83 Agostino Pintus

[00:00:00] Kristen: Welcome to this edition of insider secrets, the weekly podcast that turns real estate investing goals into reality. Each show we interview guests who are seasoned real estate professionals, actively closing and managing real estate deals. Mike is the founder of my core intentions and would like to help you make your real estate investing dreams a reality.

[00:00:22] Mike coaches you to buy investment real estate, creating short-term cashflow and long-term wealth, your host and real estate coach. Mike Morawski has more than 30 years of real estate investing and property management experience. Here’s your host, Mike.

[00:00:39] Mike Morawski: Hey everybody, good afternoon and welcome back. It’s Mike, your host of Insider Secrets brought to you by My Core Intentions. I know every week I ask what’re your intentions and I hope that you’re thinking about it today. One thing that I want to talk about that I think is really important. I had this conversation before the show today with my guest and the conversation we had was coaching and who are you working with? Who are you following? Who’s helping keep you educated? Is that person in the trenches with you? Are they somebody who’s actually physically doing deals, doing multifamily deals?

[00:01:11] I throw that out there because I just want you to know that my coaching clients, I partner with them, I help take them to the next level in their investing business. If you’re somebody who’s looking for that kind of support, that kind of help, somebody who’s going to be right next to you, doing that deal with you, then let’s talk because you might be somebody that I’d be interested in doing a deal with.

[00:01:33] So with that said, here’s what I’d like, if you would make sure you’re following me on Instagram, both personally and My Core Intentions, Facebook, Twitter, wherever you find your social media education or your social media information. Just follow me there, subscribe on YouTube and get the most current content. You could just say, “Hey, Alexa play the most current episode of Insider Secrets,” and it’s going to roll for you.

[00:01:58] Let me introduce our guest today. I’m really excited about our guest, Agostino Pintus with Realty Dynamics Equity Partners. Agostino, why don’t you say hi real quick before I intro you.

[00:02:09] Agostino Pintus: Hey, thank you very much for having me on, I greatly appreciate it.

[00:02:12] Mike Morawski: I’m glad that you’re here today, we’ve had this planned for a while. Augustino is a multifamily investor, a syndicator, and an entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in real estate. He currently oversees strategic partnerships and capital and platform development for Realty Dynamics Equity Partners, and investment firms specializing in multi-family acquisition and asset management services. Prior to being one of the founding members of Realty Dynamics, he maintained instrumental C-level roles in managing large operational budgets of 50 million and led large successful technology and operation teams running enterprise IT services.

[00:02:52] He holds a Bachelor’s of Science in electrical engineering technology from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. An MBA and MSIS from Lawrence Technology University in Southfield, Michigan. It’s always an easy transition for an engineer to go into the real estate business. I laugh about that because when I was selling real estate, the engineers were the toughest guys to finally make a decision about a purchase. I start this way with all my guests, Augustino, in one word please tell our listeners what best describes you personally and professionally.

[00:03:29] Agostino Pintus: I would say closer. Whenever I talk to a broker, a seller, or anybody for that matter, the one thing that we have done consistently is we have closed every single deal that we’ve chased. Every single one. We have never walked away from a deal. Of course, if the deal was bad, then of course we get away from it, but whenever we commit to doing a deal, we have always closed that deal. That’s huge. That’s huge in today’s world, I mean, there’s plenty of guys out there and we’re talking with some of those guys that commit to doing a deal, they get under PSA, they’re into due diligence. Then for whatever reason, they can’t raise the money, they can’t get the deal over the line.

[00:04:05] Mike Morawski: That’s a big thing is execution. To be a good closer, you have to be able to execute properly because the one thing that I always talk about, you can have this great plan. You can have a beautiful business plan, a beautiful exit plan, but if you can’t execute on it, that’s where we fall short at times. My past life, I think that that was part of my issue too, is that I had teams of people that just, we couldn’t execute properly. I think it goes to where’s the strength lie within the organization. So, I kind of gave a brief overview of who you are and your history, but fill in some of those gaps for us. How’d you get here today? How’d you get to be a good closer?

[00:04:38] Agostino Pintus: Absolutely. Well, I mean, it all started a long time ago. When I was working in corporate, like 16 years ago and I was introduced to real estate via a friend of mine. This friend says I was working in Corporate America as a C-level executive, young CIO working at this company, making very good money. And this friend of mine says, “You ought to be buying some real estate, I can introduce you to my friend, she’s a real estate agent. You should start buying a bunch of single family homes.” I’m like, “okay, that’s what I’ll do.” That was the intent. That was the overall strategy. But in my mind, I’m just that’s it? It’s so funny. Cause today I’m sitting on the phone in a meeting cause we’re getting ready to build up a net fund to acquire commercial properties. Now we’re sitting down, we’re documenting our business plan and we’re talking about the sales strategy and how to attract investors. None of that existed back then, I just went ahead and started buying stuff. I started buying single family homes and started buying as many as I possibly could.

[00:05:29] I was doing this not with any creative financing or anything else like that. Just conventional financing, going to a local retail bank, doing it the hard way. I was doing that for some time, but the intent, Mike, was even though as a successful CIO making tons of money at this company, I was always operating in fear. I wasn’t operating in terms of abundance. I was not operating in terms of success, I was operating in terms of, “oh my God, what if I get fired? I need to have income to make sure that I can protect my family.” And you know, it’s a minor nuance thing, but where your mind goes, your money flows, your attention flows, everything flows there. If you’re thinking about fear all day long, that’s how you’re living your life, you’re living in life in fear.

[00:06:15] Mike Morawski: Mindset is just so important in everything.

[00:06:18] Agostino Pintus: It’s everything in this business, and everything in any business for that matter. But back then, I was a very different person. I was not educating myself. I was not around the right people. Not that I was around bad drug addicts or bad people, whatever, like anything else like that, but more along the lines of, I was around working stiffs just like me. That’s what you get out there. And I’m not saying those are bad folks, but if you’re going to be a billionaire, if you want to be a billionaire, you want to aspire to be a millionaire or billionaire person, you need to be hanging around those sorts of people. If you’re looking to be a C-level executive, and you’re happy doing that, you’re hanging around with other C-level executives and that’s okay.

[00:06:57] I will say this, what seemingly was fine back then seemed to be okay by me. I was making good money, I had fancy cars, a three car garage, big house, cathedral ceilings, yada yada yada. Until one day, Corporate America does pull the plug on me and the reason why I was always so afraid was because I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life since I was a kid. I never had any desire to work for somebody and that job that I was always afraid of getting fired from. It was the longest job I’ve ever had, which was four years. I’ve probably been fired by 25 different jobs that have held in my life. Probably more than that, I don’t even know I lost count, I stopped counting at 25. But anyway, after losing that job, I went into what I call the 10 dark years. In those 10 dark years, I kinda floated around, I had no sense of purpose. I had no sense of what I wanted to do with my life. That’s hard to do. I was in a very bad place because I took what should have been the most productive years of your life, which is probably your thirties and early forties.

[00:07:55] I should have been applying myself and building my real estate business, but I didn’t know any better. I built up some real estate early on in a single family and small multi-family world. But then I stopped after I lost that job because I wasn’t building it fast enough. This is all before the 2008 crash. 2008 hit and I lost my job and I was pretty much floating for years. I decided that I really had to fix my life after those 10 years. I went through a whole lot of just thinking my life had no vision or no plan. I just floated from day-to-day and I would say the real big shift only happened about four years ago. I’m trying to compress a story here because that’s when things really started getting back on track. What I decided to do was to really commit to doing real estate as my thing. I ended up getting lucky and getting another job at another tech company and working in IT. I was able to build some success there, but again, getting fired again, you know, seemed to be a thing. I say to myself, ” how many more times can I put my life and the lives of my family in the hands of some stranger that doesn’t care about me or my outcome?” It was in my late forties. I’m like, “you know what, I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t do it anymore and I refuse to.”

[00:09:12] That’s when I took a stand and made a decision. I made a hardcore decision that I will stop doing IT stuff, and I will do real estate. What exactly in real estate it wasn’t clear, but I decided I was going to do it anyway. It wasn’t until I spoke to a friend of mine four years ago about syndication and putting deals together and understanding how that whole process works. He explained it to me, I’m like, “well I can raise money, I can put deals together, I know real estate well enough to underwrite deals. That’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to do that.” I committed to doing that, I learned everything I possibly could and downloaded every single book I could find, read every single book I could find, listened to training programs, listened to videos, podcasts back-to-back to back-to-back learned all I could. Then I started buying stuff on my own. I felt that before I could go raise money from other people, I had to start doing things on my own. That’s what I felt, you don’t have to do it that way, that’s just what I did. That’s when things started popping, at that point, I put together a business plan, started talking to people, raising money from them and fast forward to now, between my partners and I, about 1300 units.

[00:10:16] These are deals that I sourced, I underwrote them, I walked them, I still run them even today. We bought the Rockefeller Building in downtown Cleveland. We broke ground on a new development deal that we’re doing down here in Cleveland, we’re going to actually start swinging hammers in the next week or so. Now we’re getting ready to launch our triple net fund as well to acquire a freestanding single tenant, triple net lease type of assets that throw off consistent cash flow.

[00:10:42] Mike Morawski: Listeners are a little bit newer in this space, so talk about triple net for a minute. That’s like Walgreens, CVS, Auto Zones, correct?

[00:10:49] Agostino Pintus: Yes, Yeah. So here’s the thing, people don’t realize that those Walgreens, CVS, Dollar General, those individual locations are not usually owned by the corporate headquarters. Rather they’re owned by individuals like you and me. You and me, being the listener, own those assets either directly or indirectly via investing in a fund and CVS or whoever will lease that space from you. They take on the majority of the operating expenses related to the assets such as taxes or insurance or repairs or whatever and they just cut you a check every month. That’s it. The hard part is finding the location and then there is some work involved in operating the asset to make sure that it’s always consistent in terms of taxes, in terms of the insurance, to make sure that if things go awry, what do you do? How do you handle it? That’s why by investing in a fund, you can invest in a bunch of these different assets all at the same time and get one consistent return back. It’s a phenomenal deal. Phenomenal deal.

[00:11:51] Mike Morawski: What’s interesting and you said it is a lot of people don’t understand that or don’t know that that’s possible. I remember when I was selling real estate, there was another realtor in my town and we were really good friends. He sold a ton of real estate and I was selling 125 houses a year, and he was selling more than that. He quit real estate one day, I run into him like a year later. I mean, I can’t find the guy. He went through a divorce and then when I run into him, he goes, “I got sidetracked. My brother and I, we went and we bought 14 AutoZones.” Here is a guy, he built these AutoZones, bought the land, built the building, got these 20 year leases. Talk about a hedge against inflation. You know, with where we are today in the world and the impending inflation that we’re going to start to see. Real estate, whether it’s multifamily or a triple-net deal, the hedge against inflation. Talk about that real quick.

[00:12:45] Agostino Pintus: Oh my God, Mike. Here’s the thing. When the government is able to print off little pieces of paper, which is all it is guys, all money is are little pieces of paper that say, I owe you. I owe you something, we’re printing off debt. People assign value to these little pieces of paper. These little pieces of paper are worthless, they are worthless little pieces of paper. The value is in what we give it value, right? The real value is when you put it into a cash flowing asset, into a real physical asset, like a piece of real estate. This building that I’m standing in right now, this building has been here for about 25 years.

[00:13:25] And do you think this building is going to be here in 25 years? More than likely.

[00:13:30] Mike Morawski: Probably.

[00:13:31] Agostino Pintus: That same dollar that was used to buy this building 25 years ago is now worth far less today than it was back then.

[00:13:41] Mike Morawski: But the building’s worth more.

[00:13:42] Agostino Pintus: The building’s worth way more than what it was. So that’s the reason why people are taking this depreciating asset and they’re printing it off like crazy. I just read an article just yesterday, that apparently Biden is forgiving student loan debt for another a hundred and some thousand people. $1.1 billion gone and that’s slid under the radar. People aren’t even aware of that. They’re focused on Afghanistan, not to say it’s unimportant. That is important. But meanwhile, while all this noise up here is going on, they’re sliding all this other stuff down the back door. Here’s the thing, that stuff that’s going out the back door, that will hit us eventually, that will show up in the way of higher taxes. How do you pay for the higher taxes? You got to decrease the amount of valuation of your dollar.

[00:14:28] Mike Morawski: Then they do things like they try to bandaid it and they kick the can down the road with a foreclosure or an eviction moratorium. Now they push it out a little bit further and then they get into a season where you can’t foreclose or evict people because of the time of year and the weather and things like that. They try to stall things and make things look better than they are and they’re not. They’re just making it worse really because when they do pull that plug out of the bathtub, it will be like that running water, running down it.

[00:14:55] Agostino Pintus: Here’s the thing Mike, I’m not a naysayer, I’m actually a very positive person. Whenever I talk to my buddies about this stuff, they think that I’m trying to be negative or whatever. And it’s like, “hey listen, I’m not being negative and being pragmatic here, okay? Every empire has fallen, every fiat currency has gone to zero. And guess what guys? We’re on a fiat currency. If you don’t know what a fiat currency is, go ahead and Google the history of money and you can watch a whole series about it on YouTube. There’s, I think 9 or 10 videos, this guy does a great job covering it.

[00:15:24] Long story short in 1971, when the US dollar was taken off the gold standard, it made it a floating currency. Basically gave the government the ability to just print off as much as they wanted. I should say the federal reserve, which is a private company, to print off as much as they wanted, but they operate symbiotically. It’s still one group that controls it. But the point is, is that when you’re able to print off as much as you want, there is no limit. That’s where the problem comes in. It’s like having a credit card with no ceiling and people spending it like crazy. Eventually someone’s gonna knock on the door and want their money back.

[00:15:54] Mike Morawski: Yeah. It does at some point catch up. I just heard a statistic that we’ve printed more money in the last 60 days than they printed in the last 20 years. I don’t know if that’s a true statement or not, but you know, it’s scary where we’re headed. I’m bullish on real estate. Always have been my entire career, my entire working life, real estate’s always been something. I encourage people to be real estate. Do you want to diversify? Maybe a little. But I think that real estate is a place that you’re going to beat some of that inflationary issues that come up.

[00:16:30] Agostino Pintus: It’s a real asset. It’s a real physical asset. You can walk up to it, you can put your hands on it and no matter what tomorrow’s currency is. Let’s say the US dollar does go to zero and it’s gone and wiped out. All right. Now we’re on cryptocurrency. So now we have to do a massive, and I know I’m talking like crazy talk here right now, but let’s say for instance people are no longer paying in dollars, but they’re paying in crypto or they’re paying in gold or whatever it is. Well no matter what, someone’s paying rent. Got to pay rent somehow. If you own the asset that someone lives in, because you treated it very well, they’re pay tomorrow. They’re paying you in gold, fine, take their gold, you know, take whatever it is, as long as you can pay that note. I’m not saying it’s going to happen tomorrow.

[00:17:10] I’m not saying that at all. It’s more along the lines of putting your money into a physical asset that produces cashflow. That’s where your cash needs to be. It doesn’t need to be sitting in the bank. The last thing you want it to have is millions of dollars sitting in the bank not doing anything.

[00:17:26] Mike Morawski: So tell us about the Realty Dynamics. What’s Realty Dynamics function and how do you guys operate?

[00:17:31] Agostino Pintus: Absolutely. What the company does is we do primarily three things. We acquire stabilized assets. Lately we’ve been focused on C class assets. We go in, fix them up, we improve the property, we will bring in new construction crews. Really make a big difference for the community and just make it better really. We’re long-term holders, you know, so we hang on to the asset for a long period of time. That’s one aspect of that, that’s our bread and butter. We’ve been doing that the longest and secondarily we did development. So what does that mean? That means we either do ground up development, where we might acquire some land and then we’ll build up multifamily deals there. Or in the case of Rockefeller, I ended up moving into an apartment so I can see the Rockefeller every single day, downtown Cleveland right outside my window here. But in the case of that building, that’s going to be $130 million asset when we’re done with it.

[00:18:20] Mike Morawski: I know you just bought that Rockefeller building in downtown Cleveland and you moved across the street to make sure nobody else took it?

[00:18:27] Agostino Pintus: I want to make sure it stays there. It’s been there for a hundred and some years, but, you know, I gotta make sure it’s still there. Got to make sure.

[00:18:34] Mike Morawski: That’s a terrific purchase though.

[00:18:36] Agostino Pintus: Thanks, it’s very, very exciting. It’s very exciting. But we’re doing stuff like that as well. We’ve already teed up 4 development projects for next year. Next year is going to be a very active year on the development side. And those deals are going to be anywhere between a 100 to 200 units each deal. In Cleveland those development deals are going to be nice juicy deals for our investors because of the way we structure things and some of the other tax credits and some of the tax incentives that we get as investors in those deals. So that’s why I’m bullish on that. There’s still a huge demand for housing. When we’re unable to find those stabilized assets at a decent rate at a rate that I’m willing to buy, because one thing we take pride in is our underwriting. If I can’t find the right deal, then I won’t buy it, and that’s what’s happening these days. So anyway, development is a second thing that we do. And then the final thing that we also do is net leases that we touched on earlier. In that case, we have a blind pool and investors can come in, they invest money into this pool and then we will go and purchase your Dollar General, Dollar Tree, CVS, Walgreens, as free standing buildings in an area that we know. That will last a long, long time in terms of population growth, in terms of income, and that obviously that company is going to stay there for a long period of time.

[00:19:51] Like I said, underwriting for us is a real big deal and we will not overpay for a deal. Some people do, they pride on it, they get on social media, “we are going to overpay for everything.” Well, you go ahead and you do that. I’m not doing that. I think that that’s ridiculous. I’m not saying you’re trying to screw people or whatever. It’s more along the lines of you’re going to pay a fair price or a good price, a strong price, and get the deal done. That’s the thing, we always close, always close. We’re not trying to go in there with some unrealistic number. Then the bank won’t finance it. That’s one of the reasons why deals don’t close is because some guy or some group or whatever, will go in and look at a deal and they underwrited improperly. We don’t. We’re very careful about our underwriting and we’re also very careful how we get the deals done.

[00:20:38] Mike Morawski: So when you’re looking at underwriting, what are some of the key metrics that you’re looking at today, especially in today’s environment, how are you being conservative? How are you being safe in that underwriting?

[00:20:48] Agostino Pintus: That’s a very good question. These days, I’m staying away from tertiary markets. I’m staying away from zero or negative growth markets. That’s something that most people were doing anyway. The difference now, though, is that a lot of these tertiary deals I’m finding are bubbling up now. I got one just yesterday in Mansfield, Ohio. No offense to the folks that might be listening in Mansfield, there’s nothing happening in Mansfield, Ohio. There’s no growth there taking place. It’s a shrinking market in terms of population and income. It isn’t like companies are moving there in massive amounts to drive some economic diversity. It’s just not there. When there is an economic shift, and there is an economic shift taking place now, with all this inflation we talked about it’s coming, it’s going to be bad. It’s going to make 2008, I think, look like a picnic compared to what’s happening right now. The tertiary markets are usually the ones that get hit first. If I’m wrong, fine. Great. I’m not doing tertiary markets anyway because of what I said before, but I’m looking for quality assets over, over quantity. I want quality assets that will last a long, long time.

[00:21:54] Mike Morawski: You think that what’s coming is going to make 2008 look like…

[00:21:58] Agostino Pintus: A picnic, yeah.

[00:22:00] Mike Morawski: Lately you’re not the only one I’ve heard say that. I’ve heard some big economists kind of like allude to, “hey, let’s watch out because crap’s going to hit the fan here shortly.”

[00:22:12] Agostino Pintus: Yeah. I mean, I’m no big time economist. I’m just the guy that buys real estate. But I’ll tell you what, in 2008, I was working in corporate, I was like many of the people that might be listening right now. I was just doing my thing, I was working in corporate, I had my job that paid very well. I’d get my fancy car, drive home, have dinner, spend time with the family, whatever. I was living my life. When I was trying to buy some of these houses and some of these small deals I was working on, the bank was giving me some static.

[00:22:45] Now I was a big shot C- level executive at this company, making a lot of money and they were giving me static about it. They’re giving me a hard time about certain things. They wanted information, after information, after information, sign this paper, sign that paper, and it’s very unusual. Cause I’ve already done a bunch of deals and they’re putting the pressure on. I’m like, why is this happening? Oh well, I just shrug it off no big deal and I should have been paying attention. I should have been paying attention and I wasn’t, I just shrugged it off. That was the wrong attitude. That’s the difference between people that live their life every day and entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs always ask questions, “why is that happening? I should look into that.” And I should have looked into it and I didn’t. I ignored it.

[00:23:25] Now I’m hypersensitive to it. I’m reading reports, I’m looking at national debt. I see it all the time. That’s where that comes from is that our debt is sky high right now, sky high. And when you’re seeing all the stuff going out the back door, all this free money that’s being given away, that’s never coming back. So like I said, the Piper’s gonna come home and they’re going to want to get paid.

[00:23:47] Mike Morawski: Yeah. I want to circle back to the fund thing for a minute to that conversation. We’re kind of getting close to the end, but what I want to ask you is in that fund, how much are you raising and how many assets do you plan to put in there? If there’s a triple net deal out there, that’s got 10 years left on it, are you going to buy that type of an asset and trade in and out of it over a period of time? Talk about that structure around that fund and the assets a little bit.

[00:24:13] Agostino Pintus: Absolutely. Absolutely. So let’s talk about the assets first and what we’re targeting is going to be your Dollar General, Dollar Tree, CVS, Walgreens, maybe a Burger King or type of Arby’s or one of those quick food service things. We’re not entirely sure yet, I think I’m leaning more towards the first two, right? We understand those very, very well, the team understands it very well. We haven’t had a lot of experience doing the food service stuff, so that’s the reason why. Not against it, don’t hate it or anything else. That’s what we’re targeting. We’re also targeting stores that have anywhere between a 5 to 7 year lease left on the deal, but we have a high degree of confidence that they’re going to renew. There’s certain data points that we’re looking for to get that confidence. Is it in a growing market? In terms of population, in terms of income what sort of anchors are nearby? What sort of traffic flow is there? All these different things go into our model to determine what is the likelihood of that person renewing or that group renewing. And if they do leave and anybody who’s doing a triple net fund needs to understand this, if they do leave, what do you do then?

[00:25:20] Who’s going to rent that space? The good thing about a Dollar General or Dollar Tree is that those sorts of stores are very interchangeable with other types of stores like an AutoZone or one of these discount auto places, right? They’re very similar in size so you can easily transition that over. Cause it’s just a box on the ground. The drugstore is a little different, but what’s common with all this is that they have a corporate guarantee that’s backing it up. So what does that mean? Well, it’s a publicly traded corporate company that’s in those locations, if for whatever reason Walgreens goes out of business. Is Walgreens going to go out of business tomorrow? Probably not. But if Walgreens went out of business tomorrow, the lease holder is getting paid before the shareholders do. So we get paid. We collectively, as the owners in this fund, we get paid before anybody else does.

[00:26:12] That’s why I liked those sorts of deals. It gives the investors confidence that we’re getting into a great deal with a company that’s going to be around for the long-term. Those are the only types of deals that we’re going to be looking for. We’re looking to do I’d say anywhere between 7 to 9 of these types of stores in the single fund, I would say the raise is going to be anywhere between 5 to 8 million, somewhere in that range.

[00:26:38] It really depends on what we have in the pipeline. We’re setting that up right now. What’s unique about the way we’re structuring our fund is that it’s an 80/20 split. As opposed to many other guys out there that are doing like 70/30. We’re giving people a lot more juice on this deal then typical.

[00:26:54] Mike Morawski: That’s nice, couple of your best capital raising techniques, private capital raising techniques?

[00:27:01] Agostino Pintus: I’ll tell you what Mike, somebody is always looking for that magic bullet and the biggest thing to do is consistency. Consistency is important. And what does that mean? You hear these people on social media all the time, “well, if you have a great deal, the money will just come.” Well, yeah, but if the people that you are talking to do not know that you do multi-family, the chances of you getting them to invest in your deal is very, very slim. Very, very tough. The time to start raising money was yesterday. Even if you don’t have a deal today, you are looking to establish those connections today. So you’re calling your Uncle Joe, “Hey uncle Joe. How are ya? Good, good. Hey, you know what? I have some new partners and we’re investing in multifamily real estate. Let me know if you ever want to hear about it.” Okay, Joe’s probably not going to call you back. Call him maybe a week from now, or maybe you send him an email. “Hey, we just looked at this deal, check out this thing and here’s why we like it, or here’s why we don’t like it.”

[00:28:01] Joe’s going to look at it, he’s gonna see your name on it, blow it off. A week later, you hit him up again and “Hey we have a new deal here. We’ve raised money from X number of people. It’s very, very successful. Yada, yada, yada.” Now Joe might be, huh? He’s really serious about what he’s doing here. A year later, you’re still emailing Joe, and eventually he will invest with you. The point is that, you know, there is no magic bullet, but there is consistency and that’s where they fall short because in this business mindset is huge, but just as important is to keep the word out. So people, especially your friends and family, that’s going to be your first ring of influence so to speak. Those are the ones that are going to believe in you enough to invest with you. It’s gotta be those folks first. If they think that you’re a fly by night type of person, not saying that you are. What’s that phrase I’m looking for, a flash in the pan type scenario. “Oh, I’m going to be a real estate guy.” Oh, good. Charlie’s a real estate guy now, how long is this going to last? But if after a year you’re still doing it and you can demonstrate success then maybe they’ll believe you because here’s the thing. If your approach to raising money is ‘please, please invest with me.’ They’re never going to want to invest with you because it looks desperate. However, if you’re going in as a person offering an opportunity to those people, that they could make a great return on that investment that you are presenting to them. They should believe you because you’ve been doing this a long time or for some length of time, you will attract that money. And I say attracting, you’re not begging them. You’re attracting it. It goes back to mindset.

[00:29:38] This business is not easy. It’s not for the faint of heart either. I mean, there’s, there’s people I hear about stuff that you and I do, Mike, and they’re like, “I want to do that too. I’m going to buy this course. I’m going to read this book. And next thing you know, I’m going to buy my first Ferrari in six months.” I’m like, “oh boy, great, good luck with that.” You know, it takes work, it’s hard work to do this. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it takes a great deal of consistency. It takes a great deal of really attacking the day every single day with real estate and doing this kind of stuff in mind, everyday.

[00:30:08] Mike Morawski: The rewards are huge and I think more personal rewards than anything else. Hey, let’s get on to the fun part of this. I like to always ask three questions, kind of wind down with that. We all get around a lot, we travel, we get to see different places, the best tourist attraction?

[00:30:24] Agostino Pintus: I don’t know, man, this is going to sound very cliche, but Niagara falls, I like the falls.

[00:30:31] Mike Morawski: Very cool. How about best restaurant? Best food?

[00:30:34] Agostino Pintus: Oh man, I forgot the name of this place. There’s only been one place in Columbia, there’s this roadside restaurant, which I never eat at roadside restaurants. Where I actually said, “huh, this is really good.” I got to remember the name of the place, so it’s somewhere in Columbia.

[00:30:47] Mike Morawski: You know, I went to a place like that in Brazil. We were coming out of the mountains and we stopped there. They caught your fish right out of the ocean, cooked it right there. How about the best book you ever read.

[00:30:58] Agostino Pintus: Oh, wow, best book ever read. That’s an easy one, The Shortness of Life by Seneca. For anybody, go to YouTube, you can download it or you can listen to it right there. It’s a very short listen. You’re going to have to increase the speed and really, really pay attention to it. Because the guy who reads it, he reads it in this very deep voice and reads it very slowly. You really have to pay attention, but when you understand the message, you realize that every day that goes by is another day that that you’ve lost. We’re given all the time we need to be what we want to be in our life. Don’t waste it and especially don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t do what I did. If you’re really that unhappy doing what you’re doing right now in your life, you need to go ahead and change it because you only get one shot.

[00:31:47] I don’t know what happens after this, after our heart stop and we have our last breath. I don’t know, but I don’t want to be that person at my death bed thinking I should have been doing something else. Instead of being a slave to some CEO that doesn’t appreciate me or my family.

[00:32:04] Mike Morawski: Good stuff. Hey, Agostino, it’s been a pleasure. I always enjoy the conversation with you. You know, we dig in and it’s very substantial, where a lot of times you have these superficial conversations with people, but you and I have always tended to really get deep. And I like that.

[00:32:19] Agostino Pintus: I appreciate that, thank you.

[00:32:20] Mike Morawski: So how do people get ahold of you if they want to know more about you or Realty Dynamics?

[00:32:24] Agostino Pintus: Sure. If they go to our rdyne.com, RDYNE, it’s abbreviated for Realty Dynamics or realtydynamics.co is the other one, either one will get you there. Bulletproof Cashflow is another one too, that’s our podcast, go to bulletproofcashflow.com. They can just email, get on an email list or reach out to us from there.

[00:32:42] Mike Morawski: Perfect. We’ll have all that in the show notes. Thanks for being here this week, I appreciate you guys listening in. We’ll be here next Tuesday again with a new guest, but if you all want to get more from Augustino, please reach out to him and give him a call. Have a great day, everybody.

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