Greetings, Hard Knocks Community!💰

Ready for a brand new School of Hard Knocks Newsletter? This week, we're featuring commercial real estate powerhouse Todd Nepola. Todd has over 25 years of experience as an investor, manager, and developer. As the author of Keeping It Real on Commercial Real Estate, he shares practical, no-nonsense insights that make him a standout industry leader.

Today’s Schedule

• Keeping the Real in Real Estate: How commercial real estate mogul Todd Nepola became an industry leader

• From the Hard Knocks Library: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

• In Case You Missed It: We asked Florida supercar owners how they got rich.

Let’s get into it!🔥

Keeping the Real in Real Estate

Todd Nepola comes from a long line of real estate investors and commercial real estate developers.

His paternal great-grandfather immigrated to New York from Italy in 1899, was a superintendent for over 40 years, and was responsible for building the Holland tunnel and several of Manhattan's subway lines.

Todd's grandfather and father were also in real estate. Before he followed in his family's footsteps, Todd was an average kid. He graduated from the University of South Florida and had a goal of achieving financial freedom ever since he was young.

At 21, Todd became a stockbroker on Wall Street and got a crash course in commission-based business. There, he learned if you miss a week's worth of work, you don't make any money, he knew that this was unsustainable and started to lookout for other ventures to pump up his cash flow.

Back in the 90's, Todd looked into buying everything from ATM machines and payphones to an ice cream store. Eventually, he stumbled into real estate in 1998.

The first property Todd purchased was worth $575,000 and he put every dollar he had into this purchase of it “I literally had $70 left in my bank account”. With no prior real estate experience or business plan, Todd decided he was just going to figure things out as he went. He cleaned up the property in his free time, filled vacancies with tenants, and started collecting rents.

6 months later Todd refinanced the property and due to the appreciation and increase in property value from doing renovations he was able to get all of his money back that he originally paid to invest in the property and more.

With money back in his hand, Todd was off to the races. At the age of 26, he bought a second property, then a third, then a fourth, and so on.

After a decade of buying, building, leasing and managing his own properties, Todd decided it was time to open his own firm, known today as Current Capital Group.

Now, Todd owns over $100+million dollars worth of properties throughout the state of Florida. In addition to his real estate success, Todd's an active philanthropist. He's also an accomplished triathlete and finished the Ironman Triathlon.

Inside the School of Mentors community, Todd shared a ton of practical tips and advice for today's entrepreneurs on a recent live call. Here are four of the best takeaways:

Habit Hustle

When Todd was in his early 20s, he read a ton of books and spent his weekends at live seminars. He also bought DVDs and CDs and listened to them in his car. He spent most of his free time learning as much as he could, applying what he learned in his business ventures.

Todd advises young entrepreneurs to learn as much as possible through books and from successful people. Back in the 90s, there were no online platforms or YouTube channels. Today, all the information is available at your fingertips.

If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to put in the work. Many young people would rather spend their free time partying or hanging at the bar. However, if you want to level up, you're going to need discipline and a healthy lifestyle. Making sacrifices now sets you up for big wins down the road.

Income Aha 

One of Todd's biggest "aha moments" was actually a setback. Around 2008, Todd was living exclusively off his real estate investments. When the market crashed, things took a turn for the worse and his personal income evaporated.

Todd then started living off savings and he made a vow to put the money he earned from real estate right back into the company. He now spends it on things like expansions and renovations and earns his income from third party commissions and leasing assignments.

When your business starts to make money, it's tempting to want to spend that money on yourself. However, to keep yourself financially stable, it's smart to hedge your bets with another source of income.

If you're still working a day job, hang onto it as long as you can and put the profits from your business back into it. Once you're generating some real cash flow, then you can change your strategy.

The Momentum Machine

Before his stockbroker days, Todd had a cold calling job as a teenager. He sold cruise packages and would get hung up on hundreds of times a night, but he kept at it. He took the persistence he learned in that job and applied it to his real estate career.

Todd says you never know how many calls it's going to take to get your first deal. You could be making 40 calls a day and it still could take you months to break through. You might get 999 no's before you get a yes, but the important thing is to keep going.

Even if you're not in real estate, entrepreneurship is all about keeping up your drive and building momentum. Rejection can be discouraging, but it's all part of the game.

So many people give up when things get hard, but that's often right before something amazing happens. Don't take rejection personally and keep grinding.

Never Get Greedy

One of Todd’s biggest regrets and lessons he has learned along the way is to never be greedy. Don’t let a few thousand or even tens of thousands be the reason why you decide not to do a deal that you truly believe in. Todd’s primary goal in real estate is long term buy and hold, so if you have a potential deal and the seller is not willing to compromise entirely on the purchase, don’t let a few thousand be the reason you don’t do the transaction because if it’s a good deal that money will be obsolete in the coming months after appreciation and doing renovations.

Connect with Todd here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeaccordingtotodd/?hl=en

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Words of Wisdom

From the Hard Knocks Library

In Case You Missed It

Ever wonder how supercar owners made their millions? We interviewed business owners all over Tampa, Florida asking them how they got rich. We asked them about the most amount of money they have made in a year and for their top career and life advice. Catch the interviews here!

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