Hello my friends, and welcome to another episode of Passive Real Estate Investing. I'm your host, Marco Santarelli. I have an interesting guest today, an exciting show, someone who is a friend of mine, but I haven't interviewed him for a while, and so I'm excited to have him on. We've had like a couple of hours of conversation already today before recording this interview. But my guest is Gino, and I always pronounce his name in so many different ways, Barobaro, but Barbero, if you want, . We're both Italians, and actually we both come from the same region of Italy. So Gino is an investor. He's a business owner, he's an author. He is also an entrepreneur. And as an entrepreneur, amazing guy, he's grown his real estate portfolio to over 2100 multifamily units representing close to $300 million in assets under management, which is phenomenal.

And I'll tell you why I am so impressed with him here in a few minutes. But he's also the bestselling author of three books, Wheelbarrow Profits, which is his hardcore real estate book. He also has a book called The Honey Bee, and then one that's a little bit more about food, but Family, Food and Friars, or, and the Friars, interestingly enough, he lives in St. Augustine, Florida, which is an area that I love, and I'm looking to potentially get a second home in that area. And he lives with his beautiful wife, Julia. And yes, six children.

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Gino, welcome to the show.

Marco. When you said an interesting, I wasn't sure what you meant by that, but it's been an interesting life for me. How you doing, brother?

I'm doing good. How are you?

I'm doing good. When you said family food in the friars, your listeners must be like, what the heck is he talking about? I was the pizza guy. Jake was the drug rep, and I was in the restaurant business for years and years and years. And that was my passion. And I know you're gonna get into this, but real estate really took a hold of me back in 2008 and oh nine, and that's how I sort of transitioned out of the restaurant industry.

. And you're Italian and you love food, so family, food and friars completely makes sense.

To you. It does. Right?

Yeah. No, we, we live, we live for food. We live to live. I mean, we don't live to work. I mean, that's, yes, that's the European culture, and that's certainly the Italian culture. You know, we, a lot of Americans, interestingly enough, you know, live to work, whereas the way we look at is we work to live. You know, we don't want to just be working all the time. We wanna live life. Mm-Hmm.

, I agree a hundred percent. Yeah.

Cool. Well, it's good having you back on the show. The funny thing I mentioned and, and for, you know, just kind of a, a little fun fact, when we originally had our first podcast interview you and I both ways, you and your partner Jake, were literally on a sofa in a room that had a foosball table. , that was your start. Yes. You've come a long way, my friend. Yes.

Well, Marco, you said something insightful on my show. You know, we recorded go to the Jake and Gino channel. I, I interviewed Marco, and what you said was ready, fire, and aim. And I think that's what Jake and I were doing on that couch. We weren't ready to get everything right. The lighting, the microphone, the, the, the, the look. We just said, let's start. And what's the worst thing that can happen? We have a terrible interview at Marco, but we'll learn something from it. And it's the same thing with anything in life. Awkwardness. When you feel awkward in the beginning, that's the sign that you're doing something right. That you're stepping outta your comfort zone. And I'm glad that you reminded me about that. 'cause It makes me feel good. That's, it's, we live in the gap in the gain, as Dr.