Apartments To Jets With Javier Hinojo

Mario
 Hey guys, I am super pumped because I've got Javier and know-how on with me this morning and we're going to be going deep dive into his business and how he went from just humble beginnings to just a massive portfolio of real estate and lives, a pretty incredible lifestyle. Javier, thank you so much for being on with me today and looking forward to talking yet. 

 Mario
 We've met she's about a year ago, right? 

 Javier
 Yeah. Roughly about a year ago, but I, I, but I, I follow you on social media and things like that. Sometimes if you meet somebody like, in person and you feel like you've known her for two, three years, , 

 Mario
 A hundred percent now, Javier and I are in the same mastermind, Tim brought, says, mastermind a legacy family. We met in person, I agree, it was Hey dude, good to meet you in person. And we've crossed paths. I think in multiple industries have ears got really interesting background, but also he's built a portfolio of apartments, mobile home parks, and a bunch of other property types that I want to dive into today and make sure that we touch on because I think that's unique. You you've done a really good job at building a portfolio of multiple property types. Like for myself, I'm mostly mobile home park investing with of self storage, but it seems like you've touched a lot of things. Maybe we can start out with kind of how you got into real estate and what got you excited about it? Like what made you want to start investing in real estate? 

 Javier
 Well, I appreciate you having me on the show, Mario. This is definitely an honor. And, and I'll tell you my story, man. It's going to be pretty unique. I think it may be resonate with a lot of your listeners. I grew up, I didn't have anything. Right. I, I grew up in a trailer. I ate bologna sandwiches, 

 Mario
 Literally a mobile. 

 Javier
 Home. Mobile home. Yeah. Yep. All right. I, I bologna sandwiches, I mean, I didn't know that we didn't have money. I just, I was just a kid. Right. When I got out of high school, I want it to be mom boss. I joined the military and to making it 800 bucks a month, I'm like, man, this sucks. I realized, one day when I got married, I was, I got married when I was in military and I moved out and I got a water bill, my holy crap, his water, he got paid for water. I'm like, damn, I thought water was free. Anyways, fast forward, I've always been entrepreneur. Even when I was a young man, young kid, one of my biggest goals was never to ride the school bus to high school. Man, I worked my ass off and I bought a car my freshman year. 

 Javier
 I didn't have insurance. I didn't have a license about this, a Hyundai Elantra purple with a glitter. And, and I had to push that thing up a hill. Anyways, I did not ride the bus one day during high school. Right. That took all the pretty girls home afterwards of why they're walking home, pick them up, take them home. Right. That was definitely a perk. 

 Mario
 But. 

 Javier
 Yeah, but when I was in the military, I was always an entrepreneur. I grew up, I learned a service business with my mom and my dad, so locksmith company. So I did that. Part-time in the military. I started my business when I was in the military. That was making five times more in the military. I mean, outside the military, working half the time than what I was making in the army. I got out, I continued that business, roughly about seven years ago, a good buddy of mine invited me to one of those three day seminars or they the fortune builders, but this one was rich dad, poor dad. He took me out and I was 35 K for the program. I didn't want to do it. He said, I'm going to do it anyways. I'm like, man, you're going to get ripped off. That's what I told him. 

 Javier
 He's like, well, I'm doing it anyways. I said, all right, man, let's get ripped off together. Right. I'll put half it, he put half and just kinda our personalities together, we're alive, we're on, we're just action takers. Even before our first like eight week course, I think it was eight weeks, six weeks, 12 weeks. I don't know how long it was, but our first course, like not even halfway through it, we got a property under contract, single family. We learned it just enough to be dangerous. We started with, flipping houses and it wasn't. I went to wholesaling houses and then I jumped over to the commercial multifamily. So that's kind of my story. 

 Mario
 What's the 32 cents I've heard about. Can you maybe touch on that ? 

 Javier
 Yeah. Right around, I started in 2000, November, 2015 and in January of 2017, so I already had a few flips going, right. If you guys flipping houses and you kind of just, shoot at the hip and just going balls out, right. That just, I didn't manage my cash flow very well. So, we had a couple of projects that didn't quite close and some money didn't come in and I'm sitting there on new year's Eve and kind of feeling sorry for myself driving home. I had 32 cents in my account and I pulled up, I pull up to an ATM machine like at three in the morning. I grabbed my kids Christmas money, my three kids in the backseat. I grabbed the Christmas money and I put in the ATM so I can pay my rent, ? And that was that night. I, that was, I got really close to quitting that night. 

 Javier
 Yeah, man, it was rough. And, but just, I said, okay, I always thought to myself, the price is just too great to quit. Just one thing after another kind of, we got the ball rolling there. In 2018 I flipped like 50 homes in a year. So, from the glows, from the highest of the lowest of the highs, , 

 Mario
 So, so that's super interesting. One thing that I've observed about Javier is that he is massive action. I think for those of us in different, businesses or real estate investments, part of the problem that we can have is, we, we over-educate ourselves in the sense that it's always important to educate yourself, but we overstudy, we spend too much time researching and we don't jump into action quick enough. So, I think what I've seen, not what I think what I've seen you do is, I mean, you just said 2015, you started buying right. You started buying single family homes. That's not that long ago. That's seven years ago and you've built up a portfolio of what now. I mean, what is your portfolio. 

 Javier
 Roughly about 75 million? 

 Mario
 That's insane. So, I mean, in a few years, and, and like you said, you went from, flipping a few homes here and there to all, to buying 50 homes in one year. I think that's a secret to success that people need to be able to pay attention to or should pay attention to. That's that, starting out and learning and educating yourself, you need to number one, start dabbling. You need to start looking at real deals right away, but you got to start doing deals while you're still learning. That's how you learn the best. I mean, I think if you're stuck in a course or reading up and studying too much without actually taking action and looking at real deals and making offers, you're gonna, you're probably gonna get stuck in that analysis paralysis. I think you are a great example of that. Just take a massive action. 

 Mario
 I mean, 50 homes in a year, just briefly into it is pretty massive. So, so let me dive deeper into that 32 cents. Like what pushed you out of that? Cause I mean, I've been there, I've had rough days. I've had days where, my account hit zero early on and I had to kind of get myself out of it. What, what did you do to kind of get your head out of the funk and say, what, screw it. I'm going to do this and I'm going to push through and I'm going to build a $75 million portfolio. Cause that's complete opposites. 

 Javier
 Well, look, I've always been super hard on myself. I like, what's the saying, how do I say I, I hate losing more than I like winning. I hate losing. Like I just can't stand losing. Just this, I don't lose, I have to win, but I went on like, eh, well, whatever, I don't care. Right. I, I went and that's fine, but when I lose my name, it really p****s me off. For me it was the biggest thing was, just, my goals and my vision and not really my motivation. Cause I think motivation sucks, like motivation, motivation, just motivation. Like, but if you have a purpose, right, it's totally different, right? Like if you have motivation to go to the gym, then you're not going to have motivation one day, you're just going to stop going. But there's a purpose. It doesn't matter if you're motivated or you are motivated, you've got a purpose. 

 Javier
 You're going to go do it. Right. Yeah. So I have to have a purpose. Right. And what was my purpose? Right. I, I just wanted to build something pretty big and, just be successful. Right. Sometimes you say, I want to build it for my family and I'll be honest with you. I'm pretty selfish. So I built it for me. Right. I built it for me and in my wife and my kids get to enjoy. I'm not going to say I built it for my family. I'm not gonna, 

 Mario
 Right. 

 Javier
 The biggest thing that hit me was the price is just too great to quit. I just kept thinking about that. The price is too great to quit the prices to great, to quit. Like if I quit, what's the prize, right? What's the end game, right. It's just not worth quitting. Right. That's kind of how I got over it. Really. I just, I just pushed through it. 

 Mario
 Kind of avoiding the downside risk, avoiding the loss, avoiding the failure and just seeing the big picture, knowing that, Hey, look, if I quit right now, it's just too big of a price to pay. You're going to go back to doing what . So, so that's awesome. What kind of real estate assets have you invested in? I mean, I understand one of the largest parts of your portfolio is apartment buildings. Right. Can you maybe touch on, I know you bought single families and were you flipping or were you renting them out or what were you doing? 

 Javier
 Yes, I was mainly flipping houses and then first flipping houses and then were wholesaling. So we did a combination of both. 

 Mario
 Got it. So very transactional trading. So. 

 Javier
 We fixed and flipped about 50 in a year within a 12 month period. We wholesaled, I don't know, like 80, it was insane. So. 

 Mario
 50 flips in a year. That's a lot of work. 

 Javier
 I have a hat on, but you'll see all my gray hair. I tell people that I'm, I'm 23 years old, but I look like I'm 43 because I used to flip houses. 

 Mario
 You and me both. How did you go from the transition? How did you go from the transition from single family homes to wanting to buy commercial assets? Then, like I said, what kind of commercial assets have you? 

 Javier
 I joined the mastermind, probably one of the best masterminds ever been in called collective genius. I went out there because I was flipping 50 properties a year and I wanted to go to a two. Right. I'm like, I want to scale, so I took my wife and went out there and I want to say was September, it was September of 2019. Right. Which is, maybe over two years ago. I'm sitting there, all these guys, some guy sitting next to one of the main guys from new Western, right. These guys do like 20,000 wholesales a year or something like that. Something outrageous like that. We've got some other guys that became really good friends of mine that live in Charlotte, which is, I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, about two and a half hours away. They were flipping like 250 properties a year. Some guys in Alabama doing 400. 

 Javier
 I'm like, I'm seeing these guys businesses where they scaled and the way they had the process and the systems and the team I'm seeing like, holy crap, I gotta start from scratch. Like really? I got great people working for me, but that's not going to be the team that's gonna take me from here to here, like from, really to the next level. I got to go back and I got to built a new team. As I'm sitting there, another friend of mine gets up there and he starts reading this book called Mikey and the dragons. And we can talk about that later. He read this book and I'm like, okay, great. You just hit me in, in it just hit me. What I told my wife the next day, we're not doing single family. We're, we're quitting, we're buying apartments. I didn't know how my apartment. 

 Javier
 And like, she's like what? She's like, all she asked me was all she told me, it was like, Hey, how much time do you need? Right. That's what she asked me, like a dumb ass. I didn't know any better. I said, give me two years. Like, I didn't know if I would've known what to say, give me 10 years. I said two years, which to my own, I don't know, be naive right. In a way, it was good because I pushed myself to get everything done within two years basically. But yeah, that's the way we started. We, I quit single family that one day I went back after the mastermind, I pretty much told everybody I let most of my staff go and sold our properties. I'm going to buy my first. No, not just that, but it was late September. I said, I'm going to buy my first apartment building by the end of the year. 

 Javier
 I mean, how long it takes to buy an apartment building like four months. Right. Sure enough, we bought our first one in December. So it kind of worked out. Right. 

 Mario
 That's, and that's what I'm talking about. You are definitely a massive action kind of guy. I think it's hilarious that you actually went to collective genius to learn how to scale your single family business came back and said, forget that let's go buy apartment buildings and came back with a whole different plan. And I think you're right. Sometimes not knowing what it takes from an effort standpoint is good because you set these aggressive goals. You're like, shoot, I'm going to do this within, a year or two years, whatever, not realizing the amount of effort and work that's going to have to go into it. You set short timelines for your first deal and you actually accomplish it because it was all up here. Right? I mean, you had the expectations of where you wanted to go and you're just going to do whatever it took to get there. 

 Mario
 And that's. 

 Javier
 For sure. 

 Mario
 That's huge. Let's talk a little bit about Brenda. I got a chance to meet Brenda in believe it was Austin and she was in one of the round tables, or maybe it was Orlando. One of the, one of the events and a super sharp lady. I can tell that you guys are a total power team and a total power couple. Maybe you can just kind of talk about how that worked. I mean, when you came home and said, Hey, drop everything, honey, we're making a ton of money right now. I know we're doing really well, but we're going to change completely. How, how does that dynamic work? Like how did she respond to it? I know you said that she asked how much time you need, but yeah. I mean, 

 Javier
 Yeah. I actually took her with me to that mastermind. That was her first mastermind she ever been to. So went together. One thing about my wife will be married 25 years here in the next six, seven months and be 25 years. We got married on her 18th birthday. So birthday, it was a birthday. We got married and it was a super bowl. All three in one. 

 Mario
 Legal, right? 

 Javier
 Yeah. All I gotta say is that even watch any of the Superbowl, that's out first, all in my life that I didn't watch. I believe it anyways, but we've been married almost 25 years and out of everybody, she knows me the most. I told her were going to stop flipping houses and buy apartment buildings, she's always been my number one, supporter, everything that I've done and I've done a lot of stuff. And some have worked, some have not. She's always been supportive, which I could not have done it without her, definitely could not. She just asked me for her, it's all about security and her love languages, like time. Right. She, she loves time. For me, that's one of the first things she asked was how much time do you need. 

 Mario
 When. 

 Javier
 You're tiny? And I told her two years. Right. Like most commercial purchases, you always asked for an extension. I had two years plus an extension. 

 Mario
 Option. 

 Javier
 Can I get extended in three months? And she was like, okay, anyways, 

 Mario
 That's awesome. Understanding and supportive, which I think is super important in a spouse. I mean, I think people downplay the importance of their team, but especially their spouse, people, work so hard at building a team of people. I know for me before I was married, I, I understood the importance of having a good team working with me or for me in my companies. Thank God I met the right woman as well. I, people underestimate how crucial that spouse is to your, to you and your business and your success. If they're not in line with what you're doing and they're not supportive, it can make a break. Yeah. So. 

 Javier
 Yeah, for sure. It's, it's hard enough, right? It's a lot harder if things are not while at home, if these are not good at home, it's going to be, you used to be miserable, right. It's gonna. 

 Mario
 Be, you're not. 

 Javier
 Ready, you know, already. Right. When you're working hard, and you're starting from nothing. You just can't work from nine to five. Right. They turn off your phone and not work weekends. Right? Like you just can't do that. I have never met anybody who started with nothing. They had only worked 35, 40 hours a week and succeeded. Right. I want to meet him someday. 

 Mario
 A hundred percent, 

 Javier
 You know, but you gotta grind. You gotta work. You, because you gotta want it. You gotta be hungry. You gotta work really hard. Right. So sometimes you're doing it. You can say, Hey, I'm doing it for my family, but you hurt your family. Cause you're not there. You're, you're not present. You're not at the moment they're talking to you. You're thinking about other stuff everybody's laughing. And you're like, what did everybody say? Right. I mean, I don't know that happened to me. I mean, I'm sure it happens. It happens to you guys, but definitely happened to me where I'm like physically present, but not mentally there. 

 Mario
 All the time. 

 Javier
 And yeah. Like my, my, I have a 21 year old, 20 year old and all through high school, like the only time I ever went to his high school was when he got in trouble. I senior year. Right. I was the only time. Right. And I'm not proud of that. It just, yeah. I pretty much ignored, my kids, my wife for a long time, three or four years, because I was building this business. It does take a toll if you don't have somebody supportive at home or we would definitely not be together anymore. Right. It's definitely a challenge, but it can be done. Right. If you structure it the right way, you definitely can do it. There's a lot of stuff I wish you would have done. Right. I w I wish I would have not tried to do everything myself. That was the biggest thing. 

 Javier
 I try to do everything myself. There's a, there's coaching out there. There's mentors. You can partner with people and kinda relieves some of that workload. I would have done that different for sure. 

 Mario
 Yeah. I love, excuse me. I love the transparency. You've got a podcast out too called the naked truth. And, and what I love about it is that you are real, you're transparent. There's a lot of people out there right now talking about, you can build a business, with a few hours a week, you can do it kind of conveniently from the beach type vibe. And I, I agree. I don't know anybody who started from nothing. Okay. There might've been somebody who already had, came into money or something like that didn't have to put in quite the work, 

 Javier
 No connections, no money, no credit. Like, if you got connections and you're good, you're starting with something. 

 Mario
 Right. If I don't know anybody else, either who started out from nothing and built a successful portfolio or successful business without just seriously grinding it out and putting the work in, and it's an investment and you're right, you, you only have so many times, so many hours in a day. If you're going to build a business successfully, you have to make an investment and you have to, something's got to give. A lot of times that is your family. That is your friends. That is your relationship and your energy and your focus. I mean, like you said, you can be sitting there in a conversation, but mentally be working on that deal. You know what I mean? You're, you're thinking through your next steps on that deal. Well, your family or your friends are talking to you. So I, I totally agree with that. And people underestimate what it takes. 

 Mario
 Being an entrepreneur is something I think anybody can do, but not everybody should. And, and it's because they're not necessarily prepared or they don't want to make that investment. If they're not willing to make that investment there, they're not going to be successful. Let's talk just real quick. What property types have you invest? I know you own apartments, mobile home park, right? 

 Javier
 Yup. I started with apartments just because I didn't, again, I didn't know anything, right. Anything about retail or warehouse, but I'm glad I started with apartments is pretty sexy right now. It does help you scale a lot quicker because you can go out there and buy a $20 million apartment building. It's really hard to go out there and buy a $20 million mobile home park right there, out there, but it's pretty challenging, right. Or a $20 million warehouse. It just super challenging to get those they're out there, but there's a lot more like multifamily style apartments and things like that out there. So I started with apartments. I bought a mobile home park and I have some warehouse. I don't have any self storage, not yet, but, and, and retail, I don't have any retail, but self storage, retail. We've got a whole bunch of stuff that we're working on. 

 Javier
 Definitely want to buy the different asset classes and houses. Of course. 

 Mario
 Yeah. You're, and so right there in a few years, you're already into three asset classes. I, for me, I invest in mobile home parks and of self storage, and I know what it takes to learn new property types. It's not easy. One thing that you kind of subtly dropped, but you mentioned partnerships and how have you, and how do you, if you do, how do you utilize partnerships in doing deals today? 

 Javier
 All right, perfect. I'm glad he asked that question because people ask all the time and I'm going to partner with somebody and be like, we're going 50. Okay, great. But do a deal by deal basis. Right? Like you don't know what you don't know. Right. Let's partner up the first deal, let's go 50. Let's just say, make it super simple. Right. Once you're done with that, or you're working on it, and then you talk about your second deal, like, I'll be like, Hey, Mario, you'd be like, Hey, Javier, I worked a lot more, and I, I feel like I need 70% keep 30% and I'd be like, hell no, man. We split ways, whatever it happens or I'll be like, what? Yeah, you're right. All I did was raised money and that was it. I did work for two weeks and I was done and you're doing all the asset management and we're splitting it 50 yet. 

 Javier
 It's probably not fair. So, et cetera. Right. You've gotta really have this communication, whoever you're going to partner with. Not just that, but hopefully you're partnering with somebody who has experience, right? Don't partner with somebody who has your same strengths. If you're good at finding deals, find a partner that can raise money. Right. Love it. Hopefully you guys can sign a loan together, right? Maybe you have a third person that can sign loans for you, but somebody gets really good at raising capital. Somebody who's really good at finding deals. None of the person that's really good at possibly signing loans, right. You still got to do the asset management and all that, but you just kind of have to really figure out who you partner with and how you're going to do your, your splits. Like for me, right. I'm going to buy some retail. 

 Javier
 Right. I already have my partner that I'm going to pick for retail and I'm going to bring the projects. I'm good at finding projects and DocuSign alone. I can help raise some money. He'll do the asset management and help raise some capital. In that say like, in whatever splits we get, I'm happy with mine because I don't know that asset of retail. I don't know. I'm not gonna, I don't want to do the asset management. I don't want to learn, but they have a portfolio. They do it and I get a piece of it. Right. It's for me, that's a lot easier. If not, I'm going to be stuck against 60 hours, 70, 80 hours a week, trying to learn a new asset and trying to do it myself. And I don't want to do that. Right. I'd rather get a small piece, and some that I do on my own, like if I buy stuff on my own with no partners, that's where I get my big chunk. 

 Javier
 That's where I get a lot of my cashflow, but I still buy other things with other partners just to grow my portfolio and just, grow my experience and just be part of a other projects. 

 Mario
 Yeah. I think that's the best way to get into new property types too, is exactly what you're saying. If it takes you a year to really learn a property type or even six months to study up, I mean, if you own apartments, it's not that difficult to learn self storage or mobile home parks. They're fairly similar. You go from apartments to retail or office or industrial, totally different ballgame. I mean, there's still commercial real estate, but it's a big learning curve. If you can team up with people who know that property type really well already have a portfolio understand what works and what doesn't, and then you can do what you're good at, which is sourcing good off market deals or are good deals. Bring those to the table, bring capital, bring, like you said, your balance sheet, things like that, and then utilize other people's skillset. 

 Mario
 You can scale much faster by doing that. I, one thing that's also super crucial that you touched on is that you find people who have different skill sets than you. If you're good at raising capital, go get somebody who's really good at operations. You know what I mean? Or if you're really good at sourcing deals, get the operations guy, or if you're, get people who are good at different things. I think that a lot of people jump into business partnerships just because they like the person I may like you, but if you were not complimenting our skills, the other person's skill sets very well. We're going to be stepping on each other's toes very quickly. And that's a good recipe for failure. You're going to have that deal go south because you're constantly stepping on each other's toes. You also pointed something out to you guys, figure out who plays, what roles going in. 

 Mario
 You don't go in and say, Hey, I'm going to go learn retail. I'm going to have so-and-so come in and partner with me. I'm going to sit there with him and do all the asset management with them. No, you're letting him handle that. You can go out and do what you're good at. I think that's a huge nugget right there, 

 Javier
 Especially in a new asset. Right? Maybe we buy two or three properties. W as you bond, you learn part of the asset management. When you get into calls, these like that. Am I saying, yeah, I don't want nothing to do with this. Right. I just keep doing it that way. Right. At some point, if say, what, I definitely want to bring this in house, ? At some point you grow big enough. You can start doing it on your own. Maybe you don't need that partner anymore. Partners, some are lifelong partners, some are just temporary. Right. You got to make sure that everybody knows that, like, somebody can partner until if one plus one equals four. That's great. As soon as one plus one equals two, like, then you don't really need each other anymore. Right. You got to have that discussion at the very beginning. 

 Javier
 I said, okay, great. What are we doing? After like a year out the teaser, we'll re reevaluate. That's why I like to do it more project by project in a way. Not just that, but if you actually have a partner that you actually partner with and you're doing everything together, make sure you guys have conversations every six months. Right? Like you still love me. Do I still love you? Right. Basically kind of conversation. I'll be like, I'll be like, Mario, what do you see my role in the company? Right? What do you see my role? Are you telling me what your, what you think my role is? I'd be like, mark, this is what I think my role is. We might hit, we won't be, we might be correcting a couple, but you'll really realize how far off will be. Like, you'll be like heavy. 

 Javier
 I think you do the construction management. Like, and after you're done, I'm like, man, I hate construction management. Like, I didn't know that, so then we just outsourced that. Right. We don't. Okay. Did we bring another partner in, what did we all source it? Right. Okay. Let's all source that. Right. Et cetera. Right. You got to have the conversation and then the same thing, right? I tell you what I think you should be doing. You tell me what you should be doing, right. W what you want to do. You kind of adjust and you always going to be adjusting every six months. Every year, you got to have this conversation. So you can adjust. If not people are going to be unhappy. 

 Mario
 I love that because as you grow in scale, both in your portfolio, but also in your partnership, things change, right? I mean, you get more advanced in certain areas. You figure out what you're better at over time. What you were doing in the beginning might not be what you're best at. Pivoting and making sure that your communication is really strong. I super good advice. 

 Javier
 Especially if you start out in a venture where, you've never done before, like, you don't really know what you going to be good at and think, man, what, I really enjoy the asset management side. And I hate the deal finding side. Right. Or whatever it is. Right. You know, people change. 

 Mario
 What's your superpower, Javier. 

 Javier
 I like finding good projects for sure. 

 Mario
 Deal, deal junkie right there. I'm. 

 Javier
 Good at finding good projects. Right. I'm pretty decent at raising capital. I have a team, so we do some asset management on some of the projects that we buy, but like anything that has to do with operations, I don't want touch, like, you want to see me in a bad mood, give me a spreadsheet. Like yeah. You know, no, 

 Mario
 I'm the same way. I like finding deals. I liked negotiating deals. I enjoy raising capital. I enjoy managing those relationships. When it comes to, I, I like hunting and killing. I just don't like preparing and cooking. 

 Javier
 Yeah. I like hunting it. Right. And then like eating it. 

 Mario
 A hundred percent, everything. 

 Javier
 In the middle. Like I don't want to do like, okay, I find a deal. You guys deal with a bank. Just tell me where to sign and tell me what the meetings are. Right. 

 Mario
 I've got a good, I've got a funny kind of comment or joke that I throw out my company. It's I find the problems and you guys solve them. I'll assign the problems. I'll take them down. You gotta figure out how to actually solve it. Act fact. Firstly, we're involved in the due diligence together, but yeah, a hundred percent of the same way. So, so let's talk about the power of masterminds. I want to make sure that we keep this super tuned into commercial real estate businesses, but maybe a couple of reasons why you've got, why you've grown so much from masterminds. I mean, a lot of people hear about masterminds and I struggled with the concept of spending tens of thousands of dollars to be in a room with people that are doing what I'm doing and to network with them for a couple of days. 

 Mario
 What's kind of the value in that. What have you pulled out of that's allowed, that's allowed you to scale and grow your portfolio faster? Okay. 

 Javier
 One of the biggest things that I attribute to my success is definitely masterminds because just the connections that you make. Right. I was in a stable and paying 35 K for this 25 K for that. You're like, man, it's like, there's 60 K for the year. Right. Like, we're, it's a big, it's a big number, 

 Mario
 Right? 

 Javier
 Yeah. It's a big number. You're like, okay, we're meeting a few times a year, et cetera. Once you get in these rooms, right. You start connecting. Right. You and I connected and you're going to come speak at my mastermind, which is kind of cool. Right. So you just get those connections. I mean, I'm on your podcast, maybe you get a project to come in. Like, what, there's a mobile home park who does Mo O'Mara does mobile home park. Like, okay, here, let, maybe we'll pass a deal to him. Right. I've got money flow. I've got deal flow from masterminds. Right. Where I spend 30 K on a mastermind and I made two, 3 million bucks. Right. Just because of the connections. Right. We bought like, give me an example, the same one, that same mastermind we're at, in April. There's a couple of guys who had a deal in Atlanta and they brought it to me and to my partner moon. 

 Javier
 Cause it needed to close like in a week. Right. They needed help, with a couple of things like, Hey, great. We jumped on it and we closed on it. Right. Yeah. We were all, yeah, I know we bought an apartment building in the week. I should do, I should do a podcast on that. Okay. And I was pretty cool. Anyways, we're all in for like four and a half million bucks. And that was a year ago. Last we closed it in April, late April, early may. Right now we have it for sale that we just got a contract on it for 7.5 million. Right. Went in at 4.4 point, we're all in for 4.5. We're making 3 million bucks in a year right now. I own the whole project. Right. I own, I think I was 20% of the deal. So whatever that is, right. 

 Javier
 I mean, I'll make five, 600 K on this project. If say the night, the price, I don't care. I'll make two, 300 K that money that I'm gonna make within one year. I probably spent a total of about 40 hours on this whole deal the whole year. Wow. Combined. Right. So do that ROI per hour. Right. And how did that come by? Being an April, being in the mastermind where you were hanging out, and connecting with these guys who had this deal and I'm like, okay, let's jump on it. And we just move pretty fast anyways. Being part of a mastermind, you get deal flow. You get connections. If you look at possibly, for a partner or something like that's a great place to start because everybody's going, same direction, right. Nobody really needs their handheld. Right. If you're at a mastermind. For me, I give, I joined a every year I'm part of a mastermind to at least two every single year, just because the connections are the best. 

 Mario
 Connections are huge. One thing that I've realized is that the masterminds, excuse me, masterminds are a great way to weed out people who aren't serious. It really, what it does is it gets high performers. People who are willing to make that investment, it weeds out people who aren't. I mean that the cost really clears the room and you get people who are serious about building good relationships. I mean, I'm not dropping tens of thousands of dollars to show up and just sit around and be sitting along the wall, watching people I'm going to spend that two days building relationships strong, and I'm going to invest a lot of effort into those relationships I built because I've got my cash behind it. I've invested into it. What are you looking for in D in a deal, Javier? I mean, is it purely returned based? Like what are you looking at in general? 

 Javier
 Yeah, it just depends on kind of project. If somebody brings a project for like, say an apartment building, we just look for a return, right? If we do a traditional syndication, which 70% goes to investors and 30% goes to the partners, depending on like cashflow and asset, pretty asset, we do something like that. Right. As long as they get there, 16 to 20% total return per year between, everything, parts of the project, that works out for me, I've done projects where it's 80% general partners and 20% limited partners. Right. Like totally opposite. Those have worked out great. Those will work out great because those were buying like at 40, 50 cents on a dollar. Right. It just depends on the asset type, but I'll buy an asset. That's distressed. They won't cashflow for a year. It has a huge upside. I gotta be in like 50, 60 cents on a dollar. 

 Javier
 I want to be able to make a lot of money and I'll buy up an asset. That's cashflow in, in a nice market. That'll cashflow from day one or within a couple of months, more of a stable of assets. I I'll buy of a boat with what I really like. I'll go to my favorite asset class has been so far. I only have two, but it's the warehouse. I really liked the warehouse. It just so much easier. She's like one tenant, or two or three tenants, the apartment, but you've got to cycle them two or three, four a month, 

 Mario
 Two apartments. 

 Javier
 You'll have three leases in the next seven years. Right. So it's kind of cool. Triple net lease, getting into that world is a different world, right? It's just not sexy. You tell everybody, Hey, let's go buy a multifamily is sexy. Hey, let's go buy industrial. Like nobody cares. 

 Mario
 It's kind of like mobile home parks. Nobody cares. 

 Javier
 Nobody cares about, well, parties make a lot of money to. 

 Mario
 Yeah. Super gritty, super gritty. Industrial is the same way. I like industrial. I don't own any right now, but you don't let, so let's talk about that . You're looking at, oh, you're going from apartments to industrial, what's gimme two to three things that you think are the hardest. I don't want to say hardest, but biggest differentiator between the two property types. I mean, there's obviously some underwriting differences, but what, what would you say is probably the biggest difference? 

 Javier
 I would say, I remember when I was doing some underwriting and talking to some folks about the, have like millions of square feet of industrial and warehouse space, flex space. The first thing they ever told me was planned for vacancy. Like, okay, kind, didn't hit me, but that your property could be vacant for a year. I'm like, holy s**t. A year. I'm like, damn, okay. Yeah. Like plan for vacancy, right? If you have this $3 million property and we're a $5 million property and your payment's 30 grand or 40 grand a month, right. It can stay vacant for a year. I'm like, that's half a million bucks. Like, I'm not super smart, but like that's about a half, a million dollars. Like, that was the biggest thing, right? Like just plan for vacancy, just in case the worst happens. You have enough cash to pay for that. 

 Javier
 Once you move somebody in the biggest thing is trying to do triple net lease. Right. You can get a big, nice tenant in there and get a triple net lease. All you really got to check is make sure your money's in the bank every first of the month. Right? Yeah. That's kind of one of the biggest things, right? The, the vacancy or how you can structure your projects. Sometimes you also gotta think about, you got a new tenant. They might need improvements, right. It's called TIAA tenant improvements. Right. You could spend half a million bucks. You could spend a million bucks. You could spend more than that. That comes in your banking relationships saying, Hey, look, I've got this tenant coming in. I got a Starbucks and a put lay and all this stuff, and I need $3 million to, I'll fit this. Trust me, the bank will give you the money. 

 Javier
 Okay. Right. The bank they'll be like, Hey, we'll give you all 3 million or all the work something out. Right. Or you'd give the tenant, like, I don't know, a year rent for free. And they do the on improvement. There's so much stuff you can really work on this commercial, but on these industrial. You got to look at the ceiling Heights, like turning radius in the parking lot. Can you pull up to a dock? Is it, or not, it just, little things like that really make the separation inside the, what do you call the pillars? I forget what they called inside. How many feet in between just certain things like that were you got to really take into account because it's really gonna affect what kind of tenant you can move in there. 

 Mario
 On the apartment side, you're worried about how many beds and baths. 

 Javier
 Correct. 

 Mario
 How many supporting posts you've gotten. 

 Javier
 Yeah. Let me tell you what the best part is. Right. What I like about like flex space or even retail, but I'll just, I'll say retail. Yeah. There'll be easier for everybody to understand. If you have this shopping center with five, five, retail, five different units. Right. You have like a, local nail place, maybe a local Chinese place. Maybe you got somebody who does, maybe you have a local barbershop and just a mom and pop. Right. It's a good location and all of a sudden, right. You're getting 10 grand a month in rent. Right. You probably gonna get more, but just say till you're getting 10 grand from all of them, 10,000 a month in rent, okay. If all you do is you move that Chinese restaurant, you put Lee in, right. You move that barber shop out. You put a great clips in you put a Starbucks in the corner, you could be getting $8,000 a month in rent and your property value went up like 50%. 

 Javier
 Like it's crazy. Like you get less money, but your proper value almost went up 50% or double just because of the tenants that you have. 

 Mario
 Higher quality tenant base. 

 Javier
 In place. Right. There's a lot of cool little things about retail and warehouse. Like if you put in a Sherman Williams, right. In your warehouse or a flex space, right. Or some kind of franchise, and it just helps your, the V the cap rate goes down, right. If you could be at an eight cap and it just goes to a four and a half, right. Which is a big deal, like a big deal. 

 Mario
 Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely a D a big difference. What you're talking about too, is you're dealing with commercial tenants versus you're doing business to business versus business to consumer. I know, like in the mobile home park space, our residential tenants are fairly high touch, just like apartments. Your, your management is much more hands-on involved. There's more turnover. There's are, when you get into the, especially with the credit tenants, like what you're talking about with the Chipotle is the Sherwin-Williams things like that. Those tendons are solid. They don't, especially if you're doing a triple net, they're handling all. And, and just to clarify for those who aren't familiar triple net is where the tenant is essentially paying all costs, including taxes and insurance. They're, they're maintaining everything. There's different levels of net leases, but triple net is kind of the gold standard because it's, hands-off, you don't touch it. 

 Mario
 You don't, you don't do anything with it. They maintain the building. They maintain, like I said, even property taxes and insurance in the apartment space, we're so used to like gross leases, right. Where they give us $1 amount, and then we have to manage all the expenses from there. Maybe carve out some utility bills and things like that. Generally speaking apartments, or, other pro residential property types are going to be a gross lease. You're talking net, net leases, which is pretty cool. That's where you can get that much more passive income. 

 Javier
 Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It's just a different animal and it has to fit your personality. Right. I've just saw your listeners. Right. There's a lot of shiny objects out there. I was talking to somebody and somebody said, Hey, put your eggs, all your eggs in one basket and watch them closely. Right. One asset class. Right. I was talking to somebody else just as successful and said, Hey, put your egg in plenty of baskets, but watch them all closely. Right. Where they do, they have multiple asset classes. Right. They got businesses, franchises, retail. I mean, they have like, I mean, big, like, it was definitely diverse. Like it was very diversified portfolio from business to real estate. Okay. They're like, yeah, put your eggs in a lot of baskets, but watch them all closely. What's what's, what works, it really depends on your personality. Really. 

 Mario
 If you've got the, if you're add ADHD and you can kind of manage that and handle all these different businesses or property types, or if you're very focused and you need to just do something really well, I've kind of been the, the get really good at one thing, master it, and then add on something else. And then slowly add on. I'm not good with managing a bunch of different things at once. One thing that I think is important is that you had mentioned that you're getting into retail, industrial other property types, but you've got partners that have a lot of experience in it. So, just like in business, you need that integrator. You need that COO person to run the operations of the business. You mentioned you're not an operations guy, me either. If you can find that right, operations person or asset manager for commercial real estate purposes, then you can scale into, or you can pivot into other property types because you've got that ops person. 

 Mario
 You've got that asset manager that can manage the day to day taking on too many things at once. Without having somebody with an expertise in that area can definitely be overwhelming. You can overall be unsuccessful at all of them because you're spread too thin. Some super good nuggets there have here. What's what's what got you into owning a plane. I know we're kind of jumping around here from real estate to jets, but you now own a jet. What, what got you into that? And what's the benefit of that. 

 Javier
 All right. Let's, there's a lot of planes out there, right? So it's a jet, right. With a jet engines and it can fly to Europe, right. So it's a big boy. It can fit 12 people in there. A few years ago, four or five years ago, I was talking to a good friend of mine. And, we're talking about, you can flip anything, a watch, some shoes, and he's a pilot. He's like, am I asking, do people flip planes? Like, Hey man, all the time, people flip planes. Right? Look, if you ever find a really good deal on a plane, let me know that, all right. Last four years, he sent me like two, right? This is the second one he sends me. Long story short, I bought it because it was such a good deal. And if not, we'll never bought it. Right. So I got a really good deal. 

 Javier
 I got like 50 cents on a dollar cheese. They got it. They had to close super quick, like in three weeks, and which is pretty fast, two or three weeks we closed. And so we bought it. Right. It's been a very, definitely been an experience. It's not, it's not a, it's a very costly asset, I guess you'd call it an asset. Yeah. If you manage it right, you can make some money with it. But I like the depreciation. You can take a hundred percent depreciation in the first year. So that was pretty cool. Once we've had for about a year, and once we did our, we're doing to finish up our numbers and we're like nets 100 K like a hundred, 150 K so far right now. So I'm pretty happy. We didn't lose money. And, but we, and we put like a million dollars in it, right. 

 Javier
 Between, between fuel insurance and just all costs. We put them about a million dollars the last 12 months. And, we're pretty much like positive plus my depreciation. I got an offer somebody to wants to buy for like, almost twice as much that I paid for it. Most likely we will sell it here in the next couple of months. We'll buy a nicer one, like a bigger one. 

 Mario
 Isn't that how it always goes next next you got, 

 Javier
 We'll buy a nicer one. I'll take my initial money that I invested, get all back, which is going to be awesome. I'll still have double that and I'll put in another one and then we'll have like a, it will probably buy something like around 5 million, $6 million. That would give me a five or $6 million tax deduction. The very first sheet, Not just that. Right. One of the cool things that I use is, and that one will keep, for four or five years. We can use the depreciation so we don't lose it. We don't have to repay it. So it will be a newer plane. There'll be a finance deal and we'll be about a cash. One of the biggest things is that I have some people who invest in my properties, in my deals that aren't real estate professionals. They can't take the depreciation and offset it on their other income. 

 Javier
 Right. I can work something pretty creative, where they can be part of my company and my plane ride. I can help out on the depreciation. Right. I can say, Hey, for a hundred K you get 500 candy appreciation, right? Something like that. I can, for investing in my company, you get a 500,000 or a million, whatever the number is. Right. And it works out. They get a piece of real estate. They don't really own the plane, but they can get the appreciation for bringing something to the, to the company. And it works out. Right. We can, I can be super creative. 

 Mario
 You're, you're playing the wealthy game that a lot of people don't know exists. A lot of times we see people with jets or cars or, pretty awesome lifestyles and what a lot of people don't understand is that there's financial gain in that. You know what I mean? Like you're thinking about this, I asked Javier about his jet, right. You would expect him to come out and start talking about how awesome it is to fly around the world and be able to, have the luxury of being able to jump to a meeting on a, on a second notice and not have to go through lines and all the luxury side of it. Right. And that's all awesome. I'm sure it's great to enjoy that. Have you noticed that all he's talked about is the business aspect of it and the financial gains aspect of it, because he's thinking differently, people who have these assets understand that there's some serious financial benefit to it and they work that. 

 Mario
 The benefit of having it is just icing on the cake. I mean, you're, you get the luxury of, of enjoying the toy, but at the same time you made money owning that asset, and you're going to make a lot of money when you sell that asset because you bought it, right. You didn't just, it wasn't a stupid purchase. It was a smart financial investment that is fun to own. I think that's so good that listeners get to hear that because sometimes people just totally miss that. They're like, I need to go live this lavish lifestyle, blow all this money on these toys because they, and they don't understand how to do it to where you can actually make money. And, you know, you mentioned cars watches. I mean, I know you're a car guy, so am I, and my most recent toy car, I'm gonna make a ton of money on it. 

 Mario
 I'm gonna make probably 35, 40% on that. I get to enjoy it for a year. Actually we, I don't know if but Javier owns Aston Martin, which I do too. We're both British car fan currently, but it's the same thing, making smart investments into fund assets. And so. 

 Javier
 Sure. Yeah. My wife's like, I want a Ferrari I'm okay. We're looking for a Ferrari for her like $300,000, right. Because, oh my gosh. A lot of money. Yeah, sure. It is. We buy it at this, the right price when we sell it in a year and a half, maybe 360, 3 80, right? Yeah. You kind of drive a car for free or you make money. There's a lot of ways to do. I mean, if you just got, and is just sitting there in the bank and you don't care about this stuff, well then that's no problem. Right. I'm still a business guy and I like to get, I like deals. Right. I love to get a good deal. I like to make money, especially if I'm spending a lot of money, 

 Mario
 You're dropping them. If you're dropping millions, it better be a good deal. And it better be fun. 

 Javier
 Yeah. For sure. So yeah, you can definitely do it. People say don't buy a Ferrari, buy a house. Yeah, sure. I mean, I say buy a Ferrari, if you can afford it. You know why? Because locally here there's a Ferrari club, right. There's a Lamborghini club, the guy that owns the Ubisoft. Right. And all these other, there's a lot of tech companies here at fortnight. One of the owners of that is part of that, Lamborghini club. You've got, if you've got a Lamborghini, guess what? You spend 150 Canon Lamborghini guests while you hang out with him. Right. He's a billionaire, what I mean? It just gets you other different. 

 Mario
 Gets you in the door to different groups of people. I mean, I love the car groups that I'm involved in. Great guys, we all come together with word car enthusiasts. It's not about flash. It's about fun. We really enjoy the cars that we drive and it's a great way to build a relationship. So, yeah. 

 Javier
 Yeah. What, the biggest thing about it is all these guys are just like you and I like everybody listening to this podcast, they're all, we're all the same. The only thing, different guys, the only thing different that I see is who they hang around with, what circles they're around. That's it. I see, I see all kinds of stuff happening like at these Carmine's right. Somebody has an idea or somebody needs this. Somebody has that. There's people doing business together because you kind of, you get to connect and you build that relationship, right. Not just about connections, but you build those relationships and then throughout time you might do some business together. So. 

 Mario
 Yeah. Real quick, I want to make sure we touch on this billion dollar boardroom. This is a have years mastermind, which he has graciously invited me to speak at coming up in Vegas next month, which I'm super pumped to be at. Have you done that at a car location or something like that? I thought I saw some pictures where you got together and like a, is it a car museum or what was. 

 Javier
 The for sure. For you guys listening to the podcast, just go on social media, you can follow me or just go to my website, have Yeti knowhow.com and I'm on social media links are there, but yeah, that's actually my office. 

 Mario
 Are you serious? 

 Javier
 Yeah. It's so it's we got a private bar. Previs chef is beautiful and we got like planes hanging in the ceiling. Everything's custom made. There's there's I dunno. There's beautiful cards in the showroom. We got conference rooms. My office is I have an office in there. I have a two car garage and I can have meetups there. Right. Sometimes I, I, that's why I have my local meetups and I've held, I've hosted the mastermind there as well for two, three days. And it's pretty cool. It's nice when I go to my office, I just walked by. For me, like after I read Lambo and rolls, Royce has seen Bentley. Like it's just normal for me. Now. I remember when I first used to walk in and I used to be like, oh my gosh, they get all these cars now. It's just, it's just a part of life. 

 Javier
 Right. So. 

 Mario
 I thought that was a car. 

 Javier
 That was just, it's a car club, but it also have a, it's like a members only, and you can have an office there and things like that. So pretty cool. 

 Mario
 Yeah. I definitely want to check that out sometime. That's a, it looks like a pretty cool setup. So let's wrap up here. I, you've given a ton of good nuggets that I think people can take and run with, but most importantly, how do people get ahold of you? You kind of mentioned a couple of places, but what's the best place they can get in contact with you to maybe do a deal or to check out your mastermind or maybe invest with you or partner with you. 

 Javier
 Sure. My website, Javier know-how dot com. I have all the links in there. Right? I got some like free calculators, free tools. I don't sell any coaching. I don't do coaching. I have a mastermind, but anything you need, follow me on social media. I've got YouTube channel. Just everything get ahold of me, my contact information, everything is there. 

 Mario
 So, what I love about you, Javier, you're super approachable, super down to earth, very transparent and easy to work with and talk to. I hope people will spend a few minutes and at least shoot you a message and let you know how awesome of a show this was. Hopefully they'll find some ways to do deals with you because super high integrity, high transparency kind of guy so loved having you on the show. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to doing some deals together, doing some business together. We've got some big things ahead. So again, thank you Javier. Hopefully you guys all enjoyed this show. 

 Javier
 That's for having Mario. Appreciate it. 

 Mario
 Cool. 

 Javier
 Awesome, man.