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Show Summary
In this conversation, Gregg Amaral shares his journey from residential real estate to commercial real estate, emphasizing the importance of personal relationships and the lessons learned from failures. He discusses his strengths in building connections with clients and tenants, the challenges of raising capital, and the significance of mentorship in his career. Gregg highlights the need for authenticity in the real estate industry and the value of creating a supportive environment for tenants and investors alike.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Gregg Amaral (00:00)
listen, we’ve lost opportunities and some of it has been maybe a lack of discipline, right? Like not, not in a bad but like just not a hundred percent focused or your focus is elsewhere, the biggest thing man is, is like everybody’s so scared of failure, right?We were talking about this earlier, what what’s what do we look forward to, right? And and we were talking about people that you have to chase to create opportunity, right? And like, I’m not going to chase somebody for an opportunity.
This is gonna sound completely crazy.
Quentin Edmonds (00:33)
Talk brother, talk man!Gregg Amaral (00:35)
than succeeding sometimes. Now everybody loves succeeding and seeing a deal go through, seeing investors, that’s that’s goal, right? It’s the primary goal. But I failed enough prior that I could never have learned or be in a position I am without having failed, right? And so many people I feel are just afraid to fail that they gotta take that first step, no matter what it is. It could be whatever their regular job is, it could be sports, could be, it doesn’t matter, right? It’s just like,Quentin Edmonds (00:57)
Yeah.Gregg Amaral (01:04)
they’re afraid to fail. So they don’t take that one step and man, like, don’t want to sound corny or cliche, but that first step is the hardest. And it’s like getting up and doing something about where you are is the most important aspect in life. you get there because otherwise, you know, what are you doing? So yeah, I just, yes, you’re 100 % right, man. just gotta be prepared and you gotta do your due diligence. gotta, you have to fail. Do not be afraid to fail.Quentin Edmonds (03:01)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And you know, I say I’m excited to be here today. And I often say, maybe I shouldn’t say that. So if you’ll ever hear me say I’m not excited, that means I’m really not excited. but hopefully you’ll never hear me say that. If you look there, maybe a couple episodes. But anyway, anyway, I’m super excited to be here today. I’ve been talking to this gentleman and you know,What I just get is just straight authenticity Honesty one of the first things that he said is that he liked to provide a personal touch And you hear people say that you like okay, but the more he talked the mob like he is definitely about adding a personal touch He’s definitely about relationship building He’s definitely about coming at you with servitude from an authentic place making sure that he’s not putting you in a position. That’s too much
You know more that you can bear more that you can handle then making sure that when he’s advising is something that you can definitely Withstand build a foundation on and be sustainable. And so I am really excited for you guys to meet Mr. Gregg Amaral Amaral did I say it correctly? All right, Mr. Gregg, how you doing today, ⁓ Man I’m doing great
Gregg Amaral (04:20)
Well, friend, how about you?Quentin Edmonds (04:24)
I’ll be honest with you. I want to dive in because I know you have a lot to say. And I know you have a lot. I know you’re going to bring a lot of value to our listeners. And so, Gregg, what I want to do, I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. Give them a little bit of an origin story. You know, we love the hero’s journey. So a little bit origin story of how you got to where you are and then tell us what markets you’re operating in. So, Gregg, so you have the floor, man. Absolutely.Gregg Amaral (04:52)
So pleasure to informally meet everybody. ⁓ Yes, we as you said, we’re very authentic here in our business. I am the founder and owner of GDA Capital and Development. We’re based here in Jupiter, Florida, just northwest Palm Beach basically, for those that are acquiring and my business is commercial real estate. We do a little bit of everything in the commercial side. Now, my origin was I started as a realtor actually.about 15 years ago, started doing real estate, selling real estate, got to the point where I obviously had another job and it got to the point where I had to shuffle and determine do I go with a real estate path or do I stay and just sell a couple of houses a year? Well, obviously we made that determination to go forward and sell real estate, which was the best decision I made in my life, kind of life offering. And I did that for about five years, had always…
kind of taken a good hedge into the real estate brokerage world. So my mother was a realtor for about 25 years, still is. So I always saw her going back and forth, the whole typical on vacations, doesn’t stop texting, the whole nine yards, right? So I grew up in that industry per se, around that industry. Now, I always liked the brokerage industry, right? No employees, everybody’s 10.99, right? Like minimal insurance, minimal operating costs. So I determined one day, hey, if I find the right office, we’ll pull a trigger on this.
⁓ was 2014, 15, roughly. And it was no joke, was about 24 hours later, I’m just zooming around on LoopNet, I look for an office you know in our our location, Jupiter, Florida, and something pops up like that. like, that’s way too good to be true, right? So short of it is, is we ended up opening up the brokerage. I had some family help me out with the construction. We went in there, we constructed the whole interior.
Remodeled it, made it look really cool, made it look homey. That was kind of the start of my business per se. Now, when I opened up that brokerage and, you know, towards the end of my sales career, if you will, just selling real estate, I always wanted that personal touch, as you said, because, know, realtors always get this kind of bad notation about them, like car salesman or any type of salesman, right? Like you go to a car dealership, ⁓ man.
I got to, here comes the guy, right? Like I didn’t want to do that. My job was not to sell a house as crazy as that sounds. My job was to help with resources, show you around the neighborhood, show you the community at advantages and disadvantages. course. I was never a salesman and I hate to say that, but I was never a salesman. I did not want to sell you that house. And there were some times where I could open. didn’t. And I like to look back at that and I feel good because I can sleep at night, right?
know a lot of realtors. had 75 agents, three offices at one time. And that was big into our team training was, guys, we’re not sales people per se, we are, but.
we need to sell other things than the home itself, right? The house is going to sell itself, the person is going to sell itself to the house. That’s going to happen regardless. There’s nothing we can do about it. So we kind of took that training mentality to as far as we could. We had done during the 2019-20, know, early COVID days,
⁓ I got on the commercial side. We had done a lot of commercial transactions as well, from buying, selling, leasing, through our brokerage. And so I had a taste of it. And yeah, we ended up purchasing 120 units of multifamily in Dallas. We had a person in 84 in Cleveland, just to name a few, did syndications. That was our first fund experience. So we did that for a few years.
and I decided, you know, we exited those that really good exits, anywhere from 18 to 36 months later on those, those buildings. have about five buildings at one time. had a good exit on those with our team. And, after that, you know, we kind of focused on the brokerage opened up a few more offices that got us to the three offices and 70 plus agents and kind of a lot of buyout opportunities and decided to take one, one that we felt fit us well. And I decided it was time to move on from the residential side.
kind of work more from the commercial side, not from a brokerage perspective per se, but more from the ownership perspective. So we went out, we purchased a couple of industrial assets in central Florida. We really determined where our market was that we wanted it to be. For anybody that knows South Florida, prices are insane. And I’m talking residential, commercial. So we really put in some due diligence, about 12 months of due diligence to figure where is the first market that we get into,
funny story it kind of now Q I can talk all day so you cut me off if you need to but it was funny how it worked because I was selling a gentleman’s house and he I sold him a lot up on the water at Ataco Hutchison Island by an hour north of us beautiful waterfront house oceanfront intercoastal front home line yards he developed the house and
Quentin Edmonds (10:49)
Yeah, you good,Gregg Amaral (11:09)
I kept in touch with him via the CRM, right? So I wasn’t like calling him on daily basis, but he built this house for his weekend getaways, he was in Miami. So my CRM was to stay in touch with him. And this was about 2016. So he calls me up one day, says, hey, Gregg, I’ve been getting greenmails. I know they’re fake from your CRM. Regardless, I see them. So I was like, hey, my programs are doing its job, right?⁓ So I could have maybe had a little bit better personal touch that matter but you know I actually went up there viewed his house and he wanted to sell it. He just had different path of life 76 years old path of life decided he need the big headache. So we listed that property and throughout the listing I knew he was in development and commercial real estate built the first 52 home depots just a really
Quentin Edmonds (11:37)
.Gregg Amaral (12:04)
a good contractor, just a good guy to be around and absorb knowledge from, right? Like I’ve always been a huge fan. And I think this is a big piece for people that are learning or getting into an industry, matter what industry it is, is close your mouth and open your ears, right? Like it doesn’t matter how much you think you know, or how much you do know, but sometimes being the quietest person in room is the most powerful person. And that was kind of what I’ve always gravitated to is like, me,learn from these guys that have done it, let me not make the mistakes that they did. And not from a monetary perspective, but just a life perspective, right? Sometimes you make mistakes in business and set you back a year or two years or more than that, unfortunately. So yeah, the short of it, even though that was long winded was, you know, was talking to him one day and he was selling some of his assets in central Florida. Now,
Like we were talking about earlier is I had already been doing research. said, I can’t gain entry to the market down here in Poplar County. I’m buying a warehouse. I wanted to go industrial. I wanted to buy a warehouse and I wanted something big, right? I didn’t want to do like a 4,000 square foot warehouse. I wanted something that I knew when I exited my brokerage could cover what at least my brokerage was bringing in per month, right? So was I making any more? No, but technically yes, because it’s obviously taxes are more advantageous in commercial real estate. But with that being said,
I don’t want to just get rid of the brokerage and not have the 24 seven hands on business experience and get into, you know, owning a building which was a little bit less hands off. And so so I was like, I need to go somewhere else. We had targeted central Florida just we didn’t target a typical, you know, certain MSA at that point. So I was talking to this gentleman, he owned buildings up in central Florida and hotels and office buildings and industrial and we were just chatting. He’s like, yeah, I’m selling on my industrial buildings. said, well.
Do you think it would be a fit for me? You know, and we started talking and that’s kind of how it took off now. What happened is, like I’ve never had any family money just to throw this out there. I’ve never had any financial help. Everything we built, I built from the ground up with my own money. We’ve exited with our own money. Like everything has been us. I haven’t had the luck to have that, right? But in business, is luck required.
And that just so happened that that was kind of one of these things where it’s like, Hey, did God put him in my life for a reason? Was there luck? Was there a little bit of everything? Absolutely. And, and it was funny how that works. So this gentleman became a very good mentor of mine still is to this day. And what happened is basically said, Hey, Gregg, I have this building. I run a hotel now I’ve scaled back my assets. The hotel is my primary moneymaker.
Quentin Edmonds (14:41)
Hmm.Gregg Amaral (14:50)
This industrial building was 50,000 square feet. He’s like, it’s kind of the redheaded stepchild. I’m 50 % occupied, but obviously it’s paid for cash for him. So I’m making my money and it’s paying itself and I don’t have to deal with anything, but I’d like to sell it.So we actually made a deal as opposed to just going in there and buying the building, 50 % occupied, getting a 50 % LTV loan, right, from a credit union or a bank. I made a deal with them and I said, listen, let me go in there and let me lease, let’s negotiate a purchase price. We negotiated that purchase price that was fair for both parties.
but let me lease it up and let me get it to 90 % occupancy. Let me get it to 100 % occupancy. And he said, I will allow you to do that. And I’m not going to let you close until you do that because I don’t want to put you in a bad predicament. So that’s what we ended up doing. ended up spending, now we spend our own marketing money and my time and money and effort to go back and forth, it’s about an hour and a half away, go back and forth every week, multiple times a week to clean up the building, do this, do that.
Quentin Edmonds (16:24)
Yes.Gregg Amaral (16:34)
prior to even leasing it up. So we were risking our time, some money to go in there and do this. And the short of it is we got the best head we’ve ever got. I still got him in there. A national mill work company for home developers. He came in there because it was the bigger space. He occupied that and made it about 90 % occupied, which allowed me to close on the building. And then we had a little bit of issues trying to lease the remaining space, which was 5,400. It was completely raw.No drywall, anything like that. And it was really funny because as soon as we went in there, and it was like, it was before closing, I was under contract and still waiting on title. think we were like closed in two weeks. had a national roofing company call me and they actually ended up leasing the building. No questions asked. No, and like nothing needed. It was just, it was, it was almost too good to be true. Right. So ⁓
We leased it up and upon closing I told him, yeah, at least up to the last spot he started dying laughing. He’s like, oh man, you had that 10 in your back pocket the whole time, right? But regardless, we got a little bit lucky in that situation. Business does require luck for sure. But we were able to negotiate the right way. We were able to not be hasty, if you will, trying to buy our first building. And since then we bought more buildings. We bought an office. We’re doing into the development side.
Residential as well, residential development. We’ve got projects like that and a couple of hotel, branded hotel development projects. You know, our primary area of business is Sunbelt. So we like anywhere from Texas, Tennessee down to Florida, know, Georgia, stuff of that nature. So we do stuff in Texas primarily, Florida, Tennessee is kind of our three big states right now.
so yeah, it’s, been a wild ride so far. It’s the best. I love it. love waking up every day and just something new, something interesting, right? Like it’s always, it’s always something really cool. I mean, like we were talking about, you know, the, residential real estate side made a different personal touch. And I believe that’s why we were successful. we tried to bring that onto the commercial side as well, you know, as
Hugh and I were talking about, it’s like, how do you do that? Right? Like owner of building is a building. Not really. You know, there’s this connotation as well. Like there are realtors between a tenant and a landlord. Right? So like how do we bridge that gap a little bit? you know, it’s just, it’s just being authentic with them. It’s helping them out. and it doesn’t necessarily mean monetarily. It’s, you know, I can give you an example earlier. Like we’ve had people look at our spaces that we knew was too big for them.
And we actually deny them not because I’m not worried about getting paid my rent. It’s because we didn’t want to see that business not succeed, right? Because you’re a small part in the community of bringing business, right? And bringing people’s dreams to fruition, right? Like they’re creating a business. lot of these people are building businesses from scratch. I’ve done it. I know how hard it is financially on your family.
The last thing we want is to have them worry about rent or this or that. So trying to bridge that gap in the commercial world is kind of where we’re trying to bring, we are bringing that personal touch in between the tenant and the landlords. And it’s been great for us so far. We’ve got big, big, you know.
The state of Florida is in a bunch of our buildings, TruGreen, a lot of national companies. And it goes the same for them just because they’re national doesn’t mean they can’t have that kind of one-on-one touch. It’s been a really cool thing to see. And yeah, we’re enjoying it lot.
Quentin Edmonds (20:08)
Man brother brother Gregg sir, man, you said so many good things Within just you know, which what you shared and it’s two things I want to highlight and then I want to ask you a question You know I know you say, know God, know, you feel like you know, hey, maybe God, you know God bless me But you know these opportunities different things like that and it’s two things that I’m thinking about as you talk one and I’m gonna use abiblical kind of term and reference you reap what you sow and It’s sound like just talking to you earlier and listening to you in that story It’s no doubt in my mind that you was reaping on the things that you’ve sold because you just said yourself and people don’t know you said this even before you said it now is that You know, you don’t want to put people in a position Where they’re gonna hurt themselves, right and it sound like when you was transitioning
about to go into this commercial and to industrial, you had somebody that did the exact same thing for you that was like, listen, until I can make sure you get this thing to a hundred percent occupancy, we’re going to make sure, right? So you read what you saw. Now that’s a biblical aspect. Now I’m gonna get a little ratchet. This is the Jay-Z version of it, right? So Jay-Z, this is what Jay-Z said. He said, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And so I agree with you. There has been some luck.
but I also believe you was prepared so that when the opportunity came, you were ready to take a hold of it. And when I say you was prepared, I think you was prepared when it came to discipline, system, strategy, but also with integrity, like being the person that you are, not building on false presences. And so like when the opportunity came, you were fully know who you were, how you wanna operate.
And you were able to meet the opportunity. And I believe that’s why you’re thriving. I don’t know, man. You told me that’s any of that kind of hit with you at all.
Gregg Amaral (22:09)
Yeah, 100 % man. No, you’re, you’re, you’re spot on. That was like nail on the head, if you will. And I mean,listen, we’ve lost opportunities and some of it has been maybe a lack of discipline, right? Like not, not in a bad way per se as weird as that sounds, but like just not a hundred percent focused or your focus is elsewhere, right? Like, we’ve lost opportunities because of that. ⁓ but like, you know, the biggest thing man is, is like everybody’s so scared of failure, right?
We were talking about this earlier, what what’s what do we look forward to, right? And and we were talking about people that you have to chase to create opportunity, right? And like, I’m not going to chase somebody for an opportunity. And it’s just crazy because, you know, like you reap what you sow, just like you said in this world, like nothing is giving to you. I mean, for some people it is, right?
you’re not getting anything in life. You have to go out and get it. it’s just, yeah, like when you’re not disciplined, when you’re not ready for that opportunity, it’s not, know, sometimes too, I look at it as like, okay, failure to me, I like failing. This is gonna sound completely crazy.
Quentin Edmonds (23:22)
Talk brother, talk man!Gregg Amaral (23:24)
than succeeding sometimes. Now everybody loves succeeding and seeing a deal go through, seeing investors, that’s that’s goal, right? It’s the primary goal. But I failed enough prior that I could never have learned or be in a position I am without having failed, right? And so many people I feel are just afraid to fail that they gotta take that first step, no matter what it is. It could be whatever their regular job is, it could be sports, could be, it doesn’t matter, right? It’s just like,Quentin Edmonds (23:45)
Yeah.Gregg Amaral (23:52)
they’re afraid to fail. So they don’t take that one step and man, like, don’t want to sound corny or cliche, but that first step is the hardest. And it’s like getting up and doing something about where you are is the most important aspect in life. you get there because otherwise, you know, what are you doing? So yeah, I just, yes, you’re 100 % right, man. just gotta be prepared and you gotta do your due diligence. gotta, you have to fail. Do not be afraid to fail.This is more like away from real estate. This is life. Like
Don’t be afraid to fail, It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be cooking a meal, like you’re trying for the first time with your wife. Fail. That’s how you learn, man. You can learn by succeeding, but you’re going to learn more from failing. You never set out to fail, right? Nobody does. But it’s going to happen, especially in business. going to out there and create 100 businesses and 100 of them are successful. So yeah, you’re spot on, man. I love that.
Quentin Edmonds (24:40)
Absolutely.Come on,
Appreciate that man. Again, I’m gonna hit you with two more quotes, right? One is a Quinton original that I literally just, I had never said this before until the last podcast. So this last guy that I was talking to, he was a baseball player, know, professional baseball player. And so he started talking about how when you get into the Hall of Fame, people are in Hall of Fame that had hit the ball 30 % of the time, which means the other percent of the time,
They’re failing and so as he was talking this is what I said. I never said this before I said failure is fertilizer Failure is fertilizer like it’s it’s it’s where the nutrients it’s where things grow and if you know anything about fertilizer sometimes it’s manure Sometimes think sometimes it’s stinky. It’s just mess like it gets muddy it gets it gets gross But it’s the fertilizer where things grow so sometimes like you said you can’t be scared of failure
It’s messy. It’s stinky, but you can’t be scared of it. Second thing again, I’m sorry y’all forgive me, but it’s a biblical quote. Cause you started talking about discipline and it says, it’s a statement that says no discipline feels good at the time. But once that discipline is finished, it’s produces right standing in peace. When you let the discipline produce you, once you get to the end of discipline, the consistency of it all, the
the mundane of it all, whatever it is, once you get to the end, you find yourself standing up strong. You find yourself at a level of peace because that discipline has taught you how to be resilient. It has taught you that you ain’t going to die. Like you will be okay. You know, we didn’t fail, but that discipline tells you to come back because eventually things are standing right. And so when I say all of that, Gregg, I look at you, man.
And it’s no doubt in my mind why I see you successful. You know, you know, I said it earlier before we got on. I’ll say it now within 30 seconds of talking to you. I knew I was talking to a person that led with honesty, integrity, and there’s no, there’s no doubt in my mind why your story started to unfold while people was looking out for you, why you had family friends that came and helped with the construction while you had a mentor that looked out for you, that looked at your CN CRM and said, I know this I am.
But still I’m going to reach out to him, right? It all makes sense to me, man. And so, man, I got to thank you, man, for being here today. If someone wants to reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can I get in contact with you, sir?
Gregg Amaral (27:31)
Absolutelyman, so first off, you know, our website is great. It’s GDA. So like Golf Delta Alpha is my name, CAP, C-A-P, so like GDA Capital Development. So gdacap.com is our website. You’ll see projects we have going on, stuff of that nature. But you know, social media is big as well, right? Like we’re in the social media kind of era. You know, Instagram handles GDA CAP as well, so nice and easy. Same with Facebook, GDA Capital.
So all pretty much the same. LinkedIn, you can find me as GDA Capital as well. So really, if you screenshot the name, GDA Capital will get you around to all of our links, the website, social media handles, everything of that nature. pretty, we like to be on social media a lot. We have a good marketing company and we’re on social media doing videos a lot too. So Instagram is a good one for us. Links to all our other pages as well.
So definitely the best one, absolutely. And all those go directly to me as well. So any messaging, anything of that nature, website inquiries, investments that are put up with inquiries, that all goes directly to me as well. Nobody else, you’re not gonna get an admin or anything of that nature. So nice and easy.
Quentin Edmonds (28:46)
Great man. I appreciate you run. I’m literally I could talk to you easily for another 30 minutes I mean easily without breaking a sweat so I reparted dog fight for hours, but ⁓ man Let me say this sincerely So first I’m gonna thank you for your time because you know top time is valuable right time is our most precious commodity So thank you for giving us time today Chew man. Definitely. Thank you for your story. Thank you for your narrative that the Lake Colby Brian saidNothing in this world moves without story. so, you know, just stories is what power the narrative brings the context to the content. And so thank you so much for your story and definitely thank you for your perspective. Thank you for the way you think. Thank you for bringing your mindset to this platform. This was great, man. I really appreciate you being on today.
Gregg Amaral (29:35)
Absolutely, I appreciate you guys and again time is precious commodity. So for you guys as well. Thank you for having me. It was truly an honorQuentin Edmonds (29:43)
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, listen, y’all can’t tell me y’all haven’t got the value out of this conversation, but Mr. Gregg, you can’t tell me. So definitely check him out, but definitely make sure you subscribe. I say it all the time. We’re going to continue to bring incredible people up. told you, listen, inbox me if I’m lying. Tell me somebody when I ain’t said that line and it haven’t been true. So listen, again, man, Mr. Gregg, I appreciate you so much and everyone else, listen, we’ll see you on the next time.
