Growing as a Real Estate Investor with New Host Nate Trunfio

Nate Trunfio: Welcome to the Real Estate of Things podcast. I am your new host, Nate Trunfio, CRO here at Lima One Capital. And I am really excited to pick up the torch from my dear friend and colleague, Dalton Elliott, who has done an awesome job bringing us through 69 episodes to get us here to the 70th, and I will be carrying the torch onwards from here. With that said, this is going to be a little bit of an introduction really to myself, and also to reconfirm some things that I hope all of you are thinking about as this transition happens, which is, what is going to happen next? And is anything going to happen next? So to hopefully de- myth some of your concerns, you do not have to worry about anything. We are still going to have the same focus. We are still going to bring you some great, great, great guests filled with all operators, investors of all different investment strategies, whether that's single family, fix and flip, new construction, rental landlords, multifamily, and anything in between. Bridging from the operators to different market specialists, economic specialists, financial specialists. The point here is to continue to bring you content, to bring you insights, information, analytics, some fun stories along the way, some of them positive outcomes, some of them not so much, but good learning lessons. And most importantly, we are here to continue to bring you value. You being anything that services all things real estate investing, which is why we are the Real Estate of Things podcast. So with the goal being the same, I want to briefly tell you a little bit more about myself, why I like to think that I'll be able to bring the heat and the fire and some value to you. And then also, I'm going to give some points of view on what we want to continue to focus on as we grow the reach of this awesome podcast. So why the heck would you want to listen to me? And this is not anything that I'm here to brag about, but I do just want to give some perspective because that is really what I like to think that I can do in regards to bringing you value, which is different, unique perspective. My entire career has been revolving around real estate, predominantly all things financing. But also myself I've had some getting my hands dirty, boots on the ground as well. So currently, as I said earlier in the intro, my role here at Lima One Capital is the chief revenue officer. I'm responsible for our lovely group of sales warriors that help bring in clients and retain clients and bring in revenue for the business. I'm speaking to you here out of my home base in office in Philadelphia. I'm originally from Massachusetts. But my role at Lima One Capital is really to help grow and to provide value, which is why and what we want to do with the podcast. During my tenure here, a little bit over two years. We've taken the sales team from 30 individuals all the way up to 75 plus. Those are all producing sales representatives who came in. We had about three different diversified sales channel. We are now up to five and are building our sixth. I won't get into the detail of that, but hopefully it just shows you as we just stepped off of our year of 2022 breaking a bunch of records, that what my job is to do is to help grow and bring in revenue, hence what my title is and what I explained herein. By doing that, and here at Lima One, we are really proud of our culture, which is something that's really important and close to my heart. And why that's important is because our culture at Lima One is very inclusive. You don't have to stick in a lane just because of your role. And with that, I am very fortunate to be able to throw my hat in the ring of a number of realms of our business, which is, includes but not exclusive to things related to our product development, how we price all of our products, and how we tweak them to make sure that they accommodate the needs of all real estate investors. I am not a voting member of our credit committee, but I have influence into some of our bigger credit decisions and our guidelines. So I'm very close to how we're looking at deals and loans, and also get the insights from our really elaborate and illustrious credit team on what's going on in the marketplace. But more importantly, I like to think that I'm plugged into some really intricate and important networks on things that trace my career and all things capital markets and on the financial side, which I'll hopefully be able to bring some good value on there. But also, to a exclusive network of executives in the private lending industry. We don't have any enemies here at Lima One Capital in private lending. We are all friends. If you want to look at it a little bit more negatively, some people may call us frenemies. But the bottom line is, we are a very small piece of the mortgage pie, but a very important one that services real estate investors. So it's really important for executives of all lenders to come together, share ideas and insights on what we're seeing. And that's the network that I'm very close to. I do have some firsthand real estate investment experience, specifically owning rental properties. I flipped a good three homes, which does not make me qualified than anyone else here, and I promise to bring you more highly qualified investors than what I am. And I'm also actively a passive investor on all things multifamily in a couple syndications. So I do have some firsthand experience, but that's not what we want to talk about. It's more about the guests that we can bring on that have the real experience. And this is a group that I am very close to by really making sure that I go back on that bill. One quick second. This is a... one more time. This is a group that I am very close to because, in order to be somebody who drives revenue and sales here at Lima One Capital, I always say it's most important to know your client. And our clients are all real estate investors. And so I'm a member of a number of different industry groups, some really prestigious masterminds that I've been in for the better part of four or five years. And I'm really excited to bring some of the people from my network and some of the things that I learned by just having an ear to the ground to all of you. And again, that just rolls back to all things real estate, hence Real Estate of Things, that we hope to elaborate on here in some upcoming episodes. So that's just a little bit of my virtual resume, if you will. But the most important thing that I like to have and bring is passion. And why I love working with real estate and real estate investors is just because I'm passionate about it, because it really embodies some of my personal core values, which is to continue to improve things. I love the acronym C- A- N- I, or CANI, continuous and never- ending improvement. It's something we've adopted and embodied here, the sales organization in all of Lima One Capital. But it's something that in the network of real estate investors is synonymous. Real estate investors, whether you're full- time, part- time, you're early in your career, or you have a large team that you're working with, it seems like, different than most other industries, real estate investors just want to continue to learn and grow. And as I said earlier, through my career, I've continued to learn in a number of different facets. I always say I'm still a student of leadership, even though I have a leadership role here at Lima One Capital. But you're never too far along to be able to continue to learn and improve. And that's just, again, the mentality that I see in this network of real estate investors. And so it ties into the passion that I have, which is why I'm just so blessed and honored to be able to take the torch here on Real Estate of Things and continue it forward to continue to bring you all the content and value that you deserve. Lastly, just like all people are going to be different, I'm going to be a little bit different. So I want to rehash some of the main themes that I look forward to bringing to you because, again, it's something that I'm very passionate about and something that I know I may not know, but my network and the people that we bring on certainly will. So we're going to continue to bring you all things around tips and tricks about real estate investing. I think it's important to realize that, in real estate investing, there really are no tricks, although people have some hacks. And what are they hacking? They're usually hacking some form of a process. When you're bootstrapping a real estate investing business and growing it from the ground up, you don't realize that you're putting processes in place. But what I want to make sure we focus on is, what are the processes that make real estate investors successful? And then on top of that, what are some of the main issues that we run into in real estate investing? On all points of view, depending on if you're an operator, a service provider, a lender, or what have you. Just like synonymous with the word issue though has to be the word solutions. And so as we talk through a number of the issues that you may face on a day- to- day basis or that you're going to face as you continue to grow, we want to make sure that we also emphasize the solutions to those issues. And that's what my job's going to be to pull out of our guests. The other thing that we all see in real estate and many of us are looking to do is to continue to scale and grow. And that's a topic that I really want to focus in on in detail because, when you hear a podcast, most of the time you hear the first cliche question of, how do you get started or started? Or how do you get to this point in your career and in your business? But it's not just about hearing it from the first explanation. It's about fully understand what it took physically, mentally, emotionally, to piece everything together, to get through the tough times and the trials and tribulations all the way to the successes that people are going to mostly focus on. But how you scale and grow is something that's really important to me and hopefully important to you. And I want to make sure that we unbake that, unpack that for all the listeners to gain value on. We're also going to continue to bring you a huge focus on what's going on in the market, whether that's from the ground level, from a more macro level, or anything in between. But it's very important that we all stay attuned to this ever- changing market, especially as we move forward here in this post- pandemic year. And then lastly but most importantly, the thing that I really care most about is people. I say it in the lending side. I think you can say it if you're on the operator investor side. But really, at the end of the day, when you bake it all down, we are all in the people business. It doesn't matter if you're a one man or woman show, if you have a small team, a medium team, or a very large team, you have clients internally and externally that you deal with. So what I'm excited to do and talk about is learn more about the people, not only what's made them successful, but where they failed and what they've learned along the way. What they do, what their mentality is, what their actions are, and bring all of that to you so that we make sure we understand the people side of the business, because people on the buy side, people on the sell side, people on the finance side, people in other service provider side, it is all about the people that make the real work happen. So in summary, we are excited to bring you a ton more value. I am just so enthused about the community that we attempt to serve in real estate investors and service providers of all shapes and sizes and kinds. I am excited to carry on this torch from what is big shoes to fill from Mr. Dalton Elliott. And please stay tuned because we are going to bring you much more great value in the real estate of things here in the Real Estate of Things podcast. This is Nate Trunfio signing off. Look forward to the next episode coming soon.