I've got an idea. I've gotten in with the tenants or the students here, a lot of people are following me. What if we bought a house and we can meld this all together and just like that. I mean I'm 20 years old, no background in real estate. None of my buddies background in real estate. My father, no background in real estate, we buy a house together. We buy it's a duplex, four bedrooms downstairs, four bedrooms upstairs. I live in one of the bedrooms and I rent the other seven to my college buddies. And that's, that was the start of a student housing portfolio that we've now scaled, to 13 properties, I think ranging, I wanna say 65 units or so some right around the sixties. And then as you said, 2020 or right at the end of 2020, I was like, there's these guys out there that are buying these apartment buildings. I was so naive, Mike. I thought they were billionaires, but then I figured out that dude, they're just guys like you and I they're out there crushing these deals. And I found out about the world of syndication and general partnerships and limited partnerships and active versus passive investing. And it just that same fire that was lit under me at 20 years old, that when I got that first duplex, it was reignited. At the end of 2020. And it was like, holy crap, we gotta go bigger. And that was the whole mentality dude. And I literally spent all of 20, 21, deep diving, closing the knowledge gap every single day. Every single week, networking going to meetups. Speaking with mentors, submitting LOIs, and we probably submitted, I don't even know, dude, probably over 20 LOIs over the course of the year. And there were so many mistakes. It is not even fun, dude. And I will I'll run through all. Long story short, we ended up going under contract with 141 mobile home park portfolio. That has a crazy story behind it in itself. It fell through during due diligence because of, again, mistakes that I made. But dude, I'll tell you anything. The best mistakes are jumping in there. And for me personally, I have to get hands on and I have to make mistakes in order to learn. I'm not like a guy that can just read a book and learn something like I've gotta get two feet in and I've gotta make mistakes. Making that jump to close that knowledge gap, I am so much farther ahead of where I am 12 months from now. And now we're about to go under contract. We have a signed where we haven't accepted LOI. We'll now have assigned PSA here within the next week on a. 3 million, campsite in North Carolina. And we have several other deals, here in the works, but I hopefully that wasn't good enough for the wave tops. I know we, we talked about a bunch of stuff, so I'll let you, pick up where you wanna pick up.

So I'm sitting here taking notes as we're going along, jesse and. Your story's just absolutely awesome. So you grew up in upstate New York, with us long Islanders and people from the city call Canada. And, just, living in a town like that, cuz upstate new York's a little more rural. Living in a town like that, you. Grew up wrestling in high school. So like high school sports are very big in areas like that. So getting like into this whole mentality, at a very young age, when, you started wrestling at what, five years old, like you said, most other dads are telling their kids, oh, go out there and have fun, have a good time. And your dad's telling go rip that kid's face off, man. Hey, whatever that's, it started you off on this mentality of, you gotta go out there and get it and get after it. So I think like little things like that little spark that your father ignited at such a young age, blossoming to this wild fire of passion that you have, that you've taken on with you as you go further on. Now, when you're talking about how, you joined the army and you got into the ROTC program, And while you were going to college at 20 years old, you were like, there's gotta be something I can do different. And you started looking at real estate and, just going into this whole idea of buying student houses, or the whole student housing thing, you realize there's an opportunity here while you're going to school to not only make a little more income, but provide something that would be useful to your fellow students. Right. now. I think what we talked about earlier is that you had scaled, your residential portfolio for the student housing to 13 total properties. And you had mentioned that, I believe the first one you bought was a duplex, right? Out of those 13 properties. Is it 13 doors or did you have 13, like duplexes in other properties?

Yeah. It's 13 duplexes triplexes. I think we have one quadplex so that's what I mean. I think I glossed over it in the beginning. I, we have 60, I wanna say right around 60 total doors across 13 properties. It is all four units and below. So that's why I just wanted to note that as residential.

Yeah. Yeah. So single family, but small multi-family still considered single family, so yeah, that's dude, that's super awesome, man. I, you know what, I've known you for a little while now, and I didn't know that you, that you started that back in college, so that is super cool. I thought you started that after you had joined the army. So well done, dude, like even before you even started getting that first paycheck from the army, you already had real estate, you already started building this portfolio, so that's super awesome. Now, what made you decide to jump ship from that? I You still have those properties, right?

Yep. We still own everything that we've ever bought. We've never sold.

Yeah. And you say, we, cuz you're talking about you and your team, right? Yep. Correct. Now, when you decided to jump ship from the single family real estate space to get more into commercial multi-family real estate, was it just you that did that, or did your entire team shift together or did you build a new team on that side of the house? How did that all work?

Yeah. And to go back to where I was at the end of 2020, I had just finished up, doing a lot of great things with the Rangers and I was like, what's the next big thing for me. And that was the idea was like, I wanna do bigger deals and really, I believe anybody can do bigger deals with the right systems and processes and learning and setting the right conditions to go to the next level. Like anybody can do what I'm doing. Or what you're doing or whoever, but from a specific team aspect, this is such a great question. I spent all of 20, 21, like I said, networking, and I found so many guys in the military that are out there crushing commercial real estate. If it's mobile, home parks, multi-family apartments, self storage, camp sites, Airbnbs, whatever. And I just networked and Hey, what, how can I bring value to this team? These teams need capital. They need guys boots on the ground. I was just doing anything and everything that I could for these guys that were, maybe 2, 3, 5 as much as 10 years ahead of me. But I know that if I just keep working hard and setting the right conditions, I can catch up to them eventually. So basically the teams that I've scaled to the commercial real estate with are all military guys that I, I spent networking. And I've used this networking word. I'm sorry, a dozen times since we started, but to put this in perspective for you, Mike, I set the goal. On January 1st, 2021, I said, I'm gonna talk to five new people a day Monday through Friday. That's what a 25 people week. And I, no joke. I would probably say four out of the five days a week. I hit that. And maybe the fourth day I would talk to three or four people, but. Just from doing that from that networking piece, the amount of people that I talk to now, the amount of people who want me to raise for their deals or Jesse wanting to come assist us, we want you to come do boots on the ground, whatever it's a hundred X, what would've been, if I hadn't have set that goal. And then also with launching a podcast, I have a guest list, Mike, so many, I know you because average shows is incredible, but there are a lot of podcasts out there that struggle to get because they, they don't line it up. Dude. I have I gotta stop recording at this point because I'm telling people that, Hey, your show's not going live for six months, but it goes back to that goal that I set and why I've been able to build out this team to attack these larger assets in commercial real estate.

Yeah. That's awesome, dude. And I tell people the same thing and I feel bad when I bring guests on the show and I'm like, Hey man, your, your episode's not gonna come out for six. So including yours, right? So this one's not gonna be out for a while. And, this is actually one of this is the first podcast episode that I've ever streamed live, and I'm only doing it on TikTok right now, just, to test things out. But for the folks that are here on TikTok live, they're actually getting to, to hear this before anyone else, which is awesome, man, cuz it's gonna probably be like six months before anybody else gets to hear this podcast episode. Jesse. I remember dude, when, in 2021, when you had mentioned that you're gonna talk to five new people every day and just started doing it. And I just I'm like, what's what's he, how's he finding the time to do this? What's he doing? And, just, and you built this network up, like in a very short period of time. And I. It goes to show that if you set your mind to something that you can push yourself and make it happen, and you did that, like you absolutely are probably one of the people that I, there's a few that I know on LinkedIn that are crushing it and you're one of them. And when I say a few, like I'm talking about a handful of people that I know that. Absolutely crush on LinkedIn. I thought I was doing okay on LinkedIn until I see. Like when you post something verse, when I post something and I'm like, dude, what am I doing? Jesse's over here killing it. And I'm getting like, so little engagement on LinkedIn. Cause I'm trying like I'm on all social media, like focusing everywhere, but you've really Focus down on LinkedIn as a powerhouse, as it is. Which is super awesome. And I have to think like this all has to do with mindset for you, and I'm curious, or, cuz me being in the Navy I'm, going on 20 years, getting ready to punch out here soon. And you being in the army and being in army ranger, so I worked with some operators, in my time throughout my career. And I know army Rangers go through some pretty wicked tough training. And it, there's a lot of stuff that you have to really grit your teeth and focus and really focus on your mentality to be able to overcome some of these obstacles that get put in your way. So would you say that your training as an army ranger, did anything to help sculpt your mindset, especially when it comes to being an entrepreneur?

Dude, that's such a great question. The answer's absolutely asked, like I tell that story in the beginning of like my dad and I five years old, not as a joke, but to be like, Hey, that fire was lit at that age of being, what is it gonna take to be the best? And what, when I look at every crossroad in my life, and I can't stress this enough to your audience, anyone on TikTok right now, anybody could do what I do. There's nothing special. What I do. I made a decision. I made up my mind and then nothing is stopping me until I'm successful with that. It got lit at that young age and it's just, it's walking to the beat of the drum that says, I want to be the best at everything I do. If it's wrestling in high school, if it's starting a, a student housing portfolio in college, if it's now scaling to commercial real estate, if it's going to ranger school, if it's the bull, deploying within a lead organization. It's just, it's been who I am as a person. And this training, it is extremely, challenging. It has a very high attrition rate, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, long movements. Everything that you can think of, but I would tell anybody that after going through that. You come out on the other side, a completely different person, a completely changed person, I would say in a better way, when you go down and it's, I'm thinking of a time in my head from ranger school right now, Mike, when it's, four o'clock in the morning, it's pitch black, it's 38 degrees out and pissing rain and you haven't eaten all, you haven't eaten in 24 hours. You haven't been to bed in 24 hours. And when you're in those types of moments, You find out who you are there, you can't figure that out in no offense. You can't figure that out, sitting in the cubicle for, from nine to five, Monday through Friday, you can't figure that out. Sitting on the couch, watching Netflix and to go back to the networking piece and how this all ties up. There are people Mike who go home and they watch Netflix from five o'clock till eight o'clock and then they have a beer and go to bed, but to support talking to five people a day, You better believe I'm when I get off at 16 or 1700 or whatever, after my W2, I'm going home to crush real estate. I'm going home to record a podcast. I'm going home to network. I've got several meetups. I'm on several zoom calls and I'm doing this from, five o'clock till midnight. And I don't recommend that everybody do that. Maybe there's a little bit insanity in there. Maybe that's a little too much. I don't know. But it's again, it's. It goes back to the military. It goes back to the wrestling. It goes back to what I was born into of, I, I wanna be the best and I want to bring other people on this journey, but, being a ranger was one of the greatest privileges I've ever had in my life. And if someone told me when I was like five years old, I was gonna be an army ranger one day and crushing real estate at 26. I'd. That'd be a dude I'd book up to for sure, man. But yeah. Great

question. Hey, with a great question comes a great answer. And that was a superb answer, just with what you've done, since you were 20 years old, which is absolutely amazing, you hear a lot of times where, I've said it myself too, a couple times where it's you really wish that you would've started younger at a younger age, oh, I wish I started this when I was 20 man. Oh my goodness. I really wish I did. And part of that message. One of the reasons why that message resonates so much is because, when I think about what I've been able to do in the short period of time, since I've started, and if I would've done that at a much younger age and where I would be today, it would be like night and day. I wouldn't even had to have finished my career in the Navy. I could have gotten out much sooner if I got into real estate. At a younger age and that's one of the messages I want to get out to folks like you don't need to be a slave to your nine to five for the rest of your life to live this quote unquote American dream, where you work, 40 years of your life and then, get to retire and enjoy like the last seven to 10. Because a lot of people, when they retire at that, older age after they've beaten their bodies down so much, don't really last long in retirement because when they retire, they just want to truly just sit back, relax, and just you wither away at that point. But if you get yourself to the point where you're financially independent, right. Not retired, but financially independent, that whole fire movement thing, I'm gonna go off on a tangent here, but, fi financial independence, retire, or fire stands for financial independence retire early, right? Yeah. I. The whole I piece being financially independent, but the retire early piece, I can't do it, man. Like I can't just say I'm done. I'm just gonna sit back. And I've got my cash flow coming in and I'm just gonna go live my life and go do whatever you can still find that time to go enjoy yourself and enjoy your life. That's the beautiful thing about financial independence is that you build up this life where you get that time back and, They say money can't buy happiness. That's absolutely a hundred percent correct. They can't buy happines yeah. A hundred percent. What can buy you is time. And you get that time back. You get that time. Freedom back. I think I even talked about this when I was a guest on your show. Yeah, you did. But you get that time freedom because it's just so important, to get that time back, to be able to do what you want in life and it's yours. It's that freedom. It's that time. And it's that freedom. And, you know what you've been able to do. In just this span of six years from the age of 20 to 26 and, serving our nation, and donning the cloth of our nation and going out and doing what you do, gritting through some of that training that you had to go through and just really, Digging down deep and finding that motivation for yourself to just, to where you're at right now is just absolutely amazing Jesse. And I just wanna point that out and reiterate, that to my listeners, that, you had a vision, at a very young age and you enacted and you acted on that vision, right? You didn't just say, oh, this, it would be nice if it would be nice if that no, you said it will be nice because I'm doing, because I'm doing this, I'm taking action and that's what you did, man. I, would've never thought, in my younger years, especially if I was going to college full time, like through a, so I enlisted in the Navy first. So I wasn't going to school or anything like that, but even if I did go full time to school, I don't think it would've even been a thought in my mind to. All the students that party in this quadplex over here all the time, they're paying somebody to live there. What if I'm the guy that owns that? What if I'm that buys that place? And now they're paying me and yeah. Hey, my school's already paid for by the army, so Hey, good to go. Pocketing that. So just that whole aspect of how you were able to do that is just absolutely awesome. And then. You went into it at the beginning with a team like you, you realized you didn't have to do this all by yourself. And I think that's super important for people that are listening right now that to understand that the real estate game, while you can do it by yourself. But if you do it by yourself, it could be a very lonely path. But if you network and you build a team, it's absolutely amazing. And I'm telling you, the people that I've met along this journey, including Jesse have just been absolutely phenomenal. And I love every time I get to have a conversation with someone like him, talking about this stuff. So anyway, like I said, I was going off on a tangent. I'm gonna bring it back into this interview. Now. Okay. So you started off, you had the whole, student, housing thing that you were doing. You got those 13 properties. It was like 64 doors total. And then you in 2020, decided to change it up a bit and you got into commercial multifamily. What is it that made you want to make that switch if you were already doing so well in the other side with the single family?

Yeah. That's a great question. And it was really. Hey, I'm doing this, and this is really successful on a small scale, we're, we can do the same thing with a hundred unit apartment buildings. Here we are with 13 properties or 64 units, it took us whatever five years to do this. We can do that in one deal in three months, it's just, the power of scale is so much more incredible with commercial real estate and to back kind of the beginning of this journey. And I told you how many mistakes. I made Mike, it's unreal. How many mistakes I made just getting kicked in the face. I don't like to share this story, but I'll share it on here. I know we're live right now. I submitted an offer to a broker, Mike, and then I like followed up for feedback, two days later, just, Hey, did you get our offer? And he texted me back laughing, emoji. I don't like to share that story, but it just goes to show like how awful we were in the beginning with just missing the mark on stuff we were offering on price points we were coming to. And I just kept following up though. Like I would get kicked in the face on Monday and then I'd wake up on Tuesday, analyze a new deal. And another L LOI would be out by Friday. And we literally just did that week after week, January, February, March, April. And then may we finally caught a little, what we thought was a break. We, submitted an offer on 141 unit mobile home park. This deal had been on market. Since I wanna say for over a year, it was listed on market at 1.5 million as it started right around COVID I wanna say like March 20, 20, and then I submitted an offer on it may 20, 21 and got him under contract. But when I originally saw the deal back in. Whatever 2020 I, call the owner, I call the broker and I say, Hey, the 1.5 million price point doesn't work for me here, I'm interested. I, let me know something doesn't work out. And I kept doing that. I kept following up every single month and then low, and behold, six months later, where in May, 2021, I get a call, from the broker. And it's Jesse, we just had our fourth, buyer fall through due to an issue. Listen, the seller's ready to pull his hair out. We're willing to reduce our price point. Let's talk. So a deal that was originally on market Mike at 1.5 million, we go under contract at 800,000 for, with seller financing. And it was totally just based on literally just me following up every single month. Talk about just, whatever wrestling, military, the persistence of. Of just, Hey, I'm not gonna, you can tell me to shut up, but I'm gonna keep calling you back until I either get this deal or the deal closes with somebody else, but we go under contract in May, 2021. We take it through the process and then basically this, the seller didn't disclose several issues wrong with the property. And there were major infrastructure issues with it. There were ruptured water lines, sewer lines stuff. Would be massive, financial things to fix fast forward the story, but just the issues and the problems during that, doing the due diligence, learning about it. It was so powerful to me. And again, you can look back on 2021 and say, I didn't close that 141 lot, but I look back and I'm like, Holy crap. I learned so much this year. It's incredible again, to be at that time, 25 years old and under contract with 141 units. It's incredible, I'm going off on a tangent here, but that was just so powerful for me. And I think so many people out there, Mike, and I'm interested in your perspective too. I think they're afraid to make mistakes or they don't wanna get denied. And I'll be the first dude to raise my hand and. Dude, I've been told to, F off I've been told to, go screw yourself. I've been kicked in the face. I've been, laughed at I laughing emojis, dude. dude, that story is a true story and it blows people's minds, but it's true, man. But I'll tell you, dude, for the people out there who are sitting on the couch, not willing to take action, afraid of failure for every a hundred of them. There's one of me out there who doesn't give a crap. What other people think is going to keep failing, keep learning. And now we have so many incredible opportunities here in Q1, 2022, because we made all those mistakes.

Yeah, Jesse, I gotta say so you're telling me about this, this mobile home park and how it was listed at 1.5 and the guy came down to 800 K like almost cut it in half, which is yeah. Absolutely bonkers. And then when you explain about what happened during due diligence, I'm like, huh. This is why it was so easy for them to come down almost half the price. But even, what's crazy is that they were able to cut the price that they originally had it listed for in half. And it still wasn't enough to make up for the cost that it would've been to make those repairs. Because when you're talking about ruptured sewer lines and ruptured water lines, Plumbing in general. Ruptured sewer lines. That's stuff, that's underground, man. Like this is a huge undertaking, huge projects. And there, even if you would've came down to 500,000, it probably wouldn't have been worth it. That's just crazy, man. So I'm glad you got out of that. You probably, your heart must have been like racing a mile a minute. When they came back and said, Hey, we'll do it for 800 K. You were like, yeah. And then just to do your due diligence and get punched in the face. As we've been saying, or I think you've been saying kicked in the face. So it happens, man. It happens, you get kicked in the face, but you got the thing is you got back up and you kept moving. And that's one of the most important things here. And I think it goes back to the mindset like we discussed earlier. And part of that mindset that you learned as an army ranger, which is super awesome. And I'm not saying that everybody has to go through some type of intense training. To get that. But what you do need in your life is some type of mindset shift something to, to understand that there's so much more out there that's bigger than you, but you could still obtain it. You can still go after it. It doesn't just have to be for, rewinding all the way back to the beginning. When you said, you're looking at some of these larger properties and you're thinking that. Billionaires own these places. And then you realize it's just dudes like you and me that have a team that take these things down. So understand that you can do it, that you can be the person that doesn't really have much of anything and go out there and crush it in real estate, as long as you build the right team and network around you, which is super important. And yeah, dude, I absolutely love that. I loved your answer. And I love what you're doing, man. Now. I know we've touched on some of these, but I know that you've had some hard lessons learned as you go through this. So what would you say are some of, I guess some of the lessons learned in, in the commercial side of real estate versus some of the lessons learned on the smaller single family, small multi-family. Properties, the four and under. So what would you say were like some of the differences between what you learned in the smaller side and then also on the larger multi-family commercial side?

Yeah. Great question. And start with the smaller stuff and work small to big here. One of the biggest things, and I'm sure there's plenty of listeners who have duplexes triplexes quadplexes out there in the residential space. And when we bought these properties, Mike, they were buying them from the. They were awful, there was rotting wood, there's smashed windows and we're putting, stainless steel appliances in 'em, we're redoing the back splashes. We're redoing, bathrooms, kitchens, retiling, everything putting in new doors windows. And when you create that culture, this is a nice property. We're, we have, you have a landlord who cares about you. Who wants to invest money? Who wants you to be successful? What we found is that our tenants or the students would take better care of the property as opposed to if they lived in some type of, crappy slum. Then, if I live in a slum, like I don't really give a crap if someone's putting holes in my wall, because the window in the kitchen's up been smashed and the landlord hasn't been here, it's six months to fix it. So we really invested a lot of money. Stainless steel appliances, redoing kitchens, bathrooms. We really did a lot to that. And when you put those nice things in there, you're going to attract the good tenants and the nice tenants who take good care of your property. Maybe for people out there listening who are having issues with tenant screening or man, I can't get the right tenant in there. I would tell them that was a huge lesson we learned. And I would tell you to recheck that, that was very big in the residential space and. The success is really compounded on itself. And just to tap this off for the student housing to put this in perspective, like we have a waiting list right now. If I pick up my phone, my father picks up his phone. He's probably got half a dozen text messages just today. Jesse Vince, I'm looking for a room, I'm looking for a unit. We have a place to live. We have a waiting list that. Out the door and around the corner, we have a great relationship with the university. My father sits on the off campus, student housing board of the university. So basically he's in there with the university. The university feeds us tenants. They're like, Hey, we're getting inquiries about people who wanna live off campus. We, they always get pushed to us because the university has buy in with that. They want students to live in safe, secure, clean places to live. And they know that the Futias in 508 housing supplies that as opposed to the slum Lord. So just to cap that all off is, we have a waiting list, around the corner. We've never paid a penny for market because we are supplying a product that's better than the competition at a price that beats the competition. So that's the residential piece. And then the commercial piece, just to go back to the mobile home park and. So important, but I made this massive mistake and I was receiving information from the seller. Me as the buyer and people, I think. I think there's this idea that everything that the seller is saying, or maybe the seller's agent is saying is true, but you have to get there. Whether you personally, or someone on your team, you have to get there and get boots on the ground, on the property and verify everything that's being said. That was just a massive mistake. If I could rewind my life six months, that would be the number one thing is that, we're, we were so naive and you hear 141, 25 years old, your first commercial dealer, you hit the nail in the head, $800,000. And you're like, heck yeah, like the planets are aligning. I'm getting this deal for 50% off. We're gonna go from 13 or 65 units to 141. We're gonna be at over 200 units. This year, this is incredible. And it's, it was, I was so naive because I was taking everything the seller was saying, and I was like, oh yeah, Mr. Seller's got my interest in mind. He's definitely feeding me all the right information. But when we got there, Mike and actually got eyes on and boots on, we were like, Hey, man, this isn't what this guy is saying. There's massive issues with this park. The there's a huge, issue with PO possibly the water sewer line. Hey, we really gotta do our own due diligence and our emphasis on this. So the, those would be the two biggest things from the residential side. And then from the commercial side of just lessons, I learned that anybody can take and start implementing.

Yeah. That's huge. And I'm sitting here writing down, some things and I, One of the things that you mentioned when you were talking about your smaller, the single family homes, the student housing, you talked about tenant care, and that you really cared for the tenants and that you took care of the properties and made sure that you were giving them a good housing area to live in. And it built that reputation up to the point where you have lines out the door and around the block, it's like, it's best by releasing new GPUs. And the crypto guys are all going after 'em right. Or the release of a new, really big game or something. But that's absolutely crazy man. And that, and I mean that in a good way, like crazy that, Something that simple, can make such a difference. And the fact that you actually do, care about your tenants, and take care of them is huge. Cuz you don't wanna be, a slum Lord, especially, when you have properties that are, right outside of a college campus and everything, that would be my biggest fear is oh man, all these students gonna have all these parties and tear it up and this and that. But if you're putting good stuff in those properties and you're taking care of them, they're gonna take care of you as well. And it also, it gets you a better quality tenant. It gets you a, a better, probably a better paying tenant as well, too. Because there are folks that are like, Hey, I'd rather live in this nicer spot while I'm going to school versus one of these party flop houses, and, so it's good. It's good to build that reputation up. And, so that's super cool, man. Jesse that's, what you're doing is absolutely phenomenal. You've been doing it for a little while now and, I, I wanna touch a little bit, just real quick on what you've done with LinkedIn. And, so if you could just like what made you decide to really just clamp down on LinkedIn? Was it the whole, I want to talk to five new people a day. Is that where you did it? Was it on LinkedIn? And then what made you like really focus on staying there? Because I gotta say, man, I'm really impressed with your engagement on there like you, you have these posts and they're real conversation starters, and you've got people talking. On your page and that's just awesome. And dude, I wanna get there, like what did you do, man? I'm ask, this is a selfish question I'm asking for me, but also for my audience that wanna know, like, how'd you do it, Jesse?

Yeah, this is another great question. I feel like I've said that every single time here, but by you are a phenomenal host. So just to clear the air, the five new people a day that was back January 20, 21. I was no, no joke. That was five phone calls a day or five zoom calls a day. So that was literally just me blocking off. Yeah, that was so that's impressive. Dude, it was insane, but just to build context for the audience of what I meant when I said that I was no joke, either zooming or on the phone with five new people a day, the LinkedIn thing, I started looking at LinkedIn and I was like, man, there's a lot of people on LinkedIn. There's a lot of sophisticated investors on LinkedIn. But there's nobody really talking there are people that talk about real estate, but nobody scripts their. Content in a way that, feeds the kind of that private investor and really informs them on the power of real estate. And going back to what I talked about in the beginning where, I'm always like, how can I bring value to a team? I wanna take down a hundred unit apartment building. There's guys out there doing it. And the reality Mike is that every deal needs cash. Every deal needs capital it's, we need investors to syndicate to do these deals. And I was like, man, there's nobody raising capital on LinkedIn right now. Yeah, there are capital raisers, but nobody's gaining real traction from it. And I got in with basically, I started following like marketers and like content creators, and I'm like, these guys are selling their programs on LinkedIn right now and they're making really, and I know this show is huge on side hustles. There's people making six figures a month, literally just posting on LinkedIn and selling their programs right now. And I was like, what, if I took what they're doing and just applied it to real estate. And I applied to meeting new investors and raising capital and educating people on the power of syndication and everything that we've been talking about for the past, whatever 45 minutes here. And that started, I was maybe posting like once a week, like September, October of 2021. And then I would probably say November, I started posting like two to three times a week. And then I just woke up and on December 1st, I was like, Hey, I'm gonna start posting Monday through Friday and I'm gonna start being super intentional. I'm gonna script it so it's really easy to read. I'm gonna, write things that want people to engage more that. Has starts driving conversations that starts driving more views. And I stuck to that. And I started doing that Monday through Friday, and I started con commenting on other large profiles on LinkedIn. And then people would see, my comments on those people. And then they would come over and they'd start commenting on my content and seeing my podcast and it just became this incredible just orchestra of just content creating and just, it was, it started building and compounding on itself and to put this in, reality for people listening and how well, and just the last 60 days that I've been doing this, I've probably had. 25, probably right around two dozen phone calls with private investors that have, commented on my content, have DMed me Hey, Jesse, this real estate syndication thing. It's awesome. It's really cool. I'd love to learn more about it. And I already have that background of networking. I love zoom in and talking to people been absolutely incredible. And I would tell anybody the special thing about LinkedIn is everybody's on there for a purpose. Mike people are on there and they wanna get better if it's from a business point of view, an entrepreneur point of view or whatever it is, maybe a little bit different than something like Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, and those are phenomenal platforms. And you do, very well in all those, but there's something special about LinkedIn and how you can leverage it. And just in the last 60 days, the amount of success that's compounded by just making a decision has been incredible. What I'm pumped for Mike is I can't wait for December, 2022 when instead of 25 phone calls, I'm at, 2000 phone calls. And then it's we're off to the races dude, but I encourage anybody to start leveraging it and I can deep dive in more, but dude, it is such a powerful platform. That's unreal. , Average Joe Finances: I love it. I love it. You're making me like. Almost salivate here about LinkedIn and I'm ready to get in there and start engaging a little bit more. It reminds me very much of how Gary V says to, to interact on Instagram, to grow your Instagram comment on other people's content, something of value. And then. It'll start happening to you as well, which is, I was sitting here writing it down, you're sitting here commenting, not just random comments, but you're commenting something of value. Like something that, that is worthwhile to read right on other people's content. And then by the same token, cuz one of the beautiful things about LinkedIn is when you comment on someone's content. I can see that it says, oh, Jesse commented on this. And it's, and it could be for somebody that I'm not even connected to, but I could see that you commented on something. I'm like, oh, what's Jesse talking about here. Oh, cool. And then I see one of your posts and I see all these people engaging on yours. And then I get involved in that too, because I'm like, man, Jesse's doing some good stuff. And I'll comment on your stuff too, because you really post some great content and as you said, I wrote down driving conversations, right? So you're driving conversations. That is phenomenal, dude. And, I just wanna say, well done with everything that you've done with that, using social media to grow your business and using LinkedIn in just in particular, cuz a lot of people like, LinkedIn really is a powerhouse for networking. But a lot of people don't look at it as a way to grow your business, even though networking does help you grow your business, but you're using it as an opportunity to bring on more sophisticated investors, right? So people are calling you up and saying, Hey, Jesse, I never looked at real estate syndications as an option or a vehicle for me to use in my investment portfolio. And they get to learn a little bit from you. And then, and when you have a deal coming up now that you've built this personal relationship with them, they can invest with you. And that's just, that's super awesome, man. Like you said, I know you could dive deep into LinkedIn. We could probably talk about that all day, but I think we're gonna go ahead and make it to the final round here. So right now I've got four questions, that I've been asking everybody that's come on recently as a guest and, there's some pretty, hard hitting questions, but they're impactful. Okay. So if you're ready, we'll get this party started, dude. Let's send it. I'm pumped for the, the final round.

All right. So first first, question's a doozy. All right. What's the biggest mistake you've ever made?

Biggest mistake I've ever made. Yeah, probably back in the beginning. Just probably everybody says, man, I wish I started, earlier. And I know people are saying, Jesse, this is dumb. You're 26 years old. There's no way you could have started earlier. But when I look back at, 20, 21, it was like, Mike, I could have been doing this back then. I just didn't have the confidence. And it was a limiting belief in my head. I'm a college kid. There's no way I can buy a hundred unit apartment building, but I'm telling you that I have networked with college kids right now. They're taking down a hundred unit apartment buildings. And that was just, man, I always think to myself, if I had started doing commercial real estate at even 23, as opposed to 26, where would I be today? So everybody has the power to start. Mike, it's just getting out of that limiting belief. In taking action. And that is the, that is if I, anybody takes anything away from today, that would be it. But I know people are gonna laugh. Jesse, starting earlier. You're 20 years old, Steve that's stupid, but really, I wish I started doing commercial real estate, at least going bigger earlier.

Absolutely take action. That's the key takeaway from that, man. That's awesome. Awesome answer. Appreciate that. Okay, Jesse, next question. What is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

Yeah, something that I wish I had a better understanding of is how, debt structure works when it comes to lending on deals. I, I really had, I had an idea, but I wasn't networking with lenders or banks or anything like that. So if anybody's out there, I know people who once a week just go meet a new. Or up to a new lender or something that I didn't really do in the beginning. And now I'm playing like a little bit of catch up here later down the road. And again, it's not a huge deal, but it's just something all the time. It's man, we need a lender for this deal. And it's Jesse, who do you have? And it's I really don't have anyone in my network that does that. So that was just something that maybe I didn't put as much emphasis on earlier that I wish I did earlier.

Okay. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. And understanding some of that stuff is, yeah. Is huge. And a lot of people don't realize that, you can get past a lot of these things just by educating yourself and get, getting past that learning curve. Awesome. Okay. Next question. Do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today?

Yeah, I get asked this all the time and it comes up with, with so many of these phone calls, Mike, so many, there are people at wide range of investors, and then there's so many military people that are like, Jesse, I wanna use the VA loan in my first duplex. What's the first thing I should do. I tell everybody, you've gotta find a way to efficiently close the knowledge gap on a daily basis. And I tell everyone I'm a big, gym person. I love working out it. You don't have to be maybe. Go for walks or whatever, but just throw your headphones on for once a day and crush an episode of a podcast. And if you literally just do that once a day for a month, you will close that knowledge gap. And so many people like overlook that and it's and trust me, I love listening to music at the gym too, but if you, I disappoint myself now, Hey, I've got. Sunday morning, you know what podcasts I'm gonna be listened to every day at the gym. It's average Joe's. But I tell everybody, throw on a podcast when you're at the gym and just do that every single day to close that initial gap.

That's awesome. And I appreciate being on your listen list. That's awesome. And I'm humbled by

that's my Sunday morning gym session. I swear. Every Sunday.

That's amazing, dude. I really do appreciate that. That's perfect too, cuz it leads into the next question. But before I get to the next question, I just wanna point out that. How important that is. And, I, myself too, I love listening to music when I work out, but, and I still do every now and then, but my commute to work, my, when I have free time when I'm working out or if I'm at work and, it's slow and I have time to pay attention to something else. I'll have something on in the background, but I will always be listening to a podcast, an audio book, or watching some type of YouTube video that adds value. And I like to call myself a content sponge. I like to just absorb as much as I can and whatever's good. We'll stick. Whatever's not so good well, I just let that fall off. Because there's so much content out there. There's some that's absolute trash and then there's stuff that's really fantastic. Like podcasts, like wealth science. So stuff like that is just super amazing and I think it's one of the best answers, and I've gotten that answer more than once so far. Yeah. I gotta tell you, it's one of the best answers I've heard, because it really is super important that you constantly are learning and educating yourself. Especially in this space, cuz things change all the time. Okay. Onto the final question of the final round. This is a big one, besides your own. Do you have any favorite business investing or real estate related books or podcast?

Yeah. If I had to give everybody a book that I could tell, I, I gotta give two because there are two ones that I read last year that had a profound impact on me. The first one is a business book. It's not real estate related, but it's called the go giver. It's by Bob Berg. If you haven't read that book, it's very short. You could literally crush this thing in one week. That book will change the way you think about business, the idea of before you receive first, you must give, and that is so powerful, but the go giver by Bob bird. If you haven't read it, please go out there and read it. It'll change your life. The second book is by Sam Zelle. It's called I being too subtle, and this is Sam Zelle was really the real estate, mogul or tighten of the nineties or early two thousands. He liquidated. Portfolio at the top of the market in 2006 and sold it to Blackstone for 36 billion or something. But the whole book details his life where it's crazy. His family, he was, his family grew up in Poland in world war II and his family was on the final train out of Poland. To get to the us as the Nazis dated Poland and much of his family was unfortunately wiped out because of the war, but he comes to America with 10 or his family comes to America with $10 in their pocket and they go on and he grows up to be, a multi-billionaire real estate invetor but Sam's out. Just his perspective on life is so powerful. If you do anything and just read those two books within the next month, it'll change your life and set you on a different trajectory.

Fantastic recommendations. So definitely adding that to my list. The go, giver's probably gonna be the next one I read after traction. Yeah. Once I finish that, so awesome dude, really appreciate that. And yeah, I'm gonna make sure that, that everybody gets, Gets that in the show notes so they could have easy access to it. So speaking of show notes, there's things I like to put down there. And some of the things I like to put down there, because the guests that I have on such as you, Jesse, is adding great value to the audience, right? There's people that are listening to this show right now that are like, man, I wanna know more about Jesse. I wanna know more about wealth science. I wanna know more about what he's doing in the commercial real estate space, and they just wanna learn more about you and. Get some more content from you. Jesse, this is not the final round question anymore, but this is the final question and the most important, one of all, where can people find more information about you? And do you have, a website or social media that you can share with us today?

Yeah. And we've talked about it. Hit me up on LinkedIn. My name will be in the show notes. Shoot me a DM it, I tell this everybody, Mike, I don't have a VA. So when I hit you back, that's the real me. And I will take, this, if you're someone starting out, if you're someone that's been doing the stock market or crypto for 20 years or whatever, and you want diversify, I don't care what your story is. I'll take time to get on the phone with anyone. I love networking. I wanna add value to help as many people as. You know me on LinkedIn, I will connect with you and I will do whatever I can to help you in this journey in whatever possible. And then I have a website too. It's called exec equity, investing.com. That's a website that we just kicked off here with raising capital to do syndication. So you're more than welcome to check that out. And then obviously my podcast you'll catch up. Mike Cavaggioni on there. It's a phenomenal episode that we'll have going live here on the wealth science podcast. If you like the energy I bring, do you wanna learn more? Come follow us at that, Mike, I just want. Wanna say one last thing is to be here with one of the greatest teams in the world. This is really a podcast. When I look at the pinnacle of content creation in the financial world, I think of average Joe's brother. Thanks for having me on today. And seriously, this was a privilege.

I really appreciate that, man. And you're gonna make my head swell up so big that the headphones I'm gonna have trouble keeping them all., I really appreciate that. Jesse and. It was a privilege to be on your show. It's it was fun. I had a blast and, I had a blast today having you on my show and it's just been a fantastic experience and just learning what you're doing and everything that you're doing is just super awesome. And like I said, earlier all the, the links for Jesse. For his website, his social media, will be in the show notes, go connect with him on LinkedIn. Send him a message. You're gonna get the real Jesse hitting you back up. Just like the real slim shady. All right. Jesse dude, it's been a pleasure, man. And again, thanks so much for, for coming on and chat with me today.

Mike. You're the man, bro. Your audience is incredible. Like I said, absolute privilege. And if one person gets better from this, I know we'll have way more, but it'll all be worth it. Brother, chatting with you any day is a privilege.

That's awesome, dude. Impact. As long as you impact one life, man, that's all that matters. So Hey Aloha from Hawaii brother. We're outta here.