WS1228: 32 Cents in the Bank to 75M AUM with Javier Hinojo

EPISODE 1228

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.1 

Javier Hinojo (JH): Never again do I wanna have a feeling like I did that day, I never wanna be cash poor, I gotta manage my cash flow and I gotta limit my risk.

0:00:10.0 

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest, Javier Hinojo. Javier has an amazing story, he’s an experienced investor in numerous states, but his story is incredible, what he created and some of the hardships that he’s gonna express to you today, or I know we’re gonna make you to keep going. It was just difficult for you to think about one of the things specifically that he had to go through, but he built this business, a real estate business, and he had desires of going much higher. And then he said, you know what, there’s a better way. And he completely pivots, does something completely different in real estate, though, and has done so well with it; I hope you’ll listen to the end ’cause he’s gonna share numerous things around. He’s purchased more than 130 properties just in the last five years alone, and all value-add and he also was inducted into the Rich Dad, Poor Dad Hall of Fame, a host. 

Anyway, he has done some amazing stuff, I love how he built a team and has automated so much as far as finding deals, he’s become a very good at finding off-market, truly off-market leads, and he’s gonna go through how he has created 50 to 60 leads a week, I mean, a true off-market deals and different ways he’s using those leads and buying some and whole selling sound of those, but syndicating large deals and finding them by this team that he’s created to find these deals. So, I know you’re gonna learn a lot and you’re gonna be motivated and inspired by Javier’s story. 

[INTERVIEW]

0:01:49.5

WS: Javier, welcome to the show. I’m honored to have you on, especially just learning a little more about your background and your path to real estate success, right. $75 million from 32 cents. That’s just an incredible story, so I’m looking forward to hearing more about that. I know the listeners are gonna be encouraged and learn a lot from you today as well, but let’s jump right into that, I would love to hear a little more about that story, and for you to be able to share that with listeners and encourage them.

0:02:17.1 

JH: Well, I appreciate you having me on the show. Definitely enjoy the show. So, I’m glad to be here, thank you very much. Yeah, we’ll start with that. I’ve been in real estate for about six years, and I started buying houses, fixing them and selling them, so roughly around 2017, I had a whole bunch of flips going, and it was like feast or famine, right? Either I was selling a whole bunch, making a whole bunch of money or I had a whole bunch of projects eating a lot of money. So, I got, most businesses fail because of cash flow, not because they haven’t a good business, but it’s because they run out of cash. 

So, it was New Year’s Day 2017, and I had 32 cents in my bank account, I had a couple of closings, they got pushed, I had to pay a whole bunch of bills, I had to pay my rent, and New Year’s Day, I was actually driving back home, I turned around, I stopped at an ATM and I looked at my kids that were at the back seat. My wife was in the passenger seat and I asked my kids, my three kids for their Christmas money, so I can put in the ATMS, so I can pay my rent.

0:03:09.4 

JH: So, that was probably the lowest point and almost quit that night, but I’m like, hey, you know, let’s just keep going, and just one positive thing after another positive thing, and I was able to get out of that, and it was definitely very interesting. But after we got through that section of my life, later that year, I got nominated for the Rich Dad, Poor Dad Hall of Fame, so I got that award in 2018, and then in 2019, I switched to multifamily, there’s a big picture for you.

0:03:35.0 

WS: Wow. Yeah, that’s incredible. And there’s a few things I wanna go into there, you were flipping a bunch of homes, but you’re running out of cash flow, you ran out of liquidity, to the point you’re asking your kids for their Christmas money. I just think, you know, it gives me chills just a little bit thinking about that, like that situation. I just admire your willingness or ability to like to keep going, in that moment, you didn’t quit as tempting as that would be at that moment. Where do you think that came from? As far as the ability to keep driving forward in that situation, right, you could have easily just quit and like many who, unfortunately, do. What was that?

0:04:12.2 

JH: Listen, I tell you what, for me it was, that’s the closest I ever came to quitting, the closest I ever came to crying in real estate in. I’m not crying in real estate not yet, but hopefully, when I cry, it’ll be tears of joy. But I thought to myself, you could have all these negative thoughts. Right? I’m a very positive person thinking about having the right mentality, and I just see all this junk started coming in my head, right, it’s two in the morning. Don’t be up, but two in the morning feeling sorry for yourself it’s not the best time to feel sorry for yourself at two in the morning. 

And I said, you know what, I told myself, suck it up, and this is what hit me, I said, the price is too great to quit. That’s the only thing I kept telling myself, price is just too great. Huge, right? The cost. It’s just don’t quit. It’s not worth quitting. It’s easier said than done, you still open my bank account, I still had not a lot of money in there, so you gotta psych yourself out of that and just keep doing, just moving forward, but the price was too great to quit.

0:05:03.6 

WS: What helped you turn that around next? What were maybe an event or a couple of things that have helped you to start going the other direction?

0:05:10.0 

JH: A couple of weeks later, I got a cash offer on a property, you know, hey, we need to close quick, I guess another buyer, something happened with his contract, fell through with a removed, I don’t know the whole story, but the guy’s like, hey, they’ll close in like 10 days, two weeks, I’m like, sold! And pretty much for my asking price, so that right there just brought in like 50-60k, just one shot, but it was just like I’ve never been so happy for 50-60k in my life. It felt like $60 million, you know?

0:05:34.0 

WS: You could breathe. Right?

0:05:34.9 

JH: Yeah, I could definitely breathe, now just give me enough room and I said never again, that was my next thought, never again, do I wanna have a feeling like I did that day, I never wanna be cash poor, I gotta manage my cash flow and I gotta limit my risk.

0:05:48.1 

WS: And your kids are thankful to get their Christmas money back.

0:05:51.0 

JH: You know, they were smaller. So, I think my oldest, was like 15 or 16, and I had like a 12 and a seven-year-old at that time, so you know what? Did he remember it? But for them, I was like, yeah, whatever, not a big deal, but having my wife next to me. Oh, that was tough. She just sat there and she was quiet, but man, that hurt.

0:06:07.9 

WS: What a growing time though, for your whole fam. I love looking back on a few similar things that happened in our family, just during the tough times and getting the business started, and it’s just amazing to be able to talk about that now with our kids and involve them and made them see that, hey, this didn’t happen just overnight. Right? I love that you shared that and just being so transparent about that, I think it’s so helpful for all of us to be able to think through that and see that, hey, we can keep going and make it happen. And so you switched to multifamily in 2018. Why and how? Talk about that a little bit.

0:06:39.5 

JH: In 2018, I was at the pinnacle of flipping houses and I was in an event and somebody said, hey, I used to flip houses, he’s like, buy an apartment building. It’ll change your life. I’m like, alright, whatever, later on I find out that that same person I spoke to that day was in the same stage as me getting an award. I’m like, okay, I’ll listen to this guy, so I’m a little slow, so it took me, like a year so that was like in October 2018, and then in October, September of 2019, that’s when I decided to make the change. I had joined a mastermind, I was flipping 50 houses a year, I wanted to flip 200, and so my wife and I said, Let’s go just join this mastermind, and with these guys just flipping 150, 200, 300 houses a year. 

I’m like, this is great! And I’m sitting there and I’m thinking about the systems and process, the team that I need to flip 200 houses a year, and like, man, I gotta fire everybody. Great people, but they’re not gonna take me to the next level. And then it hit me, you know what, forget that we’re just gonna quit told my wife that same night. I joined the mastermind to grow my flipping business in that same first meeting, I tell my wife, honey, we’re quitting we’re not buying houses no more. We’re buying apartment buildings. That was September of 2019, and I said we’re gonna buy the first one by the end of the year. Like I had no idea what I was doing to be honest with you. I just gave myself a timeline. I’ll buy the first building by the end of the year, so that was it. That’s how we got into multiamily. I never took a course or any formal education none of that. I just said, okay, this can’t be that hard, let me jump on a project with somebody who learned the process, that’s how I did my first project. 

0:07:56.2 

WS: Incredible. It sounds like you had a, it wasn’t easy to build a business, so flipping 50 homes a year, I mean that took a lot of challenges that we’ve already talked about, but the desire to go to 200, you realize that, hey, to be able to scale to that magnitude, maybe you should just take a different. I was just trying to think through that, the mindset and the thought process of just saying, You know what, I wanna get to 200 because that’s an amazing goal and to achieve that, but speak a little more to making that decision to say, You know what, I’m not gonna go to 200 in flipping homes, I’m gonna just pivot altogether.

0:08:26.2 

JH: So, I run the numbers, right like, okay, not a math whiz, but I said, okay, if I can get these houses at this price, I can cash flow 200-300 bucks a month, as long as your (inaudible) doesn’t go up. Then (inaudible) my cash flow for the year, as long as I can keep my tenant up for six months, but let’s just say in a perfect world, I can cash flow thirty 100 bucks, 3000 a year per house I’m doing all the math, I said, okay, great, if I want 50k a month in net cash flow, like, holy crap, I gotta buy a lot of houses, or I gotta buy a ton, start doing the math with apartment buildings, multifamily and I’m like, shoot, that’s a lot quicker and a lot scalability with just a lot different. 

The key point here was when I was gonna go to 50 to 200, something else hit me in the back of my head and said, hey, you’re gonna scale to unhappiness, ’cause it was a grind. Flipping 50 houses a year, it was a grind. Anybody out there that flipped five, one, imagine doing 50, imagine doing 200, it was a grind for me, and something in the back of my head said, hey, you’re gonna scale into unhappiness. I said, okay, I don’t want that. Let’s do something different.

0:09:20.1 

WS: Scaling to unhappiness. That is interesting, it may not be all that it’s cut out to be. Right? The glamor, the fame, it is not always what it thinks it might be growing a business to that level, and it’s interesting that you saw that and just pivoted completely. Tell us a little bit, so you did that first multifamily deal, tell us about that, that you mentioned that maybe you partnered with somebody else or you started kind of watching over somebody else’s shoulder, or we’re working with someone to explain that process a little bit, ’cause the first deal as hardest.

0:09:49.3 

JH: Yeah, I know, first thing I did, I will start listening to podcasts like yours, right, and started hanging out with people that wanted to do what I wanted to do. If I wanted to flip houses, I go hang out with flippers. If I wanna own a taco truck, I go hang out with people that have taco trucks. I guarantee you, I’ll have a taco truck in six months. Alright? And that’s just the way life works, right? Your network. 

And I said, let me jump on a deal with somebody, project. Right? And then I found a friend of mine who had a 63-unit in Charleston, South Carolina under contract. Hey, what can I do to help? I got up with the construction management, do due diligence, I’ll bring capital to the deal or whatever it is, let me just learn the process. Right? And then I jumped on, I learned the process, I got a small piece of the pie and I’m like, okay, great, I can do this. Right? Let me put a team together and we’ll start buying our own.

0:10:25.7 

WS: It is so much about who you surround yourself with. It’s just so true. Somebody ask me the other day about, they’re 18, they already have a business and they’re doing very well. They’re like, what do I need to do? I’m like, (inaudible) you gotta surround yourself first to with those people that are where you wanna be, and it sounds like that’s exactly what you did, Javier. Well, take us through a little bit of that process, moving to the next project, or maybe some challenges that you had to overcome.

0:10:48.8 

JH: Yeah, so we went straight into buying multifamily when Covid hit, so I’m like, holy crap, we were buying more distressed properties and pretty much all the bridge lending kind of paused for a little bit, like nobody knew what was going on, and so that was a little bit concerning for us, but we still kept at it, like okay, let’s just get a bigger, if the world crashes here we’ll just get a better deal. It’s crazy as it sounds. We started wanting to buy just better projects, and then one of the first projects we bought after that was a 72-unit for a million and three at the average rent for like 650 bucks, something like that, even to a bank thought it was like a scam because this is too cheap. It was like 16000 a door, that was 2020, right? 

And we were refinancing out of that right now, we’re just gonna have devaluation in that like 6 million bucks, so it’s not a huge 20-30 million project, but that was a nice project to buy, and we just said, hey, they just buy a really low base let’s come in low, we bought that one, we bought another one, we’re getting a refinancing in a couple of months it’s 12-13 million, and we’re only for 5 million, right, things like that, we just started buying as cheap as we could. Right? Because I just didn’t know any better. I said, how do I cover myself? Let’s just buy and make a good purchase.

0:11:51.0 

WS: Love that. Tell us some things you’ve learned about finding those deals, now you’ve done numerous projects, tell us a little bit about how you’re finding deals now and what that looks like.

0:12:00.4 S1: Sure, so half my projects, now that we have directed from the seller, so I got a marketing team, we make phone calls, we send emails, we talk to sellers every single week, we get about 50, 60, 70 leads every single week. Anybody from a 10 unit to 150 unit, wide range, where we have a conversation with them, we try to lock up a project, do some creative financing or just buy it, just straight buy it from them, and the other half of our projects have come through connections I partner with a few folks that they got broker relationships, and then they get like off-market kind of pocket listing, they’re like, hey, how are you do you wanna take this down with it, I’m like, sure looks good. Looks like a great project and I’ll partner with you. So, I’ve done, half of them have come to me from other people, and then half, we’ve pretty much sourced them ourselves.

0:12:42.1 

WS: Nice. Tell us a little bit about, how you’re doing some of that in the marketing piece to receive 50-60 leads a week, and maybe how many of those are, or something that actually happens, but walk us through that process a little bit of even getting that kind of lead.

0:12:54.9 

JH: Yeah, so I used to do that for single-family. Right? So, I said, okay, let’s just get a list, list at let’s go ahead and hit the most likely to sell, you know, seller. Right? And conversation is a little bit different, right? Even talking to somebody with 250 units, they’re usually already pretty sophisticated, they know the business, they’re probably a millionaire for sure, the conversation’s different than talking to somebody who you’re buying a 50,000 house that they inherited ’cause their grandma passed away. Right? It’s a different conversation. 

But we just make a lot of phone calls pretty much all day, I have seven people on the phone calling every day, it’s all they do, eight hours a day and half a day on Saturday, and then I have a, like a closer, he’s on the, every time they connect with somebody, they transfer them over, and he’ll get the rest of the information and build a rapport. 

And if it’s like a smaller, like an eight unit, 12-18 unit, like some of those, we’re not gonna buy, but I have a good database of other investors, I wanna buy those 20 units and 10 units, right. There’s nothing wrong with that. And I know people that own 150 units all by themselves, no syndication, and they make really good money, they got some nice cash flow and they’re all 12, 18, 20, 40 units, they just bought ’em throughout the years, so those I’ll pass along to other investors.

0:13:55.8 

WS: So you said seven people on the phone, eight hours a day, and they’re calling. You said get a list, you’re gonna attack the ones that are most likely to say. oh, let’s start it there, I guess. Where do you get the list and what are some of the things that to find the ones that are most likely to sell? 

0:14:09.6 

JH: For sure, yeah, we go through the tax records, we have our own data, it’s called data scientists, data engineer, and we’re going, we pull everything you can do from cash records, so you can pull it from CoStar, we have CoStar, you can get a list from anywhere, you just Google property list, and there’ll be all kinds of companies out there that will sell you a list for as cheap as like five cents a list, number too, a couple of dollars per number. Right, so I guess it can get pretty expensive. Right? If you order 100,000 at 10 cents at 10 grand, 100,000 at 25 cents, at 25 grand. 

So it can get pretty expensive. So we do a lot of it in-house and once they come in, we look, the typical stuff like, hey, when does your mortgage expire, like what is your mortgage deal if the mortgage is due in the next two years, trust me, we’re calling. They gotta do something, either refinance yourself or 1031 or whatever they’re gonna do, so those are a little bit easier one, because they’re already in the back of their mind, they’re like, hey, I need to start planning to sell.

0:14:56.1 

WS: So you are, are you mailing these people as well, or is that like, no, we’re just calling them right then.

0:15:00.6 

JH: Yeah, we’ll send some mail as well, but right now we’re just calling them. It’s cheap this way right now, it’s cheap to just call.

0:15:06.5 

WS: Okay, seven people on the phone, eight hours a day. Like how many calls are they making daily? I mean, roughly.

0:15:12.4 

JH: I think we’re getting, we just had our meeting a couple of minutes ago, I forgot the number, but it’s a lot, that’s all I can tell you. Thousands and thousands of calls a month. Not tens of thousands.

0:15:21.6 

WS: That’s awesome. So they’re calling tens of thousands of people, and then if it’s a warm lead, they’re transferring them to your guy who’s a, you call a closer.

0:15:29.6 

JH: Correct, he’ll get in and build rapport and then get more information, you know, try to get a price out of them and build that relationship. Right? ‘Cause the biggest thing is to follow up. You’re not gonna get the deal if I’m just talking to you on the phone, no, but once you’re seven, eight, nine, ten times on the phone, you feel like you know that person. Some of these take a year to get into contract. That’s crazy as crazy as it sounds, but some of these take a year, some of these take a week, just gotta follow up kind of have a good system.

0:15:52.3 

WS: Love that. How do you track that?

0:15:53.5 

JH: So, we have a CRM we started with Podio, ’cause it’s free, and now we’re migrating over to Salesforce, not just for our CRM, but just for our company HR and everything else that we do. Or email blasts, things like that.

0:16:05.3 

WS: Yeah, no, that’s, I’ve heard nothing but great things about Salesforce. That was definitely one we considered when we were making that decision and may still in the future at some point, but you mentioned having to have a system, no doubt about it, I love the thought behind all the processes. You got this team of people that are just, I mean, just banging these calls out, then you have your follow-up process, and you talked about how follow-up is key, and even, hey, this may take a year, it may take a, it may take so many contacts or connections of those phone calls before something else happens in that person’s life right now they need to sell. Maybe they didn’t need to sell when you first talked to them. Right? 

0:16:43.4 

JH: Correct. Yeah, for sure. So we’re kind of like what the brokers do, right, the brokers have these relationship with these people for 20 years, like the dad had the relationship with the new owners, that the broker’s dad had a relationship with the new owner’s dad, right now, they passed along with their kids, and that’s all these brokers get all these projects right, ’cause they’re just on the phone and they know everything about every seller, so say if I can do that and I can get straight to the seller. 

I mean, sure go through a broker, they do all the work, and I tell everybody right now is it’s another business guy’s having a, it’s a sales and marketing business trying to get off-market properties as a totally separate business and you gotta treat it like a business if you don’t have the (inaudible) for that just go straight to brokers, right? Nothing wrong with that, it’ll get you some good projects in a while, but we build this relationship, especially if it’s all automated with the automatic get a Christmas card, automatic get a birthday card, automatic get something for whatever Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, to get a text to get an email like it’s automated, so I don’t really have somebody there calling him every single second, but it’ll be automated for the next 20 years, and at some point when they go and they wanna sell like, hey, Javier, he’s being calling me for 10 years and his people had been calling me or emailing me, sending me letters for the last 10 years, guess what one of those times they’ll gonna email you back. 

0:17:48.3 

WS: Ok, you’ve caught my attention now too, how do you automate something like birthday cards or Mother’s Day cards, those things?

0:17:54.7 

JH: So, I’ve got a software, we’ve got a software engineer or I don’t even what the hell he’s called, but he does all that for us, we got him on staff, so definitely just automate everything. Right, just put it into a CRM and I’m not, I’m not an engineer, or a tech guy, but you can do it. You can definitely do it.

0:18:08.5 

WS: Yeah, so ultimately you have someone on the team that’s managing that, maybe insuring that

0:18:12.1 

JH: Yeah. Which I’m trying to get him to text my wife every three days. Hey, honey, I love you. You look pretty today. Things like that, right. So I don’t have to do it, even though I mean it, I mean it, but I have to automate that part to text my kids and hey, have a good at school.

0:18:25.1 

WS: You come home and your and your wife’s saying thank you, and you’re like, oh, you’re welcome.

0:18:29.1 

JH: Automated to order her flowers automatically, things like that. Right? 

0:18:25.1 

WS: That’s incredible. I love the automation behind that too, and all those personal touches. Like you said, birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards, all those things are so important. And we’re seeing that as well, we’re seeing thank you cards and hand-written cards for all these things, and it’s interesting that the response that we’ll often get. I love the card, it’s not that expensive to make that happen, I’m not writing all those, by the way, and if our investors are listening. I’m sorry, I’m not righting all of those. But we have a team that takes care of things like that. And so I appreciate those tips, but I go back to the brokers versus doing this yourself and still got relationships right, you’re building the relationships, just like a broker would. Right? And so you’re gonna do that one way or the other, it’s interesting, and so what size deals is like your sweet spot now?

0:19:26.7 

JH: Well, depends, right? So if I’m gonna do a syndication, you know, your traditional syndication the bigger the better. Right? If we get a 10 million, 20 million project, it’s better. I don’t wanna syndicate smaller project just because it’s a lot of work and your income per hour drops drastically, so ideally. You know, if I wanna do a traditional syndication, 10 million, 15, 20 that, that’d be great. 

But I do a lot of projects where, I don’t know what the right term is, maybe it’s opportunistic, where maybe they’re 50% occupied and we can come in, we can buy and be all in at 60-65 cents on a dollar and then cash out refinance in two years. That’ll be a little bit different. Yeah, I’ll buy a 3 million, 5 million project on that, just because when I structure it with the investors on the ownership side, I’ll end up owning a big chunk, like 70%, 80% of the whole project, so that gives me kind of a bigger net worth in a way, or a bigger cash flow than even syndicating a $15 million property, sometimes I can make more money by doing a smaller property but a different structure, but the investors to make, if not more money than a traditional syndication. So I’ve got a couple of different models. I’ll buy some stuff on my own, but ideally, traditional syndication, 10 million plus be a good number.

0:20:34.5 

WS: That’s incredible. You still see opportunities that are, you’re getting all the deal flow too, that you’ve created from this really marketing machine that you’ve built where it’s just neat that you’re flexible, you’re open to that 10-20 million-dollar deal, but you even have avenues. And I wanted to come back to what you said earlier, it’s like these other smaller projects, maybe you don’t technically want to buy, but you have other avenues to guys who do wanna buy those as well. 

0:21:00.2 

JH: For sure. Yeah, I got a pretty good email list and we’ll sell some of those contracts to some other investors, pretty good deals too, by the way.

0:21:06.1 

WS: Yeah, that’s awesome. So what about, Javier, if you had to look back, what would you have done differently? Thinking back to you know, the way you scaled the flipping business to where you wanted to take that and then pivoting, like How would you have done this or would you have done it differently as far as your path to large multifamily?

0:21:23.9 

JH: Yeah, I think I would have started networking sooner, and not just networking, but building more relationships, more meaningful relationships with people who have the same vision, same mentality, kinda going the same journey. When I started flipping houses, did it pretty much all of my own, like I just let’s go and I was just working. Right? It was, I didn’t network, I didn’t do anything. I just worked. So, I think I would have started just networking a lot quicker. Right? Does goes for anything, if you wanna go start flipping businesses, start networking with people that flip businesses and create relationship, not just connect and networking, but actually build a few meaningful relationships.

0:22:00.9 

WS: Those relationships. No doubt. Earlier, the better that you’re doing that, what about, do you have any predictions for just the real estate market over the next six to 12 months or anything you’re planning for?

0:22:11.3 

JH: As far as predictions, I know the interest rates are going up, so you gotta account for that when you go back, when you gonna resell your property, but along all the, your income goes up as well, you can just go with inflation. But as far as predictions, I think we’re still gonna be in a hot market, as long as the interest rates don’t go too high too quickly, I think there’ll still be a, for sure it’s a seller’s market I tell you that, definitely a seller’s market.

0:22:35.0 

WS: What about how, when you’re buying these projects, how do you like to prepare for a downturn or so none of us have that crystal ball, and it’s hard to make those predictions, but I just, I love to hear, what do you think about that? How do you think about when you’re moving into another project, something like that happens, there’s some kind of downturn and the ballers go out as well. How do you prepare for that?

0:22:59.2 

JH: Part of our plan or what I try to do is I try to have three to six months to be able to pay my mortgage on each property, either if I partner with somebody, you gotta make sure they have enough capital either on my own or if I partner with somebody else, or there’s two or three GPs that we have enough capital to carry this in case there’s something happens, right? So we’re not asking investors for money. That’s number one. 

Number two is you buy some cash flowing assets, which is fine, but if you’re buying at a tight cap rate, the market switches, the cap rate changes and those margins can shrink pretty quickly, so you can buy these prettier properties or more stable cash-flowing assets and then you come on, you by your cash cows, which are these properties where, the brain-damaged ones, right, (inaudible) my gray hair, I call them the brain-damaged ones, right. Where you come in, they’re 50% occupied and any 25K, every model takes a lot of work that not everybody wants to do that kind of lift, but once you do that kind of lifts and you go refinance out and you pretty much have a free property number one, you can go on a 70 lot value, 65% lot of value, and you get some big cash flow, and that’ll kind of help offset if the market switches a little bit on the higher end properties, the lower end you have enough cash flow, hopefully at least carry you through those two, three, four years of downturn. That’s just what I’ve done.

0:24:11.4 

WS: Yeah, and I think it’s so wise and I’ve had so many conversations with people about this specific topic and from what I’v heard from you, it’s like, and that emergency fund, but having some liquidity where you can weather that storm and especially even across the team, that’s even better. Numerous people, but yeah, I mean, businesses fell. I think you mentioned this earlier, right, in the floating business, it’s like, man, you don’t have cash flow. Like what happens when the baller does go out. Right? And so I appreciate that it’s so important, but what’s your best source for meeting new investors right now? 

0:24:43.9 

JH: You know what? It’s been through social media. Recently, my Instagram account went over 10,000, I was pretty excited about that, and I’ve only been hitting it hard for since last June, so only about eight months. So, social media, any kind of event where it’s a multifamily event, it’s great, so I recommend that everybody search. There’s events all the time. And you can go in person, or you can do them virtually as well. I like in person, it just touches my personality, but you know I’ll do a virtual as well, but just hang out with folks that are doing what you wanna do, or they’re already doing what you’re doing, and it’s a great place to network and raise money.

0:25:21.0 

WS: Give us a quick tip on growing our Instagram account.

0:25:24.5 

JH: Well, just be consistent. It’s free to post on social media, it doesn’t cost you anything, just be consistent. Don’t ask for anything. Just give value, be authentic. Be who you are. Don’t be somebody who you’re not. My wife is always saying, why did you put that? I’m like, That’s me. What do I got to do? I can’t lie who I am, somebody meets me in person and they see my social media, they’re like, okay, they feel like, they’ve known me forever. 

And just post as much as you can. Like right now, when I hired my marketing manager last year, she’s like, How many pieces of content do you want? I said, I want 150 pieces of content per week. She’s like, what? We’re like at 180, 190 right now, we can easily go to 300 pieces of content everything single week, across all platforms, but I’m just saving it a little bit, I don’t think we can handle the bandwidth.

0:26:06.1 

WS: Yeah, that’s awesome. Tell me about finding your marketing manager.

0:26:10.8 

JH: You know when I came through a referral, we have an executive assistant and we were looking for somebody like, hey, I know someone that worked for this company, that’s what she does, and like, okay, let’s go stealer and so we grabbed her and I was like, let’s go and make your job, made my gun offer. And she’s done a great job.

0:26:25.6 

WS: That’s awesome. Tell me about some daily habits that your disciplined about, Javier, that’s helped you achieve this level of success.

0:26:33.1 

JH: So, what do I have back here? Oh, my book is not back there, so I don’t read. It’s probably something I should have put in my bio, I’ve read one book my whole life, I’m 43 years old, and it’s about a 20-minute read and it’s got a lot of cartoons, pictures on it and big letters, and that’s about the only book I’ve ever read in my life, I just came through a whole bunch auto books, yeah, somewhat just try to go through the big picture. 

But I definitely want my COO to read two books a month, because he’ll be the one implementing and I’m more of the big picture visionary of the company, so one thing I don’t do is I don’t read. I should probably change that, but it’s worked out fine so far. As far as habits, and I’ll be the worst person, I don’t meditate, I don’t have daily habits, I don’t have, I have a schedule, but I don’t have routines. Any coaches out there, life coaches that are listening to this, they’re like, oh man, you’re a project. I go, yeah, I’m a project. There’s two things that I know that I’m good at is number one is, I’ve been married 24 years, so I love my wife. And number two is, I just, I like to do business, I’d like to make money. And I’m good at both of those, I think.

0:27:35.2 

WS: Good, I’m glad you’re especially good at the first one. Happy wife, happy life, right? How do you like to give back?

0:27:43.4 

JH: Well, I like to give back, when I do my social media, a lot of people ask me questions, and I go back and I’ll answer those questions or I’ll send back a video. Reply with a particular question. So I love to do that as far as giving back. I did a team millionaire challenge last July, where I got 19 teenagers, they came up to my office and then I trained them how to buy multifamily, and then they went out and they’re looking for deals, these 16-year-old kids, 17-year-old kids can’t send an LOI because you gotta be 18, but they can make offers on $15 million properties talking to brokers all over the country. 

It’s beeen amazing to see these kids coming in from all kinds of backgrounds, from its, one of the kids showed up here and he didn’t have enough money for gas to go back home, and a couple of the kids in the program, the parents are worth like 75 million bucks, 80 million bucks, whatever it is. So all range, wide range of kids, and so we got them in a program and called it the Team Millionaire challenge, and the goal is for them to make a million net worth a million dollars, right? As teenager. So that’s been one way to give back and a good friend Tim and I, my good friend Robert Allan, they’re the ones with the idea and they found me to be the kids’ mentor and coach.

0:28:50.2 

WS: That’s incredible. I have not heard of that. That’s, man, to have been involved in something like that as a teenager, that’s life-changing.

0:28:58.2 

JH: I know right, it’s like, man, what was I doing when I was 16? I don’t wanna tell, I don’t want to tell anybody what I was doing when I was 16.

0:29:04.4 

WS: Javier, it’s been a pleasure to get to meet you and have you on the show and just really hear your story, I think it’s so encouraging to so many. Even from asking your children for their Christmas money to the point of growing that business to where it’s like, okay, we wanna go to this massive other level, but realizing that, nope, you know what, we’re just gonna quit now and pivot all together and making it happen, just congratulations to you and your success and not quitting. Right? 

Like so many do, when times are that tough, you did not. And I just, I love that story of just pursuing it and just keeping on keeping on. Right? And I’m gonna say, I appreciate your service. You were in the army, and I think I contribute some of that. Like that never give up mentality, I call it. To military and time overseas and what not in the law enforcement, and so I bet you would probably as well. But again, grateful to meet you, tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more value.

0:30:04.8 

JH: Well, thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s been a blast. You can follow me on Instagram, you can just go to my website. It’s Javier Hinojo. My first name J-A-V-I-E-R, last name is H-I-N-O-J-O dot com (javierhinojo.com). And all my social media links are there to my YouTube channel, Twitter, whatever. The only thing I don’t have on there, so I don’t have my fans only page, I don’t have one of those. So you know the word about that.

0:30:30.2 

Whitney Sewell: Thank you for being a loyal listener of the Real Estate Syndication Show, please subscribe and like the show, share it with your friends so we can help them as well. Don’t forget to go to LifeBridgeCapital.com, where you can sign up and start investing in real estate today. Have a blessed day. 

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