On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. All Jake and I really wanted to do is a 100 units. $200 profit per door That's $20 a month. That's more than what we needed to survive and to live and to thrive in life. When you have more options and opportunities in life, life gets a lot more interesting. What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast, coming to you with a special guest, a king. A king in the real estate space, mom, man, Gino, Barbara Rowe.
How are we doing, brother? Chaz, I'm actually gonna send this to my wife as soon as I get off because I'm gonna tell her I was called the king today. You know what I'm saying? She's a queen, but, I mean, I'm the king right now. So great. Thank you. How you doing, brother? I'm doing well. Here Monday morning, and so I'm excited to be first thing here with you. It's really I mean, I'm excited about all of our guests, but you've got, a huge platform. You've got of course, a podcast of your own.
Most people in the real estate space know Jake and Gino. And so to have you here as a true honor, and I wanna let people that don't know you, get to know you here today and maybe the story behind the story. So tell us, Gino, get a little bit about what you guys do. Jake and I started investing the other in 2011. He was the drug rep, and I was the pizza guy. I own the restaurant, one restaurant in New York.
I opened in 1994, and he was a pharmaceutical sales rep when when things were good to get to get good, as they say. And in 2009, we met, and I guess the getting wasn't that good for either one of us because we're, like, brosefs. We need to do something because we are struggling. You hate what you're doing. I just a great recession just wiped everyone out. Everyone thinks real estate got wiped out. I the restaurant was working harder and making less.
At the time, I had 4 kids, and I'm like, I need to do something. And we got together in 2009. In 2011, we Jake moves down to Knoxville, Tennessee. From New York. And I'm like, Jake, where's Knoxville number 1? Cause no one knows when no one knew where Knoxville was back then. I'm sorry. It's the truth. And now everyone knows where Knoxville is. And we just started looking for deals. And in 18 months, long time, it took us to find that very first deal because we had no process.
We had no framework, but we did find that first deal after 18 months And, you know, 3 months after that, we got our second deal. And I guess the rest is history. You've owned today 1700 units. We syndicated deals, but the vast majority of our portfolio is not syndicated. We just continued to refinance deals, put money back into the business, refinance out. I left the restaurant in 2000 team, and I went into real estate full time.
And that's about the time that I started the Jake and Gino education community. Yeah. I love it. So first off, the history there of just your own success in real estate. I love 1700 units. That's incredible. Well done. But then at the very end there, you kinda just lightly slid that in. Now you teach not just a few people, but hundreds, if not thousands of other students, I think I saw one of your videos. Your students represent, like, 20,000 plus units across the country. Is that is that right?
Is that more it's now? Actually, it's 71,364. We did we we have a weekly huddle on Monday morning. So before I got on with you, Mine with the executive team, we're looking at our numbers. It's over almost $400,000,000 in capital raised from the students because Chaz, I think with multifamily, it's a little different than than single family. Once you get going, You either just finish or you just figure it out with the framework and you just start snowballing and snowballing.
And that's what a lot of our students have done. And they realize one thing you've talked about being in a business that real estate and specifically multifamily, I think, is really an entrepreneurial venture. We create multifamily entrepreneurs at Jake and Gino. And if you're flipping homes, you're fixing homes, you're doing rentals, it really is a business. It is real estate, but it really you have to look at it as systems and processes.
It's buy right, finance right, but it's also managed right. And if you can't manage these assets, I like having kids. You're having kids. You have to raise your children. And if you don't, bad thing's gonna happen through those deals. As we're seeing right now, as we're seeing the operators in the space right now, It's it's a wonderful thing to go out there and raise capital. It's a lot of fun. But raising the capital, you're a fiduciary, and if you can't operate these deals, it's not easy.
Find someone out there who can operate the deals who can partner with you. And Chaz you saw, Joe Sullivan, he's he's in your community as well. Great student of ours is a Jake and Gino coach. He's an operator in Kansas City. He's doing phenomenal job. He's buying these assets. He's financing them, but he's also managing these assets. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. There's there's a huge business component to it. I think a lot of people think, you know, real estate and business are separate.
I Wolfe tell you before we hit the record, but we've had probably 100, 120 or so real estate investors, some very large portfolios. Some some just getting rolling, you know, obviously, to be on the show, they've gotta have a qualification, but to get rolling in comparison to someone like you with 1700, but the reality remains the same that inside the asset, okay, you call it a a building that has 200 units and people are paying rent, the asset could also be a business.