The WAY to WOW Shows
Naval Aviator Builds $1000 Investment to $25 Million Company
March 2, 2022
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[0:00] are live and we're going to record all right there you go siri has said we can go and so we can go welcome everyone to the way to wow show people making money i'm your host kevin bemel and i want to thank you for joining me and my guest this week is john rubino you can see him up there on the screen with all the with the airplane above his head and i'm going to introduce john in just a minute but before i do that i want to mention

[0:36] my guest from last week craig noel and for those of you who who missed that show craig is a former investment banker who now um is the managing director of uh healthy tribes so he um his company um puts puts together um distribution arrangements for healthy food producers essentially as well as some funding etc and and craig kind of went through his professional arc um through the finance world and and the deal-making world and all the craziness

[1:11] even at one time working for goldman sachs in in new york um even though he started out life as a farm boy in tulare county here in california so it shows you that uh you know we can we can all find our way to wow professionally um if we if we work at it and and that's what this show is all about it's talking to people who have found their have profound professional satisfaction are doing remarkable things to make a living and my friend john rubino uh almost more like a brother at this point uh is is certainly um

[1:47] someone who fits that bill john and i met now gosh what about four or five years ago i think um when john was still in the navy and he was starting the process of transitioning out of the military into civilian life um and like a lot of a lot of people coming out of the military he was looking at one of the fairly traditional career paths of going to work for a government contractor or something like that and he happened to mention to me that he had this real estate investment company that he had started with a partner and i could hear the difference of the level

[2:24] of excitement in his voice when he would talk about working for you know a defense contractor kind of you know working for a defense contractor and working in my real estate business and so eventually john made the decision to pursue his real estate business uh full-time and i think it's it's fair to say that he's been he's been very happy with that decision um not because it's been easy um i i don't think any any time we start a business that we're taking the easy route by any stretch of the imagination

[2:59] but i think that in terms of the route that has fulfilled john the most um going with uh making his business full time has has really filled that bill so um we're going to talk to john about that and see what we can learn from him in terms of lessons that we can apply to our professional lives so that we can follow in in john's footsteps so john thanks for coming on the way to wow thanks kevin honor to be here with my brother and uh thank you so much uh it's wonderful to be here and to talk with you and share my experiences with you

[3:34] and your your listeners and we also have uh dave rutherford on with us today dave is um our director of investor relations also an army veteran and uh dave's been with our team for about a year now so hopefully we'll give dave a chance to jump on as well but i can't tell you how much i was looking forward to this uh being on the show and i'm looking forward to having some fun with you that's great and and and dave let's assure the viewers you and i did not coordinate our colors before the show i just happened to be that way you know so so john i want to kind of

[4:14] so i want to take you back to the beginning of what we might call your professional journey or maybe kind of one step before that as i recall um you went to the merchant marine academy is that is that correct i went to uh what's called the state university of new york i call it suny uh and that was uh at the maritime college which was directly across the river from uh the merchant marine academy so i didn't go to the united states merchant academy at king's point was at suny maritime college in fort schuyler so that was where i attended college uh

[4:49] for four years there yeah and what did you study why did you make the decision to go there well uh i attended a military high school uh junior rotc reserve officer training corps and um i had a i had a pretty good time there i did well i had some uh some aspirations to to join the military uh when tom clinton came out in 1984 i said that's what i want to do and uh i just pushed real hard and i and i worked hard through high school and and i went to my suny maritime because of the fact that they had a navy rotc program

[5:25] so that was kind of the one of the main reasons they also had a very good business program and i also had the opportunity to become a third mates in the merchant the third main emerging marine as well so i kind of felt like i would be coming out of college with you know an array of different skill sets that would be uh you know quite quite helpful and resourceful for me out there in the uh in the real world but my passion was always the military and plus it was close to home so i'm born in brooklyn new york so i wasn't too far from from friends and family but we did board and at the college five

[6:01] days a week we uh we went away during the summer for 60 days for three summers in a row to different ports throughout the world which was fantastic and so i got the experience of um of being in the military before i actually said the oath and you know put the uh put the golden bars on my shoulder so yeah it was it was quite an experience cool so so uh three or four years of college going through nrotc you come out as a newly minted ensign and you you go on active duty with the navy right and

[6:36] that's right and you mentioned top gun you know um having served with two air wings i can testify that uh top gun was the best um naval aviator recruiting um peace in history and it's only been recent that its impact has has you know not been felt in the navy so um talk a little bit if you would about becoming a naval aviator now which is you know kind of a specialty you know over and beyond uh joining the navy yeah that's a great question um again

[7:11] you know i was really inspired for the military my dad was in the marine corps he served um in korea he won the bronze star he was awarded the bronze star and the combat purple heart um and you know ever since i was a kid i just really looked up to my dad i still do he's 87 years old and he's my hero and so i always had aspirations to want to be in the military and um as i got to learn more about the different options in the military i know i didn't want to be on a surface ship and i knew i didn't want to be on a submarine and just being an aviator is you know there's not a lot of people in the world that can say they

[7:46] can do that and from the people i spoke to and when i got to go away during the summer to different squadrons to talk with pilots they all just kind of you know they had this coolness about them you know and um also they were just very much professional do knew their jobs inside and out and um just the the excitement of being able one day to get into an airplane and and take that up and and take it into either harm's way for combat or just to perform maneuvers and also i had the opportunity to be an instructor pilot so i i had the chance to to teach kids who were just coming

[8:21] right out of college how to fly an airplane which was such a rewarding experience probably my favorite tour out of my 20 years in as teaching these kids coming out of college how to how to fly in an airplane which was which was a lot of fun so i assume you did at least one or two carrier deployments so so this big plane up here the p3 orion was the plane i eventually selected out of flight school so when i graduated i was down in pensacola for six weeks the marines got to beat the heck out of me uh we did aviation training in the in the pool learning how to get out of our

[8:56] parachute and doing all kinds of survival uh survival training uh we went through classes aerodynamics meteorology um and then when i selected off my site for primary and advanced training i selected corpus christi texas so going from new york city at 99 miles an hour to corpus christi texas at 10 miles an hour was definitely an eye-opening experience but um i selected p3 orions after my primary uh training and the p3 is a land-based aircraft that was really designed to be a submarine hunter

[9:32] during the cold war but uh you know business kind of was uh was kind of done in that way back in the early 90s but it's picking back up again so the p3 uh became then what was called an isr platform intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance platform so we would basically go out and and survey the battlefield for uh on-scene battlefield commanders who are actually on the plane with us and calling back to their units to tell them where the bad guys were and we'd also be able to bring in fighters to take out um you know air sights radar sights whatever in particular that was

[10:07] necessary in combat so but i wasn't on a carrier it was land based given the size of the aircraft so i got to deploy to italy and puerto rico and iceland but uh i did get to do some time out at sea but not not while i was uh as a pilot i was more in a staff job okay okay and um did you you mentioned being in uh rosie rhodes and puerto rico and uh up and up in iceland and such did you do any um combat deployments or yeah talk to someone

[10:42] my first deployment to uh roosevelt roads where's rhodes was to go after uh drug drug operations out of colombia and in south america so we were out going after you know combating the war on drugs which um we actually had some instances where we did you know track drug runners out of colombia and out of certain ports which was pretty exciting uh bringing the coast guard in and doing what's called maritime interdiction operations mio and vbss uh which was very interesting and then when i went to iceland uh we were really patrolling the north

[11:18] sea up there just to prevent or see if there's anything going on from the soviets so or from russia at that time so that was interesting i also got a little time after the um the bosnian um bosnian conflict in the early 90s i got a chance to get into those areas to do surveillance after the war was over um in my second deployment i went to uh ciganella in sicily and in suda bay crete and um yeah we did have combat operations primarily um there was uh al qaeda threats in the levant region and also in the

[11:54] straits of gibraltar so we would be combat combat capable to potentially launch on any enemy combatants that were threatening passageways through the straits as well as along the levant region with our partners with israel and uh in that area of the world so yeah it was pretty it was pretty exciting so so of course the operational stuff yeah very exciting stuff you mentioned all but every other tour you were doing something non-operational right or yeah typically that was yeah so yeah you um as a naval aviator when you

[12:32] weren't you know behind the controls of a plane yeah that's a great question kevin so after my first operational tour i went to a test squadron in patuxent river maryland uh my first tour was in jacksonville uh jackson florida and i was in patuxent river maryland and that's when actually i started to learn about real estate which was about 10 year point in my career but i did fly at a test squadron for uh for three years which was pretty exciting i i supported the naval research laboratory which is actually close by where i live here in maryland and we would take up uh the scientists from the lab to test out their equipment and these were state-of-the-art you know cutting-edge

[13:08] technologies that were going out to the uh the warfighters from the naval research lab so we were out testing those equipments before kind of in the in the testing and the in the pre-release phase to the to the warfighters uh after that i did a three-year tour in naples italy uh supporting commander six fleet and the commander naval forces europe and that was a really exciting tour because i started to harness an analytical skill through operational uh research and operational analysis which i loved and i was part of the four-star commander's staff where i

[13:45] would conduct operational net assessment on africa and certain countries in those areas in western central africa in the balkans i got the chance to go to the country of georgia the country of ukraine bulgaria romania i was on a ddg um and we were supposed to go up to the black sea to conduct an exercise which at the time it wasn't they're not part of nato but they're part of what's called pfp partnership for peace and those were the countries inside the black sea with the exception of turkey and bulgaria and romania who are our nato partners but

[14:21] ukraine georgia um some of the countries there we were partners with we were supposed to go for a big exercise but we got diverted because unfortunately um there was a war going on in israel and um we were brought in to support uh non-combatant evacuation operations out of lebanon uh because of israel's war uh at the time there so that was pretty eye-opening i remember one night on the bridge of the uh the ddg i was uh with this with the xo at about two in the morning and we're just up there you know talking because he just you know i i told him i'd come up and hang out with

[14:57] him and spend some time with him when he was on his watch the xl and you know over our head f-15s are flying over and dropping bombs down in downtown lebanon and uh in beirut and then you had all these ships and the port so that was really eye-opening to see that and um to get a get the chance to participate but then on the next time i did get to go up to the black sea which was amazing going through the um the dardanelle and the bosphorus straits the turks are amazing people everywhere you look when you go through those straights you see a turkish flag they just are so prideful and they're so full of of um a pride in

[15:33] donation and it just kind of you know hit home for me i really enjoyed that and then after my three years in italy uh came back and i came back to dc oh i'm sorry i went to back to corpus christi and i was an instructor pilot in apartment head for two years teaching kids how to fly the t-34 aircraft which is this one right here which you probably can't see that was a great tour and then i finished up here in dc i did my last six years i was working for the navy headquarters staff the op nav staff and i was um a senior um senior branch officer supporting the chief of naval

[16:09] operations uh cnp chief of naval personnel staff n1 the three star and i was running manpower personnel training and education which again was an amazing experience just to learn and and i made a lot of connections which uh have been a blessing post-navy life because i still keep in touch with a lot of people so that's kind of been it yeah yeah so you know a very a varied background in terms of the jobs you did in the navy if you took a big sifter and and put all of your navy experiences

[16:44] in that sifter and kind of shook it out what comes out the other end in terms of what you found best prepared you for a civilian career you know that you learned during the many different experiences you had as a naval aviator as a navy officer another fantastic question um i think a lot of the a lot of us are you know as we get ready to come out and we and we get ready to take the next step you always hear the term soft skills right and i think that that is a um a huge uh advantage we have

[17:19] veterans coming out is those soft skills how to communicate um being in front of a commanding officer who's you know your boss you know the ceo the the ceo of the company the ceo of the squadron you're presenting to him and you're briefing him and you're telling him how the mission is going to go and you know you're put under a lot of pressure pretty early in your life so you come out kind of with good experience you know talk tried tested and proved that you can go through that so i think the soft skills the communication the ability to see you know the leaders that i might not necessarily want to emulate but still

[17:54] learn from them why i didn't want to emulate them just because of the way they maybe acted or whatever it was and then the ones that i truly truly you know just was blessed with to be able to work with and serve with and those were the ones that i really took a lot from as well so what you get to experience the opportunities you get to participate in the things you get to learn the things you get to see and then to take that and bring that into the business world to be able to use those skills to build on and the different things you learn through policy and and how to write papers and

[18:29] how to um you know again provide a presentation to a senior executive or a four-star or three-star admiral or general but now you're presenting that to your investors where you're presenting that to ceos and ceos of businesses that you're going to work with who are developers and you're going to be at their big table explaining them why you're important in their life and you only get 30 seconds to a minute to do that and then when you do they want to talk to you now for another two hours so that's that's been a great blessing i think coming out of the military um there's

[19:04] other things too but i think to me those soft skills were huge and what i learned from that and then i would say the other thing too is always having a mentor always having you know when you got to a different command after two or three years and your pcs go going going to a new command is really uh it's scary right i mean you're learning everything from scratch after coming from the place where you were the the best of what you did so going to the smart people learning from them getting a mentor and that's how i do business now i mean i'm always learning i always want to you know have a mentor you know you and i connected when i got out about

[19:39] a couple months before i got out and i was picking your brain because you had those experiences and not only did i have a wonderful opportunity to learn from you but we became very good friends we're brothers and that's the other side of the coin is that if you do it the right way and you learn from folks and you give back you build these relationships and these are foundationally concrete relationships that can't be shaken no matter what and you call on each other and your lowest of your lows and your highest of your highs so i would be ever fraternal eternally grateful for that experience for the military now you mentioned when you were in

[20:15] patuxent that's kind of where you started your real your involvement with real estate so why don't you if you would take us back to that and when how did that get started yeah so um i was in patuxent river maryland i was about the eight to ten year mark in my navy career i had a wife and two of my four kids uh at the time just babies and um i the first thing i decided to do is to go back for my master's so i signed up for a master's program with emmy riddler and article university and um i actually ended up getting my masters in 2008 when i went to italy i finished

[20:51] online and got that masters which i thought was was a big a big thing i wanted to have in my in my resume and my my my professional uh my professional kind of uh criteria there so that was the first thing the second was i was on a deployment or not appointment detachment for eight weeks uh in new orleans and um i was with a good friend of mine who is now one of my best friends who i've worked with in real estate since i started because he got me started and god has a way of doing things that you know if you just nod your head and say yes to the lord he takes you down a path that you'll enjoy

[21:27] so my buddy scott and i were stationed together as students in corpus christi texas and then we were stationed together at uh vp 16 patrol squadron 16 which was our first squadron tour together and every time i was kind of around scott he always talked about this thing called real estate running real estate doing this and that and i never really knew what he meant but god again put us together in patuxent river and we were both together on an eight-week detachment and i'm in my room watching a movie just you know doing nothing wasting time and scott came into my room and he said hey why don't we go next door to my room i want to talk to you a little bit about this

[22:02] thing called real estate and from that point on i was hooked i was hooked i wanted to do everything and um it's just you know i got the bug and he just walked through it in a way that i just became captivated by it just you know obsessed with it so when we got back i was trying to do foreclosures and residential renovation and all this stuff but at the time it was around 2005 2006 so right before the great recession so everything was such overvalued so high priced but where we were stationed uh naval force for the uh the navair group a naval air

[22:39] which is the um the acquisition arm of aviation had moved from pentagon from the pentagon and pentagon road to patuxent river so that's a three-star commander and he's bringing all of his acquisition folks down there to pat to pax river patuxent river so who's going to go there the northrop grummans the boeings the titan systems the raytheons the l3s all the contractors are going down with them and what do they need they need a place to live so patuxent river is pretty funny it was an old southern maryland town very country-esque not a lot there and in a matter of three years when the three star got there with that

[23:15] command it just exploded so there was a need for home building and so scott and i partnered up with a couple of new home builders and we basically got involved in investing in new construction new construction home building so the first one i did i bought like i participated in the investment it was a one thousand dollar investment fully fully refundable and the builder would basically do what's called a construction loan they'd take out the funds to build the property and then at closing we would do what's called a construction to permanent loan you know what that is

[23:50] and so from construction to permanent map when the builder and all of his costs and the land went to me then the buyer well what i did two weeks before i built bought the house from the builder is i turned around and put it on the market and so i got it at 280 000 of what i would have bought it for and i turned around and sold it for 370 000 so i ended up making a nice 65 to 70 000 profit and i said wow i like this so uh i did i did it again i did it again and then and i had very very another successful uh uh transaction

[24:26] there scott did it he did it as well and had very good success and then when we went to italy we had bought in our home at the time when we first got the patuxent river for 234 thousand dollars and then three years later we sold it for 360 thousand dollars so um and if anybody knows when you look when you're in the military if you own a home for two of the last 10 years and you sell it you don't have to worry about paying any capital gains as long as it's below 500 000 of profit so i got to take all that and um and be able to utilize that for

[25:02] investment so what i did was i took about two hundred thousand dollars of my money scott and i had a nice conversation i stayed in he got out and he started building his business and i gave him a two hundred 000 investment loan and what happened there kevin was interesting he was going out and buying a row house in washington dc and converting it into a three or four unit condo where he would buy a bill another building and gut it out and turn it into a five-unit condo and he was sending me the performance the budgets the the offering memorandums um the uh

[25:38] the details on the project the demographics the locations why he was investing and so i was learning this i was basically a passive investor and i started to understand it more and i was getting 10 a year on that 200 grand for seven years so every year i was getting 10 on that 200 for seven years in a row when i got back to dc and i got to the point where i was getting ready to think about what i was going to do when i grow up after the navy i had about five years left and um i talked to my financial advisor at the time about hey i think i got something good here i did this for seven years with my buddy i

[26:14] would love to be able to to do this where i could bring in more money for him through friends and family and people i got to meet and give him larger chunks of capital that he would need for equity the down payment money for the bank loans that he would go out and get and uh my financial advisor right away said well if you do that you need to talk to your accountant who he introduced me to who happened to be my accountant at the time who's now my business partner and my best friend david chatz and so david was my accountant since 2010 2011 and i pitched him this idea of hey why

[26:49] don't we be a business that brings on friends and family um you have an accounting firm david you have clients that might be interested in this i have friends in the navy i got people i know i've been networking in the dc area for a while why don't we start this business and put it together where we basically bring money in from these individuals we bring it through our business we bring in our money we do the due diligence we do the review we put the legal docs together and then we invest that money under the umbrella of the uh the sponsor the one that's actually out there building these properties and david said i'm in i love it i'm in so that was an easy sell

[27:26] but what david brought to the table was the experience the knowledge uh the expertise of owning a business and really having the skill sets that we needed to be able to build the foundation of the company i'm the face of the business i go out i talk to people i love meeting people i love those relationships i meet with companies to grow the new partnerships for sponsors reinvestment i meet the new investors dave is really more of the inside person that does so much of the uh the finance piece the tax piece he puts my mind at ease from what he does

[28:02] and i put him at ease from what he does and what i do so it's a great it's a great partnership and again i i have my primary verticals of what i'm good at i still know what david does which is the horizontal and vice versa for david and it just turned out to be a great business so we took a full year kevin from 2012 to 2013 to put together all of our documents all of our paperwork and when we thought we were you know ready to go we we gave that information to very trusted friends and family that went through it who had enormous experience in mortgage lending

[28:37] and brokerages and real estate and banking and they beat the heck out of us in a good way and so we took all that information we made those changes and those folks turned around and said we don't want you to pay us a dime but we want you to bring us bring us on as your investors so that was a great compliment and that's how it's been we've grown our business uh to now 175 to 180 investors mostly from organic introductions and relationships that we've had we brought dave on dave rotherford last year in february and dave has just been an amazing force and a great part of our

[29:14] team that makes things uh wonderful for us in a way and you get this and everybody who's a veteran who watches the show get this i'm the ceo of the squadron and dave is my master chief dave will go out and and get things done and we have a relationship where dave says hey i think we should do it this way i hear him out and i say you know what we're going to do it that way that makes all the sense in the world so we have a great working relationship we respect each other as peers but at the same time he knows that you know we make the decisions but he's there to help us and he's been doing a fantastic job so we're growing now we're expanding we're investing in 10 investments with 25

[29:51] million dollars of investments right now we've completed 17 projects with 8 million invested in about 6 million in profits so i mean we're a business we're rocking and rolling and um and i'm enjoying everything i do yeah like you said it's not easy it's a lot of work i mean we're in business next month nine years i can't believe it nine years we've been in business and to look back and see where we've come over the last nine years with covid and and challenges with supply chains and all the stuff everybody's seeing and still come out with success uh in the green or the in the red or green profitable on every project in the

[30:26] black and to be doing as well as we're doing uh is just truly a blessing dad's got me right where he wants us and um we're just going along for the ride so you started at tax river an investment of a thousand dollars and and i heard you now you're at 18 million is that pretty big here with 18 million in our active deals and 25 million total uh combined from the 17 full cycle deals and the 10 deals we're investing on right now that that's a that's and when were you in pax river 2000 in 2005

[31:04] 2006 so about 15 16 years about 17 yes 16 17 years ago so so it's fantastic growth but but it actually it's it's it's been you know getting on 20 years right that building a little bit of a little bit and i suspect the growth curve kind of went like this right so it starts out slow and and then it and then it picks up right yeah and we we purposely wanted it that way we didn't want to uh get into anything over our head and we still are that way i mean we're we're investing on projects we

[31:39] feel comfortable with are in our sandbox and our sweet spot when we first started we were doing 150 to 200 000 investments now we're doing you know four five six million dollar investments so um and and you know the guy i mentioned scott you know he's a 400 million dollar development company now and guess who my number one sponsor is that i work with you know so it doesn't go by any chance that that's just just to happen karma whatever you know i got i got lucky and that's that's just god's way of connecting the right people to do great things and that's how it's been

[32:15] so that that's a perfect segue for my next question because you know having known you for as long as i have one of the things that i i find um strongest about you is the emphasis that you put on building relationships so would you talk about that process um is that something you learned in the military and if so how and then how did you take whatever that nascent skill was and expand it into your civilian career

[32:52] i love that question thank you so much for asking it um it started when i was a kid you know i i was an only child i had two uh half sisters but we are so close they're my sisters i came from a mother and father that you know my dad owned his own company he was a construction zone construction company in downtown brooklyn he put up 12 stories in the uh in the towers when the bomb went off in 93. uh he was you know in the midst of new york city construction his whole life after you know by ron was 40 in his 30s after he got out of the marine corps so

[33:27] dad was a business owner he woke up at 4 30 in the morning i saw him at 6 o'clock at night and he worked his butt off mom was a school teacher for 30 years uh and she was also a a family therapist so she did counseling and so she owned her own business i had uh seven uncles and and five aunts from my mom's side where my mom's father immigrated from italy in 1898 and a second generation grandmother where my grandfather was 21 and my grandmother was 14 when they got married and they had seven boys six of which own their own grocery

[34:03] stores my grandfather owned his own olive oil company and my seventh uncle who's my godfather owns a riding academy in brooklyn new york in rockaway beach that his oldest boy still owns is doing amazing things with so and then i had five ants that just you know pretty much were the number crunchers and they helped my grandmother and took care of the house and basically took care of the the boys and then you take that and you multiply that by you know 20 or 30 and that's the number of cousins i had so i was i came from a very tight-knit family you know italians

[34:38] typically are very hands-on and and um ever since i was a kid um we were always taught that you know if you're in business you take care of your customer customers is the number one person you take care of so much so that they're family and so my cousin frank he's a survivor of cancer he wrote a book called now i know i'm not alone and uh chapter three in the book talks about our family and uh blew me away because it's just again frank just goes into and if you talk to any of my cousins the same thing they'll say in family is that we always know how to take care of our

[35:14] customers because the customer is your your life support if you don't take good care of your customers how do you bring home money how do you take care of your family not only that the relationship opens the doors to so many other things friendship taking care of each other looking after each other money's a part of that the relationship is the foundation so to me i love when i meet someone new or i get the chance to to get out get to know somebody a because i'm learning about them b i'm getting a chance to understand who they are and see it could be a friend i get to you know i don't

[35:49] know god knows where that's going to go so it's person that's brought into my life and then when you read books like you know um the millionaire next door and um the dale carnegie book drawn a bike um uh how to win friends and influence people and and you read robert kiyosaki's books and it he just donald trump the order the deal everything is about relationships bringing people together uh working with people and and and when you kind of look at someone and say i'm gonna do my best to take care of that person and and get them what they need because if i do i know

[36:24] if they're like me they're going to do the same thing and so it just it just catapults and multiplies into something that it's just it's euphoric i guess that's the best way to explain it that when you can do things with people and build those relationships and get to know their families i mean when i was a lieutenant and the maintenance department for my first job i used to walk around the shops and talk to the maintenance guys and gals and get to know them and you know i'd go back the next day and say hey how's your mom feeling i know you mentioned she's in the hospital they look at you like what the heck who are you you know it's like you blow them away but when you show you actually care and you do

[37:00] um it's it's just it's just hard to explain it's just an amazing connection and you can do that with anybody you call up a customer service representative at verizon and you ask someone when they pick up the phone hey how are you are you having a good day how's everything going they're going to bend over backwards for you just because you take the opportunity to be a human and you take the opportunity to treat someone with respect whether the janitor or the ceo of the company it just is it's amazing and i love it so excuse me what i'm hearing is is you

[37:35] really grew up with that being almost um almost by osmosis coming into you so for someone who didn't grow up in in that kind of family environment how can they develop that that skill that ability yeah would you yeah mentor get a mentor look at someone that you you see that you want to be like from either a business standpoint how they treat someone their faith you know i mean to me if someone comes up to me and says you know why are we so happy i just say because i

[38:10] got you know i i believe in jesus christ he's my savior i love him and and next thing you know it's like wait you know and then i have a conversation with them and that's great i love that or someone comes up and sees me smiling all the time and i say why are you always fine well because i coach or i am part of um you know i'm part of an organization the knights of columbus or i help out in the community i mean that's a way somebody can do it from a civic standpoint from a business standpoint um you know practice get in front of the mirror you know what what do you want to do if you want to be in real estate that's great

[38:45] learn about real estate get the generic the strategic level understanding but then what do you want to do when you get into real estate do you want to be a wholesaler do you want to be in a commercial lender do you want to be a passive investor start breaking out into the mold of the direction in real estate you want to go to get book smart but then go out and start to talk to people network i've been networking in washington dc for 11 years i mean i i love to network i love to go out and meet people because that's that's the lifeblood of business when you get to meet people who if you give them a referral that turns into dollars

[39:20] they're gonna do everything they can for you you know so that that to me is important and that's the best way i think somebody can do it i really do it's define what you want to do get a get a get a legal pad write it down what you want to do right and then start doing the spider webs like what do i want to do out of this and what do i need to succeed out of this and you know one of the things i think and you probably overlook this because it's just a part of you is you authentically love people

[39:56] and people people can sense that about you right and and and i think that's something we can cultivate as well i mean you obviously grew up in a very loving family um although i'm i'm guessing they were probably fighting in your family as well right oh yeah every family oh yeah you probably fought with love yeah we did we did yeah my my mom used to tell me when my uncles were together and they had a meeting about business it was like screaming and yelling you know this and that and then it was

[40:32] quiet and my grandmother would go in and they'd all have a glass of scotch and they were laughing and you know so yeah i mean that's just part of it um i will say though you have to be careful and this is something i've learned is that you know if if you become the type of person that you really are driven by relationships and and just being wanting to be accepted uh it can become a double-edged sword because then you can become a people pleaser where then you can become someone that you know it's somebody that gets stepped on a lot so you know sometimes you have to be careful that it's not pride that's driving you into

[41:09] those relationships because you want people to like you so much but it's that it's gratitude and it's humility and it's objectivity and it's not emotion and that's that's not always easy because you know you connect with a good person and you get excited and you think to yourself wow i'm going to do a lot of business with this person or this is a person i want to introduce to my wife and my kids and it's like all of a sudden they do something or then they start using you in a way where you're like wait a minute this this isn't what i anticipated so so yeah you know and that's that's a great point is as we develop relationships

[41:46] we we want to be giving but by the same token we don't want to be taken advantage of and and that's that's something we learn you know we learn through experience right i mean i i think though it would be and tell me you know what you think about this we probably have to take the risk of being taken advantage of sometimes if we're going to find those relationships that are really worth building yeah that's a great point and and you don't you don't know until you try right like you could plan for it and plan for it and say wow do i really want to take a risk on this but

[42:22] when you when you try you may not necessarily succeed or you may stumble at first but at least you go through that process and um i'm reading a good book it's called the the mindful catholic and one of the things it teaches you is that you know we shouldn't be afraid to embrace discomfort right i mean colin powell said the secret to success is that i've fallen but i've gone back up when i was able to keep going you know learn from that because we're so afraid to get hurt and we're so especially in society today i mean people are just not comfortable with with pain whether it's

[42:57] emotional physical mental psychological but at the same time pain allows us to grow it allows us to experience something you know you can have the greatest day of your life every day for for two weeks but then after a while it kind of gets boring right i mean you need a little a little bit of a change to experience so you know and so i think today you know god help the people in ukraine what they're going through not that type of suffering but at the same time you know that's sometimes when you see that happening kevin on television and you hear about it you really appreciate what you have

[43:32] and you kind of realize then hey this thing freedom you know it does it comes at a cost and we shouldn't be running away from those pains we shouldn't run away from those things that are gonna possibly be failures we should look at them and say they're opportunities you know and uh and try to learn from them so we're uh we're we've just got a few more minutes what does the future hold for for for john rubino for jid investments for for david and and and dave and what do you what do you see as as your trajectory from here on out yeah i mean

[44:08] i think that uh we're in a nice we're in a nice groove right now um obviously love balance i'd like to see our our projects that are currently larger scale projects that have been going on for a few years come full cycle and finish uh we are getting ready to finish one of our largest projects today uh which would be wonderful and so i'd like to see some of the the balance there as things are getting done more projects are coming in um dave is is learning not only things that we brought him on for to learn and be part of but he's also learning other areas of the business which i'm excited about because it's going to only open

[44:44] his spectrum of what he can do and and be able to enjoy doing with us and um i'm always asking dave and he could probably tell you after we get done i always say are you having fun and if he doesn't tell me no i don't hang up i say come on let's talk about why but he's always smiling he's always having fun which tells me he's enjoying what he's doing and that's important to me because i want us all i want our team you know as we grow everybody that's on our team to have fun and so i think you know as we could we have a consultant that works with us that does due diligence i'd like to see that area expand a bit more where we

[45:19] have a capacity to look at more projects and um yeah just slowly kind of grow in a way that we're not growing uncomfortably but we're at a nice pace you know let's say between a crawl and a run a nice steady walk and just doing more projects we're comfortable with and uh and not over exerting ourselves i have four kids one's going to college this year my mom and dad are down here now so it's like you know gotta gotta have good balance yeah and most importantly and i would say make sure you take time for yourself people are just they get so excited

[45:56] about you know being successful and that's important but but go out and go for a walk take take fresh air and take the dog out spend some time that's something i've learned lately is that i gotta be able to take time for me because if i'm not good then my wife is out my kids are out my family's out because i'm not myself and i and i can't be that person that i want to be let alone who they want me to be once again you gave me the perfect segue for my next question and this this i think probably be the the last maybe the last question so i i've had the pleasure of meeting your your wife stacy

[46:33] would you talk a little bit about um being married and and going through this career progression maybe some of the challenges you know how how you've um dealt with your marriage in the context of of the various decisions and the the successes and setbacks you've had how how is that mind sharing maybe a little bit more personally so stacy and i dated for two years two and a half years before we got engaged and it was mainly long distance um she wanted to go back home and finish her

[47:08] degree when we met in texas i was just finishing flight school and got my wings and was going to go through my first squadron we kind of decided hey you know what's not moving together i don't believe that from my fate standpoint anyway but i just said hey let's you know you go finish your degree let me let me uh get my wings and learn how to fly this big plane up here and um we got engaged right before my first deployment uh back in 2001 we had been dating for two three years and um it was um it was good in a way because again we were away from each other and we were building that tolerance of being

[47:44] away from each other that would prepare us for when you know we had a move or i went on a deployment when we were married so we kind of built that that you know strength and that foundation up front and i thought it was the right way to go and she agreed and then when we got married uh three months later i'm leaving for another six-month appointment so again she was away from me for that time so we built a pretty strong foundation up front you know stacy's been my best friend she's she's everything she she knows me better than i know me and um we communication is so important um you

[48:20] know she may say something one way and i say another and it becomes an argument just because we weren't able to clearly articulate our side of what we're talking about um but now it's all about the kids college and sports and running around and she's she teaches so we're really happy to finally be planting our roots here in in northern virginia that we have a home now that we're here now 11 years you know always in the military moving every two three years but um you know she always she always said that if it's makes sense for the family she was willing to make the sacrifices

[48:55] she knew the life she was getting into um stacy was a christian before he got married but it was very important to me that we had raised our kids as catholics and she agreed to become a catholic she converted so she was willing to sacrifice she was willing to do things in a way that you know she understood what marriage meant and um she teaches me so much as not only my wife my best friend but my partner and um you know his joke i tell her i wish we were in business together but she says no no no you do what you do i do what i do but um but it's really a it's a harmonious

[49:30] uh get-together where i can honestly say that i haven't i don't think we fought more than 10 times in our whole entire marriage and we're going on 20 years this may just um we we get along really well and um you know she's just uh she's opening different doors to me of understanding different things and i and i as well my family's embraced her um i love her family and um you know the kids see that and i think that that today is really important because as you know it's difficult these days with families the way things are going and kids don't have a strong father mother whether

[50:06] they're married or even if they're divorced they they still need those parents to get them through the toughest times in their lives and a lot of kids are missing that these days they're not getting it from mom and dad they're getting it from school or from uh their friends and they should be getting it back at home you know the family is the nucleus that's why we as a society have been so successful um over our 220 plus years of of existence this country right or 40 um is because of the family i think you know kids have gone out after being raised from a mom and dad and a family to go out and be successful in life so

[50:44] yeah long answer to a short question a very good answer and and again i you know so i want to see if i can sort of distill out um a few of the the lessons we might take from your story so so we're starting from the end and working back one of the things i i i've seen as a consistent theme throughout your story is you're open to listening to other people to really taking in what it is they have to teach you um and and i think that speaks to you know i say this is your brother it

[51:19] speaks to your humility right so there's the famous saying you know who is wise he who learns from all people right and i and and you've really made that a central tenet of your life whether it's from your wife your business partner um you know mentors whoever it is you've been open to to learning from them and that's not to say that you accept everything that they've said to you but but you're open to hearing it you taking it in analyze it and saying does this have a place in in the the overall tapestry of my

[51:56] life so i think that seems to me that's that's one very important um aspect of of your success i think another one is um and this i i get this is i didn't make this up this is another friend of mine who made this up um we've for so many decades we've lived in the world of just saying no it seems to me you live in the world of just say yes which is what my friend bob sanders talks about he's a doctor at nasa and he says you know just say yes even if you're not really sure that it's going to work out or you're not really sure if you really know what to do or they just

[52:32] say yes take a step forward forward in faith even and and you know do your best to to navigate those situations and they'll probably work out better than you might think they would so it seems to me you've always been willing to sort of take that that's that step forward um on the next lap of your journey um and and i think the third um lesson i would distill from your story is is is your faith and not not just your religious faith although i suspect that that's the source of it

[53:08] but you have your life is a testament to the kind of faith it takes in oneself in one's family in one's country and one's colleagues that if if if we do the things that we know we need to do then somehow good things will come from that so how in terms of a summary how does how does that sound to you am i off base you respond i appreciate it when are you going to write my book i love it

[53:43] you know me well kevin what would you add to that if anything you know i i mean just enjoying it enjoying it right because i mean one of my friends was saying a couple months ago you know life is so fast you know before you know it just just enjoy the opportunities you have and uh and and just take a step back every once in a while and and don't be so worried about you know what you need to accomplish but look at what you've accomplished like what you've done and just you know not in a prideful way like you said in a humble way just to be so grateful of the blessings and the things

[54:19] that have been accomplished but yeah i yeah i i think you stole the show there with that i agree great summary here's you so um david sam do you have a question to uh to post to given a second here oh hey kevin i appreciate you uh allowing us to attend i think this is a a great forum um you know john is is always such a a wonderful representative of not only our company but of course himself i think just it was a great opportunity that's a

[54:54] great condition and i'm just happy to be a part of it [Laughter] now this is this has been really good um i always enjoy attending uh you know things like this as i always learned something new about john that i didn't know before yeah i mean i i learned new things about john as well so this is a this is a great example of army navy cooperation here right yeah and sam's sam's prior military too are you sam yeah he's got some mic problems yeah sam sam in the knights of columbus with us here at our local parish he was the supreme

[55:29] knight of our council a wonderful wonderful man it's got a wonderful family and um every time i see salmon church he's always smiling so and he was actually a soccer coach for my you know my middle boy yeah he was retired air force so we just needed the marine corps player here yeah i did my first tour at the marine corps so maybe i'm a sort of an honorary marine yes john thank you so so much for coming on the way to wow people making money very much your story really is is an inspirational

[56:05] story you know just the the idea of of going from you know a thousand dollar investment to 25 million dollar investment um it it it's it's it's as inspiring as craig's story of going from a you know a farm boy running around barefoot to you know working for goldman sachs i mean you know none of us are our elon musk this is and this is not to knock elon musk at all a fabulously successful guy very smart all of that but most of us are not going to be elon musk but we can be a john robina we can be a

[56:40] craig noel we can be a jennifer chang the kind of people that that you know i get i get i'm so fortunate to get to talk to on this show and so i really appreciate you coming on and and telling us uh your story so uh and i realized i forgot who my guest is next week i gotta look this up real quickly yeah uh oh yes okay next week my guest is marcia collier so if you are on twitter you probably know marcia marsha is um among other things author of a number of the um

[57:16] dummies books where you learn how to do all kinds of great stuff she also has a a twitter show basically on customer service and marcia is a a thought leader and and a tremendous innovator um has been really her whole life um and uh i'm i'm i've been trying to get her on the show for quite a while now so i'm really happy that she's uh finally able to work us into her calendar so i invite you to tune in next wednesday 12 30 pacific time 3 30 eastern time live here on the way to wow

[57:51] show people making money and and uh marcia will be my guest today my guest has been john rubino of jid investments he's uh uh a retired naval aviator and uh now ceo of jid investments and uh and also my one of my brothers um i'm proud to say and uh and so you know we're gonna i'm gonna wrap it up here and i think i forgot to do this last week but but this week i want to make sure that i remember to do this so um it's it's one of the great joys of my life was to

[58:26] take care of um a woman um by the name of marie faulkner um and she's very very dear to my heart she passed away in 27 2019 and somebody was asking me about where does this come from so just real briefly when i was visiting her in a nursing home shortly before she passed away she she asked me to come very close to her bed and and she got me to bend my ear down right above her mouth and she said kevin i just want you to know that you're my bow but not in any weird way

[59:03] and that was that was marie she was just she was a the quintessential southern belle and just a a wonderful wonderful woman raconteur etc so lest you forget marie you are still my bell darling john thanks so much to all of you watching thank you for watching and hope to see you next week all the best