Pizza Chef to Millionaire (Gino Barbaro's Wealth Journey)

Plug: Paul Leon here. I want to take my hat off for a moment and speak directly to you, the listener or watcher of our show here at the managers Mic When you join our newsletter at the TheManagers Mic.com website again, that's the managers Mic.com website. ⁓ I'm going to give you a free resource called a selling script to sky rocket sales.

Paul Leon: Gino Barbaro. Did I say your name right or did I say it wrong? Gino Barbaro. Did I say it right?

Gino: You did, you nailed it on the first try. Everyone's always like sort of Barbaro, Barbarinski, it's Barbaro. You rolled it off the tongue, my friend. How you doing, brother?

Paul Leon: Barbaro. Good. I love it. So what I I've been looking studying your background. You're an investor, money coach, entrepreneur, and podcast host. And an entrepreneur, you have grown a real estate portfolio to over 1,900 multifamily units four hundred and fifty million dollars in assets under management. you have grown a real estate portfolio to over 1,900 multifamily units and four hundred and fifty dollars

Plug: And my promise to you is that resources to help you totally free, evaluate your current script and see where it might need some improvement.

Paul Leon: What I like about your mission, Gino, is through Barbero 360, is the goal is to empower families to build lasting legacies by focusing on restoring traditional values in family life and finance and helping families create a healthier relationship with money. Also, you are the best selling author of Happy Money, Happy Life, and Happy Legacy. And you reside in Florida with your beautiful wife, Julia. and children. Gino, welcome to the manager's mic. I'm happy to have you on the show.

Plug: Thank you so much for being a listener and watcher of the show. And now back to the episode.

Gino: Paul, thank you for having me. And as you're listening to this, the listener might say, that's really impressive. But you know what's more impressive than that? Being married for twenty seven years to this guy and having six kids. I I give my wife a lot of grace. I give her a lot of credit. I think that's probably the biggest accomplishment that I've had is that we've had twenty seven amazing years. There's been some rough ones wedged in between, but overall it's been an incredible ride. Thanks for having me on.

Paul Leon: Yeah. I ⁓ been looking forward to this conversation because I watching some of your content and I saw you had an interview with one of your boys. and I that was just really cool. Like my son is now ten. and starting to kind of scratch the itch on what content development means. And I just thought how cool that would be one day when we're at a point where he's comfortable enough with his dad doing that. What is important to Gino today in 2026 before we get into our core topic? and I'm and I am putting you on the spot, so you didn't know this question was coming, but important to Gino today running a family as big as yours and a portfolio of four and fifty mil? What's important to you in twenty twenty-six that isn't that will help most people in your entrepreneurial journey?

Gino: This question has obviously changed over the last several years for myself, and it probably has changed for the listener. The most important thing for me right now, I'd have to say, is to help establish and to continue to create legacy. Legacy is not something that you leave behind. Legacy is something that you you actually activate today. Let say that again. Legacy is not something that you leave behind, whether it's financial, whether it's your It's something that you activate today. And if you take it from that mindset, everything you're doing, well, starting a podcast with your son. 20 years from now, I'm hoping and I'm praying that my grandchildren will be watching that podcast and saying, wow, Grandpa Gino is rocking it with dad. They're talking about money. I think it's so important for myself from the financial aspect. It's important to teach my children to become financial stewards of these resources. Ultimately, they're not really our resources. I think everything really belongs to God. I'm here. He gave me the intelligence, the wisdom, the knowledge to be able to these resources. Now it's like incumbent upon me to pass them along to my children. And not only the financial resources, ⁓ the resources of the values that I have instilled in the family, the faith that we have, the and intellectual capital of our Every child is unique. ⁓ I want every child to focus on what their human capital is, what they're really good at. And that's what I want my legacy to be is not only just passing them a ton of money, but being able and allowing them to learn how to continue to perpetuate by earning money, but by also shining and continuing to add to the legacy of our family and continuing to expand that legacy.

Paul Leon: I think it's a very powerful mission and I wanna peel the onion with you ⁓ around I know one of the clips I was watching too, you guys broke down the history of money and I feel this will kinda go into our topic ⁓ on

Gino: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: scaling a mutual fund portfolio. my wife took a business class, like a finance budget class one on one. And this is gonna be really embarrassing to admit to you, but even me myself, at the time when I took it, I was in my late thirties, there was topics there that I still felt there were gaps.

Gino: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: And this is pre-me finishing an MBA, and even still post-finish MBA, I would still say I'm always learning about the skill of money. ⁓ what some baby steps to scaling mutual fund portfolio? Because someone who's done four and fifty mil, you've obviously had some pain in achieving that result. But let's talk about in scope steps that any new professional in their career might be able to start doing today, next week, to start being on the right track. What would you say to that? Go ahead.

Gino: I'm gonna answer this. Yeah, I'm gonna zoom out and answer your question specifically as to the money, but then I wanna get into the emotions of money, the fear of money, the shame of money, the scarcity of money, the regrets that we have, these financial flashpoints or memories that we have that are really affecting us today and we don't even know it. So when we zoom in, we're gonna look, we're gonna talk about building a house. I'm a contractor, I'm building a house. Well, what's the first thing that a contractor needs to do when they're building a house? They need to build a foundation, a strong foundation. And this is what you as an investor need to do. You don't go out and start a business right away or invest in stocks without having a foundation built. Because what happens is you may get lucky, you may make money, but after three months, or after six months, or after interest rates rise, or after the war starts, or whatever happens, you lose the money and you say, ⁓ it was bad luck. It wasn't bad luck. It's that you built the house too quickly. You didn't build the foundation. The foundation is step one. Now, what is in that foundation? What's in that foundation is an emergency reserve. You need to have money set aside. Before you go and risk money in a risky investment, in a risky mutual fund or a real estate deal or a business deal, you need to have money set aside. There's some other things that you can do in that area of the foundation. You need to be able to understand what your relationship with money is, how you feel about money. You need to explore that because you may be having these self- Ideas of self-sabotaging yourself without even knowing about it. Once you have the emergency fund, you have that understanding of your relationship with money, then you can start educating yourself. That's all in the foundation. That all needs to be done. ⁓ made a huge mistake when I started investing, I didn't have the foundation. I went up to what I called stage four. But before I get to stage four, stage one is that foundation. Stage two is the framing of the house. You're putting up the two by fours and the two by sixes. That's when you can start investing a little bit of money. that stage one, I forgot to mention, you need to start creating habits ⁓ are going to make you successful. You need to start learning how to live within your means. You need to start learning how to save money. If you can't save money, you'll never be able to invest that money. So at stage one, that's important. In stage two, now that you have those habits, now that you have that understanding, you have a little bit of experience, you can start investing in those mutual funds and you can start building the cash management. The budget, how you have income and expenses, and you're how starting to understand how business really works. This is the area where you start dipping your toe in the water. You have the found that you have the framing. Stage three is the windows, the doors, the siding, and the roof. That is the insurance. That's the protection of the house. in stage one, you're still gonna learn about insurance and home insurance and car insurance, but you're not gonna really be that's not really where the focus is as an investor. As you start buying and you start learning how to invest, well, now you have to start learning about what umbrella insurance is. You have to make sure you have enough life insurance, you have to make sure that you have enough general liability. All these questions about protection are important. You can't put on the windows and the doors unless you have the framing and the foundation. Now that you have all three of those, you're at stage three, you're gonna go to stage four. Stage four is all about the mechanicals, the HVAC, the plumbing. The lighting, the electrical. That stage four can be really thought of as now you're going to be investing in real estate, alternative assets, business, maybe self-storage, single family homes. You can do it at this stage four because now you've understood the cash management. You've got great skills in saving money. You understand that you have protection. There's a moat that's going to go around these investments. You see what happens if you skip to stage four and you don't have these stages already done, the house. Ultimately will crumble because you don't have the foundations in place. And stage five, the last stage, is all about the landscaping, the finishing touches, the walkway, the pavers, nothing that really looks nice. And that would be equated to estate planning, asset protection, LLCs and trusts and advanced tax planning. You're not going to do that at stage one because you don't have the experience or the necessity to do that. You may be learning that at stage one. But that's a stage five skill. When you're at stage four and you're building these businesses, then at stage five, you have to adapt it. So if you're looking to as an investor, it's a hard question to answer in a way that you want to hear it because you just want to go ahead and rush right away and start investing. You really need to build the foundation. if a contractor rushes the house, doesn't the blueprints and goes out of sequence, all know what happens. We get a house that doesn't last more than two or three years, we have problems. So I I mean, I hope that illustrates, you know, the steps I I think a person needs to take to be able to scale the portfolio.

Paul Leon: Right. No, I like that. And as somebody who works in like the home improvement space, although for a backup power company, I actually like your analogies a lot 'cause a lot of small businesses I've worked with are typically your HVAC electricians. And I argue, ⁓ in experience, and I'm gonna have a follow up question to some things you said as I peel that onion with you, Gino. I feel like in my experience, collar workers really understand more about saving money sometimes organically than collar workers. I'm not trying to compare and say blue collar smarter than white collar, white collar smarter than blue collar. I think there's some overlap with that frame I just gave you in the conversation. Amongst your clients, what are signals you see that are like These are red flags this person has bad money habits. And if they don't start fixing these ⁓ habits, they're gonna end up broke, they're gonna end up poorer, and they're end up gonna get away from more wealth In general, what are some of those common habits you see in your experience that if people have done that if they if they didn't change, they're gonna fall into the trap of going in the reverse direction? Like let's just talk about the pain. Yeah. Sure.

Gino: This is a great question. Yeah, I love this because I'm going to use another analogy. This is something that we learned in money coaching. They're called money archetypes. Now, an arc archetype is a character in your mind. It's a a way for you to process information and a way for you to make decisions around money specifically. There are eight archetypes. picture yourself driving a car. The person driving the car is the warrior archetype. That warrior archetype is the one who. They're called archetypes.

Paul Leon: Money archetypes.

Gino: There are archetypes. picture yourself driving a car. The person driving the car is the warrior archetype. Me and you had 10 minutes to try to figure out this podcast to try to get on Riverside. The Warrior's like, we're gonna make it happen. Paul, we're not, we're not gonna quit. We're gonna figure out this VPN thing. It's gonna happen. That's who you want making your money decisions. They're not gonna make hasty decisions. They're gonna work hard. They're gonna build the foundation. They're gonna do what's right when it comes to making decisions around money. Now, next to the warrior in the passenger seat is the magician. The magician archetype is like, okay, Paul. We know what you really love. We know what you're passionate about. We're going to keep you on track. The warrior is going to work really hard, but the magician is going to understand your why and your soul purpose. When you put those two together and you're making decisions for the right reasons, it's like baby. It's like pouring gasoline on the fire. In the backseat of the car is what we call the creator artist. Now, in myself, the creator artist is the opera singer. The opera singer is great. You need that type of person because it lights you up. You need to be creative, whether it's out there shooting guns or going fishing or having a garden or whatever the creator inside of you. You like to paint, you like to draw, you like to sing, whatever that is. We all need a little bit of that to come out. It inspires the warrior. You don't want the creator artist making decisions about money. That's what you don't want, but you do want him inspiring the warrior. Always default back to the warrior. Now, in the trunk, you have the five other archetypes. Now, neither archetype is

Paul Leon: Mm.

Gino: Good or bad, there are shadows of them. When I sh tell you these other five, the one that I displayed that I would say the negative one was the tyrant. Now, the tyrant archetype is the one that's demanding, the one that is overbearing, the one that's afraid, the one that I would say is the typical manager where they're out there, they're being controlling. There's fear, there's scarcity. It could work in the short run, but in the long run, if the tyrant's going to continue to make money decisions for you. You are going to burn out and you're going to turn a lot of people off. And you don't want to live in a place of fear and scarcity when it comes to money. The next archetype, where I think you were talking about that, these next two really lean into your question. And I'm going to answer them with the fool and the innocent. Now, the fool can be great because you need to be optimistic. You need to have some kind of fun sometimes. But if the fool is driving the car and making every decision, ooh, crypto, ooh, single-family homes, ooh, it's a it's a shiny object.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Gino: But you need a warrior to look into those decisions. If it's the fools making every decision, not good. But you need to have some type of optimism. Or else if you're just going and not having any kind of fun, it's not going to work. But if the fool jumps out and starts driving, that's where a lot of people make mistakes. The other one is the innocent. The innocent is the one who just doesn't care, put digs their head in the sand and says, I don't really care. I don't want to know anything. I'm not going to open up my checking account. I'm going to keep my money in savings. That innocent is not going to do really well. It comes to investing. We also have the victim. Woe is me. We have a bunch of victims in this economy right now. The economy sucks, and I know because I suck back in 08 when I started. But the victim, if they're gonna make your money decisions, they're gonna make terrible decisions. You need to understand that victimhood is okay for a little while, but if you continue to blame your circumstances on other situations, external factors, it's not gonna get make your life any better. Victims are not good when it comes to dealing with money. There's the martyr also. The martyr archetype is great. They're compassionate. They're wise. They're giving. But at a certain point, they also may be self-sabotaging. They may be giving because it makes them feel good and they may expect something in return. like other archetype, they can be a shadow to it and a bad shadow to it. Ultimately, I like to say keep all those other archetypes in the trunk. Let them pop out every now and again. But just make sure that you're making decisions from the warrior archetype. I mean, and that comes down to about the investments, not just having the fool pop out and say, I got ten grand. I need to go buy a deal. I mean, that's what I used to do. But when you do that, what ends up happening? Ultimately the house crumbles.

Paul Leon: Mm-hmm. I like that. I like that frame. I haven't heard it quite that way of terms of archetypes before. The warrior archetype you want, you want the magician and the the passenger seat, I heard you correctly. ⁓ part of your teachings is about how have a value-based decision making framework. ⁓ And want to kind of start going a little deeper and we can bring back the archetypes into that. So

Gino: Mm. Yes. Mm.

Paul Leon: Is there an archetype that most people organically flock to if they know nothing about money in your opinion? And what archetype would you say you were maybe pre four hundred and fifty mil portfolio and then what archetype did you have to become to get the results of scaling fifteen hundred units in less than five years four hundred and fifty mil portfolio like you the and I'm I'm just gonna I'm just making this up. I'm not saying you were this were you the victim archetype? You had to become the warrior archetype. I'm just asking you very transparently like your journey from the type of archetype you were to now. Even if you didn't know those terms looking back to connect

Gino: Paul, I was all of them, baby. Like when I got married to my and this is gonna be important for for spouses. When I got married to my wife, we were completely different. And if you want to have a little exercise and have a little fun, I will guarantee you, I don't want to use the word guarantee, but in my opinion, fights that we have as spouses is not truly about money. We we argue about money, but that's not the root cause. There's behaviors or feelings or attitudes that are underlying the fighting about money.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Gino: Now, what do I mean by that? When my wife and I got married, was the one who was from more of an entrepreneurial household. I was the one who learned how to save, who learned how to set goals. I was the one who's driven, who knew more about money. My wife, on the other hand, came from what you had alluded to earlier, a blue-collar background. They were great people, but they were working paycheck to paycheck. They didn't know about anything about money. They thought rich people were evil. So when we got together, I became the tyrant. I was more controlling, but I did it from a place of fear because we started having kids. And I'm like, I can't spend money. I have to save. My mom told me, save, save, save, save for a rainy day. So I was conditioned to do that. So I was more tyrannical and was more of a self-tyrant. My wife, on the other hand, knew nothing, abdicated it, stayed home with the kids, and said, Hey, you take care of the money. And that Really caused a lot of problems in our relationship because she'd want to spend on certain things. And I was more of the tyrant. Now, as we learn and as we grew, and by the way, that's why I'm so passionate about coaching and about money, because it really, once you really, as you say, peel back the onion, you'll start seeing the patterns and the behaviors. And what I ended up doing was my tyrannical self, I had these limiting beliefs, these behaviors around money that money was scarce. That ⁓ I needed money to make money. And I started investing in real estate. And I'm like, yeah, it does take money to make money, but I can use other people's money. I can go to a bank. I can do something called seller financing, where the seller takes back part of the of the deal as as a as a seller finance note. can raise capital, something called a syndication. And once I started seeing that, wow. And by the way, if I own a property for two or three years I'm able to go to the bank and show that I increase the value, I can get a bigger loan on the property and refinance out some of the proceeds. So am I using someone else's money? Yeah. So it does take money to make money, but it doesn't have to be my money. ⁓ once I learned that, the answer to your question specifically, how did I scale? ⁓ of a sudden those money beliefs started going away, those limiting beliefs. And I started saying to myself, okay. Now, what is money? And my own thought about money early on, I had that belief also. Money is, you know, rich people are greedy. I ultimately earned ended up understanding that money doesn't corrupt people, it just reveals people. I I had that little inkling in the back of my mind by saying, if I became really wealthy, is my family gonna think I'm just this rich evil jerk? And is my wife's family gonna think that? I don't want them to think that. So at certain times, we hold ourselves back unconsciously by these beliefs.

Paul Leon: Yeah, I agree.

Gino: And if you just sit back and really think about it, I know we're both practicing Catholics. Catholics have some have oftentimes negative connotations around money. And if we live that life and we're saying to ourselves, okay, how much is too much? That's a question for everybody. I I think make as much money as you possibly can, because money creates impact. Profit to me is not the fuel, it's the destination. I think money is a result. If I'm really good at something and if I buy more apartments, I'm just gonna make more money. Now it doesn't make me a good or bad person. How I utilize that money and what I do with it may, but I think the whole concept of money is such an emotional, heavy topic for people that they tend to like push it away and unconsciously sabotage themselves in a lot of instances.

Paul Leon: I would say on paper, ⁓ you and I, just like from numbers point, are obviously not equal in value, but I think what I'm starting to learn about making more money, trying developing the ⁓ skill of entrepreneurship

Gino: Yes.

Paul Leon: I I would say I'm I would I'm starting to become more of the tyrant going back to your archetypes. I'll say things around the house like we gotta s ⁓ wife hates this, but I'll say like we gotta slow the spend or something and like I'll say that a lot and and I know it kind of irritates her 'cause I say it so much, but like I don't know. I feel like if you have more money you can see more to the future. That's just like a belief I have about money. That's why I think it's important

Gino: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: case there's that rainy day fun you need. You mentioned faith. Catholic, you're Catholic. Does and this might be kind of a weird question, but since we're both in the same spiritual system and how we practice Christianity, does faith play in to wealth and money? Obviously, their answer is yes on level, I would assume, but How does it play in in your opinion? Is there a framework we should be peeling around faith comes into it? Is it just because it gives you emotional comfort? I'm curious how faith may play into money as well in your professional perspective.

Gino: When I was at the restaurant, there were some great years early on. And in ⁓ eight, everything changed. The Great Recession changed everything. And I was struggling to make money. I was struggling to earn. I remember at times I felt like as if I was hiding in the kitchen. I was a chef and I was seemed like I was washing and hiding. And I sat one day and I had an epiphany. And, you know, the seven deadly sins, one is being slothful. And I had to have a hard conversation with myself. Am I am I being slothful? Am I being a little lazy here? Am I hiding? is is this what God made me for? I mean, I mean that's what I think. I think we're all made for something unique. I think we all have amazing gifts. when when I look back, I'm like, yeah, he gave me great parents. ⁓ He gave me a great opportunity. was born in the wealthiest country on the planet, and yet I'm sitting here in the kitchen and I'm hiding. And to me, that felt really off. That felt really, I mean, lack of a better word, sinful. And then to bring it home and to come home in front of my kids and have my kids see me struggling at work, not enjoying work. I didn't want them to grow up with them hearing dad saying, Work is tough, work is hard, you're not gonna make money. I didn't want that as well. So I tried to say to myself, what do I need to do? for me, I had to have a hard look in the mirror and say, I need to change. And I I don't want to call it the depths, but we all have to hit a certain area in our lives where we're like, okay, we need to change. And I I think from that perspective, I'm like, okay, he did give me intelligence. He did give me the ability. And for those of us that can do that, I think we have to do that because there are people that are not able to make money. So the more money that I can make, the more that we as a family can sit down and say, okay, how can we spend this money? I'll give you a quick example. I have we have a friend priest who ⁓ who's at the shrine And he wanted to write a book. Well, who helped him with the book publishing? I was able to pay for the book publishing. He's got this amazing book of prayer out there. He didn't have the funds to do it. He didn't have the skill or the experience to be able to launch a book publishing on Amazon. We were able to do that as a family. Now, if I didn't have the money, we wouldn't have allowed to to have that come to fruition. That's just one little thing that you can do with money. Can you imagine if you have extra money? You can start a podcast. and help other people out. I mean, becoming financially independent is just the first step. That's the goal. Once you've done that, then there's so much other stuff that opens up and so many other things that you can do in life to impact others.

Paul Leon: You said you were hiding. I assume what that means is weren't taking risks. maybe you were doing things that you only wanted to do that were comfortable versus things that were uncomfortable. I was wondering if you could define ⁓ what looked like and maybe there's some dots we can connect that maybe somebody also hears that might also hear I'm hiding too. 'Cause I can give you examples from me. I'm just curious if you had some ex more specifics. ⁓

Gino: ⁓ yeah. I mean when I went to coaching, I did some life coaching, became a certified life coach, there was something called an energy block in life coaching. And I just recently read a book called You're Taming Your Gremlins. gremlins in life coaching is that voice you in your head where you're good enough. You maybe maybe you're maybe fat, you're maybe ugly, you're maybe short, you're maybe old, you're maybe too slow. We all have those voices in our heads. And the voice that I had in my head was, I'm this pizza guy. Who's gonna invest with the pizza guy? Like I don't have any skill. I don't have any value. And that was what I was hiding from. I think if you're listening to this, sit down and think of what that voice is telling you inside of you. Name that, name that voice. And and then add power to it. Like really, the pizza guy that's holding that that's holding me back from going out and having conversations. And it's very powerful because I fortunately day stood against the gremlin. I was sitting in the front of the restaurant and in walks my partner today, current one of my current restaurant ⁓ real estate business partners. ⁓ He's at a hedge fund. He is really intelligent, really well versed. And he sits down and we start having a conversation. And ⁓ I shocked him because we're talking about oil and commodities and China. And real estate, and he didn't know that I had those skills or that experience. I told him about a real estate deal. Now, if my gremlin was there, my gremlin would have told me, shut up, Gino, you should be talking to Mike because you don't know what you're talking about. But I just actually said, Hey, what's the worst thing that can happen? And I think that's the first thing that we need to do is you're not alone out there. We all have this gremlin and it does take control of us at times. It does hold us back, it does have us hiding in the kitchen. And you're not the only one that's out there. And really to name it, what I ended up doing at coaching school is I would literally took a wooden spoon. And every time I thought about the gremlin, I would look at that wooden spoon because it would remind me of being in the kitchen and seeing how silly is that? I mean, just because I'm in the re restaurant business, why can't I learn about real estate? What's holding me back? There's so many other people out there who are not as intelligent as me. who have gotten into real estate because you don't need to be a rocket scientist to make money in real estate. I'm living proof of that. And there's a lot of people in this business that barely graduated high school. So once I started understanding that and saying, wow, I'm the problem. It's all the inner thoughts that I have, it really helped me out, Paul.

Paul Leon: No. And I appreciate you being open with me and invite I invite your feelings or wherever you're comfortable sharing. don't know a lot of life coaches who are Catholics in my circle. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing. Go ahead. Yeah, please do. Yeah.

Gino: Let me let me let me hit you up with that. Let me hit you up with that real quick because 10 years ago it was very frowned upon, frowned upon in the Catholic space. ⁓ if you go back into St. Thomas Aquinas, or you you go back, he is the ⁓ ⁓ of the first founding, I mean you want to call him a life coach, whatever you want to call him, ⁓ of the founding ⁓ theologians ⁓ living a great life, on personal development from the Catholic space. And I think a lot of a lot.

Paul Leon: Yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm surprised.

Gino: And it's interesting because the problem that is there is with life coaching, it always comes it one of the faults that there are is it it's more incumbent upon you. I all you're gonna do it. Whereas in the Catholic space, we think of, hey, we need help with God, right? God's there helping us do it. It's we can't do it all by ourselves. But at certain instances, a lot of Catholics put up their hands and go, Well, you know what? If it happens, it happens. Yeah, well You have to sort of put in the effort and the work as well. You have to sort of pray and really think about it as well. So there, I think there's a mix in between the two that really is beautiful. Whereas you're all open and you're honest and you're trying to think and trying to pray about what God wants you to do. I don't think God wanted me to be stuck in that kitchen. I think God wanted me to be on these podcasts, help people out, inspire people, show that a pizza guy can actually become a real estate quote unquote entrepreneur. I think that's what he wanted me to do. But at the same token, I needed to put in the work. I needed to put in the effort. And I needed to work on myself personally alongside him. And I think that's where the power comes in. If you're working just too much on yourself and you're avoiding the spiritual element of it, sometimes it's just for not for my opinion, not the right reasons. But when I can attach that to my to my, you know, spiritual and Paul, it can be challenging because at certain times the warrior mentality is like, I'm gonna make it happen. I'm gonna do it. And you forget. That there's someone behind you that's always helping you out. So there is that balance that we need. There's a company called Metanoia Catholic that are you know life coaches. They have a really cool coaching program as well from the spiritual element. But I mean, I have to say, Paul, it was such a a a huge decision for me to get into personal development because I needed it. I I just I I just was always blaming other people. I took no responsibility. I was aimless. I had no idea how to set goals. I didn't know how to ask empowering questions. I wasn't a good listener. I wasn't a good leader. These are all skills that we learn from going and becoming a life coach. And I didn't go to become one to become a life coach. I went to learn all those aforementioned skills, which I became much better at.

Paul Leon: So you're like a customer, you enjoyed it, and then you kinda became more endowed. ⁓ I agree and connect to a lot of stuff in your journey. I didn't a pizza place, I I can't connect to it in that context, but I used to work in the car rental world and

Gino: Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: And I used to work in one location we had a lot of interesting people. I'll give you a a story kind of connect the dots of type of interesting people we get. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. at least once a week we you know the rent the white vans you rent to go and you get like twelve people. At least once a week or other week, we'd get a white van with bullet holes in it. And I'd that I remember one time I was like, Hey, these whole

Gino: Yes.

Paul Leon: holes and I couldn't call them bullet holes you have to treat the customer right. But they were. And I was like, hey, these holes were not in here before you rented the car. And the guy was like, Yes, they were. I was like, no, they weren't. We take pictures of our cars. And then he dropped the keys and ran away. And that was kind of like so when I I I mentioned that to you because I would say I was in a situation where like I want to be stuck

Gino: Yeah.

Paul Leon: just doing car rental and I was also doing comedy, which I still like doing now the NBA's done, maybe we'll see what happens with that skill. 'Cause there's a lot of other goals. But I remember I was so low that one of the things my wife and I committed to doing the pandemic and everything was just praying the rosary every night. We never even prayed once a month if I were if I'm being totally transparent. But for whatever reason, we thought it's already bad, it's already terrible. What's it gonna hurt? Like that this is what we said. We said, what's it gonna hurt to pray the rosary every night? I had got laid off

Gino: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: The next week from my job, still prayed the rosary. Then the pandemic happened. Still prayed to the rosary. Applied to four hundred applications. Still prayed to the rosary. It wasn't until the last fifty applications three years later that competing offers, the opportunity, the job I love doing came, and then the rest's history. I share that with you because you shared your story.

Gino: Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: I would say one of my new goals is learning the skill of how to grow a happy family. You've done that. Like you have six You have a wife, Julia. and you've been married, what, over twenty seven years, twenty five years, if I heard you correctly earlier? What there's no other way to ask this question, but what are some of the secrets, man?

Gino: Hm. twenty seven.

Paul Leon: I mean, that's a heck of an achievement. So I'm just curious, what would you say to somebody who's either just starting a family or maybe somebody like myself is only at the ten year mark, eleven year mark, because I still feel like I have ways to go. What would you say to that person to achieve a twenty plus year marriage like yourself?

Gino: From the marriage perspective, it's gonna be challenging because men and women are different. I think I we interviewed Dr. John Gray. He wrote the book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Now, this current this current economy, the current environment we're in is going to tell us that, ⁓ no, there's very few differences. There are very few differences, those differences are massive. And I think we need to understand the

Paul Leon: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I remember.

Gino: The difference is, for instance, when we get into an argument, am more of the man, I will sit in my quote unquote man cave and I'll process it. Whereas women tend to like to talk it out. It's a big difference. I you're gonna come to me with a problem, Julia. I'm going to solve the problem. If you don't, you just wanna talk. We have to know those differences. And I that's one of the things that that helped us out tremendously. ⁓ when I talked to my wife, I think the thing that men crave most, I think, we would just want to have respect. We want our our wives to respect us. But in the same token, I need to do the actions that will provide that respect that I that I crave from her. And for me, when I told her I'm leaving the restaurant and she said yes for me to go into real estate full-time, the respect that I needed, I had to put in all that hard work, all that effort. ⁓ My whole goal was protect. And to provide for the family. And I think that's what that's what as far as us is has helped us out over the years. Now, as far as the children, I think you need to spend time with your kids. No more than that. And you need to spend time to them and you need to listen to them. I think one of the things that I did wrong early on, more than one, but I'll say two things that I did early on is I was more quickly to tell them what to do instead of actually listening to my kids. And I think the other thing that I would just hope that the listener grabs on to is when you make a mistake in front of your child or your wife, be quick to say sorry. Because for most of us, we just it it's a wound that I have that I just early on when we go into money coaching, we do this as well. We talk about what happened in our past. was blamed early on in my my childhood. It was always my fault. My mom was quick to blame me. And and it just escalated. And as I got to be an adult It's one of those wounds that I have, which it's I was very defensive. And it's one of those things where if you make a mistake to your child and you say sorry to them, you're you're teaching them really how to become an adult and how to actually act as an adult. And those two things, if you can spend more time, focus on them, listen to them, connect with them, and then just ultimately say sorry to them, that will that will really help out the relationship tremendously.

Paul Leon: I get relationship coaches on here at times. I've had one coach, and was Rabbi Shlomo Slotskin. Very interesting r relationship coach. He taught me in our conversation that marriage is the journey the relationship we have with our parents. It's an interesting frame I thought.

Gino: Mm.

Paul Leon: I'm curious, you can say Paul, none your business is this next question, 'cause it just came from my my thought process, Geno. What was your relationship like with your family or mother specifically that you feel you carry over into your marriage today?

Gino: That is a great question. And that's one of the things that we discuss when we do money coaching. ⁓ when I at my relationship that I have with my mom and my dad, my mom w was was she was a great, great mother, she was very controlling. She's the one who took care of all the finances. She was a really hard worker. She was a little bit more dominant. And when it came to my father, my father was the more of the fool archetype. She literally gave him an allowance every week because if she gave him all the money, he'd blow all the money. when you go back to my dad, my dad lost his mother when he was only 13 years old. He needed to be the leader of the family. His dad would go out to the farm and he'd have to take care of his sister. So you can see there's a lot of a lot of wounds there. ⁓ But when looking back at it, I can see how that affected me as becoming an adult because in the relationship now I was the one early on controlling all the money, being a little bit like the tyrant like my mother. And then my father, sort of being like the innocent, like my wife. My father was great, he was an excellent provider, went to work, made the money. He just gave everything over to my mom, and my mom controlled everything. Even my mother, when it comes to the family, she's the youngest one, but she tends to control these situations. And it's very, very similar to what happens to me. Now, there's certain things that she does that I really hate, and I'll be the opposite of that. But I mean, you have to and think about it from a money perspective as well. There may be some things that you hate. hate that your parents did. For instance, if you have a parent that was not making money, that was struggling, may have one child that says, you know what, unconsciously, that's just how it is. And you may have another one that says, I am never going to be like that. I'm going to prove to everyone that I'm going build this company and make millions. Great, ⁓ but when you get to that point and you've done that, you'll look back and go, why did I do that? I did that just to show my father. I'm here just

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Gino: To empower people to make them understand about their money journey and about their past and how it's ultimately controlling our behaviors in an unconscious way. And all those patterns and behaviors that I'm talking about now with you, I've only noticed them over the last few years. I was fortunate enough that my mom had enough positive behaviors that I was able to, gather and from her and take them unconsciously. There was negative ones that I have, but a lot of the positive ones, negative ones with my mom. It was all about scarcity. It was all about fear. It was all about saving. And that sounds great and all, but when you get to a certain age, if you've got money saved up, how many of you listening to this know of that person that has money in the bank, but is just too afraid to spend it? Because if they spend it, they'll run out of it and they can't enjoy their money. We don't want you to end up that way as well.

Paul Leon: Yeah. Hmm. What are some your favorite and and before I go here, I'm actually just curious, Gino, without making assumptions, because some people may be watching this, some people may be listening to this. What you maybe this the wrong question for the political climb? I was gonna say, were you ⁓ are you our country originally? I don't mean this in a very negative way. I mean this in a very positive way. how did you where did you come from to your journey today? were you were you born in the States? ⁓

Gino: ⁓ ⁓ my parents were both born in Italy. ⁓ then they came here, they met here, and I was born here in New York. And it's interesting because ⁓ I mean, growing up back in the 70s and eighties, ⁓ there fear. There was there was shame because my name is Gino back in the like the eighties. So all these people were making fun of the name. early on we weren't rich.

Paul Leon: Okay. Yeah.

Gino: I mean, I came from a lower middle class background. My dad opened up his restaurant when I was eight years old and we didn't start making money till I was maybe in high school. So I wore older clothing. I wore hand me down. My mom's made me force me to speak Italian back then. That wasn't cool. So I did a lot of things growing up with having a chip on my shoulder and and a lot of that stuff affected me negatively and it it it was hard. But I look back and I'm really thankful because they did give me the values of hard work. They did give give me the values of responsibility. They'd give me the values of family. So for me, there's there's a lot of positive and there's a lot of negative. And I think immigrants, I mean, my parents saw this country just as an amazing opportunity. They left Italy back in the 50s and 60s when it was just stagnant. There was no job growth, there was nothing. They didn't have any opportunity there. They came here and they worked really hard and made a great life for us. I'm sitting there back in my mid thirties going, My mom barely graduated elementary school. She didn't go to high school when she came here because it was either go to school or get job and help pay rent. So she got a job and I'm like, if this lady can open up her business and have a rental portfolio and I'm here complaining about my situation, how much of a moron does that make me?

Paul Leon: this is gonna terrible what I'm gonna admit, but when you said pizza place, ⁓ I had assumed that, but I do not like making assumptions. We know that saying. ⁓ and I just wanted to ask, because I think it's important to humanize my guess, that's why.

Gino: Yeah. No, it's no, that's fine. That's Yeah, no, I and that's the cool part about life. It's we shouldn't be offended or triggered. Whatever you say, it's great. Stephen Covey says there's a stimulus and a response. I mean, I mean, what people say is about them. What you hear is about you. Let me say that again. What people say is about them. How you internalize it or what you hear is all about you. I hear that now. I think it's great. I'm a name like Gino. I my my dad's name was Vito. I mean, come on.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Gino: In Brooklyn, New York? Of course that's the stereotype. There's nothing wrong with that. Why would I get insulted? I mean if I wasn't, it's okay. It's just you know, let's have fun in life. Let's loosen up a little bit, you know?

Paul Leon: No. No, I like I no, I appreciate I like the I like laughing and humorous stuff. A lot of people don't know I'm Cuban with a name like Paul Leon. two white guy names. ⁓ ⁓ can totally understand where coming from on some level. So I'm gonna ask you a kind of ⁓ I'll give you an interesting question. And it'll challenge you a little, but it'll also connect to your expertise. So I give a blank piece paper.

Gino: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: And the goal on the the paper is to are some of the most important questions we need to write down together on money and finance questions into how creates lasting wealth. So I'm gonna say it again I know it's kind of an oddball question. So I give you a blank piece of paper. What are questions we need to put on there? That are some of the best or most important money and finance questions, and how it connects to creating lasting wealth.

Gino: Great question. I don't need chat. I can give you my my answer because I've gone through it a ton of ways. There's a difference between wealth and being rich. Now, wealth is something that you perpetuate long term. something that you can sustain. Usually it's something that's not seen, Rich to me is someone who earns a great income, but when that income is done, they have nothing to replace it, Rich people work hard for their money.

Paul Leon: Yeah.

Gino: I think wealthy people work harder for their money, but their money works hard for them as well. That is to me the difference. Ha allowing your money to work hard for you. And that's what happened to me when I was at the restaurant. was working very hard for my money and I was earning it, but my money wasn't working hard for me. And that's the first step. What I would say to anybody who wants to create wealth, they figured it out over five thousand years ago in Babylon. There's a book called The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clayson. It's a very simple book. There's five laws of money. If you read those laws and you implement those laws that they talk about, I guarantee you before the next decade, your life and your wealth trajectory will have changed dramatically and very simply earning and saving one out of every 10 coppers you make. at least 10%. Understanding how to put your money at work by not working with con artists, but actually learning the business. That's how I came up with the framework of the contractor. You need to learn how to create the whole structure. But then once you learn it, you need to start learning how to make those soldiers, coppers work for you. Understanding that over the long term, you want to create some type of income for yourself because when you get older and you retire, most of us don't have a net worth problem. We have a cash flow problem. So learning how to make your money work for you. Also, a home, making your home of a profitable, you know, way.

Paul Leon: Yeah. Yeah.

Gino: Buying your own home and then over the years being able to pay it down and have some kind of equity when you retire is also a wealth-building strategy. So for anybody wanting to learn, it's more of the it's more of the behaviors that hold us back. But I mean the the clues are out there. Another book that I would recommend is called The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Great book. It's behavioral finance. And they're starting to link cognition and behaviors and showing how important and how relevant it is. To start understanding why you're doing what you're doing with money. It's so it's so easy to understand. Well, save one out of every $10. And people are gonna say, Well, I can't afford that. I mean, maybe you can, maybe you can't, then save maybe 20 cents out of every $10. Start somewhere. Start cutting back. And you're like, well, why? It's it comes down to a person's belief and their behavior system.

Paul Leon: Yeah. I How how can people find you, interact with you if they want more information, Gino Where should they

Gino: Well, if they if this resonated with them, if they love talking about family, if they love talking about faith, ⁓ if they talking about, how you can start that conversation with the family around money, because it can be a difficult conversation, just go to barbaro three sixty dot com we have resources on the website. We have our podcasts, we have our blogs. If you want to schedule a call with us, just go on the website and you can find everything out there, barbaro three sixty dot com.

Paul Leon: And I'll be putting obviously links to the show notes, but I to put the plug in there for you and ⁓ at speak to that. I think an question to circle back to is one that you had mentioned earlier. When we started this topic, you mentioned the word legacy.

Gino: Thanks, brother.

Paul Leon: I've got a lot of people who will always talk to me about what legacy is and leadership, legacy is and this and legacy is that. I'm again, I'm gonna reiterate your successes. Four hundred and fifty million dollar asset, you've built hundred multifamily units in under five years, you have a family of six, a beautiful wife Julia. What does a happy legacy look like in your definition?

Gino: I would have anybody who's listening to this figure out what it looks like to them by just doing this simple little lesson. Just imagine yourself on chair on your front porch 30, 40, 50 years from now, and let them envision what it looks like to them. I mean, what do they see? What do they hear? Who's there? What have they accomplished? What does life look like over the last 30 or 40 years? And if you can start creating that picture in your mind and saying, wow, okay, that's what I want to happen in in 30 or 40 years, then you just reverse engineer that. For me, it's just simply being on that front porch and having my kids around, all six of them. we're big into family. They all, and my daughters all want to stay home and have, you know, stay-at-home moms. They all want to homeschool their kids as well. So having a bunch of grandkids running around, having the family. all understand business and possibly having a family business, having this Barbero three sixty business built so we can pass it on to the next generation and teaching them all the skills and being part of the family, possibly having that home that I have in Italy where we can go every year and spend a couple of months together. I mean, that's to me is what my legacy looks like. And then ultimately having all those families and all that all that faith and those values pass over to the next generation. And then ultimately I think as Catholics, as fathers, I think are Duty is to get our kids into heaven. So I think that's really important as well, having that faith component and making sure that you're the leader of the household from a spiritual perspective and really taking Saint Joseph as a role model into that. Sometimes, you know, when you're living in the world, you forget about that. And that's really ultimately I think why we're here. We're here for a short period of time to create as much of an impact as possible and to leave a really cool legacy. But hopefully we do the right thing and we focus on on that aspect.

Paul Leon: Why Saint Joseph, if you mention him, why him?

Gino: I I I just think that if you think about how how courageous he was, I mean, can you imagine like your wife is pregnant back then and most people are like peace out, I'm gone, not for me. He's he stayed and there's not much written about him. And for him to stay, and then there's a dream, and he's like, Okay, we need to go into Egypt and and he's really faithful. And then just having God pick you.

Paul Leon: I see.

Gino: Be Jesus' dad. It's pretty amazing. And then being a carpenter and teaching Jesus, I'm sure Jesus learned a lot from Joseph as well. I mean, that's pretty incredible. I mean, like that to be to to have that kind of, you know, to have that kind of life. Wow. And to have that kind of faith and have that kind of courage. I mean, sometimes I wish I was more courageous. I wish I was more courageous like him. But if I stop and think about that, that is pretty cool.

Paul Leon: It always the interesting thing. ⁓ I I don't I'm guilty I would say is I think I think of Jesus, I think the of mind things is like his mom, you know, the crucifixion, resurrection. I would say gets what gets lost is Joseph's major impact in his which is of an interesting thought experiment now that I just thought about it just now. ⁓

Gino: Mm. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Paul Leon: Gino, what's an important question I haven't asked you that is important we ask now?

Gino: I'd have to say What would you have done differently if you were younger? I get that question a lot. And I'll answer that question simply by saying there's not much I would have done differently because I love where I am right now. if there was ⁓ thing that I could have done differently early on was really to explore my feelings around money and to really learn finance at a higher level when I was younger. There was there was that that that need that if I had understood it and I would have been better at it. I mean, maybe right now I wouldn't be a money coach. Maybe I would be in a different life. But for anybody out there right now that that is struggling with finance, with money, it's just a topic like anything else in life. We need to learn it. We're not born great communicators. We're not born great leaders. We're not born great at finance or great at sales. These are Just four topics that we should all try to really learn and to master. And for the money, unfortunately, money is just something that has changed over the last fifty or sixty years. And it's just such an important part of our lives right now that I think we really need to learn and understand what money is and how to be able how to become really good at dealing with money in our everyday lives.

Paul Leon: If there's one we need to answer about money, whether somebody never interacts with you or not, what's that question? What's the one question? If there's one we need to answer about money, whether somebody never interacts with you or not, what's that question? What's the one question?

Gino: Right now, Right now, do you feel about it or what is your emotion around money? And you can go to Barbero three sixty, there's a money quiz there, ⁓ that'll give you all the archetypes and be objective and don't think what the right answer is, but understand what you feel around it. Is there fear? Is there scarcity? Is there a shame around it? If you have those emotions around it, it can really impact how you end up becoming financially successful or financially. free, your life. And that's something that's really important. ⁓ And I always operating from a scarcity perspective. I I just was, you know, early on. And once I changed that, once I started looking at it differently, opportunities started to show up.