Real Estate Investing Insights by Santino

For somebody watching right now that wants to get into real estate investing, what would be the first couple steps they need to take right now? We actually started out with barely anything. You're probably looking for off-market deals. So we bought it for $155,000. We can make $100,000 out of this in five months. That's not bad. We'll take that. In terms of your growth, incredible. Last three years, more than 500%. And our revenue last year was $2.1 million. You have a lot of opportunity to make some good money. On this episode, we are interviewing Santino Filippelli, a 32-year-old who owns a real estate firm, two construction companies, and an investment company. And today, you're going to learn how to be so successful at such a young age. So the last like five years have just been great. It's been a good five years, right? Every month's been great. You have a number of LLCs. Why don't you break it down real quick in a nutshell for our viewers what you have so far so that... later on a video it makes sense to people what we're talking about fair enough so yeah uh i have modern realty which is our real estate brokerage okay and then we have modern construction and then we have northwest home investments which is we used to acquire property and we have urban rentals and a couple other ones but those are kind of the main ones that we use you'll see modern construction northwest home investments in modern realty modern realty is kind of the hub because we get so much business whether it be through people looking to sell or buy so we might come across the client They want to sell their property. We say, hey, how about this? What if we just paid you cash and we just get the whole on the market process? Clever. Right? So that's an option that we bring that to. But we really don't advertise it. But I mean, you see a lot of these iBuyer people right now. Yeah. Signs all over. Yeah. All right, you guys, we're going to go check out one of his projects and give you guys an inside look in terms of revenue, cost and everything that you want to know. So let's go check it out. All right. All right, so here we are at one of Santino's projects. I believe it's his flip. So let's go talk to the man and dive into some more details. Before we jump into this project of yours, tell us a little bit about what the startup costs were for your multiple companies. Starting real estate brokerage, we actually started out with barely anything. It was like a 10 by 10 office, started out with two agents and essentially grew from there. So don't need much. You need to get a business license for like $100. You know, your real estate brokerage fee is like 2000 bucks. I mean, you could really start a real estate brokerage for cheap. Construction company, depends on what you want to do, how involved are you going to be working on the job physically. Then you need some tools, you're going to need some stuff. But if you're just going to have a license and sub it out, you kind of don't need a lot of money unless you want to actually like market it, right? And then the investment company, obviously, it sounds like it's just paperwork, licensing, and then go after those deals. 100%, yeah. And those start up costs to buy deals you can leverage, whether it's hard money or if you have cash, you know. different ways to finance them. Exactly. All right, well, let's go warm up a little bit as we go to his other location, which is his Airbnb. And we'll tell you guys what he paid for, what it's earning, and a lot more. Give us a quick summary of what we got here. It's an Airbnb. What did you pay for? What's it earning for you now? Paid $180,000 for it back a few years ago. Got in with five or $6,000 down. First we were renting it out long-term for like 12, $1,300 a month. We let it appreciate, and then we went in, did a complete renovation, and now for an Airbnb, it's generating about $4,500 a month. Dang. Yeah. Good for you. Thank you. Okay. Super fortunate the way this area, downtown Vancouver has grown. And that's another thing. If you're a real estate investor and you're looking for investment opportunities, one thing is looking at, Areas that are gentrifying or like areas that are like up-and-coming right and trying to get in there beforehand nice Maybe you might buy an ugly property But at the end of the day if you can see in two years that it has potential You have a lot of that opportunity to make some good money When it comes to acquiring or finding new deals as a real estate investing company, where do you find them? What platforms? Redfin, Zillow, what else works for you? Yeah, so definitely not Redfin or Zillow. You're probably looking for off-market deals. Some of the best platforms that you can find are like Batchleads or Batchdialer, Remind.com. There's a lot of resources being a real estate agent as well that you have to find off-market properties. So there's both ways. Tell me a little bit more about the batch. Is there a subscription to the batch? Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a combination of skip tracing, and they use data based upon people's time in the property, equity, so forth. Interesting. Likelihood to move, and then they feed you this list. And then batch dialer is based upon volume of lead. But you're looking at, for a subscription to batch dialer, like $100 a month, and then they charge you per the amount of leads that you want. Gotcha. And you've got to go through, obviously, pick up the phone. Yeah. All these people. I mean, that's the big thing. Is that what it comes down to? Yeah. Picking up that phone. I mean that's probably the biggest thing is if you're willing to pick up a phone or knock on a door. Phone's a little bit faster but knocking on the door, meeting someone face to face and say, hey have you ever thought about selling? You know I'm in the neighborhood. Just saw your house. I really love it. All right, let's go check out his other property across the fence. Give us a quick background on what did you pay for it, what is it rented, and what are you doing with it now? Sure. So we bought it for $155,000 seven years ago. Yeah, unheard of prices nowadays. We got it for $5,500 down. And then now it's basically sitting at a value of close to $500,000. Wow. $475,000. We'll just praise that. And so we're renting out one side for $1,250,000, which is not that great, but solid tenant. The other side, we completely renovated, tore out, gutted it, and then it's actually going to be an Airbnb. And that's kind of what we've been doing with a lot of our properties. Yeah. Why are you, give us an understanding, why are you converting to Airbnb? Is there a shift in the market that you're seeing? You know, here's the thing. With Airbnb, you actually eliminate a lot of... difficulties you have. So such as like tenants that may not pay, landlord tenant rights, evictions, turnover, you know, also what you're seeing a lot, especially if you have a property that's well located, Airbnb is just a great opportunity where you can preserve the condition of the property and not have so much damage done over a period of time. Yeah, but you have high turnover. Yeah. So we just literally have the cleaners come in, they come right out. But normally you have kids or dogs or pets or families, the longer they stay there, the more damage is going to be done. Having short term. less likelihood that they can damage it. Plus the deposit they put down in insurance and all that stuff covers any damages. Nice. Yeah. We may have to interview somebody specifically who just does Airbnb because that's an interesting business model. Yeah. We own like four of them. Nice. Okay. So they're pretty great. So talking about real estate investing, for somebody watching right now that wants to get into real estate investing, what would be the first couple of steps they need to take right now? Yeah. First thing you want to do is figure out how your risk tolerance is going to be. Do you want to pay everything cash? Do you want to finance it? Where is going to be your money? That's going to be the first thing. Because in order to do real estate investing, you need money. Or you need leverage. So some good credit scores, right? Some experience. So that's the first thing you want to do is figure out where you're going to get your money from. How much you want to have on your profit margins. And then after you figure that out, I would begin to look for a deal. I would start out really small and start to leverage. That would be my best advice. Leverage early on. So that way you're not risking a lot of your own money. So that's the way I started. And for me, that was something that was really great. So if I ever lost everything, I was like, you know what? I only have $6,000 and my credit score is bad now. Right. At worst case scenario. When you mentioned research determining whether this is a sale or a long-term rental, what are you using to make that decision? Yeah, so good question. Basically, we look at, first of all, what are the margins here? If this looks like it's a property where we're not going to hit that $50,000 mark, but we see that it's a really good area and there's a lot of people coming in, good tourist attraction, right? Basically, we say, let's turn this into an Airbnb. But if we say, hey, we can make $100,000 off of this in five months, that's not bad. We'll take that. So it just depends. Interest rates play a role as well. Okay. You know, you've got a construction company, you've got your investment holdings, and then you've got a real estate company. What's the advantage of marrying those two and kind of having that structure? Yeah. So it's like a perfect marriage that you can have. We started out with real estate, being a real estate agent. If you didn't start out or if you aren't a real estate agent, that's a different story. But having all those together, you're able to acquire properties, access to properties that maybe other people may not have. That's the real estate brokerage. Yeah. Then the construction company, you have tax breaks and right off through that. And you also separate your liability so you don't have to worry about it. And then obviously the home investment again. another entity that you're able to filter through. So that can be used to go to the real estate brokerage, talk to clients, tell them we have a real estate firm that will buy their properties and a construction company to fix it. Or even have a client that wants to sell. We say, hey, we have a construction company. That's how you can win that client over. But again, real estate investing all comes really from having those three things tied together perfectly. When it came to starting some of your companies, is there anything worth mentioning in terms of how you finance them? It's interesting. When you talk about starting a company, I mean, depending on the company, like a real estate brokerage, there's not much financing unless you're trying to go really big, really fast or buy a brokerage out. I see. Right? But if you're just starting a business, you really just need enough to get a license, some basic fees. But once you start those companies, you might have some financing issues such as like buying a building. working with trying to grow the real estate brokerage and working with trying to attain a building, we didn't want to spread ourselves too thin. So we tried to leverage as much as possible. So we actually did an SBA loan. The SBA allowed us to leverage with 90% LTV, loan to value. So you only put down 10%. Exactly. Exactly, which is huge, right? The building was a million-dollar building, right? So $100,000, that was still a lot. With SBA, whenever you occupy 51% of the building, you're able to use that 90-10 LTV, and then you can also have a renovation budget. put in there. That's a good tip for you guys. Yeah. So if you have that option, they'll look at your income from a company. And if it's good, you'll be able to get financed. So we pumped up our income really well the first couple of years, which allowed us to tap into that resource of SBA. Specifically talking about Northwest Home Investments, which is one of your LLCs. Where does your profit come from? Do you lease or sell properties? And what's the most profitable? I know a loaded question, but... Give us a better understanding on how you structured. Northless Home Investments started out of having a real estate brokerage, right? And or being a real estate agent. So the profits that we get are basically based upon what we want to do with the house. So if it's a fix and flip, we'll basically put it into that. And our construction company will come in, flip it. We look for margins. They have to be pretty significant. Anything over $50,000 and up. So if we're not hitting at least a $50,000 profit margin, it's probably not the deal for us. Okay. Or we'll take it and if it has more of a long-term potential or it's in a really good downtown area, we'll take it and we'll turn it into like an Airbnb. And we've kind of switched from long-term rentals to like more short-term because they've been way more profitable. They do better? Yeah. And what are you looking for revenue on that side of the business when it comes to Airbnb and rentals? Yeah. So what we look at is we look at like basically what is the average if we were to do long-term, right? And so if we can 4X that, so let's say a property is renting out for $1,500 a month. But we can get $5,000 a month, like doing Airbnb, or $4,000 a month based upon what's around. We'll do that. We'll turn into that. But if we say, hey, you know what? This property, we can make way more money if we just put some money into it and flip it. Out of your companies, what brings the most revenue? So I would say Modern Realty, our real estate brokerage. And that has kind of been pumping all these other businesses. And our revenue last year was... 2.1 million. 2.1 was our gross income for the brokerage. And then we netted about half of that. Nice. Yeah, it was a good, good, good year. Pretty good year. Let's quickly touch base on brand awareness, right? Just overall, what can you say? How important is it for your businesses? What are you using? What can you share with our audience? Yeah. So right away, brand awareness, I think is one of the most important key factors. Identifying what your value proposition is is going to be huge. And then putting that out to the public, right? And so brand awareness really comes out from putting out content, valuable content. Video content is like the number one things that people are going to go towards. And keeping your content and your brand awareness concise to the point to where people can click on it, get value, and leave. Because the attention span is low. And your brand's pretty cool for modern realty because it's... beautifully built. I just want to give a quick shout out to our new sponsors. You guys, if you're looking to build your brand awareness, you guys look no further than Fiverr. It's a marketplace with graphic designers, website designers, the best professionals out there that will help you build your brand awareness. And most of all, they're giving you guys 10% off. So click the link in the description below and use the code UPFLIP10. Thank you so much. Santino, tell us a little bit about this project behind us. What did you buy it for? What do you expect to put in after repair value? Everything that you can share. Yeah, three years ago I contacted the owner. They're renters here. I asked them, hey, would you want to sell this off market? And so we made a deal and he started somewhere at $450,000. I said, listen, I don't think this one worked. We got down finally to the final price was $325,000. Okay. Got this place for which is still the deal in this market because the average purchase price is around $450,000. So we got it for $325,000 knowing that we're going to do a bunch of work to it. And so we put a renovation budget of $150,000. $150,000, okay. So $325,000, $150,000, you're $475,000 into it. What's your goal? Is it to sell or rent out? So actually, our goal is to actually lease this to Airbnb. So running multiple businesses can be challenging. What systems are you using to keep track of everything? Give us the names, costs involved with that. What was important? So in the beginning, we had no systems, right? We were like kind of winging it. But then after a while, if we started to scale and grow, we were like, we need some really consistent systems. So for our construction company, we use contractor foreman. It's only $99 a month. And it's really like an epic project management. program that's also an app. So that's great. What's really a game changer? Do you think tops the list in terms of systems that our audience can implement today in their business that will help them? Yeah. I mean, if you're looking for real estate investing and you really want to like actually tap into the properties off market, I think the best one. probably is going to be BatchDialer or Remind.com. I think those two, one, they show you the property, the value, the owners. They show you so much information, likelihood to sell. And then BatchDialer to get a hold of them or to speed that process up is great. So those are probably going to be the two biggest ones, in my opinion. There you go. Do it today, you guys, if you don't already have it. If you're not a real estate agent, what would you tell them? Yeah, if I wasn't, my best advice would be link up with some real estate agents, right? It doesn't hurt to have them in your back pocket. They don't cost you anything. Right, they don't? No, literally, as a buyer, we're here for you for free, pretty much. the buyer, the seller will pass, but find real estate agents because there's some hungry ones out there. And if they know that you're looking for a deal and you have one and you're willing to buy cash or hard money or whatever, you're able to execute, you'll have agents eventually on a regular basis. Yeah, exactly. Get a part of some Facebook groups, some wholesaling groups, get on some lists where they're going to send you properties on a regular basis. That's also a great way to find deals and not have to put so much time into it maybe. So that's another way. In terms of your growth, incredible. Last three years, more than 500%. I want to know what challenges come with that kind of growth. I think one of the biggest challenges is as you grow with people, right, you need more space. And then you need more staff. And so I think those are probably the two biggest challenges. Just people and space. People and space. I mean, more having good staff, good systems in place. That's a big struggle, right? Going from just like this little office to suddenly... exploding and having 40 plus agents. And so it's a, it managing your time and all that. It's crazy. Give me a quick snippet of the timeline. So year one, just you, year two and so on. What did that look like? So really interesting. Been in real estate for 15 years, right? But actually started the real estate brokers year one. It was like me and two other agents, right? From there, we grew that first year to like 15 agents. And then from there we grew to about 20. And then from there, we grew up. 30. It was really fast growth. And it really just came from like a lot of social media presence and a brand in the way that we actually put people over profit. What business is the most difficult to find people to hire for? Is it the construction, real estate? Construction's right up there. I mean, finding good contractors and depending on, especially in this market right now where we have more probably construction than there is actually construction workers. Right. Right. So there. That's a challenge. That is a challenge. But real estate brokers are almost just as hard because they're independent contractors, can't do whatever they want. So it's really hard to find good real estate brokers that are going to stay there, be long term and be reliable. Actually be producers. Yeah, I know. Yeah. In our world, there's a lot of licensed agents that do absolutely nothing. Yeah. And there's some brokerages for them. This isn't one of them. Yeah. What do you think has the highest profit margins? What have you seen? In the beginning, I would say flips had the highest profit margin. But now, we have a really hot real estate market and everybody wants to flip property, right? And so, the profits have shrunk, right? And so, we're finding that sometimes having a more consistent cash flow from keeping the property might be better and letting appreciate over two or three years, and then we cash out. on that. So rather than a flip. So in this case, the house behind us, we're going to have as a long-term rental or short-term rentals at Airbnb, we're going to hang on to it for a couple of years, let it appreciate, and then potentially sell it. Got it. Okay. You guys tell us in the comments below what your profit margins are. Also the tools that you're using in terms of financing. We talked earlier when starting a business, we'd love to hear from you. And I know that our audience would read those comments and learn from them as well. So we appreciate that. How seasonal is the business for you? Can you give us an idea on a bad month versus a good month revenue-wise? Yeah, so the last like five years have just been great. It's been a good five years, right? Every month's been great. If you look at the market, it's been crazy. We've been on a bull run. So interest rates have obviously been super low. So it's hard to have a bad month. I mean, unless you're doing just horrible. I mean, even your average real estate broker right now can do well if they put some effort into it. Right. And in terms of flips though, has that changed? Yeah, so think about it. The more the market's grown, the more appetite for investors to jump back in and more people wanting to flip. Especially with shows out there like Chip and Joanna, you know, everybody thinks that flipping is super easy. So everybody wants to get into it or like, you know, some of these other podcasts and stuff. How's your leadership style? What do you think is a good trait to have for an exceptional leader as an entrepreneur or business owner? My leadership style is... empowering other people. I'm not a micromanager. So like my leadership style is like, Hey, I hired you for the job. I trust you. And that some people are scared, but it actually really helps them grow and empowers them because if they fail, it's fine. It's fixable usually, hopefully. Right. But at the end of the day, mine is really just loose. The crew that's working here, are they on your payroll or the subs? Subcontractors, yeah. So our construction company, we actually don't do payroll. So we use it as a source to be able to manage a project, bring the cost down, use subcontractors and not have any like employee fees because then you have workman's comp. So we just sub all the majority of our jobs out. Very cool. Building relationships with all the industry, you know, people. What are you doing to successfully nurture that? Like your subs and everyone you work with. What are some tips, tricks for audience to connect and be better connected on that scale? Yeah, I think the biggest thing is going to be just, especially like in like real estate and time. Time is a huge factor, but really reaching out, getting to know a bunch of different people, especially with subs. Subs are hard to find. Good subs, if you're in construction, you know, the subs are hard to find. Really, it's about testing them on something small. having them come out, see where they come in, looking at some of their previous work. referrals are the best for subs right so at this point in our construction in our investment firm we have a lot of subs that we've been using for the last like seven years what are you doing to keep them though because they can go and work for somebody else keeping them busy that's the secret that's the key keeping them busy promising them like hey we're gonna give you volume right and we're gonna give you extra work we have a bunch of deals down the pipeline and then that really keeps them to give you good deals knowing that they're building a relationship not just trying to get rich on one project you can paint that picture and get them to buy into that you're really going to have a good relationship with regards to your investment firm or company right were there any particular worthy things to talk about in terms of startup costs and how you use that or is it just licenses because we mentioned that earlier yeah yeah no they're mainly just licenses uh startup costs were virtually none i mean they started coming into play when we want to acquire property but i see i mean for that you can use our money cash whatever it is but yeah there's not a whole lot of money when it comes to like starting on Now, if you want to start like an official investment firm. Right. It's different. It's a little bit different. Yeah. We use it as a sister company. So it separates our businesses and protects us. Right. So that way we're not commingling all of our stuff together. Okay. How do you know it's a good deal? That's the other follow-up question is like, you may have 10 on the table. What process do you go through to determine, you know what? I'm going to grab these two. The rest eight is not for me. Yeah. I think the biggest thing is the amount of time it's going to take. right? So the amount of time and the amount of money it's going to take, and then the amount of profit margin. So I determined that by going in, assessing the amount of fixing that we need to do. If we need to perform renovations, we do, you know, how much is it going to cost? And then we subtract that and say, how much can we sell it for? If we can sell it for a lot more, we kind of filter them out that way. That would be the biggest thing is how I find which deal to filter through. All right you guys, quick fan blitz time. Let's go. Not just fans as well. What's your favorite business book? Yeah, Crushing It by Gary Vaynerchuk. Nice. What car do you drive? Porsche Panamera. Love it. What was the final thing that pushed you to start working on this business overall? Freedom and endless tap on revenue. That's awesome. What would your strengths be as an employee if you were to be? Oh, unrelentless work ethic, for sure. If something happens to you, what will happen to your business? It'll keep going. 123 Donata is asking, how do you find valuable employees? Yeah, I think the biggest way to find valuable employees is to find employees that align with your vision and your culture. From Muhammad Ali, what would your advice be to an 18-year-old aspiring to get into real estate investing and own a construction company? First, this is a two-part question. Construction company and real estate investing. Real estate investing, my first piece of advice would be buy a house that you're going to... be in for a long term, but has potential to add value and put down 3.5% and then get in as cheap as possible. And then over time, let that build. And if you wanted to bring your construction company into that, great. You can actually start your construction on your own first house, right? So one in the same. And then my construction company first started out of literally my own places in the state of Oregon and Washington. You need to... actually have a construction company in order to flip houses. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. And then Bully is asking, do you love what you do? Yeah, I do love, of course. Yeah, I don't think you can be in this business 15 years without loving it. With what you know right now, is there anything you would have done differently when you started your real estate firm and the investment side of things? What would you do different? One of the things I probably would have done differently is gotten with people. or mentor or something underneath a company that had better teaching. Because I look at my agents now and what we're providing for them and the amount of value that we give them or if they need mentorship in investing in real estate, like they're progressing way faster than I did. So I think getting with the right people and having a good sphere around you is going to be essential to your success. And so I would change that if I were to start over. Don't be afraid to leave a place that you're comfortable at just because you have a friend there, maybe your family member. Get out of your comfort zone. Go meet some people and get around the right people. All right Santino so we're in what looks like a pretty awesome office space. Yeah. Give us a quick tour like how did you set it up and so on. Yeah so check it out so this is our main conference room that's Jess. Hi Jess. Yeah so it's our main conference room we have meetings so we have these doors that we put in. They open up and we can turn the chairs yeah so big screen so they can You got a good taste for decor I mean who helped you with all that. It's actually just me. Nice, okay. So this is like an admin office, place where they can work, stuff like that. Another access point over here. So anyways, this is like our little barista area for like when our clients come in or agents if they want some coffee so they can sit down and enjoy some nice coffee and stuff. We got some work areas over here. One, two, three. Yep, for the agents if they come in, it's like totally shareable space. They're able to come in and just come in and out. And then we have, This conference room here that has these awesome sliding glass doors so it could be open or it could be shut. It's pretty cool. And this is one of your, one of three locations. Yeah. Yeah, we have one in Vancouver, one in Portland, or two in Portland. Yeah. When it comes to scaling your investment company in this real estate industry, what are those main factors to do that quicker? I think the biggest thing obviously, whatever, just what everyone will know is scaling, you need more money. Right. So that's a big thing. More deals. More deals. Exactly. Yeah. So really having your hands out there and letting people know what you do is also a big deal because if people know what you do, they're just going to come to you naturally and say, hey, I heard you do this. Right. And so that's a really big thing is tapping into your network and letting people know, hey, we're not just a real estate brokerage. We also. flip property. We also will buy you out. We'll also, so letting that be known to people also. What are the best avenues for you to do that? And, and what are you doing to let it be known? Yeah. I mean, basically we train all of our agents that when they go to a listing presentation, when they go with a buyer that, Hey, we are also have a sister company, that's an investment firm, and we're willing to buy your property from you directly. So that many agents, that many deals, we did 250 deals last year. So that's a lot of. hands out there in people. But social media is also a great tool. We have a YouTube channel people watch, stuff like that, where we post content of us doing our flips, and that's also a big attraction. Gives you that brand exposure. Yeah, pumping some money into that video and putting it out on Facebook, through social media, and ad spend, just for simply views, it actually plays a big role. So you've got kids, married. How do you maintain work-life balance? I mean, how many hours a week, Dave, you work? Dude, starting out, before kids and family, it was 24-7. I would fall asleep at the office sometimes and literally wake up and I'd have like my agents come in and they'd be like, were you just sleeping here? Did you spend the night here? I was like, no, I don't know. I was just resting my eyes. But yeah, I mean, in the beginning, I literally grinded out. As marriage goes on, like you said, wife, kids, I was like, man, I gotta find some balance here because this is getting crazy. So, At this point in time, we just had a son. He's one years old. So that's been an adjustment. And like carving out, being intentional about my time and really focusing on where's my time going to be spent and what's going to generate me the most amount of money for my time. As you start to... Eight hours? Six hours? Two hours a day? Oh. Right now, what are you doing? Like literally right now, I'm always kind of on call, but I've put people in place. So, I mean, the work kind of never stops. It could literally never stop. But me personally, I put... Probably about 12 hours a day at least. Really? Yeah, because after my son goes to bed and my wife goes to bed, I still stay up. So I'm getting on average about six hours, maybe less, to sleep at night. But work-life balance is super important. Yeah, which I'm working on. I mean, it's not perfect. Not perfect yet. Hopefully one day. There you go. Do you have a go-to resource to just further your knowledge, industry skills, etc.? Yeah, sure. Yeah, so, I mean, I'm always looking at what other people are doing as well, but my main resources, I go to YouTube and Google. But when I go to those, yeah, I mean, you can find anything on those YouTube University, right? Yeah. And then Google, but, I mean, if I'm going to narrow my search, there's some, like, Gary Vaynerchuk, he's great as far as, like, you know, entrepreneurship. But if you want, like, actual, like... real estate investing facts. There's some great from Grant Cardone. There's some great from, you know, a lot of these other bigger real estate investors. So you follow these other guys that are doing the same thing and you're learning from them. Anything else that's teaching you to be better and smarter in this industry? Yeah. I mean, failure. I mean, it's one of the biggest things, just failing your way forward, not being afraid to go out there and just try it out. And then as you're in it, all of a sudden, you're like, man, I came across a problem. What do I do? You'll come across so many diverse amount of problems. And then. And at that time, you address them. Usually we'll either ask somebody that's already flipped the house or whatever it is or investing right in that time. Hey, have you ever invested in this area? How's it been? As far as like specific things, it really becomes really hyper local, you know, when it comes to real estate investing, you got to know your area. What is your favorite part of real estate investing? And what is the least favorite part? Yeah, I think my favorite part is taking a project or taking something that's ugly and then really taking it to completion and seeing the final product. Nice. That's the coolest part, that feeling of accomplishment and before and after. And at least? And then my least favorite part is probably managing the actual subcontractors. I don't know if you've ever managed subcontractors before, but if you have, it's not that fun. What are some tips on managing subcontractors that you can share from experience? Yeah, biggest things probably have relationships, have a system, and then really use like that contract reform I was talking about. Really make sure that you keep track of everything, have good contracts in place, maybe have an attorney look over them, but really no relationships or no handshake deals. I mean, just to be on the safe side? No, no, no. I mean, in the beginning, I did some handshake deals with contractors. And you pay for what you get. And also, handshake deals are great for, like, if you have a home that you're living in and you want, like, the curb work done or something like that. Right. Like, hey. But not, like, a big project like yours. No, I would not do that. You have a lot to risk. Yeah, don't do it. What will you tell our audience who just... Love real estate. Maybe when I get into real estate or specifically as we've been talking overall about investing in real estate. Any last words, piece of advice to all the entrepreneurs watching you right now? Yeah. I mean, if you're out there and you're looking for wanting to be a real estate investor, my thing is look at the BRRR method. Google that. That's a great method to look at. Another method is look at your leverage. Think about how am I going to get this money and then start off small. Be patient. Find the good deals. It's not about how much you can sell it for. It's about you make your money on the buying side. Where am I going to get my best deal? So make your money with good buys, leverage them and be smart. There you go. Well, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Paul. It's been awesome. Thank you. Well, that's a wrap of this incredible episode with Santino, the owner of these multiple businesses. You guys have heard their incredible numbers, his growth of more than 500%. I trust you guys took away at least a couple of things that you will execute in your business. in your industry. We appreciate you watching. We appreciate your support. So take a second, like, subscribe and hit that bell so that you don't miss any of our episodes. Thank you so much.

So we bought it for $155,000. We can make $100,000 out of this in five months. That's not bad. We'll take that. In terms of your growth, incredible.

Last three years, more than 500%. And our revenue last year was $2.1 million. You have a lot of opportunity to make some good money. On this episode, we are interviewing Santino Filippelli, a 32-year-old who owns a real estate firm, two construction companies, and an investment company. And today, you're going to learn how to be so successful at such a young age.

So the last like five years have just been great. It's been a good five years, right? Every month's been great. You have a number of LLCs. Why don't you break it down real quick in a nutshell for our viewers what you have so far so that...

later on a video it makes sense to people what we're talking about fair enough so yeah uh i have modern realty which is our real estate brokerage okay and then we have modern construction and then we have northwest home investments which is we used to acquire property and we have urban rentals and a couple other ones but those are kind of the main ones that we use you'll see modern construction northwest home investments in modern realty modern realty is kind of the hub because we get so much business whether it be through people looking to sell or buy so we might come across the client They want to sell their property. We say, hey, how about this? What if we just paid you cash and we just get the whole on the market process?

Clever. Right? So that's an option that we bring that to. But we really don't advertise it.

But I mean, you see a lot of these iBuyer people right now. Yeah. Signs all over. Yeah. All right, you guys, we're going to go check out one of his projects and give you guys an inside look in terms of revenue, cost and everything that you want to know.

So let's go check it out. All right. All right, so here we are at one of Santino's projects.

I believe it's his flip. So let's go talk to the man and dive into some more details. Before we jump into this project of yours, tell us a little bit about what the startup costs were for your multiple companies. Starting real estate brokerage, we actually started out with barely anything.

It was like a 10 by 10 office, started out with two agents and essentially grew from there. So don't need much. You need to get a business license for like $100. You know, your real estate brokerage fee is like 2000 bucks. I mean, you could really start a real estate brokerage for cheap.

Construction company, depends on what you want to do, how involved are you going to be working on the job physically. Then you need some tools, you're going to need some stuff. But if you're just going to have a license and sub it out, you kind of don't need a lot of money unless you want to actually like market it, right? And then the investment company, obviously, it sounds like it's just paperwork, licensing, and then go after those deals.

100%, yeah. And those start up costs to buy deals you can leverage, whether it's hard money or if you have cash, you know. different ways to finance them. Exactly. All right, well, let's go warm up a little bit as we go to his other location, which is his Airbnb.

And we'll tell you guys what he paid for, what it's earning, and a lot more. Give us a quick summary of what we got here. It's an Airbnb. What did you pay for?

What's it earning for you now? Paid $180,000 for it back a few years ago. Got in with five or $6,000 down.

First we were renting it out long-term for like 12, $1,300 a month. We let it appreciate, and then we went in, did a complete renovation, and now for an Airbnb, it's generating about $4,500 a month. Dang. Yeah. Good for you.

Thank you. Okay. Super fortunate the way this area, downtown Vancouver has grown. And that's another thing. If you're a real estate investor and you're looking for investment opportunities, one thing is looking at, Areas that are gentrifying or like areas that are like up-and-coming right and trying to get in there beforehand nice Maybe you might buy an ugly property But at the end of the day if you can see in two years that it has potential You have a lot of that opportunity to make some good money When it comes to acquiring or finding new deals as a real estate investing company, where do you find them?

What platforms? Redfin, Zillow, what else works for you? Yeah, so definitely not Redfin or Zillow.

You're probably looking for off-market deals. Some of the best platforms that you can find are like Batchleads or Batchdialer, Remind.com. There's a lot of resources being a real estate agent as well that you have to find off-market properties.

So there's both ways. Tell me a little bit more about the batch. Is there a subscription to the batch? Yeah, yeah.

It's kind of like a combination of skip tracing, and they use data based upon people's time in the property, equity, so forth. Interesting. Likelihood to move, and then they feed you this list. And then batch dialer is based upon volume of lead.

But you're looking at, for a subscription to batch dialer, like $100 a month, and then they charge you per the amount of leads that you want. Gotcha. And you've got to go through, obviously, pick up the phone.

Yeah. All these people. I mean, that's the big thing.

Is that what it comes down to? Yeah. Picking up that phone.

I mean that's probably the biggest thing is if you're willing to pick up a phone or knock on a door. Phone's a little bit faster but knocking on the door, meeting someone face to face and say, hey have you ever thought about selling? You know I'm in the neighborhood. Just saw your house. I really love it.

All right, let's go check out his other property across the fence. Give us a quick background on what did you pay for it, what is it rented, and what are you doing with it now? Sure. So we bought it for $155,000 seven years ago.

Yeah, unheard of prices nowadays. We got it for $5,500 down. And then now it's basically sitting at a value of close to $500,000.

Wow. $475,000. We'll just praise that. And so we're renting out one side for $1,250,000, which is not that great, but solid tenant. The other side, we completely renovated, tore out, gutted it, and then it's actually going to be an Airbnb.

And that's kind of what we've been doing with a lot of our properties. Yeah. Why are you, give us an understanding, why are you converting to Airbnb? Is there a shift in the market that you're seeing?

You know, here's the thing. With Airbnb, you actually eliminate a lot of... difficulties you have.

So such as like tenants that may not pay, landlord tenant rights, evictions, turnover, you know, also what you're seeing a lot, especially if you have a property that's well located, Airbnb is just a great opportunity where you can preserve the condition of the property and not have so much damage done over a period of time. Yeah, but you have high turnover. Yeah.

So we just literally have the cleaners come in, they come right out. But normally you have kids or dogs or pets or families, the longer they stay there, the more damage is going to be done. Having short term. less likelihood that they can damage it. Plus the deposit they put down in insurance and all that stuff covers any damages.

Nice. Yeah. We may have to interview somebody specifically who just does Airbnb because that's an interesting business model. Yeah.

We own like four of them. Nice. Okay. So they're pretty great. So talking about real estate investing, for somebody watching right now that wants to get into real estate investing, what would be the first couple of steps they need to take right now?

Yeah. First thing you want to do is figure out how your risk tolerance is going to be. Do you want to pay everything cash? Do you want to finance it? Where is going to be your money?

That's going to be the first thing. Because in order to do real estate investing, you need money. Or you need leverage. So some good credit scores, right?

Some experience. So that's the first thing you want to do is figure out where you're going to get your money from. How much you want to have on your profit margins. And then after you figure that out, I would begin to look for a deal.

I would start out really small and start to leverage. That would be my best advice. Leverage early on.

So that way you're not risking a lot of your own money. So that's the way I started. And for me, that was something that was really great. So if I ever lost everything, I was like, you know what?

I only have $6,000 and my credit score is bad now. Right. At worst case scenario.

When you mentioned research determining whether this is a sale or a long-term rental, what are you using to make that decision? Yeah, so good question. Basically, we look at, first of all, what are the margins here?

If this looks like it's a property where we're not going to hit that $50,000 mark, but we see that it's a really good area and there's a lot of people coming in, good tourist attraction, right? Basically, we say, let's turn this into an Airbnb. But if we say, hey, we can make $100,000 off of this in five months, that's not bad. We'll take that. So it just depends.

Interest rates play a role as well. Okay. You know, you've got a construction company, you've got your investment holdings, and then you've got a real estate company. What's the advantage of marrying those two and kind of having that structure?

Yeah. So it's like a perfect marriage that you can have. We started out with real estate, being a real estate agent. If you didn't start out or if you aren't a real estate agent, that's a different story. But having all those together, you're able to acquire properties, access to properties that maybe other people may not have.

That's the real estate brokerage. Yeah. Then the construction company, you have tax breaks and right off through that. And you also separate your liability so you don't have to worry about it. And then obviously the home investment again.

another entity that you're able to filter through. So that can be used to go to the real estate brokerage, talk to clients, tell them we have a real estate firm that will buy their properties and a construction company to fix it. Or even have a client that wants to sell. We say, hey, we have a construction company.

That's how you can win that client over. But again, real estate investing all comes really from having those three things tied together perfectly. When it came to starting some of your companies, is there anything worth mentioning in terms of how you finance them?

It's interesting. When you talk about starting a company, I mean, depending on the company, like a real estate brokerage, there's not much financing unless you're trying to go really big, really fast or buy a brokerage out. I see.

Right? But if you're just starting a business, you really just need enough to get a license, some basic fees. But once you start those companies, you might have some financing issues such as like buying a building.

working with trying to grow the real estate brokerage and working with trying to attain a building, we didn't want to spread ourselves too thin. So we tried to leverage as much as possible. So we actually did an SBA loan. The SBA allowed us to leverage with 90% LTV, loan to value.

So you only put down 10%. Exactly. Exactly, which is huge, right? The building was a million-dollar building, right?

So $100,000, that was still a lot. With SBA, whenever you occupy 51% of the building, you're able to use that 90-10 LTV, and then you can also have a renovation budget. put in there. That's a good tip for you guys. Yeah.

So if you have that option, they'll look at your income from a company. And if it's good, you'll be able to get financed. So we pumped up our income really well the first couple of years, which allowed us to tap into that resource of SBA. Specifically talking about Northwest Home Investments, which is one of your LLCs. Where does your profit come from?

Do you lease or sell properties? And what's the most profitable? I know a loaded question, but...

Give us a better understanding on how you structured. Northless Home Investments started out of having a real estate brokerage, right? And or being a real estate agent. So the profits that we get are basically based upon what we want to do with the house.

So if it's a fix and flip, we'll basically put it into that. And our construction company will come in, flip it. We look for margins.

They have to be pretty significant. Anything over $50,000 and up. So if we're not hitting at least a $50,000 profit margin, it's probably not the deal for us.

Okay. Or we'll take it and if it has more of a long-term potential or it's in a really good downtown area, we'll take it and we'll turn it into like an Airbnb. And we've kind of switched from long-term rentals to like more short-term because they've been way more profitable. They do better?

Yeah. And what are you looking for revenue on that side of the business when it comes to Airbnb and rentals? Yeah.

So what we look at is we look at like basically what is the average if we were to do long-term, right? And so if we can 4X that, so let's say a property is renting out for $1,500 a month. But we can get $5,000 a month, like doing Airbnb, or $4,000 a month based upon what's around.

We'll do that. We'll turn into that. But if we say, hey, you know what?

This property, we can make way more money if we just put some money into it and flip it. Out of your companies, what brings the most revenue? So I would say Modern Realty, our real estate brokerage. And that has kind of been pumping all these other businesses. And our revenue last year was...

2.1 million. 2.1 was our gross income for the brokerage. And then we netted about half of that. Nice. Yeah, it was a good, good, good year.

Pretty good year. Let's quickly touch base on brand awareness, right? Just overall, what can you say? How important is it for your businesses?

What are you using? What can you share with our audience? Yeah. So right away, brand awareness, I think is one of the most important key factors.

Identifying what your value proposition is is going to be huge. And then putting that out to the public, right? And so brand awareness really comes out from putting out content, valuable content.

Video content is like the number one things that people are going to go towards. And keeping your content and your brand awareness concise to the point to where people can click on it, get value, and leave. Because the attention span is low. And your brand's pretty cool for modern realty because it's...

beautifully built. I just want to give a quick shout out to our new sponsors. You guys, if you're looking to build your brand awareness, you guys look no further than Fiverr. It's a marketplace with graphic designers, website designers, the best professionals out there that will help you build your brand awareness.

And most of all, they're giving you guys 10% off. So click the link in the description below and use the code UPFLIP10. Thank you so much.

Santino, tell us a little bit about this project behind us. What did you buy it for? What do you expect to put in after repair value?

Everything that you can share. Yeah, three years ago I contacted the owner. They're renters here.

I asked them, hey, would you want to sell this off market? And so we made a deal and he started somewhere at $450,000. I said, listen, I don't think this one worked.

We got down finally to the final price was $325,000. Okay. Got this place for which is still the deal in this market because the average purchase price is around $450,000.

So we got it for $325,000 knowing that we're going to do a bunch of work to it. And so we put a renovation budget of $150,000. $150,000, okay. So $325,000, $150,000, you're $475,000 into it.

What's your goal? Is it to sell or rent out? So actually, our goal is to actually lease this to Airbnb.

So running multiple businesses can be challenging. What systems are you using to keep track of everything? Give us the names, costs involved with that. What was important?

So in the beginning, we had no systems, right? We were like kind of winging it. But then after a while, if we started to scale and grow, we were like, we need some really consistent systems.

So for our construction company, we use contractor foreman. It's only $99 a month. And it's really like an epic project management. program that's also an app.

So that's great. What's really a game changer? Do you think tops the list in terms of systems that our audience can implement today in their business that will help them?

Yeah. I mean, if you're looking for real estate investing and you really want to like actually tap into the properties off market, I think the best one. probably is going to be BatchDialer or Remind.com. I think those two, one, they show you the property, the value, the owners. They show you so much information, likelihood to sell.

And then BatchDialer to get a hold of them or to speed that process up is great. So those are probably going to be the two biggest ones, in my opinion. There you go.

Do it today, you guys, if you don't already have it. If you're not a real estate agent, what would you tell them? Yeah, if I wasn't, my best advice would be link up with some real estate agents, right?

It doesn't hurt to have them in your back pocket. They don't cost you anything. Right, they don't? No, literally, as a buyer, we're here for you for free, pretty much. the buyer, the seller will pass, but find real estate agents because there's some hungry ones out there.

And if they know that you're looking for a deal and you have one and you're willing to buy cash or hard money or whatever, you're able to execute, you'll have agents eventually on a regular basis. Yeah, exactly. Get a part of some Facebook groups, some wholesaling groups, get on some lists where they're going to send you properties on a regular basis.

That's also a great way to find deals and not have to put so much time into it maybe. So that's another way. In terms of your growth, incredible. Last three years, more than 500%.

I want to know what challenges come with that kind of growth. I think one of the biggest challenges is as you grow with people, right, you need more space. And then you need more staff.

And so I think those are probably the two biggest challenges. Just people and space. People and space. I mean, more having good staff, good systems in place. That's a big struggle, right?

Going from just like this little office to suddenly... exploding and having 40 plus agents. And so it's a, it managing your time and all that.

It's crazy. Give me a quick snippet of the timeline. So year one, just you, year two and so on.

What did that look like? So really interesting. Been in real estate for 15 years, right?

But actually started the real estate brokers year one. It was like me and two other agents, right? From there, we grew that first year to like 15 agents.

And then from there we grew to about 20. And then from there, we grew up. 30. It was really fast growth. And it really just came from like a lot of social media presence and a brand in the way that we actually put people over profit. What business is the most difficult to find people to hire for?

Is it the construction, real estate? Construction's right up there. I mean, finding good contractors and depending on, especially in this market right now where we have more probably construction than there is actually construction workers.

Right. Right. So there.

That's a challenge. That is a challenge. But real estate brokers are almost just as hard because they're independent contractors, can't do whatever they want.

So it's really hard to find good real estate brokers that are going to stay there, be long term and be reliable. Actually be producers. Yeah, I know.

Yeah. In our world, there's a lot of licensed agents that do absolutely nothing. Yeah. And there's some brokerages for them.

This isn't one of them. Yeah. What do you think has the highest profit margins? What have you seen?

In the beginning, I would say flips had the highest profit margin. But now, we have a really hot real estate market and everybody wants to flip property, right? And so, the profits have shrunk, right? And so, we're finding that sometimes having a more consistent cash flow from keeping the property might be better and letting appreciate over two or three years, and then we cash out.

on that. So rather than a flip. So in this case, the house behind us, we're going to have as a long-term rental or short-term rentals at Airbnb, we're going to hang on to it for a couple of years, let it appreciate, and then potentially sell it. Got it.

Okay. You guys tell us in the comments below what your profit margins are. Also the tools that you're using in terms of financing. We talked earlier when starting a business, we'd love to hear from you. And I know that our audience would read those comments and learn from them as well.

So we appreciate that. How seasonal is the business for you? Can you give us an idea on a bad month versus a good month revenue-wise?

Yeah, so the last like five years have just been great. It's been a good five years, right? Every month's been great. If you look at the market, it's been crazy. We've been on a bull run.

So interest rates have obviously been super low. So it's hard to have a bad month. I mean, unless you're doing just horrible.

I mean, even your average real estate broker right now can do well if they put some effort into it. Right. And in terms of flips though, has that changed?

Yeah, so think about it. The more the market's grown, the more appetite for investors to jump back in and more people wanting to flip. Especially with shows out there like Chip and Joanna, you know, everybody thinks that flipping is super easy.

So everybody wants to get into it or like, you know, some of these other podcasts and stuff. How's your leadership style? What do you think is a good trait to have for an exceptional leader as an entrepreneur or business owner?

My leadership style is... empowering other people. I'm not a micromanager. So like my leadership style is like, Hey, I hired you for the job.

I trust you. And that some people are scared, but it actually really helps them grow and empowers them because if they fail, it's fine. It's fixable usually, hopefully.

Right. But at the end of the day, mine is really just loose. The crew that's working here, are they on your payroll or the subs?

Subcontractors, yeah. So our construction company, we actually don't do payroll. So we use it as a source to be able to manage a project, bring the cost down, use subcontractors and not have any like employee fees because then you have workman's comp.

So we just sub all the majority of our jobs out. Very cool. Building relationships with all the industry, you know, people. What are you doing to successfully nurture that?

Like your subs and everyone you work with. What are some tips, tricks for audience to connect and be better connected on that scale? Yeah, I think the biggest thing is going to be just, especially like in like real estate and time. Time is a huge factor, but really reaching out, getting to know a bunch of different people, especially with subs. Subs are hard to find.

Good subs, if you're in construction, you know, the subs are hard to find. Really, it's about testing them on something small. having them come out, see where they come in, looking at some of their previous work.

referrals are the best for subs right so at this point in our construction in our investment firm we have a lot of subs that we've been using for the last like seven years what are you doing to keep them though because they can go and work for somebody else keeping them busy that's the secret that's the key keeping them busy promising them like hey we're gonna give you volume right and we're gonna give you extra work we have a bunch of deals down the pipeline and then that really keeps them to give you good deals knowing that they're building a relationship not just trying to get rich on one project you can paint that picture and get them to buy into that you're really going to have a good relationship with regards to your investment firm or company right were there any particular worthy things to talk about in terms of startup costs and how you use that or is it just licenses because we mentioned that earlier yeah yeah no they're mainly just licenses uh startup costs were virtually none i mean they started coming into play when we want to acquire property but i see i mean for that you can use our money cash whatever it is but yeah there's not a whole lot of money when it comes to like starting on Now, if you want to start like an official investment firm. Right. It's different. It's a little bit different.

Yeah. We use it as a sister company. So it separates our businesses and protects us.

Right. So that way we're not commingling all of our stuff together. Okay. How do you know it's a good deal?

That's the other follow-up question is like, you may have 10 on the table. What process do you go through to determine, you know what? I'm going to grab these two.

The rest eight is not for me. Yeah. I think the biggest thing is the amount of time it's going to take.

right? So the amount of time and the amount of money it's going to take, and then the amount of profit margin. So I determined that by going in, assessing the amount of fixing that we need to do. If we need to perform renovations, we do, you know, how much is it going to cost? And then we subtract that and say, how much can we sell it for?

If we can sell it for a lot more, we kind of filter them out that way. That would be the biggest thing is how I find which deal to filter through. All right you guys, quick fan blitz time.

Let's go. Not just fans as well. What's your favorite business book? Yeah, Crushing It by Gary Vaynerchuk. Nice.

What car do you drive? Porsche Panamera. Love it.

What was the final thing that pushed you to start working on this business overall? Freedom and endless tap on revenue. That's awesome. What would your strengths be as an employee if you were to be?

Oh, unrelentless work ethic, for sure. If something happens to you, what will happen to your business? It'll keep going.

123 Donata is asking, how do you find valuable employees? Yeah, I think the biggest way to find valuable employees is to find employees that align with your vision and your culture. From Muhammad Ali, what would your advice be to an 18-year-old aspiring to get into real estate investing and own a construction company?

First, this is a two-part question. Construction company and real estate investing. Real estate investing, my first piece of advice would be buy a house that you're going to... be in for a long term, but has potential to add value and put down 3.5% and then get in as cheap as possible.

And then over time, let that build. And if you wanted to bring your construction company into that, great. You can actually start your construction on your own first house, right?

So one in the same. And then my construction company first started out of literally my own places in the state of Oregon and Washington. You need to...

actually have a construction company in order to flip houses. Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah. And then Bully is asking, do you love what you do? Yeah, I do love, of course.

Yeah, I don't think you can be in this business 15 years without loving it. With what you know right now, is there anything you would have done differently when you started your real estate firm and the investment side of things? What would you do different?

One of the things I probably would have done differently is gotten with people. or mentor or something underneath a company that had better teaching. Because I look at my agents now and what we're providing for them and the amount of value that we give them or if they need mentorship in investing in real estate, like they're progressing way faster than I did. So I think getting with the right people and having a good sphere around you is going to be essential to your success. And so I would change that if I were to start over.

Don't be afraid to leave a place that you're comfortable at just because you have a friend there, maybe your family member. Get out of your comfort zone. Go meet some people and get around the right people.

All right Santino so we're in what looks like a pretty awesome office space. Yeah. Give us a quick tour like how did you set it up and so on.

Yeah so check it out so this is our main conference room that's Jess. Hi Jess. Yeah so it's our main conference room we have meetings so we have these doors that we put in. They open up and we can turn the chairs yeah so big screen so they can You got a good taste for decor I mean who helped you with all that. It's actually just me.

Nice, okay. So this is like an admin office, place where they can work, stuff like that. Another access point over here. So anyways, this is like our little barista area for like when our clients come in or agents if they want some coffee so they can sit down and enjoy some nice coffee and stuff. We got some work areas over here.

One, two, three. Yep, for the agents if they come in, it's like totally shareable space. They're able to come in and just come in and out.

And then we have, This conference room here that has these awesome sliding glass doors so it could be open or it could be shut. It's pretty cool. And this is one of your, one of three locations.

Yeah. Yeah, we have one in Vancouver, one in Portland, or two in Portland. Yeah. When it comes to scaling your investment company in this real estate industry, what are those main factors to do that quicker? I think the biggest thing obviously, whatever, just what everyone will know is scaling, you need more money.

Right. So that's a big thing. More deals.

More deals. Exactly. Yeah.

So really having your hands out there and letting people know what you do is also a big deal because if people know what you do, they're just going to come to you naturally and say, hey, I heard you do this. Right. And so that's a really big thing is tapping into your network and letting people know, hey, we're not just a real estate brokerage.

We also. flip property. We also will buy you out. We'll also, so letting that be known to people also.

What are the best avenues for you to do that? And, and what are you doing to let it be known? Yeah.

I mean, basically we train all of our agents that when they go to a listing presentation, when they go with a buyer that, Hey, we are also have a sister company, that's an investment firm, and we're willing to buy your property from you directly. So that many agents, that many deals, we did 250 deals last year. So that's a lot of. hands out there in people. But social media is also a great tool.

We have a YouTube channel people watch, stuff like that, where we post content of us doing our flips, and that's also a big attraction. Gives you that brand exposure. Yeah, pumping some money into that video and putting it out on Facebook, through social media, and ad spend, just for simply views, it actually plays a big role. So you've got kids, married.

How do you maintain work-life balance? I mean, how many hours a week, Dave, you work? Dude, starting out, before kids and family, it was 24-7. I would fall asleep at the office sometimes and literally wake up and I'd have like my agents come in and they'd be like, were you just sleeping here? Did you spend the night here?

I was like, no, I don't know. I was just resting my eyes. But yeah, I mean, in the beginning, I literally grinded out. As marriage goes on, like you said, wife, kids, I was like, man, I gotta find some balance here because this is getting crazy.

So, At this point in time, we just had a son. He's one years old. So that's been an adjustment.

And like carving out, being intentional about my time and really focusing on where's my time going to be spent and what's going to generate me the most amount of money for my time. As you start to... Eight hours? Six hours?

Two hours a day? Oh. Right now, what are you doing?

Like literally right now, I'm always kind of on call, but I've put people in place. So, I mean, the work kind of never stops. It could literally never stop. But me personally, I put... Probably about 12 hours a day at least.

Really? Yeah, because after my son goes to bed and my wife goes to bed, I still stay up. So I'm getting on average about six hours, maybe less, to sleep at night. But work-life balance is super important.

Yeah, which I'm working on. I mean, it's not perfect. Not perfect yet.

Hopefully one day. There you go. Do you have a go-to resource to just further your knowledge, industry skills, etc.? Yeah, sure. Yeah, so, I mean, I'm always looking at what other people are doing as well, but my main resources, I go to YouTube and Google.

But when I go to those, yeah, I mean, you can find anything on those YouTube University, right? Yeah. And then Google, but, I mean, if I'm going to narrow my search, there's some, like, Gary Vaynerchuk, he's great as far as, like, you know, entrepreneurship.

But if you want, like, actual, like... real estate investing facts. There's some great from Grant Cardone.

There's some great from, you know, a lot of these other bigger real estate investors. So you follow these other guys that are doing the same thing and you're learning from them. Anything else that's teaching you to be better and smarter in this industry? Yeah.

I mean, failure. I mean, it's one of the biggest things, just failing your way forward, not being afraid to go out there and just try it out. And then as you're in it, all of a sudden, you're like, man, I came across a problem. What do I do? You'll come across so many diverse amount of problems.

And then. And at that time, you address them. Usually we'll either ask somebody that's already flipped the house or whatever it is or investing right in that time.

Hey, have you ever invested in this area? How's it been? As far as like specific things, it really becomes really hyper local, you know, when it comes to real estate investing, you got to know your area.

What is your favorite part of real estate investing? And what is the least favorite part? Yeah, I think my favorite part is taking a project or taking something that's ugly and then really taking it to completion and seeing the final product.

Nice. That's the coolest part, that feeling of accomplishment and before and after. And at least?

And then my least favorite part is probably managing the actual subcontractors. I don't know if you've ever managed subcontractors before, but if you have, it's not that fun. What are some tips on managing subcontractors that you can share from experience? Yeah, biggest things probably have relationships, have a system, and then really use like that contract reform I was talking about. Really make sure that you keep track of everything, have good contracts in place, maybe have an attorney look over them, but really no relationships or no handshake deals.

I mean, just to be on the safe side? No, no, no. I mean, in the beginning, I did some handshake deals with contractors.

And you pay for what you get. And also, handshake deals are great for, like, if you have a home that you're living in and you want, like, the curb work done or something like that. Right.

Like, hey. But not, like, a big project like yours. No, I would not do that. You have a lot to risk.

Yeah, don't do it. What will you tell our audience who just... Love real estate.

Maybe when I get into real estate or specifically as we've been talking overall about investing in real estate. Any last words, piece of advice to all the entrepreneurs watching you right now? Yeah. I mean, if you're out there and you're looking for wanting to be a real estate investor, my thing is look at the BRRR method. Google that.

That's a great method to look at. Another method is look at your leverage. Think about how am I going to get this money and then start off small.

Be patient. Find the good deals. It's not about how much you can sell it for.

It's about you make your money on the buying side. Where am I going to get my best deal? So make your money with good buys, leverage them and be smart. There you go. Well, this has been a pleasure.

Thank you so much, Paul. It's been awesome. Thank you. Well, that's a wrap of this incredible episode with Santino, the owner of these multiple businesses.

You guys have heard their incredible numbers, his growth of more than 500%. I trust you guys took away at least a couple of things that you will execute in your business. in your industry.

We appreciate you watching. We appreciate your support. So take a second, like, subscribe and hit that bell so that you don't miss any of our episodes. Thank you so much.

Transcript for:Real Estate Investing Insights by Santino

Transcript for:
Real Estate Investing Insights by Santino