Full Transcript

Taylor   0:02  

What's going on guys? This is the passive wealth strategy for busy professionals podcast. Today our guest is Agostino Pintus. Agostino was a C level executive in technology. He has over time transitioned into real estate entrepreneurship, and now he's buying multifamily real estate with passive investors. today we're talking about the lessons that one needs to know. If you want to get into entrepreneurship, if you want to leave that kind of C suite or two and get into the world of entrepreneurship. Agostino has learned some tough lessons along the way. you can pick them up and implement some of his strategies to accelerate your growth.

He's going to tell you about his story and his transition from the corporate world into where he is now. But I think there are a lot of people out there who want to be entrepreneurs who are in the corporate world. either they're they don't know the way to do it to get into entrepreneurship, or they're just not the right fit. I think, if you're one of those people, this episode will help you figure that out, whether you're the right kind of person, and we'll help you build that toolkit to get into entrepreneurship, particularly if you want to be a real estate entrepreneur. Once again, our guest is Agostino Pintus, from bulletproof cash flow.

I'm a real estate investor real estate syndicator I buy multifamily real estate with passive investors and split the return. thrilled to be talking with you today about this topic of entrepreneurship. It's big with the guys like Gary Vaynerchuk. He's one of the big guys out there. today we're talking to a guy who really did it and made it happen. without further ado, here we go with Agostino Pintus. Agostino, thank you for joining us today.

Agostino Pintus  2:02  

Hey, man, super excited to be here, man. Awesome. just great to be here, man.

Taylor   2:06  

It's great to talk with you again. It's been trying to figure out when it was but at least a year, maybe two years. Yeah, we saw each other at TEDx. But for everybody out there who doesn't know who you are, tell us about Agostinoine. Oh,

Agostino Pintus  2:20  

sure. Sure. Sure. Well, we know my name is Agostino Pintus. I am the host of the bulletproof cash flow Podcast. I am also an active investor, I primarily invest in multifamily. as a GP, and into about 700 doors at this point over just about 30 months now. Working on the biggest deal of my life at this point is going to be when we're actually doing a raise right now during a global pandemic as we're recording. But it's such a sweet deal. Beautiful, beautiful deal. but I can't really talk about it right now but NDA is in such a spectacular deal.

But anyway, so, um, yeah, I spent my life really in technology. I'll start from when I was kid I was 910 years old and learned how to program, self taught development software, that kind of thing back in the day with the Commodore computers, probably we know what that is. I was in grade school when I laid eyes on it. I was determined to learn everything I can about that machine.

I was gonna learn everything I could and eventually, I want to own my own software company. That was my dream when I was like 910 11 years old, you know what to do my own thing. I've been an entrepreneur my entire life, first generation, Italian kid so for most first generation kids is usually what happens during that entrepreneurial streak, as he says to what the stats say, but at any rate, it didn't go that way. At first You have friends who have family that will push you into working for corporate america push into, quote, safety of a paycheck.

I ended up working in corporate America and rose up to become a C level executive, publicly traded companies managing large budgets, doing all that fun stuff. But even so even as a young 30 something doing all that I still had enough foresight to get into real estate and got into single family and small multi families where it all started. The intent, though, was not to build wealth, like many of many of your listeners are listening, that's usually what they're looking to do is build some wealth. My motivation was a little different. My motivation was to protect myself from scarcity. I was even though it's making bank, the company was super successful and helped them to get there.

As a Level executive, I was still in the fear, fear mindset. I was like, Oh my god, I gotta find a way to build some passive income because if they're gonna fire me one day, I know they're gonna fire me. that's that's kind of like, even though even though I was like, I was a superstar at this company, everyone loved me, I was doing great. so that was the fear. That was the fear that kept on telling myself, right. the thing is, so you really have to watch what you tell yourself because if you tell yourself, something's gonna happen,

Agostino Pintus  5:31  

And that's exactly what happened to me, right? So fast forward a bunch of years, like forth four or five years, boom, I'm out the door. They referred me to get my box, all my stuff's in it. I'm out the door. Oh, man. and this is just before the 2008 crash. to top it off, right. At that point, I went through my 10 dark years and by that means that I just started drifting from job to job trying to find anyone that would pay me To do anything, really. In technology, of course, and I had no goals, I had no idea why I was just sending out resumes blindly to anybody, like if you're looking for a CFO or CEO, I'm sending my resume in the hopes that maybe they're hiring a CIO. I mean, stupid. though, the thinking was, I have to hurry up or find a job, I have to hurry up and find a job because I let this group of people define who I was. Right. I was not living my own life on my terms. I was letting someone else tell me what my life's all about.

Agostino Pintus  6:36  

know, you really have to watch what you tell yourself. I mean, I convinced myself that I was a failure. They can convince me that I was a failure because they kicked me out. Right. That's, that's ultimately what drove me down that path. But many years later, it's almost almost 10 years actually, to the point of finally getting back into the corporate world as a C level executive once again. Now I'm in my 40s at that point. yeah, but I fell into self development and started really refocusing and retraining my brain around building

Agostino Pintus  7:10  

wealth and building abundance that's ultimately what it is you know and what that meant was giving up a lot of things I gave up the TV it gave up the drinking game a party's gave up all that stuff just to really focus on building wealth and I chose real estate multifamily real estate big honkin multifamily deals to make that happen. I'll tell you, it is the best thing ever done, man I wish I would have done it sooner, instead of messing around with small deals is terrible.

But it's a learning lesson. I don't know that I'd be the guy today. If I hadn't done it but to get to this point, it involves basically refocusing and re centering my whole life and it's it's been around Windham we're not over yet and a lot of deals cooking even even as I said during a pandemic that we got going on right now. Still, we're still working men still working.

Taylor   8:09  

People still need a place to live. with all the problems or questions about whether or not tenants are going to be able to pay the rent, many tenants are still going to be paying their rent. There are protections that landlords still have, in most areas, not not everywhere. I will stay out of California and New York City, but you buy in Ohio, so that's a great place to be buying real estate.

Agostino Pintus  8:32  

Yeah, I set the cash flowing market. you have your cash flow markets in your appreciation markets. Those are two primary markets. I don't I just don't appreciate markets. I don't know them. I prefer not to know them. For that reason is highly highly speculative, and I rather deal with cash flow, real cash flow that comes in that's just how I operate. It's like, it's an easier sell than Try to guess what something's gonna cost five years down the road. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Taylor   9:05  

So I wanted to talk about that, like making that shift from the scarcity mentality that you had when you were at the corporate level in the corporate world and la somewhere, I guess in those 10 dark years, you had something clicked in your mind, and I don't know whether that was overnight, or what have you.

But there are many people out there, busy professionals, not necessarily all sea levels, but they want to create passive cash flow through real estate. Is that what we talk about on this show? And it is because of a scarcity mentality and in times like this, we're experiencing right now with the Coronavirus.

It's easy to understand why people are afraid and they want that passive income because there are people you don't know who could change your life in a negative way. Just because they're trying to fix numbers on a spreadsheet and all that So in making that mindset and mindset shift what did you do? And how can we learn and replicate that? Well take 10 years.

Agostino Pintus  10:10  

Yeah, I mean I wish I wish or just one thing. I've been asked that question so many times where it's like, What's that one thing? What's that one book? What's that one song? Who's that one person? And I think that you're, you really have to be ready to listen. Right?

Even if you say that you're ready to listen, you might not be and I think I got to a point that I got some pretty dark places when I was going through my 10 dark years, hung out with some really bad people and had some really bad relationships. it took going through the wringer to realize it working for a bunch of bad bosses to not work for a lot of bad companies. I learned how not to run a company by a bunch of different people.

Really, I already have an MBA. My god, I thought the MPAA was something. No, no, it's nothing compared to the stuff I learned. But I will say this. t harv. eker was probably one of the ones one of the first ones I stumbled on, that I discovered some of his material and really opened up my mind to, to really the abundance mindset. and then from there learning the cognitive biases, the heuristics that run people,

Agostino Pintus  11:32  

and then then getting into reading a book a week. That's probably one of the biggest things I started doing was reading a book a week, right? And the books were a mix of psychology,

Agostino Pintus  11:47  

marketing, social media, human psychology, history, biographies, things like that. not not none of this garbage like great Game of Thrones stuff, and Nothing I'm harping on Game of Thrones are these but none of that stuff I'm talking about substance of books that stood the test of time that will offer you growth potential, right. you can see how someone overcame something that was so bad in their life too, to Excel to being the best at what they do things like that. I've also taken up stoicism as well too. It's a mix of a lot of things t harv eker.

Those probably one of the first things that I did really was re studying him and going deep before discovering real estate again, or rediscovering it because I had stopped doing real estate for a while. after I got can to the last time but the last job and I'm like okay, what am I gonna do now? And that's when I discovered real estate and then once I learned about syndication from a real estate attorney friend of mine, that's when I when I decided to make real estate my thing so at that point, by time I refocus my whole life to real estate I'd already discovered tihar, Becker discovered self development. I started reading the book a week before I started on that path. Then once I understood deal syndication, and how I can build passive income by working on, I shouldn't say passive but working on deals because that's very active.

guys like us on the GP side anyway, we're going out, we're working, like I'm underwriting hundreds of deals, I'm walking properties, I'm negotiating deals, I'm lining up lenders and all that. But, but I also get to help investors get into these deals, help them build wealth, I get to build wealth, everybody wins. We provide housing for a lot of people, thousands of people, everybody wins. it's, it's super, it's super and you do that, but it all started with making a decision to make a change. I mean, that's ultimately what it is. You have to consciously decide you're This is today is today. That is so, so difficult. That is so hard. It's kind of like saying this tasty. I'm going to workout tomorrow or today I'm gonna stop eating chocolate

Agostino Pintus  14:20  

chip cookies. Well, you know what, though they're right there. This is the last one I promise and no matter what you always do it right.

Taylor   14:29  

Yeah, I mean as, as I get older, and I think everybody probably has this, this experiences the days and the weeks go faster and the months go faster and faster and faster. You know that reading a book a week is super difficult. it's it. You said that you stop watching TV, which is a great move if you refocus that energy. I mean, how can somebody go from not reading much at all. if at all for anything other than their work to eventually reading a book a week, is it that getting rid of TV? How many people are really going to effectively get rid of TV? right away? Yeah. You know,

Agostino Pintus  15:14  

How can we? Yeah, I'll tell you how I do it. Anyway, I planned all my books that I was going to listen to in January, actually, even before that December last week of December. I planned out the entire year of books. Right now remember, I'm reading books that have already stood the test of time or they've been around for a little while. it's not just garbage. There's over 130,000 published books more than that, I'm sure. a lot of them are trash.

A lot of ours are just nonsense, right. But what I did was I chose the best ones I could possibly find. Right and I created an Excel spreadsheet. I listed all the books out and I loaded them all into my phone. I got it on my phone. All the time. no matter what I always care most people carry their phones with them, right? have our phones on us. Everything's already on here.

It's like whenever there's downtime whenever you're someone's late for a meeting, instead of cursing at them. I put my headphones on. I listen. I prefer to listen to books. I can listen to them faster, and I can read them. Like Can I sit there staring at the screens? somewhat difficult to do somewhat distracting as well? Yeah. But listening to the books is the big secret. Now when I started listening to books back in the day, like when I was a kid, I found them very difficult and I discovered a bunch of things number one is listening to at normal speed. when you listen, listen to a little faster, you get to get through the book quicker.

Number two, the person speaking the book, the author, was oftentimes quite terrible. back then. We were talking like 2030 years ago. Yeah, it was dry, boring. Voice reading a book they probably didn't want to read in the first place stuff like that, right? So now I think people have put a little more energy into their books, even like a guy like Gary Vee, for instance. He's on my book list. He's got a couple books out there because he's a social media influencer. if you ever listen to any of his books, he's the way he reads his books.

The way that he talks on his videos is full of gusto, full of energy and it's very hard to fall asleep to a guy who's yelling in your face. Very, very tough, tough to do. But that's what it is, man. I mean, and the thing is, though, listen, even if you create a list upfront, I think that's part of it as you plan it out. You plan it out and put it on your phone that way, there's no nothing to think about and you put a good program to listen to your books. I use an audio book. I think it's just it, it's not a very creative name. I think it's just called. Let's see here. What's it called?

Smart audiobook player on my Android device. Never, never creative $2 change your life, load everything up, put it, put it all in your phone and start listening one by one. I'm telling you that in itself will introduce new thoughts and new pathways in your mind. It's I'm telling you it's a huge unlock huge, huge

Taylor   18:21  

cool, I'm gonna have to check that one out. That is a new one I have not heard of, and I use Android. yeah, good news is that

Agostino Pintus  18:30  

There's other apps very similar to that one. I mean, the big win on that is that it does a very good job with organizing the books. I mean, it's nothing special but it's not like on the apple side. I think they have iTunes or I'm not familiar with some of their apps, but something it's very, very simple, very easy to use, and very clean but the big, big secret is to just get all the books, put them all on your phone.

There's nothing to think about. If the book sucks go to the next One not a big deal. No one cares. just don't worry about it. Just go to the next one. Some books. Hey, listen, there's books I really wanted to listen to and I listened to them. They're stupid. Kill the book, go to the next one. Fine. Just keep rolling through, you know. But yeah, it wasn't easy, man. I'll tell you that it was not easy for me, but I think I gotta get there to understand a lot more.

Taylor   19:23  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned something else about syndication on the general partnership side not being passive and 100% totally agree. That's my experience on the general partner side. how are you kind of making that happen? How are you putting it? What are you? How are you managing that all the time that it requires?

you don't have a day job now. Right? Correct. How many hours a week is it? Is it looking like for you and all that is it more than a full time job is it if somebody's thinking about getting into it is it Good, bad move. What do you

Agostino Pintus  20:01  

say? it really depends. there's some days that it was last night. I didn't go to bed till one in the morning, you know. the day started about 6am already at that by by nine I already had two mugs of espresso as you have been known to to espresso by the mug and but you know what, though, man, I mean the day was full of dealing with it, that big deal is telling you about it's gonna be 110 nine minutes completed.

I got a couple of other distress deals on the cooking as well. No about 400 units of distress deal cooking right now. we'll see how that pans out. I'd love to take those down and help those sellers clean, they'll clean up their books, we know how to myself, my team, we know how to handle those types of units so we know how to deal with that. Of course, we're developing our own training materials as well so that the people get into this business.

I mean, it's I'm not gonna say it's easy certainly is not easy. This is not an easy thing, but I'll tell you what, man when I was working in corporate and I hear a slam on corporate or whatever, but say that it was it wasn't fun for me it just wasn't I did not enjoy some parts of it. I did, but not all of it. It's had some dark times in corporate America but even though today, I mean, there's others. There days are tougher than others.

Agostino Pintus  21:37  

Not a single day where I've ever said, Oh my god, I wish I could just get up and drag my ass to a place that never happened. I swear to God, it's never happened.

Taylor   21:50  

Yeah. I think one of the very important things that strikes me here is that in the corporate world, depending on where you work, you can really, some people can get by with just skating for a week or two weeks or while longer than that you don't have to big companies man, like, every day doesn't have to be your best possible self your best day. You don't have to necessarily be plugging away in the corporate world. I expect that in your current venture as a real estate syndicator it's a very different story.

Agostino Pintus  22:33  

No, no, no, you can't escape it. But you know what, they'll tailor I'll tell you, man, the higher up the chain, you go in corporate, the less skating you're permitted to do, right? It's especially at the sea level, like you cannot have a single week where nothing happens cuz someone's going to see you because it's a very high visibility job right. in FA and your audience out there they have to see level right now. I'm sure they'll tell you the same thing.

They're all nodding their heads like Yeah, that's true. That's right. That's correct. Because Yeah, I mean, when I was rising through the ranks, or some weeks I was distracted or something happening at home or whatever. yeah, I mean, things not everything got done the way I wanted it to or whatever. But it's, again, like when you're an entrepreneur, then yeah, you can't, he could take a day off, I suppose but it's not for everyone. that's okay.

No, that's why we're here. That's why we do what we do. we, some people, some people enjoy their their, their their gig. Some people enjoy their gig and maybe invest passively. That's fine, too. That's okay. this being an entrepreneur and cranking out 12 hour days straight is just not for everyone. But the way I see it, I want to have control of my future and when I have control of my life, the way that I want to have control of it and live it on my own terms.

That's just what I wanted to So So if I'm the one that could find the good deals and put them all together and, and help investors, make them make a ton of money at the same same time, sure, why not do it we partner up and let's get a deal done, you know that they get to share the benefits that we that we bring to the table to Okay, great. it's just, that's the good thing about putting these deals together. I thoroughly enjoy doing it. yes, for me, it's a lot of fun. It's just I just love it. Just love it. Yeah, do you.

Taylor   24:31  

So you mentioned Gary Vee. one of the things that he likes to say is that he feels that I'm paraphrasing heavily. But the more some people are made to be entrepreneurs, and many people are not made to be entrepreneurs, but they would be the better executives working for entrepreneurs and it sounds like from what you're saying that you were born to be the entrepreneur guy and have been working for you.

Agostino Pintus  25:04  

You know, as much as I don't want to agree. Because I really honestly believe that if someone really, really wants to do something they can. Right. Yeah. But at the same time I spent, I spent enough time in it, for instance, and I've had some superstar developers, I mean, some software guys, these guys were gods, their code was messy, but damn, their stuff was fast. it worked. it ran very, very well.

These are the ones that were coding since they were children, like I was, I was one of those kids, you know. then there's the people that they were drifting through life. They took some courses at college and other now they claim to be developers, you look at their stuff, it's not so strong. I don't know if

Agostino Pintus  25:55  

it's, if it's from it's a mix of upbringing, or if it's a mix of Have of schooling or whatever, but maybe it's because since I was a kid, I wanted to do my own thing.

Agostino Pintus  26:08  

eight, nine years old, I wanted to do my own as a nine for sure. I was already like, I was hardcore into computers. I was gonna have my own software company. This is the thing for me. I had a lemonade stand. I did all that stuff, you know.

I'm not gonna say that they're all entrepreneurs. I mean, Tom bill, you, for instance, the guy that ran that they used to run the quest, the quest protein bars, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he was a born entrepreneur. he he, as a matter of fact, he went to acting school, he's gonna want to become an actor. but I think to your point, though, he met up with it with a couple of other entrepreneurs.

They brought him into the fold and he started from the bottom and ended up becoming like, basically a co-founder and quest for food and became a billionaire. Now, you can call him an entrepreneur. Cuz now he runs his own thing. But he kind of like he fell into the right group. I think it might I think your mileage

Agostino Pintus  27:08  

may vary depending on who the person is. I mean, we know what at the end of the day though, man, I'll tell you it takes making a decision, you have to decide what you want to be.

That's a great thing about being humans, we can decide where we want to be, you can decide right now, to sit down in front of the TV, put on Netflix and binge watch some TV show, you can decide to do that. Or you can decide to read a book or you can decide to, to go on to bulletproof cash flow and watch all our videos and become an expert at multifamily.

There's so many things we could decide to do. You could decide to pack and take a trip down to Colombia. I mean, you could do anything you want. It's what we would choose to do with that time, and that's where the molds are pre defined for us and we have to break those molds. That's that's probably the hardest part. That's the hardest part.

Taylor   28:00  

Yeah, I like that. I think that's very true. Every moment we're making a choice about where to put our attention and how to use our time, how to spend our time, and our listeners are choosing to spend that time listening to us right now. I certainly appreciate that right now.

Agostino Pintus  28:18  

For sure you guys. Absolutely. I appreciate it,

Taylor   28:20  

too. Right now, we're gonna take a quick big break for our sponsor. We'll be right back. All right, obviously I got three questions. I asked every guest on the show. Are you ready? Yeah, let's roll. All right. Number one, what is the best investment you've ever made other than in your education? I'll tell you

Agostino Pintus  28:41  

this one thing that comes to mind right now it's going to seem really strange, but I made a one point I decided that I was going to reach out to one person a day on LinkedIn. I am one person that could change my life and send them an email. inviting them to invite them for a drink or something like that or lightened is actually just a coffee or some or a drink or something. Right. I met this one gentleman, he ended up he's a chairman of a big huge brokerage firm, right? big, huge brokerage company, a real estate commercial real estate. At our first meeting, he said that I told him I was doing improv and I was a C level executive at the time. I was working back in corporate at the time, right?

I was doing improv comedy, that kind of thing. He mentioned Oh, my daughter does improv comedy. I'm like, okay I made a mental note. We finished it for a better drink. I go back to the office. I immediately get on Amazon, order a book, right about to an improv, and send it to them. Hmm, it's a $20 book, a $20 book. This guy calls me up and is thankful nobody's ever done this before. This is amazing.

Thank you so much. He's going to love this yada yada yada, right? He invited me to so many other events and introduced me to so many people. This very day I still talk to him about deals and it's been like five or six years at this point, right? Still a very good friend. dollars. It's all it took that's it. Right and, and just to show gratitude for someone that could change your life 100% worth it. 100% worth it.

It's in the I mentioned the cognitive biases. reciprocity is a big one that all humans share. Like whenever you do something for somebody, they feel like they have to do something back. very, very powerful. It's very powerful. That $20 per one of the best investments ever made. Believe it or not, that's it. That's the first thing that comes to mind. Yeah,

Taylor   30:43  

nice. I like that. On the other side of that we had the best investment. Now what is the worst investment you've ever made? Oh,

Agostino Pintus  30:53  

no, something it's actually more, more expensive and money's actually time and time is. It is one of those things that unlike money you can't get back, time can always get back more money can never get back more time. There's one gentleman, I can say that I'm very good, very good character. this one gentleman however, we're putting a partnership together This is like a long time ago. this so-called partner was not a good partner. I invested a whole lot of time in this guy.

Agostino Pintus  31:31  

you know how to partner up wanted to partner up fine, okay, let's partner up, we'll do a deal together. it turns out, he would not fulfill his end of the bargain. He wouldn't kick up any money when things were needed.

He would not have said he was going to be there and he wasn't a total disaster total disaster of a person so that that one bad partnership has really helped in shaping how I vet our partners. Since then, I'm not. I'm very fortunate that I don't have any bad partners right now. I just don't know I've gotten rid of all I had that one guy, any negative any people I know that don't see me as or don't, don't are not good for me I kick them out of my life they're out of my life forever. I guess you could say the worst investment was the time spent on people that are undeserving of it.

so now I am relentless. If someone is what I deem to be just not a good person, a good person for me like a person, right partnership for my business, or to be around myself, my family Mike, my kid, they're out the door and never see you again. pack up your stuff. Get out of the fire , get out get out. My wife that's it. That's Yeah, that's that's a huge thing right there.

Taylor   32:50  

Nice. Nice. That's, that's a good one. My favorite question at the end of the show, is what is the most important lesson that you've learned in business and industry?

Agostino Pintus  33:00  

Let's see the most important lesson: diligence, diligence , decision making and diligence, decide that you're going to do something and dammit, stick to it, don't let go. That's the hardest thing to do. But it seems so easy, you know?

And it's like I said before, it's like everybody wants out with a special special potion is so what is that thing? You know? For me, I mean, I wish I could say that happened overnight, but it wasn't it took years but once I decided what was going to happen, and then I document it in my in my affirmations I write I still to this very day, write up my affirmations every day how my life is gonna look at journal every day I write I write, I reflect on what happened yesterday and what I could have done better. I mean, these are all things that I do and that has enriched my life so much.

It's like every day I wake up excited about what's going on. what's what's what's coming up next. I'm excited because I know it's something I look forward to. It's just, it's awesome. Love it nice.

Taylor   34:05  

Yeah. Nice. Well, I know that you're about to head to a webinar. we're gonna bring this to a close. If folks want to learn more about you, they want to find your podcasts, all that good stuff. Where can they find you?

Agostino Pintus  34:16  

Sure. bulletproof cash calm. That's it. That's our website. Of course. We're also on iTunes. We're on Stitcher, or on. We're on Google as well. Google Play, of course. Find us on social media. Find me on Facebook. stalk me if you wish. It's nice, too. I'm always almost a little stockage. LinkedIn, Instagram everywhere. Yeah. I would love to hear from people.

Taylor   34:39  

Nice. Well, Agostino thanks for joining us today and telling us about the process, the strategy, the lessons, those tough things that you learned going from the corporate world now to entrepreneurship, and maybe some lessons that we can extract from that too. If folks want to get into entrepreneurship.

To accelerate that for themselves, so thank you for that. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for tuning in. If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review on Apple podcast very much appreciated. If you know anyone who could use a little bit more passive wealth in their lives, please share the show with them and bring them into the fold. Thank you for joining us. Hope you have a great day and a great week and we'll talk to you on the next episode. Bye