No don't go in there, Daddy's working.
Jonathan: Welcome back to another edition of Daddy's Working podcast and you my friend, my dear listener, you are in for a treat today. I have Mr. Joe Evangelisti. I hope I said it right. I have my friend, Joe, here, okay? I have Joe here with me. What's up, Joe?.
Joe: You nailed it, brother.
Jonathan: I got it, huh? I've heard Mr. Mark Evans say it before, so I'm just like trying to imitate old DM, man. What's good, man? What's good? How are you today?
Joe: Everything's great, man. Everything's great. I'm down in South Carolina, spending some time with the family and enjoying the kids, enjoying the wife and down here with some extended family and so everything's magical. Having a great time. [0:01:05.3]
Jonathan: Magical. This guy says magic. Hey, so - just in case any of our listeners out there are wondering - give us like the 30-second elevator pitch of who you are.
Joe: Oh, man. Elevator pitch. I haven’t worked on an elevator pitch in a long time. Quick background. I mean, well, my background is - I run multiple companies at this point but my passion, my background, has always been construction and real estate. So the foundation of my business is construction and real estate. At this point, we have a lead generation company, a media company and I do masterminds and mentoring and coaching as well.
Jonathan: Dude, you're everywhere because you're not … so, man, I didn't even know you had this many companies. So the construction - I knew you were doing this because you guys do rehabs and that kind of thing. Right?
Joe: Yeah, yeah - I mean - the real estate - so well construction is really my, that's the real bread and butter of the foundational piece of my background because I've been in construction my whole life. I mean, that's where I grew up. My dad was a contractor when I was a kid and started out in drywall and then eventually started building houses and then development of some bigger stuff, so since I was a little boy and hanging on my dad's kneecap and walking through construction sites and you know, I've always had the dust and dirt and the construction debris in my lungs. [0:02:21.4]
So that's always been a passion of mine, always been a background of mine. I actually was in the military for a couple of years and I did construction in the military, so, it's always been something that's always been really close to me. You know, it kind of naturally lends itself into real estate. Right? Because you're building stuff and eventually you like to control the stuff you're building and own those assets. So it was kind of an easy transition to get into real estate right out of understanding the construction background.
Jonathan: Now, did your dad do that? You said your dad was a contractor, and you know what? My dad took me on the job, too. I think that was the greatest lessons that I got was like how hard it was that he was working to earn a buck and made me appreciate that. But did your dad also have those bigger dreams where I don’t just want to be the contractor, I want to be the owner? Or how did you end up being there? [0:03:08.3]
Joe: Yeah. My dad … I love telling this story because my dad is really the foundation in our family for being the first entrepreneur in the history of our family. My grandparents were both Sicilian immigrants back in the 20s, the teens and the 20s, and they came over in like I said, in the teens and the 20s, they came over and they both immediately got jobs. My grandmother, my dad's mom was a cafeteria lady at my high school when I was growing up and my grandfather, who I never met, was actually an insurance salesman. He died when my dad was young. My dad, I think, was 18 when my grandfather died. My uncle and my dad were really the only two sons in the family and my uncle went to college, first one to graduate college in our family and immediately went out and kind of became an accountant and did a lot of white collar stuff. But my dad had different plans and went out and started his own contracting company and you know, decided to put in the blood, sweat and tears to be an entrepreneur and that was where I kind of, you know, I got my background, my urge I guess to always want to become my own boss, be my own boss, become an entrepreneur and my dad really instilled that in me at a young age. Like you said, that work ethic, you know, I have been working two jobs my entire life at least and now I have nine companies, so I have nine jobs. [0:04:26.0]
Jonathan: No way. Those aren’t nine jobs. How could you have nine jobs? We're going to talk about that in a little bit. Alright. You have the example of your dad, which is great. My dad was not an entrepreneur, so I didn't have that head start of knowing I wanted to do that. Did you go into construction first and then get into the real estate side, or what does that look like?
Joe: Yeah, you know. I was doing construction stuff when I was really young. I mean, I think I was swinging a hammer when I was probably less than 10 and I learned how to tape dry wall when I was 10 or 12 years old. I was probably the youngest one on the job site taping dry wall, but then I pretty quickly got into the restaurant industry, like I think a lot of young people do. I was washing dishes and prep cooking and bussing tables and serving tables and all that kind of good stuff. Pretty quickly out of high school, I went into the military. [0:05:09.4]
I had, one of my dad's foremen that worked for us was my boss at the time when I was 16, 17, 18, I was kind of working part time while I was in high school for the family company and he was actually a semi-retired reservist senior chief in the US Navy, Seabies, which are the construction battalions of the Navy. So he was somebody I looked up to at the time and he told me basically, hey, you know, you can go into the military and you can still be a builder. I didn't know that at the time. I thought like, wow, that's pretty cool. I can go build stuff and be in the military. I always had this kind of like, I don't know where it came from - I know there was a lot of people in my family that had served in the past on my mom's side and so I had this need to want to serve. I kind of wanted to go into the military and then when I found out I could do construction and go in the military at the same time, I was like, yes, sign me up. [0:06:01.0]
When I was 18, I joined the military and spent six years having the time of my life. I really, really enjoyed it. I traveled all over the place. I did some amazing stuff. I had some amazing stations all over the world and then when I got out, I just got right back into construction, did some construction management, eventually met my wife, who drug me back home pretty quick, back to New Jersey because she likes to be close to her family, which is understandable.
Jonathan: Don’t they all.
Joe: Yeah, don’t they all. Exactly. So and then pretty quickly ended up getting right back into the construction industry. I worked for my dad for a little bit and at that point, I was a lot more mature. I was kind of ready to be out on my own and getting back into the family swing of things at that point. We kind of butted heads a lot, me and my dad at that point. I had a lot of my own ideas, a lot of my own ways that I wanted to do business and so, at that point, it was kind of a juncture where I decided to go out on my own and really took the flipping business to a whole other level and I started doing my own flips and really started to expand at that point.
Jonathan: Look, I tried working with my dad and I love my dad too much to work with him is the way I feel. [0:07:05.6]
Joe: That is the exact same experience I had. No kidding. Yeah.
Jonathan: I'd just rather have him as a dad. That's all.
Joe: I am the same way, you know, Jonathan. It's like I came in to experience and he was my best friend. He's still my best friend to this day. I love my dad. I mean, obviously growing up, we were so tight. We would come to work and argue every single day and it got to a point where I sat down and I said, "Dad, I don’t want to do this anymore. I'm not going to continue to work with you if this is all we're going to do," and obviously it was just a differing of opinion type stuff. It was not like we despised each other or we didn't like each other. We just, you know, we had a different way of how we wanted to run things. So I sat down one day and I said, look - you know, I know this is going to be risky. I know it's scary as heck for both of us, but I'm going to go out and do this on my own. It was probably one of the best decisions in my life.
Jonathan: Sure. Sure. So how do you go from the construction and then into the real estate? What was the move there? [0:08:00.7]
Joe: Yeah, the move was actually buying our first couple of flips and doing them nights and weekends. I mean, doing the first deal we did, literally as the market crashed the first time back 11 years now, 12 years, however long it was.
Jonathan: '08.
Joe: Yeah, it was '08. It was actually the end of '07 and we bought our first deal and me and my best friend flipped it nights and weekends, and so I would work general contracting with my dad. I'd get done around 5 o'clock. I would hop in the truck, go right to the job site, work until midnight. We would eat burritos and work until midnight, until we couldn’t take it any longer and do the same thing the next day and work all weekend. We flipped our first house in 11 weeks, just under 12 weeks, leading up literally to I think I got married on week 10 and it was me, my best friend and our two wives and we got our first flip done and we got stuck with that deal, unfortunately. But we had multiple exit strategies from day one. That's always been our real power point, was knowing that if you're going to get into a real estate deal, you've got to have multiple ways out. [0:09:02.2]
So, luckily, knock on wood, that deal worked as a rental property. So we kept it as a rental, put great tenants in there, still have it to this day, and paying down debt. It's got good cash flow and just started from there. We springboarded from there. We kept doing a couple of more and eventually, what happened was we knew we had to find a better way. We knew we had to stop doing it ourselves, start to find subcontractors, start to manage it differently, really not do it all by hand and that's when we started to learn our people leverage, learn how to build good teams. We learned so much in that first two years. You know, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was a great learning experience, but looking back on the way we do it now, where we do literally 20, 30, 40 times as many deals and don’t even step foot on the projects - it's incredible to think about how we were doing it back then.
Jonathan: Alright. Some people would say that you got in there. You did all that work and then you couldn't get rid of it and you are stuck with a rental. How do you have the nuts to do it again? [0:10:00.9]
Joe: Yeah. It's a great question. Right? And I think it's because we knew that the long term benefits of real estate, for me, this business has always been a long term play. You're going to get exceedingly wealth over time and you're going to make decent cash along the way. I never expected to get rich quick, overnight. I think it's a really, it's an unfortunate event that in today's day and age, especially with social media, and you know, 12 years ago, social media was around but it wasn’t like it is today, and nowadays, everyone is a guru. Everyone wants this push button, overnight riches crap that they think that they can just download somebody's course and be a millionaire overnight.
Jonathan: Why not, Joe?
Joe: Yeah. Exactly. Right? I never expected to be a millionaire overnight. Now, the flip side to that is when I became a millionaire, I never expected to become one that fast, but it happened almost accidently. I started slow. I built. I built. I built. I built. Then finally, I looked at my PFS one day and I was like, wow, I didn't realize that had happened. So we just expected to just keep building this thing and you know, this was going to be the rest of our lives. [0:11:01.7]
We were just going to keep building it. So we had no intentions of slowing down at that point. We just knew that it was going to be a slow grind and we weren’t going to pocket the proceeds of the first couple of deals and go buy a Ferrari. That wasn’t the intention. Right? It was start to build this thing up.
Jonathan: Then shoot a social media video.
Joe: Yeah. Exactly. Shoot a social media video. You know, people think like … because we do the mastermind stuff now and they're like what do you now? I've been doing this for 12 years. This isn't like I started three weeks ago. I think that's the challenge with a lot of people today. They get a taste of success and the next thing you know, they're shooting a 10-part mini series on how to become successful. It's a shame, but it's the truth.
Jonathan: Do you think that it's just something that's ingrained in people or is it the marketing that's coming at them? Why do you think they have this feeling of it should be overnight, it should be quick, there should be an easy button?
Joe: You know - I think it's our nature. Right? I think that in our nature, there's something in our minds …. If someone were to say to you - it's like the matrix - you take this pill and you're going to look like a calendar model tomorrow… you want to believe that that's possible. [0:12:02.5]
Like there's some, you know, call to sickness - I don't know. You want to believe that that's a real thing. Right? But the truth is - you and I know that that's not possible. You and I know that success comes from consistency. It comes from practice. It comes from routine. It comes from doing the right thing over and over and over and over and over again. So that blue pill is not going to do you any good unless you get up and work out and then forget about just working out consistently. You better eat right and you better drink a lot of water, and you better work out the right way. By the way, you better do all five of these things every single day. I'm on vacation and I just did Crossfit twice this week. That's not bragging. That's just consistency. I could spend the last six months working out and then go on vacation and just be a complete bum for seven days and lose a month and a half, two months worth of work. So consistency is what builds all this stuff. It's no different in health as well as it is in wealth or anything else. It's consistent practice. There is no overnight pill. One of my favorite quotes is from Andy Frisella. He says his overnight success took him 3650 days. Right? That's 10 years. Right? It's just grinding. It's grinding. If you think that ….[0:13:06.3]
Jonathan: You have an advantage because of the way you grew up, like growing up with your dad as a contractor, I'm sure that he had quality craftsmen working for him and you could see that it wasn’t just like the building didn't just appear. It was every day, guys showing up, striking hammers, doing the thing. Do you think there's an advantage to the growing up that way?
Joe: I think there might be an advantage to having the work ethic - 100%. I've always seen people work hard. We didn't leave a job site until it was clean. We have always lived by the way you do one thing is the way you do everything and it almost becomes like an OCD type thing. You can't leave the room until it's clean or you can't leave the kitchen dirty or you can't … so like that always follows me but that work ethic piece is… you know, you can't expect great results unless you put in a lot of work and so again, it gets back to that thing. You can't just push a button overnight and expect it to just pop up and show great results.
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Frisella, 75 Hard, baby. Day 43.
Joe: Nice. Good work. Good work. [0:14:04.5]
Jonathan: I'm still alive. I did a whole show about it. There's this thing that I've been toying around with and I'm going to send it your way and see what you think about it. I feel like in today's society, there's a lot of people who feel entitled, like they deserve things and the way that you're explaining it to me is no, no - you have to put in a lot of hard work. Why do you think people feel so entitled and why is that just not right?
Joe: You know, I'm not sure why people feel that way, but I will tell you this - from all the people that I coach, when you put in the hard work, the results feel a whole lot better. Like on the back end of that thing … like why the 75 Hard feels so rewarding, it's not … first of all, it is a physical challenge, for most people, I mean, for some people, you work out 45 minutes twice a day and it's not, these are not, like it's not a major work out. You could walk twice a day. Right? You could do a 45-minute walk twice a day. It's not a major workout. 75 Hard is more of a mental challenge. Right? [0:15:10.2]
So putting in that work, it's really more of, again, it goes back to consistency. Can you deal with the consistency of the work flow and that's putting in the hard work. The back end of it is the reward. So when people feel the most rewarded is when they go out and they accomplish something or they put in the work. It's almost like when I tell our sales people - you know, you can either hunt or you can be a farmer, but when you go out and hunt that lead and you hunt that deal and you close that deal that you went out and found yourself and you worked for it and you created that lead and you created that deal and you, you know, created that experience or that connection with that person, built rapport, maybe was referred to you because of something you built for yourself - that feels 10 times better than some lead came in off a website and you called a phone number and you just… it was lined up and knocked down for you. That work, that's what the reward is. Us as humans, when we challenge ourselves, that's where living comes from. It's like when you get uncomfortable and you succeed, that's how you level up. [0:16:11.0]
Jonathan: So here's the thing that I've been playing around with and I'm going to get your take on it. So there's a world of entitlement. People want the push button riches and all that. There's the other side of that, is what I call expectancy. And you're talking about that right now when you say, hey, I'm putting in the work. Hey, I put that deal together. Hey, I'm showing up every day. I expect good things to happen. Do you feel that way?
Joe: I expect good things to happen because I'm consistent in putting in work, so yes, I am creating my own luck. I know that good things are going to happen when I'm being consistent. In fact, the opposite of that is I know that things are not going to happen for me when I don’t put in the work. When I get lazy, when I get down on myself, when I'm having a bad couple of days or a bad couple of weeks, I could almost expect that the negativity is going to start piling up. The team starts to suffer. Their morale is going to start to go down because I'm not being the leader that I need to be. Right? So when I can maintain the consistency, maintain the hard work, maintain the positivity, maintain the optimism, drive, drive, drive - all the rest is going to follow because I put in the hard work. [0:17:14.4]
Jonathan: How do you do that now because I agree that we're the ones - we are the leaders of our company. We are the leaders of our family and you just said, drive, drive, drive but what about … you said you're down in North Carolina … what about recharging? What about taking care of yourself? How do you balance those two things?
Joe: Yeah, it's a great question. I honestly think it's more about creating purposely scheduling the gaps, like I'm down here. I am working out in the morning. I'm creating a routine for myself. I'm doing this podcast interview with you. I have another one right after this, but after that, I'm done. I'm going to spend the afternoon with my kids. I've been to the pool. I've read two books since I've been here. I think you have to purposely take scheduled breaks just as much as you have to take scheduled interaction, scheduled time to do certain things. I lead my team at certain times. I spend time taking breaks at certain times. [0:18:05.7]
I spend time with my kids at certain times. I spend time with wife at certain times. I have scheduled dates on the calendar. My calendar literally is blocked at all times, most times - let's put it that way. I'd say 85% of my calendar has blocks on it. So you have to find time for yourself. For me, exercise time is important. For me, my routine, my morning routine, is hyper important. I spend the first two and half, three hours of the day just focused on myself with my mind set on my journaling, with my exercise routine, with motivation, with setting myself up for success for the day. That, to me, is a ritual that has to happen in order for me to have a successful day. If I miss that, I know I'm going to have a bad day. So getting into those types of rhythms generally springboards me into a great day.
Jonathan: I love the idea of rituals.
Well, guess what - time is up for this week. I know you were just getting into that, and I don’t blame you, because it was just getting good. But we're trying to keep these episodes under a half hour, so we split it up into two. We'll be back next week with part two of this interview. Make sure you tune in then. If you love what you're hearing, why not share this episode with someone who will also love it? Thank you. Daddy's out.
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