I think it's figuring out what your talent is. And don't chase other people's talents. Because there's so many shiny object syndromes out there, and I've been guilty of it too. Welcome back to The Art of Connecting Podcast, man. It has been. A pretty minute since I've recorded a podcast. It's probably been like almost six months. That's what's up. I took a little hiatus to grow my business and the business isn't growing and I finally have bought some time back to where I'm able to do podcasts again. So the guests that I am bringing on today as we bring back the art of connecting is one of my good friends, Nick Farentino. Nick and I got connected. Long before Nick was back in Chattanooga, he was living in Cocoa Beach, Florida, living his best beach life. Yeah. And Nick and I got connected and I was like, man, I need to know this guy. And he ended up moving back here. I was like, dude, you gotta come to the real estate meetups. Yeah. And he came to the first one. You were like, dude, it's the only one I go to. This is awesome. That's it. Yeah. So I'm so happy to have you on the show today. And thanks for coming. I appreciate you, man. I'm seriously honored and I'm just grateful for the friendship that we've been building since I've been back. I know. I've been that virtual guy. I've been ghost for a good minute, living in different places of the world. And probably you've only heard about me seeing me on social media, but I am super happy to be back in town in the town that I love, in the town that no matter where I was, all my blessings came outta here. And just to be planting roots. And that's what I really needed to do was plant some roots so that I can grow some more. And that's why I'm here. I love it, man. That can be the theme of our podcast today, is growing roots in the community that you're in to pairs perfectly with the art connecting. So I actually didn't brief you before we got on the show about anything that we're gonna talk about. The whole premise of this show is to for us to talk about your life, learn about where you started, where you ended up, and then figure out how connections and relationships ended up leading you to where you are today. So that's the whole theme. That's what we're gonna talk about for those who are listening and haven't listened to an episode before, that's what this show is all about. So why don't you go ahead and just get started. Nick, tell us about your background. Where are you from? What do you do? I I'll Just, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna start in 2014. That's where I'm gonna start and that's when everything was going wrong in my gym business. I got out of the military. I decided I wanted to do something that I absolutely love. Kill two birds in one stone and I got into the the gym model, training people starting my own gym. It's something that I love to do but it never really got me ahead. I was making a living for a time and then I just kept growing and expanding and I over expanded and ended up going bankrupt, about half a million dollars. Then just to fast forward it, I learned the art of real estate wholesaling for sure. I didn't know anything about it, but I learned the no money down investing all the stuff on YouTube, and that's what really caught my interest. I knew that a lot of successful people were made in real estate, and that's all I wanted to do was just be successful for my family, my wife, my kids. I grew up in poverty. I wanted to be the train breaker of the family type stuff. And out of nowhere we were living in Florida. I'm driving for Uber and Lyft, just trying to make ends meet. We, we just had a baby literally, so my wife was staying home with the baby and she spent a lot of time in prayer. She spent a lot of time in prayer, and one day she told me that God told her that we need to move to Chattanooga. That's what she said. And I didn't even know, I didn't even know Chattanooga existed. That's so random if you've never been here. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. I thought it was a candy bar or something like that. Sounds like a candy bar. Chattanooga. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know. I didn't know it existed at all. And I'm a Florida boy, I'm an ocean lover, beach lover. Never wanted to be landlocked ever again. That's what I call it, landlocked and, fast forward a little bit, I was looking for jobs at that point in time. I was done with the entrepreneurial journey. I didn't think it was for me. And I ended up getting a job for this company called Iron Tribe they had multiple locations. To pretty much run and manage that gym. And it's funny, God will do what he needs to do to get you where he needs to go. Even if he's gotta trick you. That's right. He knows how to get you moving. So I got this job, I got this job managing for Iron Tribe in north of Chattanooga. Wow. They had multiple locations. And this was confirmation they had multiple locations. I actually applied for Lake Naples, Florida. And they called me back and they said, Hey, we have a position for you in Chattanooga. This is after my wife told me about you. This is the second time I'm hearing about this place. Right? And so that was confirmation. I was like, oh my gosh, you're right. God did tell you. Wow, God did tell you. So we packed up all of our stuff in a U-Haul, small U-Haul and just moved here. Had no place to go. No place to go at all. I moved here for a job that I thought I had, and, once, once we got here, I pretty much showed up to the location and said, okay, when do I start type stuff. And it was actually in North Shore at the time. It was Iron Tribe and North Shore on Cherokee. And find out they're closing that location down. And after after they'd hired you? Yeah, for sure. For sure. But they're like, oh, but we can put you in Memphis, and I was like it just didn't sit right on my heart. Absolutely not. And then I was studying, the demographics of Memphis and stuff and just not my cup of tea. So here I am, I'm stranded in Chattanooga, just signed a lease for a$500 a month, one bedroom, one bath, duplex back then, and I'm jobless. Yeah. So I took pretty much the first thing that I could get. And I had a background in logistics and driving trucks, and so I became one of walmart's first glorified delivery grocery guys. I delivered groceries for Walmart in a truck, and I got that job and I just felt completely out place there. Told everybody about real estate and wholesaling and what I wanted to do, and nobody in that environment believes in you. And nor did I, nor did I match with any of the mindsets in that environment, and just fast forward I find myself in the back of a truck and I am praying, I'm praying to God and saying, I, I've been really humbled, like I went from feeling on top of the world owning a gym. You know what I mean? Living the dream till like I lost it all I lost it all, I have a baby, I have a wife. I'm broke as a joke. I could barely afford to feed myself, and uh, and so I'm praying in the back of the truck. I said, God, is this what you got for me? Is this what I'm supposed to do if I'm, am I supposed to be here? I kept hearing leap, it kept coming up. Leap. Just leap or, so I said, do I take the leap and just quit for something else? So I showed up to work the next day and I got fired straight up. So I took that as a sign. I got fired for being on my cell phone. Go figure. I'm always on my phone and I'm pretty sure I was texting the boss at the time anyways, but it's okay. I got fired and I took that as a sign that's what God wanted me to do. So I didn't feel any type of way. I didn't feel bad. I didn't feel like a victim. I was like, wow, my prayer has been answered. Yeah, thanks God. You closed that door. Yeah. And then I had to ask the boss who fired me if she would drive me home because I didn't have a car. You know what I mean? We had one car, so my wife had to she would drop me off and stuff like that. Wow. So what year was this? This was probably 2000. This was definitely like 2015. Okay. Yes.'cause this is when I started wholesaling, got it. 2015. So I would say like two weeks later, I'm all depressed, don't know what I'm doing with my life. I'm like I had this moment with the Lord. My wife used to always tell me, you need to surrender. You need to surrender. And I say, I am surrendering. I'm surrendering. But I realized I would surrender with my lips and not with my heart. And I probably still tend to do this today.'Cause we're not perfect. We, we I think I get in God's way sometimes. And sometimes I gotta stop, remove myself so I can give room for him to do what he needs to do. That's right. And every time that I've actually done that, it's like blessings the next morning. Ain't that the truth? Isn't that crazy? We were just talking about it. We were just talking about that. Wow. So I'm praying in my car and nobody really knew this at the time, and I'm just crying and praying. And I think it's the first time in my life where I felt like ultra depressed. I just had a baby, just had a wife. People were bringing us rice, beans and eggs. I was like eating one small thing a day so my family could eat. And I'm praying in the car and I just asked God to take my life. No serious, like I wasn't gonna do it myself'cause I'm not taking my chances of a one-way ticket to somewhere. I don't wanna go. I'm not taking my chances. But I asked him to take my life and when I asked him to take my life. I meant for him to Hey, if a truck drives by, let me get hit by it. Or so like that I was serious. Like I didn't want to be here and I felt like I was a burden to my wife and my child. Like I felt like they didn't deserve that life too, but they weren't gonna leave me even though I was telling him like, you should probably leave me. So I felt like I was a burden. And so two weeks later I'm walking my daughter down the street and her buggy stroller, call it a buggy, anything that's got four wheels as a buggy. But I'm like pushing that buggy down the street and I see a for sale sign on a tree. And I've never done anything in wholesaling, never actually I was too scared to, and I see this for sale sign on a tree and I just like. Like you ain got nothing to lose. So I called it, and then it ended up being like a motivated seller. So I got lucky. I think most people get lucky with their first deal for sure. Or I just got blessed because, God told me to leap and he answered my prayers and fired me from my job and put me in the right situation. And so this guy inherited the property. It was actually like. The next street over from me. Like he had no idea that I lived in that ghetto, duplex up the road, had no idea. If he did, he would probably would never have done business with me. And then I didn't have a dollar in my bank account, but took everything I learned off YouTube University and I pretty much said, I found out that he had a inherited the property. The City of Red Bank at that time was threatening to mow those properties down and. Put the lien on him and all that stuff. So he just didn't know what to do. And so this is back in 2015. It was back when it was Red Bank of Stan. Ooh, that's what they used to call it. Yeah. I mean he was asking 20 K for the property. Wow. That's crazy these days. But it was like that back then. Fast forward, I ended up locking it up for 6,000. I was actually so scared to lock it up under contract'cause I didn't know what to do and I didn't wanna like fail. Somebody or do anything, which that I thought was illegal or something like that. So I locked it up under an option to purchase. Which that's a whole nother thing, but it's I like options a lot. I locked it up under an option and I just posted that sucker on Craigslist at the time. That's when Craigslist was hot. And my phone rang off the hooks. I was like a call center and I literally just lined up everybody to go see that property. And I posted it for 15,000. I had the contract for six, I posted it for 15, and ended up assigning it for 17 five and I made 11,500. And that changed my life. Changed my situation, but that was just one time and I realized that was the hardest thing that I ever did. But that I needed to do that again and again every single month. And so that broke something off of me. That was like graduation. It was like graduation. And so that same year, I pretty much just went full speed. I took the Kentucky Fried Chicken approach, make a hundred offers. I got 1% chance that somebody's gonna say yes. I made a hundred dollars a month. Ended up locking up ended up doing 69 deals that year. 69. That's insane. Yeah. And that's when I was making like five K a pop too. That's was the standard. And so I ended up, it was like the most deals I've probably ever done in a year and the less, the least amount of money I've ever made too, at the same time. But it was my first year. It was my first year and I literally cleared just about 250,000. That year and went from that one bedroom, one bath, duplex to moving on up, getting another car, having another baby, three bedroom, two bath house, and things were looking good. We went on vacations. I wasn't wise with my money at all. Not at all. I just thought it's only up from here. I didn't know that there's winter seasons and stuff like that. I've gotten wise over time to store your nuts for the winter because winter will come. Especially that's true in real estate. Oh yeah. You gotta be prepared, it's like riding the waves, take the winds while you get it, but be ready to sustain three to four months if you have to. Anyways, did I did that? Changed my life. Got into wholesaling, met a bunch of great people. That's how I met My first hard money lender was through wholesaling. Was Dan, wasn't it? Dan? Yeah. Yeah. He actually, he actually couldn't help me when we first started because of my bankruptcy And yeah, my bankruptcy too. Ah, I had no cash, no bankruptcy. And then it's funny because now like he's been my lender on everything. Yeah. So it went from hey, bro, I love you, but I can't help you to we've done so many deals together. Yeah. And Dan and I are business partners now. Absolutely. Wow. That's a small world. That guy's got the most, out of everybody in this world, I'm gonna be honest, like I'll say it to anybody, he's got the most integrity out of anybody that I ever know. He's like the most straightforward guy. Most ethical guy, and I'm not just saying this to say it, but like when you do really big deals and there's massive amounts of money that's involved people's true colors come out. For sure and he was like, seriously in a room full of sharks, the only one to like really stand up for me. Seriously. So Love that. That's what I gotta say. I'm about to send this to Dan so he can listen to it. I'm serious. I don't know if I told him enough or if he really knows, but I love that dude. Yeah. He's the best. Yeah. Great. Okay, so we've got the background story. And so tell me a little bit about kind your transition now'cause you're doing some new things. You wearing a new shirt, low key roofing coat. That's what's up. So tell me about you, you went on, you wholesaled a bunch of properties. Yeah you had a killer deal where you made crazy money with Dan. Yeah. On a project, right? Yeah, for sure. But I think. A lot of people are shifting and transitioning right now into different things. And I think you've done the same. So tell me a little bit about that shift that you've had. Yeah. I think when you've been doing something for 11 years, this is like where it came about. I knew I wanted to build something stronger and better, and real estate's like stocks, it's always up and down. There's good times, there's low times. And so I was really trying to create a stable, scalable. Sellable business model with real estate, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it because it's market dependent and it requires you. If you're a good wholesaler, you are the one Yeah. Making those phone calls. You could set appointments maybe and have some boots on the ground, but most def it's almost impossible as a wholesaler. Yeah to train up a staff of people to, to replace you. And retention is real people learn. They grow and. And the thing is I'm so grateful for it. I'll tell you, I'm so grateful for it because we've changed so many people's lives. Not just sellers that we dealt with, but people on our team. Like for real, we have people who came in they were able to learn a skill and literally. Take that into their own personal lives and entrepreneurial journey. I have a handful of people who started off in my company and are now running their own companies and doing very well. Yeah. I got one, one guy who started off, I love this dude. We still talk to each other every single day. And actually we're actually partners in the Tennessee market now, but he started off as a cold caller for me out of Mexico. And now he runs his a nationwide wholesaling company and has also started his his own SaaS software as well. Wow. For investors and stuff like that. Does he still live in Mexico? Oh, yeah, let's go. Yeah, he comes to the US all the time just for fun and podcasts and stuff like that. How amazing is that? Yeah. So that's one guy. I got another guy, he makes 50 KA month. In California. He was living with his mom and dad just bringing in checks and stuff. He makes 50 KA month. And then I got another guy who was wholesaling, put all of his money in Bitcoin. He lives in Chattanooga and he is rolling around in Lambos and Rolls Royces and stuff right now. So it's just really cool to see and that's what I look at for wholesaling. I look at it as a stepping stone. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's a place to learn. Yep. Grow. And you are gonna learn so many business skills that literally you could take what you learned in running a wholesaling business. And implement that in almost Yes. Any business wholesaling all your you're marketing, you're doing three things. You're the buyer, you're the seller, and you're the marketer. Yeah. You have all of these different business aspects that you have to deal with all in one deal. Yeah. Because you're buying it, you're marketing it to find the, the buyer from you and you're taking the fee in between. Yeah, so it's, it teaches you so many skills and you learn contracts, you learn laws you learn negotiations. Like you can literally take it into any industry. And that's what we're doing now with roofing, for example. But I look at it as a stepping stone. I look at it as being a fighter in the ring. Like I feel Mike Tyson for wholesaling. No joke. Like when you've been doing this for 10 years, 11 years, it's I just feel like personally I don't have that dog in me anymore. Yeah. Because it is a hustle. It's a hustle, it's sales, it's a grind. You're constantly, it doesn't matter if you're in wholesaling or if you're a real estate agent. They'll tell you're constantly putting out fires. You're dealing with all kinds of people in all kinds of situations and when you have a wife, three kids, dog, cat, family, it's like. I just don't have that fighter in me anymore. Yeah. I'm a lover, so I just wanna, yeah. Just wanna serve people and serve people well, that's exactly why I got in the lending business. Yeah. I did a few flips and I was like, wow, this is a lot of work. You make good money. I made 60 grand and Yeah. I more than doubled what I made that year just by doing some flips. Yeah. And sustained my crazy lifestyle though. I used to live traveling every month, but that's up. It's a lot of work. It is. And not that's a bad thing. It's a, there's a season for everything. But then I realized I paid my lender almost half of what I made. When you add up the interest in points. Yeah, that's true. I like, I made 60 and they probably made 25. Maybe 30 passive. Exactly. So I'm like, wow. And lending is scalable. Huh. And that's like where I've been talking to some of my friends that they're in a business and they're like have the blessing of coaching some people now. And just helping people out that need help in their business to figure out strategy. And I said, just like I said earlier, are you in the right vehicle? True. Like it's if you wanna make$500,000 a year Yeah. Are you in a$500,000 a year vehicle? True. Is it even possible for you to go to that point? And if it is, how much brain damage is that gonna take? Yeah. One of my mentors said that, how much brain damage is this gonna be if I sign on dotted line? And you gotta think that way, like, how much is my head gonna hurt at the end of the day? To scale is to 500,000. And if your answer is you're gonna be working a hundred hours a week for 10 years to do that, are you in the right vehicle? That's a question. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And it's just look, if you got that investor background, you're running numbers all day. Do the numbers right. Look at the statistics, right? How many people actually make this much in this industry? And then what does it take to get there? And are you amongst those one percenters that it takes to get there? Or you can look at other industries like not for nothing, but like you look at the roofing industry, right? And people make five,$5 million a year like it gross. This is not trying. You see what I'm saying? I don't make$5 million a year wholesaling. Not trying. That's what you do in the roofing industry. The numbers are just way higher in what you can make and what you can bring in and return and stuff like that too. And then the thing is, it's a sellable business as well. Yeah. So that's why Yeah. I chose that vehicle. And you gotta look for the vehicle that lines up with you, your skills, your talents. If it wasn't for real estate and renovating. Multiple properties. I wouldn't have gained the skills and the crews and the knowledge and the wisdom to get into roofing. So it's all a stepping stone, right? Yeah. But what are you gonna do with what you got? I always, that's right. I always quote that term like, do the best with what you got. You know what I mean? And so when I'm like looking around and I'm looking at my resources and what I have is, teams and crews people that I just want to put to work. That's the main thing that I love about entrepreneurship is building an economy. And and when we provide these jobs, and I was doing this through fix and flip and renovation, but we're keeping our crews back to back. We were doing like five properties at a time, right? So they're just going from one project. They're always busy, but these guys are. Feeding their families, they're paying their bills. They're going through Christmas, buying Christmas presents for their families. And that's what I love about business the most, is being able to have impact on your community and on your team. And so when fix and flip started slowing down for me, I'm thinking about my people and I'm like, how can I continue to keep my guys busy? How can I continue to keep my, people, my friends? Paid, and that's why I started moving into construction, which I chose roofing as the vehicle for that and for the life goals that we have. And, one of my main goals is to build a hundred million dollars empire, sell it, and then start a private equity firm where I buy businesses and cash flowing real estate, like apartment buildings and stuff. Yeah. That's great. I wanna dive into the art of connecting aspect of this'cause now we've gotten the full story. Oh, for sure. I would love to talk about when you were first getting started, when you were scaling up to all of those deals. You've got a lot of different partnerships that you need. You need a killer title company for sure. You need lending. There's all these different pieces. So when you were going from that, like zero to 60 deals in a year, how did you build relationships with the right people? And I'm sure there were some missteps along the way as there always are, but like how did you go about getting the right pieces in play to be able to scale that quickly? Yeah. I would say starting from nothing, like not even having one buyer on a buyer's list. I started with nothing but the deal. You know what I mean? I had the deal and that's all I had. And then I collected as I go. I would say piggybacking, piggybacking, that sounds crazy. You probably never heard that one before. But when I am sending a deal out, I'm collecting buyers, right? And then I collect their information right for the next time and for the next time and the next time. That's how your buyer's list builds. But not only am I collecting. Information. But I'm also collecting knowledge and wisdom. And when I actually assign that deal to the buyer, I'm learning how they're buying that property. What sources they're using for lending. Who's their lender? Who's their private lender? Who's their hard money lender? I'm learning. What they're doing on the exit, whether they're fixing and flipping, or whether they're, refinancing and who they're refinancing with. So it's really paying attention to detail. And then just one of my mottos is hearts and minds. I learned that from the military when we were at war in Afghanistan. It was always hearts and minds like we were going for the hearts and minds of the people. And so that's what I do in my business as well. It's, everybody, we interact with hearts and minds, we want to treat people good. We wanna win their hearts and we wanna win their minds, right? And so just being able to sell multiple deals to investors and being able to absorb the knowledge and wisdom and the resources that they had and building the relationships with them throughout the process of being that go-to person. That they can trust that they're making money off. I had somebody invite me to dinner one time and like literally he just, Hey man, I wanna take you out to dinner. Crazy. And he sat me down at the table and he like pulled out like five checks, like right there, five checks, and it was like$1.5 million right there. And he was like, you remember those properties? You sold me right? For 60,000 if that back in the day. He went off and made 1.5 million.'cause some developer came in and bought it and built Milltown on it. Wow. Yeah. You know about that. I know that developer. Yeah. Wow. He was buying up all those properties. He was. And quietly too. Yeah. So Ethan didn't want anyone to know he was doing that. One of the guys sat me down at the table.'cause he was, I sold those properties to those guys. Wow. And and back then, no, it was not. It was nothing that was, no, you might get shot. Yeah. It's just luck of the draw, yeah. To have properties in that location. But yeah, now just building those relationships, doing people right, doing people solid, becoming trustworthy. And that's another thing. It's quick to burn bridges, and just acting with integrity. And then nowadays I can make phone calls and make things happen, and it leads to bigger and better deals. I get. Bigger deals and I make a phone call and it's gone. And there's six figures right there type stuff. So I would just say, just being the guy that sells the shovels. When there is a gold rush coming and people are digging for gold do you want to be the guy that's digging for gold, hoping to get lucky? Or are you being the guy that's selling the shovels during the gold rush? You see what I'm saying? And so I've always sold the shovels. Yeah. I think it's a part of that. You have to also buy back your time. Because if you're selling the shovels, it's really easy to get sucked into oh, why don't you I just like that guy just brought back those checks. I just brought back a big old pan of gold. Yeah. With your shovel, nick. Yeah. True story. And then you're like let me go in the shed real fast and start digging. Yeah. And you have to avoid that temptation. Yeah. Yeah. I think God gives everybody talents. For sure. This is another thing that sticks out to me is that parable of talents, and he gave them according to their talents. You see what I'm saying? It was according to their talents, I think. I think it's. Figuring out what your talent is. And don't chase other people's talents. Yes. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Because there's so many shiny object syndromes out there, and I've been guilty of it too. I see guys making money off Amazon. And I'm like, I'm starting my own drop ship in store. You know what I mean? Crypto, I'm putting in crypto, yeah. And just, I've always failed at those ventures and just coming back to God, what do you have for me? What do you want me to do? What are the talents that you've given me? And I don't think talents is anything that truthfully. Anything that you have to earn, it's a God-given gift. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Now maybe you have to sharpen it a little bit. But really just get to know yourself and get to know what are the talents that God has given me, and what can I do with that? Yeah. Yeah. I think about with my life, people, I always ask, people ask me how did you get so good at talking to people or. How did you get so good at creating connections with people? I'm like, I don't know. I've just, since I was a little kid, I was more interested in talking to the adults than I was playing Xbox or Legos, and that's just my gift, right? It's something that I. I've sharpened, like you mentioned, over time I've learned some tricks, my friend David will call me, he'll say Sensei Vike he calls me the networking sensei and he's in the parking business and I helped him get parking lots and everything and I, I was talking to one of our large hospitality company owners the other day in town and they have a lot that David wanted to get and I. I said, he was like, can you get me connected to the owner? And I was like, you don't need to talk to the owner, David. You need to talk to the gatekeeper. And he was like I really wanna talk to the owner. I was like, now I'm gonna email you with the gatekeeper. I promise you respect. This is who you need to talk to. And I sent a very nice email thanking her for all that she's done for me. Genuinely. I do thank her for all she's done for me.'cause she's done a lot and sent him in that email within three minutes. He was connected to the director of that sector, of the business operation. And then they had coffee that following Monday, so on Friday. Yeah. So by him going to the, the owner's executive assistant respecting her and respecting the owner. Absolutely. Respect. Then he got what he needed within a few days. Yeah. Yeah. And. Those type of things. I didn't know at first I was, I always thought, gotta go to the owner. Oh, chain of command, gotta go to the owner. And no, that's not always the case. You sometimes you go to the right hand of the owner and it's just as impactful as going to the owner, if not more, because they're the one really controlling everything. Yeah I agree. As the owner, we put these people in place for a specific reason, you know what I mean? And I, I was in the military, so we learned. To respect the chain of command. Like we don't just go right up to the platoon captain we don't do that. You gotta go to your team leader who's gotta go to the first sergeant, who's gotta go. You see what I'm saying? You don't skip the chain of command. In fact, if you did, you get busted down pretty hard for doing so. And yeah, when I built my business as well too, I was really big on that. Like people. Like they, it's not for nothing. It's not like a ego thing, but they didn't come right up to me. Like I built it that way for a reason. And that was so that I'm focused on highest and best use of my time. And my people filter priorities. You see what I'm saying? It just is what it is. Now, some people's messages and demands and the things that they want made it to me and some did not, but I put these people in place for a reason. That's like going to Walmart and asking the cashier that's put there for a reason to check you out in the grocery line, but saying nah, I want the store manager to check me out. You know what I mean? Like, why? I put this person there for a reason. You see what I'm saying? That's how I'm really big on the chain of command as well. Yeah. I'm not so big on the chain of command. I love skipping it when possible. Which is funny. I would do terrible in the military'cause I'd see something wrong and I'd be like, I'd be terrible now. If I saw something wrong, I would just be like, I'm out. We need to fix this. And then if I talked to someone about it. Getting my balls busted for going and talking to the person. They actually think I, I could never do that, but I wouldn't make it anymore. There is a time and a place, and that's the thing. It's like learning, okay, hey, this is an owner conversation, and then, hey, this is a right, like this is not a owner conversation. Like I, I called an owner today because I had an opportunity that came up on a. A big real estate deal, four and a half million dollar real estate deal. Yeah. I could have called one of his underlings and Oh, I'll run it by him, but no, get there. Yeah. I he was in San Francisco eating breakfast with his venture capital investment and he interrupted his breakfast to learn about this, but he know that type of deal, he could invest four and a half million and make 10. Yeah. And so I'm gonna go straight to the owner for that. So I think that's cool, man. You gotta like. It's the relationship that you have too. Yeah. Depends on that relationship. What I was talking about is you get random strangers that hit you up every day. Exactly. You know what I mean? But of course, like if my buddy or this guy that I've done deal with come talk to me, man. But if it's these, some of these people that like they want something from you. You've never even heard of them. That's the filter. So this is a great I think a great thing to dive in on. You have a lot of people come up and ask you, Hey, I wanna learn about wholesaling, I wanna do what you did. I wanna make 300 grand a year. 400 grand a year. Oh, hey there. It's me again. I know you expected Morgan Freeman to come on and talk about the biggest company in the world. Well, I'm sorry, but you get the next best thing. This show is sponsored by the company that I co founded, Acadia Capital, and acadia is a hard money lending fund originating loans in Southeast Tennessee and Northern Georgia on residential one to four unit renovation properties. We are regulation D five Oh six C fund and are actively seeking accredited investors. We provide fantastic first position real estate back returns. If you're ready to get your tired and lazy capital to work with a minimum 8 percent return, go to Acadia loans. com backslash invest. Not only do we accept standard investments, but we can also accept self directed IRAs and other self directed retirement accounts to take advantage of tax advantage investing. Thank you so much for listening to Art of Connecting now back to the show. Yeah. So I know you implemented some of this, why I'm bringing this up. What is your parameter around when some random person comes up to you and says, Nick, I wanna learn about wholesaling. I wanna do exactly what you've done. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually pretty simple and I've learned this through trial and error. When it comes to. Coaching and when it comes to mentoring and when it comes to just helping people out it's still a numbers game. It's still a numbers game. And I realize, and it's always worth it, like that's why you can have a hundred people in a room at a seminar and everybody's like paid to be at that seminar and one or two people's lives changed. That's worth it. Yes. You see what I'm saying? Yep. And nobody else did anything with it. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. And then they feel oh, this was a scam. I spent money on this and it didn't fall into my lap and all that stuff. But there's two other people who actually got results, did the work. And so for me, I don't have that structure. But I do have a heart for helping people. Like I have a heart for giving and I want to see people's lives changed. I want to see people who are struggling in, whatever position they're in, whether it's financial or anything else. I want to see breakthrough and impact, and I just wanna see the best for everybody. So it's hard for me to say no, it really is. But over time I've learned that, like I meet these, hey, it's always Hey, can I meet you for coffee? Or, Hey, can I take you to lunch? It's always like that and. And I've done it in the very beginning when I was like new and still learning and stuff like that. And then you realize you spent like two, three hours, talking to this guy one on one, saying the same thing that you've said a hundred times. Exactly. And then they don't do anything with it. And then they just don't do anything with it. And so I started telling people like. I love you, but sorry, I can't,'cause I'm focused on growing my business. I started having to be selfish for a reason for a season. And I didn't like that either. I didn't like that either.'cause I generally do want to help people. And so that's why when I was in Mexico, living in Mexico and Cabo I think everybody has that imposter syndrome. I definitely did.'Cause like I've been doing this for a living. I guess I'm an OG at it and like I, I mean if you look at my life like. I've been the sole provider for my wife and my children. And we've had a great life of exploration and travel and living in all these beautiful destinations and buying our dream home and doing all this stuff. You know what I mean? And it's like I'm one guy, and I'm really proud of that too,'cause I'm old school in a way where I feel like the man should be the provider and then my wife can go get, can go make whatever money she wants, but it's not dependent on her. Like I pay the bills and, she takes care of my stomach, she feeds me. I'm a little old school like that. Take care of the family take care of our hearts while I take care of our financials here. So we have a good team thing going. But that imposter syndrome actually went away in Mexico. That's when it like really seeped in hold on a second. I'm living in Mexico right now. Like you really start to think about this. Like there, I can write a book on this, like I'm living in Mexico right now, flipping houses, wholesaling houses, buying rentals in the USA while I'm living in Mexico, living a lifestyle of freedom. I'm not tied to an office. I'm making good income really good money. I have good accountants and i'm actually living this life right now, and so I felt okay, I can write a book and I'm not an imposter here. Because we all have our things going on mentally. We, my, one of my faults. That I know about myself is that I always have, everybody has their things. And the thing that, that seeps into my thing, I think where the enemy tries to attack me is that I'm not good enough. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I'm not good enough. And so I think that's where my imposter syndrome comes.'cause I'm surrounded by a lot of great people. I, there's. There's people that are just like next level compared to me. So of course I feel like I'm not like that guy. I am not good enough, but I'm living like what? Tim Ferris would say the four hour work week was. His book is I'm living in all these different parts of the world and my life was a vacation, and I just laptop and computer, laptop and cell phone, lifestyle. On the beach doing whatever. So it was beautiful. And so all those people that come to ask for help and stuff like that's why I wrote the book, because I didn't want to tell them no, but I wanted to give them a layer. Like a filter. You gotta filter. Because again, that was my way of filtering the people who really wanted to change and the people who really wanted impact and the people who really want to do this versus like the looky lose. Oh, I'm just curious and I'm gonna steal three hours of your day. Like time is valuable. It's the most valuable currency that you have. Time is all we have. Yeah. I was just having dinner thrown of my mentors. You said it like three times time is all we have for sure. It's the classic question of Hey, if somebody said I'll give you a billion dollars today, but you'll only live till tomorrow or you can have your time, which one would you choose? Your family can't keep the billion dollars if you die, by the way. You know what I mean? You're gonna choose your time. That's why time is more valuable than money. And. Yeah I built, I wrote the book. I wrote the book. So that way anytime somebody asks for help, that's my first step. That's my filter. Hey, man, I wrote this book. Literally, it's an instruction manual. It's gonna answer every question. That you're gonna possibly ask me plus more? Yeah. Give you all the resources, the tools, everything, how I started. And literally it's a step-by-step menu from wholesaling to flipping houses virtually to, to buying rentals, to living in other countries while you do it. And that's why I wrote the book. So when people come and ask me on like Facebook or Instagram, hey, I'll kindly direct them to the book. It's not even anything that I'm like making money on or anything. It's literally my way of helping and giving back and saying, Hey man, if you really wanna do this, read this book. Read this book. You can get it for free. On Amazon, I think it's like Kindle. It's called Virtual Flipping Freedom. You can get it for free on Kindle, or it's$11 or something like that for the the paperback to order it. Definitely that way you can like highlight and stuff like that. But I would just say like it's a minimal investment. Like you wanna buy me a coffee here, it's 11 bucks, right? You wanna buy me lunch? This is 11 bucks. Go read the book and then come back to me. You know what I mean? So I'm not even like pushing you off. I'm saying read the book. It's prerequisite. Yeah. I would love to do deals with you, man. That's what I want is I want people to send me deals anyways. So read the book. Learn all the basics, learn everything, and then come ask me questions. But now they're more dialed in, targeted more high value questions, than just what is wholesaling? You know what I mean? Yeah. So that was my filter. Read the book. And it's so funny because there's so many people since then that I've said to read the book, or the book. And it's funny because they'll be like, they'll come ask you for your time and all this stuff, and I wanna learn. I'm like, Hey, read the book. They won't even buy the book. Or they'll just never come back to you ever again. I remember I, something that I just kept thinking of, and maybe this is on my mind for some reason. I remember when I was getting started and I had all these ideas and I wanted to buy domains, but they were$10. Yeah. And I was like. I don't think I can buy this domain.$10 is too much money. And like thinking about a book I used to like, there's so many books I got recommended. Yeah. And I would never buy'em.'cause I'm like, I think I made, I was like solo entrepreneur, just yeah. Like you just, I don't know what I was doing. Door National or whatever. And$10 or$11 felt like a lot. So something I would say to those people, if that's someone who's listening where. And now if someone recommends a book I get on Amazon, I freaking buy it. Yeah. Because I know that 10 or$15, whatever it is gonna be the best investment I could ever make in that. Being on my bookshelf, like my bookshelf is the most valuable part of my house. Yeah. I actually hide my diploma that I got from UTC with all my books.'cause those are more valuable than that piece of paper. Yeah. That's education. But for those people that are like that, where it's like, Hey, I don't have enough money. Message the author and say, Hey, would you be willing to send me a copy of this book? Every author has a digital copy Yeah. Of their book. Oh, for and a pdf I do. They can send for free. And I would be willing to bet you big money that they would do it for you if you say, I got recommended your book, but I'm a college student right now and I'm living day to day, but I want the knowledge. Who knows. That may be the person that says, Hey, let's hop on a Zoom call. Let's talk, here's my book. Yeah. Especially if you write them back, yeah. They send you the PDF and you say, this book changed my life. Yeah.'cause I learned this, and this, and I implemented this. Yeah. When you go and you say that to somebody it's gonna be unlikely that they don't wanna spend time with you. Yeah. Because at that point, it's man. This guy gets it. Like this girl she's on fire. This girl's gonna take on the world. I've given a handful of people the PDF for sure. It's like a ebook, yeah. It's like an ebook, but you can get it for free. Too. There is a free option, yeah. But it's also like the same, if you offer to take me out for coffee. It's the same as buying two cups of coffee. That's it. You know what I mean? But yeah. I'll happily give you the PDF for free. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's it's just an example. I say even if it's not your book where it's free on Kindle, like you can message the author. I read a book that my mentor recommended to me and I messaged the author on LinkedIn. Yeah. And he was like, ah, thank you for the kind words you can reach out to these people. Yeah. It's like I can't give you two to three hours of my time. But I'm giving you six months of my time in this book, which is way more valuable. I'm over giving to you right now because look, there's nothing I can tell you in two to three hours that's gonna change your life. But this book took me six months to write, and the best thing about books, this is what I started when I started studying successful people. And reading books is not just Ooh, I'm here to learn something. First of all. It's getting in the author's head. You see what I'm saying? When you read that book from that person, you are learning their mindset the way that they think, the way that they process thoughts. And that right there is like mentorship because you have I can sit side by side with any guru out there for two hours and he can tell me whatever. And that's good. I'll probably retain some information, but some of it's probably just flown right over my head or I forgot. But if I have that guy's book that he spent a year writing or six months writing, I have his brain in the palm of my hands. Yeah. And when you go and reach out to that person, you have so much more context behind their life. Yeah. Like I texted one of my friends, Matt the other day, he wrote a book called The Daily Climb, and I'm in the middle of reading his book and it says it talks about Aron university in Ohio. It's like a business like, it's not a university, it's like a business place. You can go take classes. But he said, go to Ohio. And I texted him, I said, I want to go to Ohio. And like he immediately got what that reference is because I read his book. Yeah. And so then they know it's wow this person's reading my book right now. That's, someone's else is taking their time to learn about my life For sure. Which is pretty cool too. So all around, it's just such a great. Asset. So yeah, we can get off the book'cause we are coming up on our time. But you already said the name. It's virtual Flipping Freedom. Is that, or Virtual Flipping Freedom on Amazon. Good. I remembered it Great by Nick Farentino. There you go. So if you guys like what you hear and you want to pick Nick's brain, don't text him. Just go there. Yeah. Read the book and then contact me. Yeah. I love it. I wanna ask lour ast question, which I ask every episode, and it's been quite a minute since I, I have done a podcast, so I have to remember I remember what I ask. Okay. The final question that I end with every time is, what is a connection to a person or a group of people that changed the trajectory of your life or career? And this could be, hey, I met this one person that really just started everything off. Or, Hey, I got connected to this group. There's so many connections. If I had to pick one, this is gonna sound so, so silly, so cliche. Or maybe I'm not trying to suck up to anybody or doing, if I had to pick one, I would say Dan. I'd just say, Dan, come on. Like how many deals have I done with that guy? How many hard money loans has he done for me? How many harmony loans has he done for my clients that got me paid? You know what I mean? That's my guy. That's my guy. For sure. All the houses I've flipped is'cause of him. It's'cause of me too, don't get me wrong. Sure it's'cause of me too. It's a win-win situation. But that's a relationship. Yeah. And yeah, I've worked with other lenders and stuff like that too, but he got me started. And he fulfilled so many of my buyer's loans who, when they couldn't get a loan. I can't say how many people I've held their hand. Yeah. Oh, go to this guy, he'll help you. You know what I mean? And essentially that's what got me paid. That's what took care of my family. That's the economy. But I really love what you're doing too. I need that in my life. I absolutely. So when it comes to an individual, there's that. Yeah. When it comes to a group, there's you see what I'm saying? And I love what you have built with Southeast Best Real Estate Meetup. A That's the only meetup I go to because I have to pick and choose where I spend my time. I do have a wife and kids, and so boom, I can commit to that once a month. And everybody's there. Great people are there. And it's very organized. And then the owner's club in itself too, like it that allows me to get into the right rooms with the right people too. And it's not because I want anything from them at all, it's because I want to be in that environment.'cause I want to soak up that energy. Yeah. Because I want to soak up that wisdom.'cause you are who you surround yourself with and I have been. My, my worst subject, there's all these principles to success, and my worst subject has always been networking. Because I'm a, I'd be, I'm a loner. I'd be like a loner. I'm like, which is funny. We're here on this podcast right now, so it may not be the truth. I'm actually, this is me working on it. That's it. That's it. This is me working on it. So I think a lot of times you don't even realize that you're doing it either. Yeah. You're just going, your head's just down and you're just like, oh, I'm just gonna get this done. And then you look up and you're like, wow. Yeah. Created this whole like community of people that have helped me get to where I am. I'm getting better at it. That was part of me moving to Chattanooga. When we were leaving Cabo. I was, that's why we went to Cocoa Beach. I was like, I'm not going to Chattanooga. I'm not gonna Chattanooga. I've been running from this town for so long. And it's because I know too many people and it's not a bad thing. Like I never did any, you know what I mean? I know too many people, but it's like everywhere I go in this town, like even when I go visit, it's this person, that person. And honestly I don't know why I was running from that for so long.'cause I would work all day and then at the end of the day, I just wanted to be left alone. Yeah. So I'd be the guy with the hat and the glasses in the grocery store. So nobody has small talk conversations with me. Hey Nick, I know you. And now I'm in a season of embracing like I, that's why I wasn't here. It's'cause I didn't wanna live where I worked, I liked the fact that I could walk around Cabo, Mexico and Florida and nobody knew me. Like seriously nobody knew me. It was peaceful in a way, but like I was clearly running from something. And so that's why I decided Chattanooga is where I'm gonna go and I'm going to embrace. The community instead of and'cause they've always been cool. They've always been tight. I don't even know why I'm hiding from'em. But I'm gonna embrace the community and I want to have impact here and I want to have change. And I love the community. I love the church, I love the people. There is no place greater, truthfully, I've been all over the world. I'm not just saying this. Same, there is, yeah, same. There is no place greater. Than the community and the people Yes. That we have in Chattanooga. I agree. Just like the events that we do get togethers, game nights, whatever, like that doesn't happen anywhere else. I'm being serious. That does not happen. Yeah, that happens here we have the Yeah I, same. I've been Yeah. All over the world, all over the country and have yet to find a place like this so well. That this is a great episode, man. I really just love getting to know you better every time. And it's such an honor to get, to be side by side with you and seeing what you're doing, coming to the game nights, having fun. Yeah, man. And just praising the Lord together, yeah. And what we do so well, guys, if Nick if the. Listeners wanna follow you, find you on social media, what's the best place to do that? Yeah I'm an Instagram, Facebook type of guy. So low key investor on Instagram. I think Facebook, it's, Nick Farentino or facebook.com/official farentino. You can follow me there. I try to post daily. That's how I keep up with people and let them know what I'm doing and stuff like that. But yeah, right there Instagram and Facebook. I love it. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Guys, if you enjoyed the art of connecting please just leave a five star review. It's the one thing that I request of you to do to help me with this. I don't make anything on this podcast. I just want to wanna serve you guys and bring some of my amazing friends that I have to you. So please just leave that five star review and also. Nick mentioned a little bit, but if you guys need any real estate lending, me and my partner Dan have a company called Acadia Capital and we would love to help you do your lending. We can lend on rental properties just about anywhere in the country. So feel free to hit me up if you need anything on that front. If all being said, I'll see you guys on the next episode and thanks for listening to the Art of connecting.