Sarah Larbi: REITE Club nation. Welcome to this week's podcast episode. I'm Sarah Larbi, and today my co-host is Daniel St-Jean.
We've got a great guest today, a police officer turned multi-millionaire, developer, investor. Great story from humble beginnings with Jason Boccinfuso. We have a ton of great things that we learned from him today. And Daniel, maybe just give us a little bit of background like you originally met Jason and brought him into the club. Do you know where or how you guys met?
Daniel St-Jean: Yes, actually we got invited last year, a year ago actually to look at reserving some units in a development project in Niagara Falls. And we were invited, I think 10 people from the club showed up on Saturday morning and who were there to tell us all about it and give us some information. That was Jason. That's how we met a year ago.
Sarah Larbi: Very cool. REITE Club nation. Don't forget to write and review the podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We hope you enjoy the podcast with Jason. Let's bring in Jason. Jason, welcome to the show. How are you?
Jason Boccinfuso: Good. How are you?
Sarah Larbi: Good, good. We're excited to have you on. You've been a speaker on our stage many times. You've recently done a few tours showing us your properties. Maybe let's take a step back and maybe talk to us about how you got started in real estate investing and what the strategy is that you are doing today?
Jason Boccinfuso: Sure. Sounds good. I got started in real estate investing, quite by accident. I was a police officer with Durham Regional Police, and I got hired very young. I was 19 when I started. I remember my first sergeant said one day he called me into the office and he said, Hey, close the door, and I said, Oh, am I getting fired? It's odd that a supervisor calls you into the office when you're not of the same rank. He says Hey kid, what are you doing with all your money? I said, not really much. I said, I'm going to university towns and buying drinks for my friends at university where I should be right now.
Instead, I'm here and spending my money that way. And he said have you ever thought about investing? I said what does that mean? And it says you invest in real estate. And at the time I was thinking. Why would I invest in real estate? First of all, I don't know what it means.
He said it means you're gonna go and buy a house and have someone else live in it. And I was thinking that's interesting. I don't know why I would do that, because see, I never came for money. My family didn't have any money. We didn't have any money growing up and things like that.
I remember thinking in my head why would I buy a house for somebody else to live in if I don't have my own house? And he said, It's called investing. And I'm like, Oh, okay. So he said, Yeah, you buy a house, you have someone else living there as a tenant, and they pay you rent. Down the road, it makes your money and that's it.
You get a little bit of cash flow and, but it's a really good investment. I'm like, Yeah, okay, sure. What the heck? I have nothing to lose. It was perfect at the time. A lot of the banks were doing no money down mortgages, which is great because I didn't have any, and just started off as a police officer, Kid Rich making 35,000 a year, whatever it was, which is Kid Rich a lot more than my university friends had at the bar.
I'll tell you that much. On my days off, we went and bought a house and I bought my first house for 167,500 in owa. It was a pretty good, three bedroom bungalow and put a clause in the agreement that I was gonna close it in 30 days. In the meantime, during that time frame, I got a tenant collected first and last month rent, and had enough money to pay for my closing costs.
Did that. And I thought that was quite fun. I was looking at it going this is great. I own a house. It's not costing me anything. I'm making a few hundred dollars a month cash flow, nothing crazy, but it was not costing me anything. I said, How do we do this again? And he looked at me and said, Already?
I'm like Yeah, I don't see why not. It makes sense to me. I'm a simple person. If it makes sense, do it. So I'm like, Let's do it. If it makes sense, once, it makes sense twice. So we went out again and bought another house, and bought another house and another one, to speed up the story.
I had 150 properties in my first three years. And the values of course, were going fromlike 160,000 to 200,000 to 300,000 to 350,000, 400,000. It doesn't take very long to amass wealth when you have that many houses. It's almost like people that buy shares in the stock.
If you buy a lot of shares and they go up, you make a lot of money. I had a lot of shares, had a lot of shares of the housing market, I started then, so my second person, or that I took advice from was the monopoly guy. I said, Okay, it makes sense in the board game Monopoly.
I quite like it. If you wanna make a lot of money, then you trade in a few houses, four houses, and you buy an apartment building and you've traded in four houses and buy a building, that's what I started doing. Trade in some houses and buy buildings. And then, I got bored of that quickly cause I get bored easily.
I said, Okay, what else can we do now? I started buying commercial plazas and that was fun for a while. Then I got bored and I said let's keep, ramping it up. I started buying some land and I was buying land in the way of development. I was buying land in areas that were growing and what would happen as a developer would approach me after I bought the land.
They would say, Let me buy the land from you. And I was like, Okay, sure. Cause they're paying like 10 times more than what I paid for the land. That seemed like a good deal. I started selling some land off and then I started realizing if they're willing to pay me 10 times more than what I paid for it, and I'm sure they're not in it, to not make a profit.
Maybe they're onto something that I don't know about. Instead of selling land just outright after a while, I started partnering. What I would do is I would partner with the developer and I'd say, Look, you can buy the land from me at this price. And I wanna stay in the deal for a small piece. But there's rules. See, the rules are this. Whenever you have a meeting, Internally, externally, you're gonna meet with engineers, consultants, the city, whatever the case is, you need to invite me to the meeting. Why? Because I wanna learn. I would do that and I would partner with a lot of developers and I chose the best and top developers to partner with, which is great and I learned a lot from them. Now I do a lot of it on my own. So it happened by accident.
Daniel St-Jean: Good accident. Right now, as we are sitting here interviewing you, first of all, where are your developments and roughly how many developments we're talking about here that you're dealing with right now?
Jason Boccinfuso: I have developments all over North America, but primarily in the greater Toronto area in gold Horseshoe. It'd be hard to give you an exact count, but I would say I would have Pretty close to 200 active projects on the go right now.
Daniel St-Jean: Looking at you, you still look like somebody will get sleep once in a while. How do you do that? How do you handle, manage, look at, Envision, 200 projects and still find time to talk with us and obviously eat and sleep.
Jason Boccinfuso: I think it really comes down to this. I don't do any of it so I operate as if, I think one of the major cornerstones that allowed me to go from, investing in a house. Or not investing at all in a house and to, What I'm doing now is that I operate every minute of every day as if I have no arms, no legs, and no brain. Let me explain to you what that means. I truly believe I have no arms, which I do. I have. They're short arms, and legs. And they're short legs too.
I have what doctors call a little bit of a height problem, still waiting for my growth to spread, but I don't have any arms, any legs, and I don't have a brain. If I have no arms, no legs, and no brain it means I can't be tempted to do something because I don't have any arms in any legs, so I can't do it anyway, so let me explain what I mean.
I currently have over 2 million square feet under construction, and I don't know how to hang a picture frame. I'm very serious about that. I don't know how to hang a picture frame, so I'm not tempted to try and hang a picture frame. Now let's say that I was tempted to hang a picture frame, cause I have arms and I'm like, I can just do it myself.
I don't need anybody. I'm just gonna be the one that hangs the picture frame. There's only so many picture frames I can hang in a day, even if I was the world's greatest picture frame hanger person, right? There's only so many I can hang in a day. Let's say I could hang one, Let's say I could hang five an hour.
Okay? How many can you hang in a day without sleep? You're still doing less than 125 in a day, right? So I would only be able to hang 125 picture frames in a day. I couldn't hang 5,000 picture frames in a day. I certainly couldn't build 2 million square feet, right? If I'm not tempted to do it at all myself, I have no arms and no legs.
I'm not tempted to try and do it. It forces me to go out and find the picture frame hanger expert. To hang the picture frame. Lots of those people out there. It opens up another box of picture frame hangers. You can get as many as you need to.
Sarah Larbi: Here's a question though. How do you ensure that because you're a little bit more hands off than maybe many and I'm sure you're living a great life that you have the time and the freedom to do, probably more than somebody that was gonna do and be involved in everything. How do you make sure that you have the right people on your team?
Jason Boccinfuso: That's a great question. The right people on the team. Number one is I only deal with the best in the industry that I can find. They say you get what you pay for, all that kind of stuff. But if you go and you have a whole bunch of people that kind of don't really know what they're doing, , then all you've done is trade physical time of hanging the picture frame into mental time of trying to manage those people that don't, that keep messing it up.
You have to surround yourself with the experts, and once you do that, you don't let go of them. Those are the experts. Those are, it's like anything in investments for example. You just find people that are doing what it is they're already doing, what it is you want to do. Just copy the heck out of them and follow what they're doing.
I often say this, if I wanted to get into the stock market, and I don't, cause I, I like to invest in things I can touch and feel in front of me. But the thing is, if I wanted to get into the stock market, I wouldn't be trying to decide what stocks to buy on my own because I don't know, I have no brain.
Number two, if I'm not gonna take advice from you. Frankie, the stock broker down the road who is selling stocks for a living because if he really knew how to make money selling stocks, guess what? He wouldn't be selling stocks. If he really knew how to invest, he wouldn't be selling stocks. He'd be laying on a beach in Maui drinking peanut water.
Daniel St-Jean: That's true.
Jason Boccinfuso: You can't take advice from those that haven't done what it is you're setting out to do. For me, it's very simple. I have no brain anyway, so I'm not tempted to get in my own way and decide what stock to buy or not. I would just simply do this.
I would just find out what stocks Warren Buffett's buying and I would just buy the same stock skis. It doesn't mean you have to have the same money as Warren Buffett, like when he buys a stock, he buys controlling interests in companies. If he's buying a billion dollars worth of stocks and Apple, probably a good reason for that.
I should probably throw in a few dollars into the Apple stocks or whatever he's buying. Okay. So that's really very simple, I'm a very simple minded person at the end of the day. I just do what makes sense. I don't need to reinvent the wheel or be the person that does it. I don't need to stand on the top of my mountain and go look at me. I just built this building with my own bare hands. I'm, yeah that's really the way.
Daniel St-Jean: Last a few days ago I had the opportunity to be at a tour bus/event where you had 67 people on your staff. I can tell you, Sarah, these people are like a well oil machine. It was actually interesting to watch them interact and go back and forth and, oh my God, what a nice organization. That was just a few of the many people. Do stuff for you, your arms, your legs, and your brain.
Jason Boccinfuso: That's the thing. It is a good compliment. The truth of the matter is that everybody on my staff is better than me at everything they do anyways. It's perfect like I have no brain, so I can't be tempted to do something, get in the way or make a wrong decision. If it's a construction question, I ask my vice president of construction cause they know 50 times more than I'll ever know about construction.
I don't get in my way. Life's really easy for me in the sense that I'm not a barrier that gets in my own way. Because I don't have an ego that thinks I have to do anything. As a matter of fact, I'm responsible for getting it done. Big difference between being responsible for getting it done and doing it. Big difference.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. Here's a question though, just because a lot of people are wondering, how do you have so much opportunity that you're cultivating and you're developing and you've got on the go, I think you said 2 million square feet. Like how are you structuring these? Like maybe just give us an example of a deal that you're working on, are like, are you structuring it as a single owner or are you bringing in partners? Like maybe just walk us through if somebody wanted to do it themselves, just what you're doing.
Jason Boccinfuso: Right now I buy the deals. I don't have partners when I buy the deals, and then I take it through the process. Let's give an example. Let's say it's a residential subdivision for an example. Okay, I'll buy the land and it's like being an artist. Where you have to create what is it going to look like in compliance with the official plan and the zoning bylaws and stuff like that, using those as constraints.
I would look at it and say, Okay I would pick up the telephone, call my architect, or walk down the hallway and talk to him and say, Listen , I need you to tell me what the maximum density I could do in this location. An hour and a half later, he'll come back to me and say, Okay, the maximum density you can do in this location is 980 houses.
I would say, Okay, can we do townhouses? Can we do condos? Can we do commercials? Goes back, researches the plan, comes back and says no, 980 single family townhouses. That's the maximum density without going through rezoning. And if you go through rezoning, in my opinion, it's gonna take three years. It's a maybe and it's gonna cost us 850,000.
I'm gonna say, Oh, I just have 980 houses. Let's go. So you see, I'm not the one trying to figure any of that stuff out. Okay. I could do it if I had to, but it would take me two weeks for something. I just got an answer for an hour, and then the hour he's spending getting me the answer, I'm doing something else.
Daniel St-Jean: Buying more land.
Jason Boccinfuso: I'm buying more land. What can happen is if I were to put a deal together, just let's say I let's use an easy one that I'm doing right now. Okay. So it's an apartment building. Ground up construction. I buy the lot and this is the first thing I do is I purchase the land and I have a due diligence period if I can get it.
Most times you can, sometimes you can't, and if you can't, you really have to know your craft because you're going in firm. But let's say you have time, so I get a due diligence clause, maybe 30 days, and I can research. And find out what it is exactly I'm buying, what the constraints are, the rules, what the highest and best use is.
I'll do that deal, get 30 days due diligence, and then I'll bring in my team of experts on what I call an initial case consultant. What I do is I bring all the people I need to the table on one phone call. Usually it's five minutes. Could be a meeting face to face, five minutes, 10 minutes.
I say, Okay, here's the property. Tell me what I can do with it. Give me all my options. It's like being in the military, you're the general. Give me all my options. Come back to me with all my options and then I'll make the call. So I go to 'em and say, Look, give me all my options, and my architect will come back with all his options.
The engineer comes back with all their options. Sales division comes back with all their options, what they think you know, the prices would be, and everybody gets together finance. All the people in my organization come together. They give me all of my options. I make the business call as to what direction we're gonna go.
Okay, let's go with a townhouse, Let's go in this case an apartment building. Okay. Now the decision I need to make, one to have all my options with the apartment building is how big is the unit gonna be? I'm gonna get the constraints from my architect and I'm gonna say, My planner, how big is the unit gonna be?
What are the finishes gonna be? My sales people are gonna recommend what my finishes should be to match the market and put a price on it. I'm gonna get finance to tell me what financing options are on the table. If we go this direction, I think we can get this kind of money for this price. If we go this direction, it'll be that kind of money.
I'll make a call, whether it be an apartment building or a condominium, after I have all the information brought back to me. Once that comes back to me, then I'll say, Okay, if it's a condominium, now it's choose your own adventure. If it's a condominium, I'm going down this path to this side, and I need to go and get Terry on registration.
I need to look at, am I gonna build it internally or am I gonna hire a builder to come in and do the deal, or am I going to sell it to a builder? Those are options. If I'm gonna keep it in, it's an apartment building. Then I look at it and I say, Okay, am I going to bring in partners that are gonna keep this long .
Am I gonna bring in a pension fund to buy this when it's all said and done? Am I gonna be a merchant developer, which means I'm building it for the purpose of selling it to the market? Or am I gonna build it, fill it up, refinance it, pull all my money back out and plus some, and then keep it for a long term investment? All these decisions I'm going to make, but I have time. Nothing is in a rush. I have lots of time to make that decision once I get all the information back.
Daniel St-Jean: You did say on the tour on Saturday that what makes you money is knowledge and you gave and we were parked at that point in front of that dilapidated garage, whatever and you explained to us what you bought or what the realtor thought you were selling. What you bought, why you bought it, and what it is now and where it's gonna be, and all of this based on knowledge. I have to tell you, people were freaking out on the bus listening to you looking at that piece and that was amazing. So knowledge, It's all about knowledge.
Jason Boccinfuso: Sure. And really having the right people around you to teach you and give you those decisions, help you make those decisions or make them for you. So a great example is, yeah, whenever you look at an investment property to buy, always consider at the beginning what is the highest and best use. It's not always what it is. There's examples I could give time and time again where somebody sold an auto mechanic shop in a location and the seller and the realtor selling it thinks they're selling an auto automotive mechanic shop.
In reality, the highest and best use is a 30 story condo tower in that same footprint. If you have knowledge or surround yourself with people that have knowledge, that understand how to apply federal policy in line with the provincial official plan, along with the regional official plan and how it integrates into the municipal official plan into the zoning and intensification.
If you understand all that stuff or have an expert but understands all of it, you see the world differently. When you drive by an office building that might be three stories tall on, 150 by 150 lot in a downtown part of any city in the greater Toronto area. Golden Horseshoe could be anywhere in Vancouver, any busy city with, even with 30,000 people or more if you're on a main street with a building with excess land parking in whatever the case is.
They're not actually selling. Or what you're looking at is not actually a building that's three stories tall. You're looking at a future condo development and so that's what you're buying when you're evaluating the deal. You're not evaluating what you're seeing in front of you. You're seeing the world for what it could be. It's almost like scouting. If you take it in sports. They draft in the NFL and football right now, they draft the best athletes.
They don't draft any position specific. They look and say, Here's the best athlete I can teach 'em to play football, and what is this person's potential and what is their ceiling? Look, they can run a 40 yard dash in 3.8 seconds. This person's gonna be a superstar in the NFL no matter where I put them. They're seeing their potential. They're drafting them for what they're going to be, not for what they are right now, because people would look at it and go. The person doesn't know how to play football.
They don't even know the rules. They can't hold the football. They don't know how to catch a football, and the scouts are like I don't care. I just got him off of a track because he runs a 40 yard dash in 3.8 seconds. I don't care if he knows how to catch a football. You're missing the point. I'm not looking at a football player. Today I'm looking at what's going to be later. Development's the same thing when I recruit people, Okay? I don't care what their technical skill set is. I want their DNA. I wanna hire and surround myself with the right DNA because I can provide clarity if they have motivation. And they have a lot of integrity.
We can provide clarity. I look at development the same way I look at it. What is it going to be in the future? I look at it and I fast forward 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, using the knowledge on how the cities are gonna evolve.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. What's the biggest struggle right now? While you're doing these developments is it finding new deals? Is it getting the financing? I don't know. It could be a wide variety of things, right? There's struggles and there's things that are more difficult. So what do you think that would be and why?
Jason Boccinfuso: The biggest challenge right now is finding a deal. Too much money, too little deals. Deals are the hardest things to find right now. The one thing they're not making more of is land. Since they're not making any more land it's a challenge to keep your pipeline full of deals. I'm saying I've got close to 200 deals on the go. I want to do 2000 deals. Bring me more.
If anybody knows of any deals or anyone knows, anyone who knows of any deals, I want to know. Development deals. I've got an open checkbook to buy deals. So that's my biggest challenge right now. If I could wave a magic wand, I would want more deals. I don't have enough deals to feed my machine, if that makes sense.
Daniel St-Jean: I remember on Saturday we were looking at a group piece of land where you've been building something and then you are expressing frustration because right next to it is under a piece of land and the guy apparently doesn't really wanna sell it or whatever. It's in the family or something. And you are evidently very frustrated at the fact that you can't own the whole street .
Jason Boccinfuso: Exactly. That's a challenge. Look, it is a challenge getting deals, really is we've built a pretty good machine that we're capable of executing on the deals when we have them. We just need more, that's our biggest problem right now.
Daniel St-Jean: You say you have no brain, but you have to have vision because for example, the DA in Saint Catherine, that fourplex that you bought dilapidated fourplex and you're restoring it, but you bought it because of the land around it, and now you're gonna build a 32 apartment building. How many people every day drive by that building, look at the building and go, Ugh, I wonder who lives here. Yeah. And then, or even investors. And nobody stopped to look at the parking lot and to space around and go, Hey, what can I do here? So it's gotta, knowledge is great, but vision, vision must be your strength.
Sarah Larbi: Did you always have vision too just to add to what Daniel said, or did it come over time?
Jason Boccinfuso: Maybe in certain areas vision is a little better than others, but it's really what it comes down to is the vision appears when you have the knowledge and the opportunity presents itself. When knowledge and opportunity come together, that's what creates the vision. When you have knowledge and opportunity, and if you have a lot of knowledge, and when I say if you have a lot of knowledge, here's what I mean. Knowledge must be present. It doesn't have to be yours.
Look, I lived in a rental property when I first started investing. I don't, I didn't know anything about anything, but I took other people's knowledge and that's what presented the opportunity. I talk quite often about the wealth building trilogy. It's something that I've created and I talked about regularly, and in order for wealth to be created, you need three ingredients.
Think of it like a science class. You know when you had that beaker and science class and you dropped in a couple of different chemicals together and something happened? Hopefully you didn't blow up school, but something happened. Okay? When you mix the two things together, a few things together here's required. In the wealth building trilogy that I talk about.
You need to have money present. You need to have knowledge present, and you need to have opportunity present. But none of the three have to be yours. In order to create wealth, there has to be money, knowledge, and opportunity. What do I mean by that? If you have a lot of money, but you have no knowledge, you can't see the opportunity. Or you don't know if an opportunity is good or bad? Only when looking through the lens of knowledge, through the lens of knowledge, does the money know if the opportunity is good or bad? It doesn't know, just, blindly.
If you have a lot of money, And you don't surround yourself with people who have a lot of knowledge. What's that line of fool and money soon part ways? You don't have to have the knowledge at all. Let me just give a quick aside here about the knowledge. Okay. Look, I do so many deals, that's ridiculous.
I have hundreds of contracts a week going in and out for various parts of different deals here and there. I would not be tempted to go to law school. And graduate with a law degree and spend seven years doing so, and then studying for another five years in a real estate law firm to know what clauses need to go in the agreement. I just send a message to the lawyer and they do it. It's not my knowledge on how to put the deal together.
I'm bringing the knowledge ingredient to the beaker so I can create wealth, but it's not mine. It's like I just borrowed it from someone else. Same with money. Great, okay. I'm fortunate I can throw money into deals, but I don't need to. I can go, there's lots of money out there that people would say, Hey, yeah, look, I'll back the deal. And then you look at the deal through knowledge and it creates the opportunity. Those three things. Present build wealth.
None of it has to be yours. You can be a fly on the wall in your science class, and if your classmate puts money, knowledge, and opportunity together, it builds wealth. It doesn't have to be me and I could still own the beaker. I don't have to be the one that puts the ingredients in, but I'm gonna benefit from what it creates. That's really, I think, the biggest game changer because a lot of people often say to me, I'd love to start investing, but I don't have any money. I'm like I guess you know what your problem is now. Gotta go find . You're still responsible for making sure that money gets in the beaker.
Daniel St-Jean: I was thinking about that the other day, what you said. And on the way back home allow me to make a comparison. Do you go to the symphony once in a while or to Concerts?
Jason Boccinfuso: Adventure.
Daniel St-Jean: Okay. What do you need there? You need good musicians. You need a great score and then you need a good conductor. You have a bad score. It doesn't matter how good the conductor's gonna be, the musicians are gonna sound terrible and vice versa. Good score. And nobody can play their instruments, that's how I see you. I see you as the person at the front there with the bathole and everybody knows exactly how to play their instruments. There's a great score and then, which is an opportunity. And then boom, you make magic.
Jason Boccinfuso: It's a good way to put it. Yeah. Because you don't have to be the one that plays the instrument or writes the score, any of that stuff. It's you're just responsible for making it happen. I'm responsible for making sure all those ingredients get into the beaker, but I'm not responsible for putting them in.
Sarah Larbi: For sure. Jason, I wanna ask you, just because obviously you're putting these people together, putting the knowledge, putting the money, putting the deals. And you have a lot of people as well, working on your team. Maybe walk us through just like your lifestyle, like what that looks like or, from a work life balance.
Jason Boccinfuso: Have you ever gone away on a vacation to, let's say, an all inclusive resort in Cancun?
Sarah Larbi: Sure.
Daniel St-Jean: I actually did that two years ago.
Jason Boccinfuso: Nice. That's what my life looks like.
Sarah Larbi: Do you care to expand ?
Jason Boccinfuso: When you have money, you have options. I remember and certainly didn't have any money when I grew up, so it's easy for me to remember that. It's when you wake up and on an all inclusive vacation, you just decide what you want to do that day. Do you want to go on a fishing excursion?
Do you want to go. I don't know how to trek through the wilderness. Do you want to go and lay by the pool? Do you want to go and get drunk at the bar? Do you wanna go have a nice dinner? Do you want to, whatever? And you never, If you notice on a resort, you never have to look to consider how much it costs or you never have to consider anything because you're on vacation.
I guess the easiest way to describe it is that I just, I live as if my life is an all inclusive resort. I don't have to look and check for anything. What if I wanna get on a plane tonight and fly to New York City? I'll do that. I can fly private, I can fly commercials, I can do whatever. It just so happens that it just gives you options. That's the best way to describe it on a high level. Is just I can live life as if my life's a non inclusive resort.
Daniel St-Jean: Okay. Do you adopt other people? I have one question I really wanna ask you. What is the best piece of advice you've ever received from, I don't know, an author, a coach, a mentor, another investor, a networking coach?
Sarah Larbi: You do know that, that's part of the lightning round question, right?
Daniel St-Jean: Yes, I know, but I wanna ask it now.
Sarah Larbi: Okay.
Jason Boccinfuso: Fair enough. I have a lot of answers in that specific category because it's not just one piece of advice. If I had to sum it up in just one word, it's action. There's a lot of people out there that the life they want to live is merely an idea. It's just an idea. I hope to be able to do this one day. I hope to be able to do that. And last time I checked, Hope is not a very good business plan. Taking action and massive action. Like the more action you can take, the better. So taking action for sure. Another great piece of advice.
You can't go broke. Making a profit is a really good one. Cause a lot of times investors are like I could sell this now and make a hundred thousand, or I could keep it for another 10 years and maybe make 200,000. It's okay. But you have a chance to take a hundred thousand right now? And it's really hard to go broker if you're making.
Don't get greedy. If there's an opportunity to make a nice return on the investment, do the deal. Don't stay married. Do not stay married to the property or the investment. Stay married to the game. Huge. Take your money off the table. Don't put it in your bank account and let inflation don't make it disappear like you realize that, right?
If you have a hundred thousand dollars in your bank account today, this time next year, it's only worth 96,000. The way it's going the year after, it's only worth 91,500. Okay? It's getting, it just, it disappears because inflation goes up, right? So if you leave, Your money is just sitting on the sidelines? Stay married to the game, take the money, take a profit. Awesome. And then go back to something else.
Daniel St-Jean: I'm so happy that you mention action because in my best seller, I don't know, come 2005, I think I must have, I don't know, out of 586 pages is probably 40 pages dedicated to action. There was, there's this lady I do coaching with and she keeps Telling the people. Knowledge is power. I just wanna reach in and strangle her because I can show her probably a hundred people who have way more knowledge than she or I together, and they're still not doing anything because they're not doing anything. As an example, what were you doing last Saturday evening that normal people would do? But what did you do during that evening that nobody on this call would be doing? Talking about action.
Jason Boccinfuso: Sure. Fair enough. I was at a friend's birthday party, a dear friend of mine, and while I was at the party and still present at the party I happened to be able to do more than one thing at a time, and while I was at the party partying and what you do at parties I bought a plaza. Land that I'm gonna build a beautiful commercial plaza on while I was doing that. That's a hobby. I just, I try and always stay on. When you talk about action, this is really important, I think, so in a lot of my books, in my lectures and stuff, I talk about this.
I say, look, I start the quote right there. It's right in front of everything that I do in my bio even. It starts with a quote and it says, While other people are making excuses as to why they can't do things or why things can't be done, , I'm doing that. There's that little voice that sometimes people have or you hear where it's oh, if I could only, if I just knew what to do, I would do that.
Or I could never be a wealthy investor because like insert B C B E and their as they're storing that excuse, they have a front row seat to watching me dominate the industry. And I just keep talking about that because I take action. And Colin Powell, who recently died, I talk about this a lot too, who recently passed away.
He was the joint chiefs of staff in the United States military. Four Star General, was a Secretary of State under the Bush administration. And he said all successful people, when he studied, every successful person he's ever met, he said, Here's the one commonality. They never make a decision when they have less than 40% of the information.
But never more than 70% of the information. Let me break that down for us real quick here. If you have less than 40% of the information, you don't know where you're deciding anyways. There's no decision to be made. If you wait till you have more than 70% of the information, don't worry about making the decision because someone's already made it for you or you've already lost the opportunity.
A great example is when I do a launch in one of my projects, if I have a condo project and I have a room of 200 people and I only have a hundred units to sell. I'll say, Hey guys, here we go. Here's the deal. I've got thanks for coming. I have a hundred units here and it's in this location and here's what the building looks like and here's the price list.
That's already 55% of the information. If you're somebody that says, Oh what are the finishes gonna be like? And how big is the bathroom gonna be? Which way does the door open and what's gonna be down the street? And how does the balcony work like that? What kind of material are you putting on the floor?
As you're working through those things in your mind, there's nothing for you to decide on because a hundred units are already sold by the people that take massive action. If they're like, Oh, I have to ponder and think about it for the night, don't bother because it's already sold. They've already taken the opportunity so you can ponder. I don't know what, but it's gone cause they take massive actions.
Sarah Larbi: Amazing. That's great advice. Jason Boccinfuso will have to have you back again, but we do have to wrap it up soon. We're gonna ask you. I guess you answered the first question of a podcast lightning round. We're gonna ask you the three remaining questions. I will ask you the next one. Are you ready to play?
Jason Boccinfuso: Fire away.
Sarah Larbi: All right, first answer that comes to mind. What is your favorite resource? Could be anything at all, if you had to think of one resource.
People.
Daniel St-Jean: Okay. All right. Great.
Question number three. What is the attribute that has made you so successful?
Jason Boccinfuso: Taking action? We already talked about that. Yep. It's making decisions and taking action.
Daniel St-Jean: All right.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely no analysis paralysis. Number four. It's Sunday morning. What are you doing?
Jason Boccinfuso: Sunday morning. I'm hanging out with my family. I have two kids, they're awesome and a wife and we're hanging out. But for a purpose, I'm thinking how can I help change more lives and build the futures of more people around me?
Sarah Larbi: Very cool. Jason Boccinfuso, where can our REITE Club Nation reach out, find out more? Is there a place that you would like to have them go to?
Jason Boccinfuso: I do have a website that people could register to see what we're up to and some opportunities. It's www.viewallgtahomes.com. That's a good place to stay.
Sarah Larbi: Amazing. Jason Boccinfuso, thank you for being on the show. It was a pleasure having you on and we'll definitely make sure to have you back again.
Jason Boccinfuso: Thanks guys. Thanks Jason. Take care.
Sarah Larbi: While that was definitely exciting and super informative. Jason Boccinfuso has a wealth of knowledge. Daniel, what's your main takeaway from today?
Daniel St-Jean: Take action. But then again, that's what I say to people all the time, Take action. Nothing happens without action.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. And you know that the 30% to 70% was a great point as well in terms of 40% to 70%. There you go. You don't need to have. All the pieces of information, cause you'll never likely have all the pieces of information, but just enough to make the right decision. Club Nation, thanks for tuning in again this week and please leave a rating and review and check us out thereiteclub.com and check out our events.
We've got a ton of great events every single month happening. Many of them are virtual, but we've also gone back to some in person and some really cool social events as well. Check that out thereiteclub.com. And on that note, what do we say? Come grow with us and customize your life.
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