Ep 114 - Adaptability and Running Three Businesses at Once with Damon Amato

Get ready for a new episode of Elevate Your Equity podcast. Join us today as Damon Amato shares a snippet of how he enjoys building out communities and giving clients a life-changing experience. He also highlighted on the show:

• His favorite fields in real estate now: syndications, development, sales, portfolio management.
• Keeping oneself fit through Athletic Training to keep sharp in real estate investing.
• His superpower of shape-shifting

More about Damon. Damon has 11 years’ experience as a real estate developer and investor. He understands what is needed to succeed in the real estate market and is able to quickly and efficiently assess any proposal, as well as liaises with clients in order to provide an enjoyable experience building houses. With a vast knowledge of various intricacies of what can make a house a home, Damon enjoys giving clients a life-changing experience. Damon operates multiple Real Estate Investment firms, focusing on development, syndications, and portfolio management. He enjoys building out communities and seeking to expand into international destinations, while also living a separate life as an Athletic Trainer at the largest high school in Massachusetts, and writing a textbook about Nutrition.

Thanks a bunch Damon Amato for coming on the show!

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5 Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

• on our website for blogs & other podcast interviews! elevateequity.org
• our YouTube channel! youtube.com/channel/derekclifford
• our book/audiobook! amazon.com/dp/ebook

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

• on our website for blogs & other podcast interviews! elevateequity.org
• our YouTube channel! youtube.com/channel/derekclifford
• our book/audiobook! amazon.com/dp/ebook

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Transcript

Introduction: 0:03

Welcome to the Elevate your equity podcast where we, as married busy professionals leverage real estate investing to unlock the three plus one degrees of freedom, health, location, time and financial.

Derek Clifford: 0:16

Today we've got Mr. Damon Amato on the show. How are you David?

Damon Amato: 0:21

Living the dream brother.

Derek Clifford: 0:22

Awesome man. Great to hear. Damon just in case you guys do not know who he is operates multiple real estate investment firms focusing on development syndications and portfolio management enjoys building out communities and seeking to expand into international destinations, while also living a separate life as an athletic trainer at the largest high school in mass and writing textbook about nutrition. So we have a very multitalented guest on the show Mr. Damon Amato, and Damon again, it's great to have you on the show. Dude, how is everything today?

Damon Amato: 0:55

Doing good. So far, so good. I only missed a few phone calls, or they gotta get backed up on that I gotta take care of but I'm keeping ahead of it today.

Derek Clifford: 1:03

Let's get going here. So first question I would like to ask all of our guests is how did real estate into your life? Like, where did the passion come from? And where did you find your spark for it.

Damon Amato: 1:12

So actually originally came from something else, I used to play a lot of online poker way back in the day, the early 2000s. And those days, poker was really easy, you did not have to be that good to be a pretty big winner not to say that I wasn't a good, I was pretty good. I like to think and I made enough money, luckily that I had a lot saved. I told my wife, you know what we should think about investing in real estate. And this was 2007. So could not have been a worse time for me to say that. And luckily, I went around making offers on three, four or five unit buildings and none of them ever got accepted because it was early on in the crash. And everybody thought that they could get a better price. So I lucked out that nobody took my offers. So we never bought anything for a while. So I built up a little bit more. And we decided, You know what, why don't we find our own place that we want to move to because we lived in a townhouse at the time. And again, couldn't find anything that we both really liked my wife and I said, You know what? Well then if we can't find anything existing, let's just buy a lot and build our own house because we can. And so we did. So I bought a lot. No idea what I was doing whatsoever. Luckily, my stepbrother was about six months ahead of me doing the exact same thing because he was deeded a lot from his in laws. So I had someone I could talk to and call for advice and subcontractors and things like that. built my house in 2009 still standing, so I didn't do too terrible the job. And then after that, kind of pivoted, I was an athletic trainer, I had my master's degree in nutrition. I was seeing nutrition clients, I was doing strength conditioning, I was working a lot. And I know the exact moment where I wanted to really get into real estate. And it was when I got that quarterly report from the government that tells you what your Social Security benefits are going to be when you retire. Yeah. Okay. And so I looked at that, and my wife and I both, you know, making decent salaries have 401, K's with employer matches, so we're doing pretty well. And I just did some calculations on the internet to say like, Okay, well, when we retire in 2055, what is our retirement income going to look like? And it was like 47 $4,800 a month of income. So I said, Okay, well, in 2055 with inflation cost of living, if we want to do the things we want to do, what does our income need to be to do that? And that came out to about 11 grand. So I said, Good god, I gotta I gotta figure something else out because that those numbers don't add up. So I'm ad on the radio for a Fortune Builders, a real estate education company. I joined into that into their mastery group so I could learn how to flip houses with none of your own money. Not always the case, although I do do that now. So I started did a flip in 2015 it was a five unit condo conversion came very close to losing my shirt legitimately and worked really hard to get myself out of that mess did a bunch more deals from my business partner, we kind of organically grow we did some wholesales together. We did some flips. We started building houses now we've built a couple dozen houses in the same few towns started to get you know from there, get a rental portfolio of small Maltese and then the last couple of years have joined with another group of friends and we do syndications together also and then my partner and I also permit unentitled land so that we can make a profit off of the increased value. Once we get approvals because we do our own board meetings. My partner does his own renderings we don't luckily for us, people think we take a lot of risks when we do that kind of thing. But for example, two years ago, we got to single family We house lots up in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire right by the mountain. We bought them for 265. We only spent about $8,000 on the survey and a little bit of engineering, did our own board meetings ourselves. And we passed 12 townhouses and a single family. And then after architecture, I think we were into the property in total for about 300. And we sold it to a builder for 900. That's where we make kind of our big money.

Derek Clifford: 5:29

That's awesome, man. Wow. So okay, there's a lot to unpack here on this. And the first thing that came to my mind was back at the very beginning, you mentioned that in 2007, you guys said, Hey, let's get into real estate investing, right? Can you walk me through or just give me a quick synopsis of like, how you came to real estate investing, because it seemed like it came out of nowhere, right? In 2007. It did.

Damon Amato: 5:51

I think, originally, I thought about it as just read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, like a lot of people. Yeah. And it just seemed like a lot of people were making a lot of money in real estate. And it was something like I didn't have to go back to school for, I didn't have to get any like certifications, or anything specific, I just had to educate myself and learn how to do it and put in the effort. And I was like, well, that I can do. So I didn't really an athletic training, if you know anything about athletic training, we don't make very much money. And we have a pretty low ceiling for how much money we can make. This was just something that I found that really didn't have a ceiling, it could be as much as I wanted it to be, I wanted it to be quite a bit. So wanted to learn about it and see how it could work, you know, made pretty much every mistake along the way you can make to figure it out. Still making mistakes, of course, like everybody, but I'm getting there fewer and far between.

Derek Clifford: 6:54

Yeah, that's awesome, man. Okay, cool. So you mentioned to me before the podcast that your superpower is shape shifting, if you had to put your finger on that any one thing. And now hearing your story, I can kind of understand where this is coming from. But can you give us a little bit more insight as to how you're able to pivot so many different times, and continue to think on your feet and just be that consistent with being comfortable with change. Because this is something that a lot of people struggle with, in fact that like, Okay, I'm going to do this one thing, and then they kind of struggle with it because they fail at something and then it takes them a long time to get good at one thing. But for you, it seems like you can tackle all these things at once either fail or succeed or do both at the same time on all these things at the same time. So let's talk a little bit about pivoting like have you done to prepare yourself to be able to do something like this.

Damon Amato: 7:42

To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact I do have some pretty some pretty significant add, which can be like it's a double edged sword. In the past, I could be honest zoom call while writing an email, texting back and forth with my business partner, and be able to do all that all at the same time. No problem whatsoever. Six months ago, I bought the book Thinking grow rich, and I try twice a week to read it. And I'm so far I'm on page 16. Because I just I cannot focus on something like that I cannot retain, like even when I read my kids books at night, I'll read them like a few pages of my son will be like, Oh, what do you think about what happened? And I'm like, I have no idea what I just read you. And that happens all the time. To me, I have Japanese game show going on in my head and I cannot turn it off.

Derek Clifford: 8:34

Well, I think that that can come in handy. But I think what I'm getting at here is while you have all these things happening, right, you've got the will to continue moving forward with them. So even though you say you're maybe self diagnosing yourself with ATD ADHD, but because you've been able to stick with these things for such a long period of time, there's a common thread of consistency and being able to stick with these things. Because you can't just turn on a dime and say I'm gonna do syndications now, right, and then be doing that for many, many years. So what's the key to pursuing all these things and being able to stick with it?

Damon Amato: 9:07

I think a lot of it has to do with just having a passion for it. Like it says, If I don't have a passion or a real interest in it, then it's really hard for me to be able to focus in on it and retain that knowledge. And so like everything to do with athletic training and nutrition very interesting to me. So I really like a sponge, and I'm able to read research articles on nutrition, which are boring as hell, but they're interesting to me. That's why I'm able to kind of handle those things. I guess it depends on what exactly I'm looking at. And is it something I can be passionate about? That's really interesting to me that that I know I need to like focus on and then I can handle it without a problem.

Derek Clifford: 9:50

How would you recommend someone find their passion in that sense? I mean, you have a lot of stuff going on at the same time. How do you know right away that you have a passion for something when you run into To

Damon Amato: 10:00

me, that's a tough philosophical question. I don't think you can necessarily answer that for anyone but yourself. Really, you know, if you're not self motivated, no one can force you or tell you what you should be doing. That's something you really have to find on your own. And maybe that takes a while. I mean, look, I'm 41, I have plenty of high school friends that still don't know what they want to do when they grow up. And I think that's more and more generally true, because people, they have a scarcity or a fear mindset. And they're just afraid to take, you know, that kind of leap that will get them into the next level of their life. Now, I think that's what holds a lot of people back. Is that that type of mindset?

Derek Clifford: 10:41

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I know that for me, it's making them natural transition from single family homes to multifamily, right. And going from being the lone wolf to being a member of the pack is there's a big difference between those two mindsets, right? Because, you know, in the single family world, like more or less, you can do things yourself to a certain degree, right? I mean, as a single owner, you can buy properties yourself and get that going. But when it comes to multifamily, you don't necessarily want to do that. You want to have a partner in there with you, to help you with the workload and help you manage things and split duties. So you can scale together and do more things, do the things that you'd like to do while your partner does things that they're good at. Right. And it's repeatable, it's easier to do. So. I think that that's a natural progression of scale, when someone is going through their journey that I think you've been able to do as part of your shapeshifting experience.

Damon Amato: 11:28

Yeah, I think, you know, it's actually it's interesting when I was thinking about answering that question yesterday, while I was doing athletic training, because I was on the phone with my business partner discussing a new deal in Florida, I hopped off the phone had to do rehab for an athlete for a high ankle sprain. And directly after that it was a hot day out. So coach came to ask me about hydration and electrolytes and things like that, directly. After that I got another phone call from an attorney about a permitting deal that we're doing. So like in the span of like an hour and a half. I ran the gamut of like literally everything that I do.

Derek Clifford: 12:08

That's so cool. Oh my gosh, I love that. Now, I have to ask you this too, because I mean, obviously you've got you've been doing this for a while and you have a lot of experience in a whole bunch of different fields. What is your favorite field of investing in real estate right now with between the syndications development sales?

Damon Amato: 12:25

I would say that is market dependent. So in the current environment that we're in with rising interest rates, I would say long term equity, multifamily syndications, that type of thing. That would probably be my favorite meeting, my favorite meeting, the one that makes the most money, I guess. Yeah, sure. I certainly would not right now want to be building out a single family subdivision. But if you asked me 234 years ago, I would have absolutely loved to do that. Right now. I think it's a little bit too risky, personally, short term debt, not terribly interested in either because too many people I think, are getting into deals just because they want to get into deals, and they're not penciling the way that they are hoping that they do. Most recently, I'm trying to get into self storage. I've had a few long conversations with a couple of guys in go abundance who have educated me. And I'm very grateful for their education, because both those guys are absolutely crushing it. And everybody I talked to about self storage absolutely crushes it. And it appears to be a fairly recession proof models. So that is obviously very attractive to me. So since I've talked to them, I've done a whole lot of due diligence to educate myself and figure out how to get deals and looking for deals right now.

Derek Clifford: 13:49

That's excellent. As a matter of fact, like for me and my fund, I think that getting Self Storage deals is going to be absolutely essential for me and diversification in the portfolio. Right now. I'm all in multifamily. I am totally with you on self storage. And we should talk a little bit later on after the podcast about who you're talking with and go abundance because I think we may be talking with the same folks. So pretty cool. Pretty cool stuff. Well, awesome, man. So you mentioned you also have a separate life as athletic trainer. And can you talk a little bit about how this athletic training also serves you in some of your other ventures in real estate as well? Because you know, they seem to be completely separate and you call that yourself even a separate life, right? But you and I know that a life is a life and everything is intertwined. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about how you think that athletic training is actually helpful for you in real estate in bunch of different ways.

Damon Amato: 14:44

Important aspects in life is to keep yourself healthy. And actually three months ago I ruptured my Achilles I had to have surgery. So right now I'm 10 weeks after my surgery. I'm walking pretty normally which is about a month and a half ahead. schedule. And I think that's because of my knowledge and I have my own modalities. And I do my own. I still go to physical therapy every other week. But for the most part, I do it myself just because know what I'm doing. And that, of course, was very helpful last week because we own a 47 unit building in Worcester. I mean, long story short, the guy who sold it to us lied about several things, one of them being the state of the electrical upgrades being none, or not none but illegally wired. So we had to redo all of them. It's a three story building, there were nine kind of separate entrances to it. So there's very few hallways, so I had to go up and down the stairs, three flights of stairs and into 47 units nine times, which, you know, wasn't wouldn't have been that easy if I was perfectly healthy, but certainly not 10 weeks after having surgery on my Achilles, I guess that it serves me in that way. But yeah, you do have to have, you know, considerable physical and mental stamina to have long days when you have long days. Occasionally, because I have a master's in nutrition, I like to think I know how to eat pretty well. But again, that might could be different between me and you and the next guy, and it's pretty individual.

Derek Clifford: 16:17

Yeah, completely agree. I was also thinking to like those ties between, you know, athletic training that has to do with mental toughness, right? Like not only physical toughness, but mental toughness, and the fact that when you're taking on all these projects, you know, syndications new development, portfolio management, all these things are endurance type sports, right, like, in the mental realm, and in the business realm, the more that you can manifest success for yourself in athletic training, right? You see these parallels that you can kind of pull in from the mindset piece directly into the real estate investing, or at least that's how I think about it. Whenever we get into these, you know, we set these 90 day sprints or whatever, you know, in abundance, we have these goals, right that we set. And so that's how I kind of look at it is again, how you do one thing is how you do everything.

Damon Amato: 17:00

Yeah, I totally agree. And I use everybody loves this story, because it's kind of brash, but when I was I was just thinking about how you often have to deal with subcontractors. We deal with a lot of attorneys, architects, engineers. And sometimes the conversation can get kind of heated, because especially nowadays, those guys are way overworked, they're overwhelmed. They're just trying to put out the biggest fire of the day. So when I call them to say, Why haven't you done the work for me yet, if you don't push hard sometimes, then you can't get anything done. So backtrack to the story. When I was in college, I was helping my high school football coach when I had some time here and there. And we had this one game where we were getting crushed by over more than 40 points, there was two minutes left in the game. And even though they had their JV team, and they were still throwing touchdowns, which is not a very nice thing to do in general. So after the game, our coach went up to their coach and started really giving it to him. He didn't yell, but he was very intense, went off for about two or three minutes. And all I could think of is the guy who's the opposing coach, just stood their hands behind his back, just stared at our coach never said a word waited until his ranch was over. And he just said, Coach, it's not my fault. You suck. And when you first hear that, you know, obviously bothers you, right? But you know, the coaches after every game, we go out for drinks. And by the time we got to the drinks, we were all like, he's right. That is absolutely true. I use that. I mean, I want to say that to people pacifically all the time. But a form of that, I guess you could say is in business, sometimes you have to get stuff done to get stuff done. Sometimes people make excuses, or a lot of times people make excuses as to why it's not happening. And that cost me time, which cost me money, which affects my family, which I'm not okay with. So there are plenty of times that I have to use a form of saying, You know what, it's not my fault. You suck, get it done.

Derek Clifford: 19:06

Wow, that's really powerful. I love it too. Hopefully, you are able to explain the story to those people that you tell them. It's not my fault that you suck. Or at least give them some backstory. Maybe they don't even need it. It's just that's just part of being a leader.

Damon Amato: 19:19

Yeah, I mean, like I say, I don't say that exactly. To people I have. I shouldn't say that. I definitely have said, but not very often.

Derek Clifford: 19:27

Let me ask you one thing. So you know, the theme for today is being adaptable, right for running multiple businesses or having multiple interests and succeeding in them over the long term. I know you mentioned before that maybe there's some add there for you. But I have to ask the question again, because there's so much wisdom here that we can take from your experiences in being able to do all these things at the same time, being adaptable, being able to take that phone call and shift from being in athletic training mode to being in development mode to being in Portfolio Management and syndication mode. What advice can you give for people who are looking to live a life that you have that maybe don't have self prescribed ADD, so to speak.

Damon Amato: 20:06

Well, if you're trying to get into real estate, and you watch the HGTV, and think it's super easy, like they make it out to be, which is completely to my properties on house owners, and the whole thing is just completely fake. So you have to really prepare yourself. One of the things people ask me is, you know, what advice would you have for somebody who just wants to get into real estate investing? Okay, and I say, if you cannot, financially, mentally, emotionally handle a $50,000 loss, then don't bother. Because you don't have the right mindset for this. And a lot of that comes down to mindset, right? You cannot have a scarcity fearful mindset, you need to have abundance and positive mental toughness in order to deal with everything that you got to deal with the first deal I ever did. I had multiple stop work orders, I almost had FEMA show up, and I had to tear down a building that I was going to do a fluffing buff rehab on. I found out the week before this, the first deal I ever did, I bought the property for 865, I was going to put about 300,000 into it and it was going to sell out for about 1.7. So it was going to be a really good deal. It was my first deals way to get a hard money loan. I ended up paying 12% and five points realized a week before closing that one of the two buildings was well below the floodplain on the street. So between my interest only payments, taxes and my flood insurance, my holding costs were about $33,000 a month. I didn't have it, I ended up taking drugs from the lender paying it back with his own money. I ended up wholesaling two properties during construction, just to pay the mortgage so I could make things happen. And I had several issues with the contractor that really kind of my contractor ended up costing me about$300,000. Oh, man. So that was a tough one.

Derek Clifford: 22:03

This is the one in 2015 You're referring to Right? Right. Yeah. Wow. That's, that's tough, dude, thanks for giving that clarity. Because, you know, guys, for those of you who are listening right now that are looking to get into real estate, like like David's mentioning right here. This is real life, man, this stuff does happen. I've had contractors steal from me underneath my nose, basically send me pictures of photos that for unit turns that were on other units like in other properties that they were working on, and sending it to us as proof of our progress payment. We learned a lot from that type of thing, right? And, you know, Damien, like even if you were to lose money on it, you got to have that mindset to know that this is not a microwave game. This is a crock pot thing, right? Real estate investing is long term. It takes skill. And I just love the comment that HGTV is not real. It gets a lot of people interested. Let's put it that way. But you know, you mean, you mean to tell me that stuff on TV isn't true. That's, that's interesting. I

Damon Amato: 22:59

was actually from that first deal. I was on beachfront bargain hunt the property, right, just a small condo on the beach. And they didn't film it until six months after the buyers bought the property. Yeah. So the funny thing was they went in, they use that as the last property. They call the community something that I didn't call it, they had the purchase price wrong, everything is wrong. And then it was funny. They were walking in, you know, six months after they bought it. And the wife was like, Oh, I love how they said, Look how nice that couch is over there. And I'm like yelling at my take TV. Like that's your account.

Derek Clifford: 23:39

I can't believe it. Wow. Okay. That's a whole new whole new level of deception. I guess I'm not surprised. They'll do anything that they can to try to make it more appealing and get viewership up. So it's very,

Damon Amato: 23:52

I actually had somebody from not HGTV, bravo, they wanted to film the weebill Modern farmhouses. And they wanted to do a show about building a modern farmhouse, and one of the producers came out and we had a couple of different permitting gigs going on at the same time that were pretty intense and difficult. And he actually told us, we had too much drama, and I was like, Are you kidding me? For TV? I was like, you guys. Oh, you guys do is edit to create drama, and you're telling you we have too much. That's crazy.

Derek Clifford: 24:25

Well, I guess it only counts if it's in there. Full control, Damon.

Damon Amato: 24:29

That is true. Yeah.

Derek Clifford: 24:31

That's incredible, man. Wow, that's, that's awesome. And oh, hey, do you. So you've got a ton of experience. This is really great stuff. And I want to thank you for sharing your stories with us too, because there's a lot of things that the listeners can take away from all of this. But what I'd like to do now is hop into the final segment of our show, which is the Rapid Round and it's five questions that we asked every one of our guests so we're just going to ask them rapidly to you. You know, after that gets done, then we'll give you a place to share how people can get to know you a little bit more. So if You're ready, we can jump right in. Are you ready? All right, let's go. Number one, what book has had the biggest impact on you and why? And we ask that it doesn't be the Bible, or the purple Bible, which is Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Damon Amato: 25:12

Oh, I would say the thick it was the 60 Minute Manager. It's a pretty short book. I can't remember the author. But it was very short, quick book about leadership styles. And something that I think helped me enormously both in athletic training and real estate, because in athletic training, I have an assistant athletic trainer I have, I'm a clinical instructor for nearby college. So I have athletic training students all the time, we have an operations associate as my assistant, or trying to hire a project manager right now. But we have a lot of people on our team, and I do have to be the one that kind of hurts the cats. So I think that one was helpful in getting me to recognize how that kind of thing is supposed to work. Because you don't really, I mean, how do you do school? How do you learn how to be a leader? There's, there's no,

Derek Clifford: 25:59

they don't do that you can't teach. That's something that you have to find and grow into your own. And that's why they can't teach it. And it's really great. I do love that book. I know book you're talking about, and we'll link to it in the show notes as well. And just an extra thing that I'm picking up too is that it's a short book, it's not quite 16 pages, like the amount of progress you've made on Napoleon Hills thinking grow rich, but you can get the gist of it in about 16 pages of that book. It's a really good one.

Damon Amato: 26:23

Yeah, I was going to Think and Grow Rich, but I can't finish it yet.

Derek Clifford: 26:28

Well, you can you can we can put that in there as a secondary because even 16 pages is pretty good. All right. Number two, if people wanted to emulate your success in general, what is the first actionable thing that they could do to follow in your footsteps right now?

Damon Amato: 26:43

Learn as much as they can and put themselves out there as much as they can. What I did my first deal, I needed a private lender to help fund the downpayment. I went to every single real estate meetup I could find in New England, I traveled everywhere. I was going to them four nights a week just to find somebody because I didn't have a choice I had to there was no not doing it.

Derek Clifford: 27:07

That's great man. Good advice, excellent advice that will where there's a will there's a way and then also combining that with networking, it's a good thing, then those two things will get you very, very far. So I love that. Number three, what is one tool process or hack in the last three months that has helped you save time and or effort hiring an assistant,

Damon Amato: 27:27

which I should have done probably a year ago, both my partner and I are pretty stubborn. And for a long time, I thought, well, everything that I do I have to be the one to do it. And that is not true. There are things that you can give up there things that you can delegate, and it's not going to be perfect when you start it never is. But luckily on our third try, we found somebody who is extremely good. I'm hoping we're going to be able to to increase her hours and priests her pay very soon, because we want to

Derek Clifford: 27:57

keep her very cool, man. Is it us base? Or is that oversees?

Damon Amato: 28:00

Yes. In fact, she only lives about 20 minutes from our office. Awesome. They're just perfect. Because all the time we need her to like go to town halls, make copies of property assessment cards and things like that. And she's fantastic.

Derek Clifford: 28:13

Congrats. Yeah, that's awesome. I know, there's a bunch of abundance guys who they own virtual assistant agencies. And so they have a lot of good tips. We were a benefactor of that, too. So maybe offline, United can talk a little bit more about whether or not virtual people can help you fill in some of those extra cracks or even supplement your assistant as well. You know, give her someone to help her with her things to number four. If the people that you know had to describe you with one word, what do you think that word would be?

Damon Amato: 28:41

I would say driven.

Derek Clifford: 28:43

That's kind of the word I was thinking for you too.

Damon Amato: 28:46

I mean, I've been doing real estate for seven years now seriously, and some of my friends still think it's fake, but they don't think I'm actually doing it.

Derek Clifford: 28:55

Okay, interesting. All right. Well, all they got to do is listen this podcast.

Damon Amato: 28:58

I don't know just because they thought I never could because I was a total screw up in high school but it's hard to say,

Derek Clifford: 29:04

Well, it's a shame. And it's sooner or later, they're gonna find out and they're gonna be scratching their head. So we'll see. All right, number five. What small thing do you most people not know about you?

Damon Amato: 29:15

I am kind of an open book, I would say I really do enjoy still playing Live Poker quite a bit. Although I don't have much of a chance to do it. That Live Poker to me. I never really play for money. Specifically, I play for fun. I play for the enjoyment and the mental battle that you have with people and one of my friends specifically, we like to go together. And it's a really good time that we have together because of you know, the mental challenge.

Derek Clifford: 29:43

And it's great. I love that too. So lots to talk about that as well after the show too. Awesome, cool, man. Well, that being said, I think that we covered everything here. So this has been an amazing story and experience to hear all the stuff from you. But before we go, can you please tell the audience a little bit More about how they can find out what you've got going on and how people can get in touch with you. If you want them to what's going on your world, let us know.

Damon Amato: 30:06

Sure, our main company is DownEastResidential.com. So you can see the plenty of pictures of previous houses that we've built, but also properties that we have for sale or even permanent projects that we might have for sale. Like I said, my business partner, actually, last week, flew down to Florida to Port Charlotte, because we're looking at different asset type there, it's actually potentially permitting a marina. We like going into doing new things and always looking for we do tend to partner with a lot of people in different ways, financially, all kinds of depends, we're always happy to do things with other people, especially other people in go abundance, because obviously, you know, we already kind of know that those people are pretty successful know what they're doing.

Derek Clifford: 30:54

Yeah, for sure. Same here. But, you know, to that point, I mean, dude, you just turn 40 Man, so you got plenty of time to figure this all out. And you've done quite a bit of stuff up to now so very impressive things and just wanted to thank you as well David for coming on the show and sharing your experiences with us. I'm sure listeners have a lot to take away from your experience and learn a lot about shape shifting and being adaptable in business. So thank you very much for coming on the show.

Damon Amato: 31:18

Thanks for having me. I had a blast.

Derek Clifford: 31:20

Yeah, me too. And for you listeners who have gotten to this point in the show, just want to thank you as well please wherever you're listening or watching this podcast it whether it's YouTube, Spotify, in the iTunes Store, please do like comment review, give us thumbs up, subscribe interact with us any way you can, because the more we do that the more we appease the algorithm gods. And when we appease those algorithm Gods we get more exposure to more people, and we're able to bring on incredible guests like Damon as well. So all right. Thanks, everyone. You guys have a fantastic week. This is Derek and signing off for the day. Thanks, guys.