From Risk to Reward: Embrace the Entrepreneurial Mindset for Success

John Harcar (00:02.136)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar. And I’m here today with Justin Cardinale. And what we’re going to talk about, you know, besides going through his business experience, his real estate experience, we’re going to talk about being willing to take the risk, being willing to take the jump. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business.

It’s because we provide the tools and resources to grow the business. They’ve always wanted in turn live the life They’ve always dreamed of so Justin man. Welcome to our show

JC (00:38.802)
Thanks for having me, John. I appreciate it.

John Harcar (00:40.908)
Yeah, and I’m excited to talk about this. And I think that’s some of the biggest thing I hear when I talk to especially people newer is, you know, it took a long time to take the leap being willing to risk it. We’re going to go for a while on that, I know. But before we get into that part, tell our audience a little bit about you, kind of your background and business and real estate and you know, what brought you to today?

JC (01:03.182)
Sure, it’s one of those things that I was sitting in a patrol car at two in the morning listening to these real estate podcasts and I listened to this clip. Again, it’s two in the morning, there’s nothing moving. I’ve got all my reports done, all the dangers been put behind bars and it was one of those things that this podcast host said, if you bought 30 single family homes and cashflowed $100, you’d make $3,000 and you could retire.

John Harcar (01:10.517)
Yeah

JC (01:30.862)
Or you could pay your own mortgage and your bills and then you could work on the things that you truly wanted to work on. And it was one of those things that it just clicked for me and all of a sudden I’m starting to look at real estate. And sure enough, I missed the window and from 2008 to 2011 I decided to give up on all my dreams and go protect and serve because it was educated to me. Thank you, I appreciate it. It was one of those things that

John Harcar (01:38.708)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (01:54.808)
Thank you for your service.

JC (02:00.782)
I was talked into it in the sense of you get a good, stable paycheck every single month. Yeah, good pension, all those things. Yeah, exactly. You get a nice coffee mug that says thanks for your service, have a great day. Enjoy your retirement in 30, 40 years and you’ll probably die of a heart attack. So I looked at my life and I had recently, we had our first son.

John Harcar (02:08.46)
Good pension and 40 years down the road. You’ll get a watch

John Harcar (02:15.96)
Yeah.

JC (02:28.15)
I realized that the career path that I’ve chosen, I loved it. I truly loved it. I was on the SWAT team, defensive tactics instructor. I dug it. But when you have a child, things change. And I realized that that secure job that I had taken so many years prior, I was wearing a bulletproof vest carrying a gun. Okay, it’s not secure at all. You’re putting yourself in danger all the time. And I also looked at some of the history and realized that, you know,

John Harcar (02:51.672)
Yeah, you’re right. Right.

JC (02:57.646)
where I was a deputy sheriff, we were banking on the state of California to take care of that pension. And I realized that the state of California does not do a great job with money. They love spending the money. And I just feared that by the time I retired at 57, 60, whatever the age was, I might have to go get another job. They might have blown my pension. And unfortunately, they had done it before in the…

John Harcar (03:09.304)
Ha ha ha ha.

John Harcar (03:19.543)
Yeah.

JC (03:23.694)
in the dot com crash when they invested a bunch of money into a bunch of fraudulent companies. So it was Northern California up near, in between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe. So yeah, and as I listened to the podcast and I’m still young, I’m still in my early 30s, I go there’s gotta be a different way. So when the pandemic hit, I go, I look to my wife and go, if we’re gonna do it, we gotta do it now.

John Harcar (03:28.802)
What part of California?

John Harcar (03:34.763)
Okay, cool.

JC (03:51.19)
She goes, well, I just don’t think we can invest in real estate here in California. It’s so expensive. And one of my mentors said, hey, why don’t you go to the South? So sure enough, we sold everything. Cashed out retirements, we sold the house, we sold the three cars, we got rid of the toys, and we took that cash and we moved to the state of Georgia. And I started buying as much real estate as possible. Interest rates were low and the opportunity was ripe. We were willing to take the risk. Everyone was…

in this fear of this great recession that was gonna happen. And I looked at it as an opportunity, I looked at it as a way to relive 2008. 2008, everything went to the bottom, and in that time period, I bought one house, and it was the greatest investment I had made. I had 4X my money, so it was one of those opportunities that we sold everything and took the risk. And when I talk about selling everything, I cashed out guaranteed

John Harcar (04:32.024)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (04:44.578)
Love it.

JC (04:48.203)
supposedly guaranteed retirement money to invest in my future and invest in now, which was, you know, in self storage and some single family rental. So that’s how we got where we are today.

John Harcar (04:57.496)
That’s a great story. So before you were just listening, and I like to ask this question because sometimes subliminally people don’t look at it, but like, was there anybody in your past and influence somebody you knew that was doing real estate that had done real estate that you were exposed to that planted that seed? Because I mean, let’s be honest, not everybody sits up listening to real estate podcasts. They listen to whatever you’re right.

JC (05:21.591)
Well, it’s, yeah, it’s usually, so the one thing that I learned, especially in law enforcement, was you have to be constantly educating yourself, because things are constantly changing. when I, so I’ve always, you know, I’ve always had a need for education, and you you can listen to Pandora, you can listen to Spotify, and you can listen to radio for about three hours every single night, and it gets really boring, so you might as well learn something, and you know.

John Harcar (05:47.393)
Yeah.

JC (05:50.592)
One of the things that I looked at in just the world that I lived in was the wealthiest people in our area all invested in real estate. They had car washes, they had single family rentals, they had apartment complexes, they had laundromats, they had self storage. And I go, do I get to that position? So it was something where I started reaching out to those people and one of my buddies, one of the guys I grew up with, his son, and he soon became a mentor of mine.

That’s what he did. That’s how he made his money was investing in real estate. that’s kind of how I introduce myself to it.

John Harcar (06:24.152)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So as you find this and start learning, you end up selling anything. Why was it important for you to find a mentor? You had mentioned a mentor. I don’t know who that is, but you had mentioned that. I want to say, why, a lot of people might just do the YouTube U-Track and learn on their own, but you sought out someone to teach you.

JC (06:47.693)
Well, it was someone that, not necessarily to teach me, but it was someone to confirm my crazy idea. Because everyone in my world, you know, they’re all government employees. They were all, you know, they were all people who did not take a lot of risks. They thought, you know, making $5,000 to $8,000 a month was a good living, and truly it is. And, you know, doing things like being a teacher, a nurse, or a cop, or a correctional officer, or whatever that might be, not to insult my family members, but…

John Harcar (06:58.456)
Mm-hmm.

JC (07:17.535)
I wanted to buy some of that freedom back. I wanted to buy some of my time back. I wanted to take less risk with my life. And it was something where I expressed this idea, hey, hey, grandpa, I’m gonna sell everything and take your grandchild 3,000 miles away. And they’re like, you’re nuts. You’re having a mental breakdown. You’re having a midlife crisis. And so I think the thing that I appreciated with reaching out to now my mentor, one of my buddies, one of my partners,

John Harcar (07:36.856)
Right?

JC (07:46.761)
is I wasn’t the only crazy one in the boat going across the ocean. You know what I mean? So it was one of those things that, you know, sometimes you gotta surround yourself with like-minded people and that’s what I did and I think that was one of the benefits where, you you could bounce ideas off without having that negative commentation that, you know, you’re gonna lose it all, you you’re risking your family, you you’re gonna have to go live under a bridge, you know, because you screwed up your life type mentality.

John Harcar (08:11.864)
Right? No, I definitely agree with that. And that’s the whole kind of premise of our mastermind theory. So you ditch everything, you leave it all, you sell it all, you make the change, you make the pivot. What were some of the biggest struggles when you started? Like what were some of the things that, you you’re now not a nine to fiver or double two job, you know, you’re on your own. What were those struggles?

JC (08:36.716)
I guess one of the biggest struggles is when you’re getting into this world, it can seem very lonely. And it was one of those things that when you leave your hometown, you grew up there, you spent your entire life there, you’re a third generation in that town, you give up a lot of those, a lot of the resources. And when I’m talking about resources, if you’ve got a problem with your roof, you know three roofers, went to school with them.

If you got a problem with your plumbing, you know the plumbing guy because you coached his kid in football. So I think, you know, starting over in that sense of, you know, investing in an area that you just don’t know much about and that takes just another couple steps where you’ve got to do, you your due diligence and really make that a priority to, you know, to be able to hire the right people. So I think that was one of the struggles, but also something that I did not really consider was the culture’s different.

going from California to Georgia, and specifically South Georgia, things just don’t happen as fast. I grew up in an area where you drive 100 miles an hour, you’re flying at the speed of your light, you’re always late, everyone’s in a rush, but things have just slowed down. So when I tried to make an offer on one of my first deals, and they’re like, yeah, we’ll get to it in a couple days, and I’m like, no bud, this is such a great deal, we need to get this thing done now. So I think that was…

you know, one of the struggles that I might have had. And also not…

John Harcar (10:07.896)
That’s funny you say that though because I moved from Southern California to Boise, Idaho and yes, kind of the same thing dude, it’s a little bit slower so that’s funny you brought that point up.

JC (10:17.994)
Yeah, it’s just, you know, people, it’s not a priority. And for me, it’s a culture thing. And I think it’s just something that, for whatever reason, when you jump on the I-5, you gotta get to LA as fast as possible. We’re not waiting around. So I kinda had to get over that mentality.

John Harcar (10:38.84)
Okay, you had, how many total single families did you get up to?

JC (10:43.432)
We got up to four.

John Harcar (10:45.012)
Okay, and I think you mentioned you sold all but one or you’re selling one right now something like that

JC (10:49.77)
Yeah, we sold two of them and we turned around and bought two more storage facilities.

John Harcar (10:55.296)
Okay, and my question being, what made you pivot to storage?

JC (11:00.332)
Well, I call storage, at least in my world, poor man’s apartment complexes. When you have a plethora of apartment complexes, you got 32 units, a couple people move out, it’s not gonna hurt your bottom line. It’s expected, it’s something that you can predict. And I saw that in self storage, except I don’t need to change toilets, I don’t need to repair the roof, I don’t need a painter to come in.

You know, it’s concrete and four metal sides and a roll-up door. But I also really like the business aspect of it. You know, we’ve got one property right now that’s for sale. Cashflow’s great, it’s got a super low interest rate, makes total sense. And I’ve got a property manager and it’s been wonderful. But the months where you’ve got a tenant that moves out and it takes a month to turn that place around, and again, we’re here in the South so things take a little longer.

John Harcar (11:54.872)
Mm-hmm.

JC (11:54.967)
you know, to change out locks and get contractors in there, you lose out on some of that cash flow. And I didn’t really like that idea of only having, you know, relying upon one or two tenants to make that property cash flow. And it’s something that, you we pivoted. It just made a lot of sense for us. One, because we also travel quite a bit and, you know, if there’s a catastrophic incident like we’ve had here in the South.

We’ve had in the last four years, one of our properties just keeps attracting hurricanes. We’ve replaced the roof, the air condition, the siding, the doors, the windows. And it’s something where our storage facilities have weathered really, really well because it’s simple construction.

John Harcar (12:32.277)
I got it.

John Harcar (12:39.522)
Yeah, I that makes sense. What does your team look like today?

JC (12:44.352)
My team. I love the team word. One of these days, I’m gonna get a team. I don’t know what team everyone’s talking about. I’m gonna go consult my team. My team is my wife and my son. We’re this adventurous three who makes us all look crazy. Yeah, it’s something that, again, I’ve got a couple buddies where we’ll kind of spitball ideas or.

John Harcar (12:46.38)
Do you have a team? I don’t know.

John Harcar (13:02.712)
That’s awesome.

JC (13:13.088)
properties or you know possible investments or things that we might do so my team is you know it’s just it’s very simple like we you know we drove out in October to fix up one of our storage facilities that we purchased and you know I you know I brought along my team which is my wife and said we painted the crap out of that building you know so it’s yeah that’s that’s what the team looks like you know at the moment

John Harcar (13:28.236)
New iPhone 7. Right? Yeah, yeah.

John Harcar (13:34.104)
All right, cool. Let’s touch on our subject a little bit that we talked about, you know, being willing to take the risk. I know we talked a little bit about before we jumped on, but how come people aren’t willing to take the risk? Maybe that’s a good question.

JC (13:49.772)
I think society has tricked us into getting into massive debt into liabilities. I look at things like, what does a brand new truck cost these days? Good God, $140,000? Yeah, so I think oftentimes our society has dictated the way we go about living our life and tricky us into thinking that we need something bigger, better.

John Harcar (14:05.772)
for a top of the line cra- yeah, at least.

JC (14:19.499)
you know, a larger house, more bedrooms, more game rooms, and we need, you know, we need to invest our money into things that literally are going down in value, like toys, know, boats and cars and trucks and that kind of thing. So I think it’s one of those things that, you know, really limits the ability to, you know, to gamble on yourself when you, you know, your burn rate is, you know, five, six, seven, $8,000 a month. You know, there’s not a lot of extra money.

John Harcar (14:32.649)
RVs, yeah, yeah, yeah.

JC (14:48.415)
to put into a savings account so you can turn around and an asset. And I think that’s something that really limits people when they’re moving forward with their lives. They’re competing with the neighbor instead of competing with the wealthy neighbor who lives in the three bedroom house that looks like it’s gonna fall over, but he’s got $10 million worth of assets.

John Harcar (14:52.504)
Mm-mm.

John Harcar (15:12.426)
Right. Yeah, no, so, and I think what the willingness to take risk is a mindset thing. And I know you have been willing to take the risk. So for you, what do you think were some of the best mind mindset tools, maybe books or podcasts or whatever helped you kind of be, get over that fear of taking that jump?

JC (15:34.848)
I think it’s something where you’ve gotta look internally and you’ve gotta answer a couple pretty important questions. Do you wanna work for someone the rest of your life? Do you wanna retire not knowing how much money you’re gonna have? Do you wanna spend less time now with your children or more time? And a lot of those things that I looked at and realized that…

I was upset, I was pissed off, I was so frustrated with being tricked into this, in this world that my wife and I, we’ve gotta both work 40 to 80 hours a week to afford this lifestyle. why not, why can’t we spend more time with our son? Why can’t my wife be a stay at home mom? Why not? It’s because society has talked us into this lifestyle. And it’s something that I was frustrated, pissed off.

So resources, tools, for the most part, mean, you go on to any real estate podcast, you listen to John here, it’s one of those things that, there’s tools out there, and for me, it was just educating myself and finding someone that had done it before me. One of the guys that I listen to and I take a lot of inspiration from is Nick Huber. He’s in the self-storage world, and he talks a lot about,

the ability to buy cash flowing assets to maybe possibly retiring early. Rob Dyrdek is one of those guys that you might know who he is. He was a skateboarder. He was on Robin Big on MTV and I listened to one of his podcasts and he had to make a shift where he was essentially worth millions one day and worth zero the next because he had spent it all on a bunch of liabilities. And it was one of those things that he had to make that shift to.

John Harcar (17:12.588)
Yeah.

JC (17:29.899)
you know, buy cash-filling assets that paid for his lifestyle, and then he can go invest in businesses and make more money and take those, you know, those proceeds and go buy more cash-filling assets that pays for his lifestyle. And it is something that, you know, really kind of helped me get into that mindset and helped me, you know, kind of find a path, you know, that someone had done it before me, that it’s something that’s doable. Talking about books, I mean, sure, I could name, you know, Rich Dad Poor Dad, I think that book is…

I think it’s a great book. I think it’s a great book for like a 14 year old. But in today’s age, I think a lot of those things just don’t apply anymore just because it’s really old. But I think it’s a great foundation. So yeah, it’s stuff like that that I took inspiration from. What am I reading now? I’m reading…

John Harcar (18:01.944)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (18:12.416)
Right, right.

John Harcar (18:17.899)
What are you reading now?

John Harcar (18:22.602)
or listening to now if you listen to books.

JC (18:25.323)
Yeah, so I listen and consume as much as possible, but at the same time I get burnt out pretty quick. I’m one of those types of people who you you read it, you get inspiration from it, and you go do it. Stop educating yourself and just pull the damn trigger. it’s what is the worst thing that’s gonna happen? Like I’ve lived in third world countries. We’re not at that stage in the world. Like literally the government will if you screw it all up you go bankrupt.

You’re gonna be okay, the government’s gonna pay you. Move to California and look. Yeah. Trust me, if you lose everything, you can have beachfront property tomorrow. Now you might have to sleep in a tent in Monterey on the beach, but hell, that’s a pretty good living. Good God, the weather’s never bad there. You got a beautiful golf course down the street in Pebble Beach. So what am I reading right now? One of the things that I think some of the skill sets,

John Harcar (18:54.956)
Yeah, you’re still you’re still gonna live. You’re still gonna have your room. You’re still gonna have it all. Yeah.

John Harcar (19:11.404)
mean,

JC (19:22.559)
Like I read most of the inspirational books, some Tony Robbins stuff. I read, what else did I read? Yeah, Rich Dad Poor Dad. I read some Grant Cardone books, Brad Lee type books. But then also like right now, my main focus is how do I improve my business? How do I improve some of the skills? So I’ve read, what is it? How to Write Better by, I can’t remember his name. He’s a copywriting guy.

I’ve read things like, what is it, shoot, the Gary Halbert letters, guy who’s an incredible copywriter that, you he wrote his letters to his son in prison. I’m reading Ted Turner’s book right now, the guy who, you know, started from billboards and created CNN and owned the Atlanta Braves and all that. But one of the books that I think is really intriguing is that I’m reading, I’m actively reading right now, is How to Find Your Yellow Tux.

John Harcar (20:01.068)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (20:10.57)
Right? Right.

JC (20:22.056)
by the gentleman, forgot his name, Savannah Bananas guy. I don’t know you’re familiar with the baseball world.

John Harcar (20:26.444)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know. They just played out in Los Angeles not too long ago, but yeah.

JC (20:32.456)
Yeah, so I’m reading one of his books right now to try and get some inspiration to do things a little bit different. One of the things that I realized in the real estate world investing in this asset class is it’s really tough to stand out. It’s really tough, because everyone looks the same. Your signs are the same, the website’s the same, the property managers are the same. It’s just all vanilla. So how do we stand out?

How do we go down our road with having some of those core principles to make sure your business doesn’t fail? So those are kind of some of the things that I’m looking at and reading at right now.

John Harcar (21:15.032)
appreciate you coming on here and sharing all this man. You gave a ton of good stuff. Guys, I hope you all enjoyed it. If there’s folks that want to get a hold of you Justin, what’s the best way?

JC (21:25.322)
Best way, sure you could see, I have no idea. You can go to one of our websites and email me. You can reach me on all social media platforms at J.C. Cardinelli, J.C. C-A-R-D-I-N-A-L-E. I will answer everyone’s messages. That’s one of the things that I enjoy doing, because I’ve discovered in this world that sometimes you need to talk to someone to make it.

seem like what you’re thinking about doing isn’t that crazy. And it’s something that you know, I would love to give back in that aspect.

John Harcar (22:00.104)
And I love your story, dude. It was really cool. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Hope you took some good notes. Reach out to Justin if you maybe have any deals in or any self-storage places. By the way, I didn’t ask. Your self-storage purchases that you’re looking to do in Georgia, elsewhere.

JC (22:17.29)
Anywhere, we found a business model that we can run these things remotely. We go to the facilities probably four to eight times a year depending on the need. So we’re buying all over the country as long as it makes sense. One of the things that I didn’t mention which I, so deals. Look everywhere, ask everyone. The last two storage facility deals I’ve boughten have been off Facebook groups.

John Harcar (22:18.839)
anywhere.

JC (22:45.354)
If you would have told me that five years ago, I’d been like, you’re nuts. You gotta go and Kreksee or Realtor or Zillow or Loopnet or one of those. But no, I’ve bought two great deals just direct from owner. anyways, yeah.

John Harcar (22:55.468)
That’s awesome.

Yeah, not very cool. So guys, if you have deals, reach out to him and see what you could do. Guys, we’ll see you on the next episode. Cheers.