Gabe DaSilva Unique Journey of Breaking Out of the Corporate World to Financial Freedom & Impact

Pamela Bardhi
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of underdog today I have an incredible guest here with me, Gabe, how are you, my friend?

Gabe Dasilva
I am incredible. I’m having a beautiful, beautiful Tuesday morning.

Pamela Bardhi
I am loving that. Thank you so much for being here. I’m so grateful. I can’t wait to get into your story. And now I’ll hit you with my loaded question, which is one of my favorites. What inspired you on your journey to where you are today?

Gabe Dasilva
What inspired me continues to inspire me, it’s, I want to live out my greatest purpose and potential. And I certainly could not do that in a cube. After 10 years of trying, I realized, I’m going to have to set out on my own if I want to fully grow into the man God created me to be. That’s what wakes me up every day, I continue to do that. And real estate just happens to be a vehicle in which we do it.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s amazing. Yes, you’re like a real estate king. And I’m so pumped to get into that story. So walk me through your career a little bit. Where did you really start?

Gabe Dasilva
My background is in finance, I have a handful of finance degrees and an undergrad degree. An MBA and then a second master’s all in finance. And that’s where I headed out of undergrad and studied and worked corporate finance. I should say actually, I worked in corporate finance, I worked in investment banking, I worked sales and trading. I did a whole host of different things over the course of 10 years, none of which I liked.

Although I’d gone to school for it, I kept trying just hoping something would stick and nothing did. And then 07 08 came and I was let go twice in 18 months by no fault of my own. Just market conditions dictated that they had to trim the fat and I was the fat. So I said okay, I need to be a master of my own destiny to control my destiny. The only way I could do that is as an entrepreneur. And that’s when I forayed into entrepreneurship and out of corporate

Pamela Bardhi
Interesting. So you do this in 2008

Gabe Dasilva
Yeah. 2008. And then I say my first business was in the foodservice space. So I launched a restaurant in 2010. So between 08 09 I transitioned out of finance and into food service.

Pamela Bardhi
That was around the same time that I was my two restaurants too. That’s funny. Oh my god. Yeah, like 2000 2010 ish, 2013 ish. And they kind of kept them for a little while. That’s so cool. So wait, the question for you. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Gabe Dasilva
I think I wanted to be what all kids want to be like all those firemen, policemen, all that stuff. I think reality like we’re dreamers as children, but then the real world hits you, and your dreams start to take shape. They start to look more like your parent’s dreams or your neighbor’s dreams or whatever the case is. So my dad is a first-generation builder, works with his hands learned all the trades, and didn’t want us to do the same.

So there was that push at home to go to school wearing a suit. That’s what they define success as the guy that went to work on the train wearing a suit every day. And so that’s what I did. You know, it wasn’t about what I wanted to be anymore. It was about what like, the world wanted me to become. And so I tried it, you know, I gave it a go for 10 years.

Pamela Bardhi
I feel you on that. So when I went to undergrad, you know my parents, it was like the same thing. Because my parents had their restaurant since I was 10. So they would grind out, you know, 12 13-hour days religiously. And they also define success as going to the office and living that kind of life having security and having some freedom and all that. But they don’t know what that’s like, when you said Cuba was like, I remember that prison cell. I was like I was just there for internships. And I was like.

Gabe Dasilva
Everything is great. The carpet is great, the computer is great, the desk is great, the ceiling is great. It’s just meant to stifle creativity put you in this silly little box. And they just want you to process you’re just a cog in the wheel. They don’t encourage creativity as we do now. You know in our world. Now the more creative you can, you can be modeling a deal, financing a deal. The better the more successful, you’ll be, and you’ll be rewarded for creativity in our world now. And in that world, you’re just not.

Pamela Bardhi
You’re not. I’ll tell you when I had this internship I literally, I got yelled at because I was an intern and nobody was participating. So there I started to participate because I was like Clover wants to be silent. And I got y’all that they’re like, Damn, you’re an intern. You’re not supposed to say anything. I got a B minus in that internship. Because I was too ambitious. Literally.

That’s what she told me because when I asked her I was like, why don’t I have an A like I’ve been here. But participating got all my work done like never late actually stayed longer than I was supposed to. Like you said it stifles creating creativity and the like, ambition. She’s like, Yeah, you were just too ambitious, you know, we give you things to do you just finish them really quickly. And then and I’m like this, are you serious

Gabe Dasilva
Call that an A player in our world. Now we call those players and we hire them at all costs. Then that, so similar to this, I wear purple, I wore a purple shirt to the cube farm. And was reprimanded because gentlemen only wear white and blue shirts. That’s what my boss told me because I wore a purple shirt one day. And just the writing was on the wall, I knew I didn’t belong in corporate finance, or in financial services early on.

And I would go back to school to convince myself that I was working towards something else and that it would get better. And so I would go and I get my MBA and then two years, then I’d go back for another degree. Another two years, and all the while knowing that I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing for work. I was happy learning a growth-centric guy. So going to school and learning was what was keeping me going over the course of that decade because it certainly wasn’t the work.

Pamela Bardhi
Right. And I mean, being caught and that it’s just interesting, like the immigrant mentality. I feel like that’s where it stems from where it’s like, this is what success looks like. And like now I’m reading stats that in the next 20 years, Social Security could be depleted. I’m like, no, like, yeah, so how’s that going? With that planning, you know, like, can’t rely on that you need different streams of revenue to keep life rolling. So in your journey, going from food service to the real estate world walk me through that super exciting. Because I went through the same shift and I’m like it just to hear yours.

Gabe Dasilva
I owned and operated the restaurant alongside my partner for four years. We ultimately came to the realization it was a call it a luncheonette. Like we served the corporate business crowd in this particular area from 11 to one. So we generated all our sales in two hours, the balance of the day, we didn’t serve, we really just bled overhead. So essentially, this place couldn’t feed two families is the realization we came to. And it was either we’re gonna sell a chunk of equity, and we’re gonna roll out the franchise. Because we had built it like a franchise, we had built it to be repeatable and scalable. Or we’re gonna hold on to this thing, and it’ll only ever serve one of us.

We ultimately decided collectively that we were going to flip a coin and one would buy the other out. And then we would do with the concept of what we saw fit whoever stayed behind. And so I don’t know who won or who lost, right, as he stayed. I sold my share to him. He ultimately ran it for a few more years, and then sold it and then I transitioned into real estate. But honestly, real estate is just a vehicle. For me, its food service is a vehicle. It’s a widget like I love the business of business. Real estate happens to be the legacy wealth creation vehicle and has been forever.

So I’ll always have real estate in my world. But I’m also doing daycare, like, we have ECOM like you and I were talking about we’re in crypto, we do a whole host of different things. I just love the business of business. And once I transitioned into business full time with food service, that was the start and I was hooked.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. And in real estate. So when you first stepped into it, what did you do in the beginning,

Gabe Dasilva
My story’s not unlike everybody else’s. I started with a cosmetic rehab, did everything wrong, it turned into a full gut. Before I knew it, right I was standing in this fully gutted-out shell wondering what the hell happened. I was gonna do a kitchen and two bathrooms. And all of a sudden, I’m in this gutted-out shell, which turned out to be a blessing. Because if it forced me to learn on the fly, and the market at the time, commanded a full gut rehab of that property in that particular location.

The highest and best use was to fully refresh it, not just to do a cosmetic so we were rewarded for making mistakes, essentially. And so yeah, that was our first deal. It was I think we did like 82k on it or 86k on it and that was it. That was what I saw then if you’re going to do the work anyway. If the highest and best commands a full gut or addition or new construction. You have to be willing to push and do what the market commands for that particular parcel. And that changed everything for me. I was no longer looking for lipstick projects. I started looking for big stuff.

Pamela Bardhi
Hmm, so everything you said sounds familiar. Oh, man. I stepped into real estate not knowing anything about anything. I hired a coach and thank God that he guided me through because I didn’t know anything about construction. Like I’ll never forget one of my electricians came in and he’s like, oh Pam, Do you want to flush mount fixture over here? And I like didn’t know what he meant. I was like, hold on a second, I gotta take a call outside. I’m like, I go outside. I’m like googling flush mount fixture like, what is that? And I went back and I was like, Yeah, that looks good right there.

Gabe Dasilva
You’re like flush Wait, does that for toilets? What are we talking about?

Pamela Bardhi
Like, why is he dug up? Well flush? Exactly I was so lost. I mean, it’s just so funny what you learn in the beginning. But then once you get the hook of like flipping and seeing that kind of dough. Like a year’s salary for somebody, you’re like, you can’t stop. And that’s exactly how I started to was one flip, that changed the game, then you’re like, Alright, now I want more.

Gabe Dasilva
And then you layer on more like, there’s a lot of guys and girls that started flipping alongside me. At the same time, I was also immersing myself in the local Rei network, going to these monthly meetups and talking to other investors. And I made a conscious effort each time I showed up every month. If I’m going to sit across the table from the same group of people. I better have something different to say. I don’t want the same static intro for months and months and months. So I would come in and say yes, so I tested for my license, or I wrote three offers or we got a contract. Each month, I made a conscious effort to have something new to bring to the table.

That started to look more like one deal turns into three deals turns into six deals, as opposed to those folks that continue to show up. And either they’re not doing anything. And they think that they’re investors, by virtue of the fact that they sit around other investors. That doesn’t make you an investor, you have to buy something to be an investor, or then they just do one at a time. Then they do one, they finish that now they start the search for the next one, then they do that one they finish, then they start the search for the next one. That’s not the way to scale out of your W two if that’s your goal. You know, if your intention is to get out of your W two, you’re not going to do that doing one deal a year.

Pamela Bardhi
Right? Amen. It’s interesting, you went to the REI networks, because there it’s like, I would go to that for months. And then I would hear the same people like, Yeah, I can’t wait to start flipping, I can’t wait. And it was like, I can’t wait to start investing. You know, you would see the same sadness at the hole, you know what I mean? Like the whole time, and it’s like, you get stuck in this. Like when you’re looking over like a cliff or you’re like at the diving board, by the pool, you’re like.

Gabe Dasilva
It’s too much consumption, not enough execution, you know, you sign on for like a Fortune Builders mastery program, and you pay 50 grand. And then they inundate you with so much stuff in that online document repository, you open it, it’s just like 1000s of files. You can spend years in there going through all those files and never do a single deal. You have to get around people that are taking action, JV with someone does whatever you got to do to just get in the game. Write a check, even if it’s a small check, as an investor on someone else’s deals, something gets active. And I just knew that I needed to get active.

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah, absolutely. Because a lot of people stay stagnant, too. It’s like, so your first deal when you went in? Did you go in as like a JV partner? Or how did that work? In the beginning.

Gabe Dasilva
I was going to those networking events. I didn’t have any deals, what I did have was my finance background, and the ability to model I knew how to do financial models. So I could model deals and build-out investments summaries that happened to look aesthetically very, very good. But they weren’t tangible. They weren’t actual deals, it was me modeling things as examples. Then showing up with investment summaries instead of the generic business card. And then showing that around the table. That created talking points for us. So people were like, Oh, he’s the guy that’s always coming in with these investments, summaries. And investment summaries are just fancy reports with colors and then some charts and some numbers. You can generate them online using a house flipping spreadsheet or whatever your audience chooses to use.

There’s dozens of options, but that positioned me differently amongst the collective and then a deal came up. A broker had a deal and remembered me is the guy that knows how to model deals and is always modelling deals, and brought me that opportunity. And that was the first deal. That’s how I came across it. And I wound up because I was so adamant about the numbers and having the models and doing it. The lender in the room also took notice.

So the broker has the opportunity, the lender sponsor at the event noticed. And then I’m the guy there that’s like, I’ll put this all together and then I’ll get the tradesmen and we’ll do the project. So it became very much a team effort. And that broker and I went on to do a lot of business together, that lender and I are still in business together. 6 7 years later, that’s how it evolved. It was very organic.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s amazing, but I love that you brought something different to the table. Like the investment summaries and you stuck out and basically you manifest things. I feel like when you create those investments, and summaries, it’s like you’re talking about something very specific. And all of a sudden opportunities came up.

Gabe Dasilva
Yeah, and that’s what I encourage a lot of my students to do now if you’re going to go differentiate yourself somehow. If you look at the business cards that are getting passed around at the REI events, they all have the same logo. They all have the same weird-looking like swooshy WE BUY HOUSES logo in the top left because everybody’s using the same can stock photography. So be different bringing investment summary, I actually don’t take business cards anymore to events. Not that we go to many events in the pandemic, but I’ll take a copy of my book, that’s my business card. Now, and that comes with time. I know not everybody has a book that they can use as a business card. But doesn’t cost you anything to create an investment summary for the type of deal you would buy.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh, totally. So tell me about your book game yet.

Gabe Dasilva
So it’s the flip tips book over my shoulder the first three years doing rehabs. I documented every mistake I made like visually I took a picture of the mistake, so I wouldn’t forget it. And then the lesson learned beneath it. When I got to 100 mistakes, I compiled them all into a book. That’s what I give my students. That’s what I give out at networking events. It’s hundreds of 1000s of dollars in mistakes that gave made that I can avoid simply by flipping through the pages. And that’s it and see what he did wrong seeing the picture of it and seeing the lesson learned. And so yeah, call it flip tips and yeah, 100 things not to do, essentially.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. I love that game. I love that, that’s so creative, and awesome. Because I mean, I can’t tell you how many mistakes I’ve been made in the process my god learning hundreds of 1000s of mistakes. And that’s invaluable. Honestly, that’s invaluable. So speaking of mistakes, and challenges, what have been some of your biggest challenges, either personally or professionally, in the game.

Gabe Dasilva
So personally, we could go down a rabbit hole. But professionally, what I’d wished I had done sooner was appreciate and understand the value of a team and particularly players. And how important it is to scale because a lot of us like to operate in silos as entrepreneurs. And even with food service in the restaurant, my partner and I did that 13 16-hour days for years. If we had sought and aligned ourselves with players sooner, we would have won retained our sanity. We would have scaled faster and doing it this time.

Like in real estate, I quickly realized I want to delegate and elevate. I want to identify the things that I’m the best at and I want to elevate into that role. Just do more of that. I want to fire myself and delegate everything that I’m not good at. Like the administration, for sure, like, first thing you need to do is fire yourself as admin. And hire someone who that’s their giftedness and empower them. Then you fire yourself as project manager, as marketing manager. And you quickly start to elevate and focus on the things that only you can do.

Or shouldn’t say only you can do the things that you do best, which for me is really kind of finding and funding. Like that’s my giftedness that’s where I need to operate. So that was a mistake, I moved too slow. I came to that realization slower than I should have. And now I delegate like a savage, I put as quickly as things come in, I forward them out to the right person like that. That’s what I do you know better than most I think

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. Well, that’s the only way to scale and to do it right. So that was something I really struggled with, honestly, myself was because again, from the old school immigrant mentality where I can do it myself. Why do I need anybody else that oh my god, and I didn’t realize how ingrained in me that was? And then yes, I’ve like you I found myself 13 15 16 hour days and then trying to regain my sanity and put everything together. Like it’s like, how does that work? And that was one of the things that were before I got into real estate. You know, I met these real estate developers who were just like coming off a golf course on like a Friday.

They’re like, yeah, we’ll take the weekend off probably go down to the vineyard and I don’t know maybe take Monday off as well. I’m like how the hell these people have time to do this stuff. And they introduced to me the idea of like, making money work for you and all these things. That’s why I started to get interested in real estate. So I’m like, Okay, there’s obviously something here that people can have the time freedom. I quickly realized that being wealthy doesn’t mean you have all the money. Means you have the time to move him to do what you want to do. And that was my realization you know, I’ve always thought money Money, money.

Then it’s like, okay, when you have the money then what if you don’t have time to enjoy it then what happens? So it’s really interesting, really interesting. And delegation, entrepreneurs’ hardest dream, to accomplish, to delegate into feel comfortable and like, okay, this person can handle this thing. And I don’t have to worry about it. So that was a big thing for me, too. I’m like trying to transition and I’m like, Oh, but I can do this best you need to get out of your own head.

Gabe Dasilva
And it becomes leading people then like, once you hire somebody, your number one responsibility now becomes empowering and pouring into that person in whatever role you’ve hired them into. So that way they can be successful at that and in turn buy you time. So you can go do more. And in real estate, it’s very forgiving, because these spreads are pretty fat. Like, on what we do. If someone empowers you if you empower someone to do whatever that role is that you’re delegated to them.

And that affords you the freedom to go find just one more deal a year that should cover their salary. You should have the peace of mind to go out and find more opportunities and not be worried about overhead. And in a lot of other businesses, that’s not the case. In food, there’s the cost of goods sold, there’s a lot like the margins are super thin. So in real estate, that’s not the case. You know, just go do more deals. That’s it?

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely. And so give who are what has been your biggest inspiration throughout your journey, your life journey, in general,

Gabe Dasilva
Kind of break it up into different buckets. And so I have faith, family fitness, finances, and freedom. The five F’s and in each one of those buckets, each one of those silos is someone that are a handful of people. A lot of times who I aspire to be like. And I try and you know, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Like, hang out with five millionaires, you will become the sixth like that applies in the finance bucket. But that person, might not be the person I want to model in the family bucket or the faith bucket.

And so I’m inspired by the people I spend time with, for different reasons. Like with fitness, I’m wearing an Iron Man hat, when it became time for me to get serious about my health and wellness and fitness. You better believe I got around a bunch of Iron Men. Because I wanted to be an Iron Man. So those aren’t necessarily the people I tap for financial advice. But they’re definitely the people I lean into when it comes to things like discipline and consistency and resolve and like your health and your diet.

So I’m inspired by people who are doing the things that I want to do at the level I want to do the mat and can articulate to me in a way that makes sense how I too can do it. Like I want to model their success. They need to be able to not just do it, but then also explain to me or show me by example how I too can achieve that. And that’s what most inspires me. And those are the people I want to be around most and that’s the kind of person I want to be for others.

Pamela Bardhi
Amen. I love that. I love that you mentioned you know that it’s different silos and different buckets. Because you don’t want your fitness guys really okay, what do you guys think of this real estate deal? They really don’t Oh, man looks good.

Gabe Dasilva
They’re like, Yeah, how about that back squat, right, like, that mile time. Which is good. Like, I want to be pushed in different areas of my life by the right people like balance. Which I believe to be really an illusion. Balance is a myth. You’re not like the whole wheel of life. If your listeners have ever done the Wheel of Life exercise, right, the wheel is never perfect, it’s jagged. Because you’re in seasons in your life, you’re going to be strong in other areas and weak in some and that’s okay. And that’s the same thing with your sphere. Like I have some amazing family men in my world that I lean into and learn a lot from, but they’re terrible with their finances.

I would never ask I wouldn’t ask them how to balance a checkbook. But how to be a dad how to show up at the Games how to be like a front-row dad, like Yeah, for sure. I’m gonna learn that from them. That’s why I applied that model. And that’s not me. That’s Jesse Itzler if you guys know if your listeners follow him Itzler or an ED, my let Tom bill you these are guys that inspire me. I watch what these guys do from a distance and then I replicate it.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. I love that you are really a growth-centric person. Like I feel like you gather inspiration from so many different sources. Which is incredible based on the different arenas of life, which is incredible.

Gabe Dasilva
It’s one of the six basic human needs. It’s certainty uncertainty, significance, significance, love and connection, growth and contribution. And for me, it’s growth and contribution those the two. At other times in my life, it was significant, like I want money, I want to focus on making money, or it was certainty. Like I want to know that, like, everything’s gonna go according to plan. I got real regimented. And over time, I’ve grown to understand like, I want to always never be growing. I want to be giving back I want to be contributing. Those two things are what keep me going.

Pamela Bardhi
I love the game. I just love your attitude and just your journey in general. And I mean, you were mentioning earlier, you were like personlig and go down rabbit hole. Oh, yeah. What has been one of your biggest challenges and how have you overcome it your biggest underdog moment?

Gabe Dasilva
Yep, so I’m in recovery. I was a raging alcoholic for a decade. So that’s my personal struggle, my test, my message, your test is your testimony, your message, and I had to experience that. So I can now draw from that experience and serve others. So that’s my underdog story was and I’m sober for two years. As I said, I’m doing Ironman, I’m building businesses and helping suit Do the same like, it just it’s my story. That’s my journey, you know. And that’s the hand God dealt me for a reason. And so I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. I’m blessed to be where I’m at. We can dig as deep as you want into that it’s something I speak about openly.

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah. I mean, that’s entirely up to you, whatever you’d like to share. Man, I know, I have family members who have struggled with it, and all of that. So I’ve walked down that journey, I feel like I’ve walked it with them throughout the process and it’s never, never easy. But when you’re surrounded by the right support system, you can make it through anything.

Gabe Dasilva
Yeah, it’s exactly right. It’s not unlike those buckets, and like aligning with individuals that are going to inspire you. In each of those buckets. It’s the same thing with recovery and sobriety like you got to be around people that are doing what it is that you want to do. And they have to be able to articulate to you how they did it in a way that you can model. And like, he does that very, very clearly he’s got it spelled out, it’s been spelled out for nearly 100 years in the book. So if you want to do it, like if you want what we have, you must do what we did. That’s the way they say it. So I didn’t, I fought it for a long time.

And then I just gave it a shot. I just said if it works for others, it ought to work for me. We as addicts think that we’re unique. We’re terminally unique. You’re so unique that you’re going to be unique all the way to the grave. Because you think you’re special. In a sense, we are all special. But like we all have the same issues, you know, the same underlying conditions. So I had to come to terms with that and do some real soul searching, do some deep work, the stuff that most people are avoiding. Because they’ll drink or they’ll watch TV, or they’ll binge eat or whatever, everybody’s got addictions. They come in a lot of forms, some are just like more in your face. And, you know, unfortunate that mine was so in my face that eventually I had to do something about it.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s an awesome game. I mean, that’s the number one thing though, is awareness. Now you’re working on yourself to be better and do better. And you’re just gonna continue that and inspire others along their journey as well, which is absolutely incredible. Because I mean, the things that you’re up to now are just unbelievable. So what’s going on in your world gives you I mean, you’ve got new business models in the commercial realm, which is super incredible. And you’ve got your education. I mean, you have a whole slew of things. So walk me through what’s happening in your world in the next six to 12 months.

Gabe Dasilva
So the commercial stuff, the most exciting thing I would say that we have going, we took what we did in the single fam space. We do value add construction, heavy type, rehabs, auditions, adult levels, even new constructions, we’re doing it in single fam. I was thinking, well, we can flip a house, why can’t we flip a building? Why can’t we flip an office building? And sure enough, you have to change the asset class, but bring the same skill set along. Clearly, your professional service providers, your engineer, your architect, your attorney, your CPA. Those guys will likely not be the right partners, but you still in the skill set you and your team have developed.

That’s what you need. And so we transitioned into commercial and we got some new partners to help us because we don’t know what we don’t know. So we hire the right partners. And now we’re retrofitting existing commercial space. To turn it into daycare, we’re doing change of use. Specifically, we’re doing daycare because two things are working in our favor. The commercial is just slaughtered right with COVID. So there’s, there’s no shortage of vacant commercial space. In our state, a third of the daycare centers closed with COVID. Now as people are getting comfortable putting their kids back in school, there’s demand issues, there’s supply issues. There’s waiting lists a year-long to get kids into schools.

So we’re going to go and take on commercial space fitted out and put daycare centers in there. We’re currently doing two of those and loving it and loving the scalability of the model. And all it took was just taking the blinders off and saying, Hey, what are you really good at? And then how do you take that thing that you’re really good at and kind of elevate it into a different asset class. That’s what I’m most excited about over the next six to 12 months, is creating space. Then there’s, of course, the impact piece, the contribution piece. You get to create a container in which little people like grow into adults.

Like, clearly, we’re not taking them from two years old to 20 years old, but like they’re sponges at that age. You want to create an environment where you can really impact children. That’s where you’re going to do it right at home, of course, but this daycare concept is something that really speaks to me. So yeah, that’s what I’m most excited about.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. And you’re still going to be doing events and you’re going to be doing all that awesome stuff, too. In New Jersey area. Yeah, yes. Yep. That talks about your education programs as well.

Gabe Dasilva
So as we were doing the cosmetic to gut rehab to addition to add a level to new construction kind of progression people locally. We’re taking notes and we’re adding asking like, can I shadow you is how it started. And then I would take an investor or two around with me showing what we were doing. Eventually, that became unsustainable. We wound up renting buses and then taking people around our projects. And then I loved what I saw, can we do a deep dive that turned into a workshop. Then we just well, thanks to COVID, we couldn’t do workshops. So we went virtual, we created a curriculum in Kajabi. We have an online course that teaches the same thing we would have taught in our workshop, then they take the course.

So they go to the workshop, they’re like, now we want to align with you in kind of a done with your model. Can you coach us through the implementation of what you taught us, that turned into our accelerator coaching program? So the whole thing has really evolved very organically. To the point where students in our mastermind, have since started quit their jobs and are now full-time. This is my mandate as a coach and mentor are to see 50 People quit their jobs.

And we’re starting to see it happen now. Right through COVID. When a lot of others backed off, most wholesalers stopped mailing a lot of fixes and flip guys went back to work or just stopped working. We didn’t, we leaned in my students, and I leaned in and started doing bigger deals, more deals. So we’re seeing those guys and girls quit their jobs and go full-time. And that, to me, is the pinnacle of what I do as a coach and mentor.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s incredible game that’s absolutely incredible. I just love the work that you’re up to and your passion for it. And just like redefining things constantly and getting into this commercial space is gonna be really cool to see you crushed that out. Because you know, the commercial spaces. It’s an open market right now, commercial has not kept up with 21st-century demand. I like to say I’m like, everything, everything is shifting, everything is shifting. So it’s gonna be really cool to see how developers and investors take the commercial realm and kind of amplify it. So I’m pumped for that.

And I’m pumped for your workshops and seminars and all that stuff. I think it’s gonna be absolutely incredible. I think 2022 is gonna be a big year for that, you know, everyone’s thirsty for the information thirsty for the knowledge. Now, especially with this great resignation. And million jobs are available out there. But Everyone’s searching for more. So I think it’s gonna be an absolutely incredible year. Absolutely incredible year, and I think more and more your students will quit their jobs.

Gabe Dasilva
Yes, that’s, that’s what we seek to have happen for them if it’s what they want. If it’s, Hey, I wanted two or three deals a year to supplement my income. And I like the security that comes from getting the paycheck every two weeks. That’s good, too. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, we like that there’s folks like that, just like we like that there’s folks that want to go full time and burn the ships. There has to be a blend if everybody was burning the ships. Imagine what mayhem it would be in our world if everybody was trying to do it. At one time they were, it wasn’t that long ago that we were bidding in competition with every local.

Like dentist whose brother was a handyman, and the two of them are at the like courthouse steps bidding against you to do a full gut rehab. Like what are these guys know about? Got rehabbing houses. But that’s the market and I’m a capitalist. So I love to see that the free market does its thing. A lot of people will do one deal and never do another because they had no business doing the first one. And they find out that they don’t do it, it doesn’t work out like they thought it would on HGTV. And that’s fine, Like, hire a coach. It’ll go better. But regardless, I love it, I love free-market capitalism, I love being a part of it and I love real estate. So thankful and blessed to be doing this.

Pamela Bardhi
And thankful and blessed that you’re in this realm and that you’re teaching everyone how to do it. Because truthfully, you can do real estate part-time or as full-time as you want to. You can invest in a fund if you really want to be completely passive or own multi families know, there’s so many different avenues. And it’s incredible. It’s incredible game.

Gabe Dasilva
You know, on that point, I want to make sure I say like part-time effort will yield part-time results. So when guys and girls come into our world, and they’re like, We love what you’re doing, we hate our job. I quickly asked how much do you make? Right like, and it makes people uncomfortable? In our world. We talk about that, you know, yeah, but in the WTO world, that’s taboo. But I asked them not because I want to shame them or anything like that. I just want to understand how close are they to being paid into a corner, and here in the Northeast. That number is about a quarter-million bucks.

So if a guy or girl comes to me and says I make 250 And I want to quit and I want to go full time and do fixin flip. I have to kind of sit with them and say listen, you would need a Runway. Like you’re 12 to 18 months from payday you need to consider quitting. You can’t burn the ships especially if you have people at home that depend on you. But someone comes to me making 80 to 85 a year like hey, we can get you out of that job in six months.

Like if you do right, if you do the work part-time effort will yield part-time results though. If you want to go full time you got to give it full-time effort. And then you’ll get the full-time result. So I hope that helps, like clarify for the audience. Because I don’t want to talk anyone out of doing whatever it is that they feel compelled to do.

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely. I always say this I’m like, you know, at least consider real estate as some sort of different stream of revenue for you. If you can’t you know what I mean? Like, if you can’t leave that job, least invest in something right? Like, because you can make at least some sort of return build a different stream for yourself. But if you do want to quit full-time, I love your strategy. I think that that’s absolutely fantastic. You got to be realistic with the goals and not just be like, I quit, and then it’s like, Oh, crap, then what? You know nothing.

Gabe Dasilva
Yeah, reverse engineer, it like and then say, Okay, I need to make this amount of money to justify quitting my job. Alright. Well, that means that you need to do three auditions, three big-scale gut renovations. Or additions in the next 12 months to get there. That means that you’ll have to send out X amount of mail every week to get this many leads. To get this many appointments, to ultimately get that many contracts, to do those deals. So I get very tactical with them too. And then it’s sobers people up. They’re like, I don’t realistically have the marketing budget for that. So okay, well, that’s why we’re having this conversation.

What Would Gabe Older Self Tell her Younger Self

Pamela Bardhi
Right. Now, I love that you do that it keeps everything sort of on a tangible front, and a realistic logistical manner. And I think that that’s absolutely fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And question for you, whoa, what would your older self tell your younger self based on what you know, now.

Gabe Dasilva
I waited too long to do a lot of things. Like we were talking about hiring and bringing on the A players and delegating. I feel like earlier, I was slow to take action. And older me would tell younger me like you have a lot less to lose now than you will later. So now’s the time to fail, like take action fall in your face, get back up. If I had done that I caution to think where I might be right losing a decade, to the drinking and to corporate and to just inaction. But again, I’m blessed to be where I’m at.

And my journey is my journey for a reason. But my older self would tell my younger self, you have nothing to lose. What do you what are you waiting for? Go try, fail, just stay the course. Fail, get up, fail forward, fail forward, and you will not lose unless you quit. If you are relentless in your pursuit. And every failure is just a learning opportunity. There is no such thing as quitting. Like, I don’t even know what that is. So I just relentlessly move forward progress.

And that’s what I would have told myself and then my younger self probably wouldn’t listen because I would have been 22. And I would have known everything, and I would have still done shit the same way I did it anyway. But anyway, that’s the advice I would give my younger self and if there’s anybody listening that is in that 20 to 25 28 age range. You have nothing to lose, like do it now.

Pamela Bardhi
Man, I love a game. And now we’re working everybody find you, my friend,

Gabe Dasilva
Some @realgabedesilva on socials. I’m still the one in the DMS. So if you find me on Instagram @realgabedesilva message me, it’ll be me. And I’ll be getting those messages. I’ll reply to every single message. I encourage people to go to YouTube and check out my Docuseries, the build, and it doesn’t cost anything. It’s a series of 16 episodes, where we had someone follow us with a video camera and document day in the lifestyle running gun. Like what it is that we do every day as real estate investors. It’s really good. I send people there first because it doesn’t cost anything. Then they watch it. And they come to the realization that you know what, like, I really don’t want to do that.

Like that looks like a lot of work with Gabe does. I don’t want to do that. Then they’ll just lend to us instead, or the watch. And they’ll get fired up and they say I do want to do that. How do I learn more? And then we have courses and workshops and things like that where they can go and learn more. But that’s where I would suggest they start go to YouTube watch the build message me or my team on any of the platforms were there and we’re active and we’re always engaging.

Pamela Bardhi
I love. Again, thank you so much for being here today. You are a total Rockstar, my friend. It was such a privilege and an honor to thank you. Thank you.