5 Talents Podcast

Sterling White finds deals other people never see, and he built his following the same way he builds his pipeline: with commitment. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Sterling break down off market deal finding and the mindset behind it.

In this episode:

• The most recent off market purchase: 156 units, sourced from a self built list, not a broker's inbox.
• The funnel: a database like Reonomy or CoStar, filter to a unit band, keep only what hasn't sold in 5 years, screen for distress and mom and pop ownership, research the LLC, then cold call.
• The opener that works: "why now in terms of your consideration on selling?"
• The mindset from his mentor: "creativity follows commitment. If you're committed enough, you will figure it out. If not, you'll come up with an excuse."
• Where he started: on food stamps, first deal at 23 with negative funds in the bank.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Juan Vargas left BMW with a wife, 3 kids, and a mortgage, and never looked back. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Juan talk about creating value, building a team, and acting before you know everything.

In this episode:

• Burning the ship: "whenever I left W2, that was my form of pulling the trigger and burning the ship. I can't go back. I'm not going back."
• The cure for analysis paralysis: "you're never gonna know everything. It's just about learning enough and then pulling the trigger."
• The team answer for someone with no track record: everyone can bring something, "underwriting, deal flow, lending, raising capital, property management, construction. There's no I in team."
• Abel's coaching line: be honest about your skills, "you're trying to partner on your weaknesses."
• The math, stripped to the bone: "there's income, there's expenses, there's debt service. If there's anything left after that, then the thing is cash flowing."

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Kathy Kersten is a Gallup StrengthsFinder coach and a former Rackspace colleague of Abel's. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Kathy make the case that you do not fix your weaknesses, you build a team around them.

In this episode:

• The doctrine: "it's better to invest in your areas of strength than focusing on your weaknesses, then partner around for the weaknesses. Because if you can find someone who is world class in your area of weakness, you're unstoppable."
• She lives it: "if you look at my top five, you don't see any analytical. I hate numbers. Every year around tax time I hire an accountant."
• The maxim from their mutual mentor Graham Weston: "individuals can have weaknesses. But teams cannot."
• Abel applied to a deal: "there are no lone wolves in real estate." Property management, asset management, your CPA, your K-1s, cost segregation, each is a strength you have or you partner for.
• Her third step, intentionality: "I'm not gonna waste any of my time on the things that I'm not good at."

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Todd Thorpe negotiates telecom agreements for apartment owners, and his whole message is that the cable line item is not a fixed cost, it is 4 ways to make money. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Todd turn a boring contract into real value.

In this episode:

• The 4 buckets hiding in your cable contract: door fees, revenue share, courtesy services, and bulk.
• Why most owners never work them: "you don't know what you don't know. You're just gonna allow the cable provider to continue serving your property without any benefit to you."
• The defensive first move: stop the auto renewal, because "once you go into an auto renewal, you just lost all of your leverage."
• The math Abel runs: negotiate a $300 a month saving, and "if I take $3,600 a year of expenses that I've now saved and divide it by the cap rate, that's $72,000 of value that we've created."
• The durable principle: any expense you cut, divided by your cap rate, becomes many dollars of value at exit.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

John Rubino is a 20 year Navy aviator who runs JID Investments as the middle layer between passive investors and active sponsors. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and John talk about how one trusted relationship can replace vetting every deal yourself.

In this episode:

• The model: he aggregates roughly 151 investors into one LLC and "dovetails it under your entity, as the GP, as the LP," so his people do not have to vet every deal and team themselves.
• The reframe: a passive investor's job is to vet the market, the deal, and the team, but with John you "just gotta vet John."
• His discipline: he vets sponsors with "a very detailed checklist" from his military background, and before any deal goes out he and his partner both ask, "Are you gonna invest in it?" Both in with their own money, or it does not go out.
• The leverage truth: "it's about who you know," and "not trying to be the smartest person, looking for the smartest people to be around."
• Why even a friend with half a billion dollars and 5,000 plus doors said the same thing: "you need a team."

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Yakov Smart raises capital on LinkedIn for a living. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Yakov show how to keep the top of your investor funnel full even when you cannot get in a room.

In this episode:

• Build a hyper targeted list around 3 things: income, net worth, and mindset, then run a series of yeses that leads with value, not a pitch.
• Reframe your profile: "your profile is so much more than a resume. It's a marketing asset." If 500 high net worth investors looked at it tomorrow, "would it build trust, or would they just gloss over a resume?"
• Keep it human: "make it look like it's not automated," and the moment someone responds, the automation stops.
• Abel's takeaway, from a former skeptic: LinkedIn done right is "a really good internet handshake."
• The timing lesson: "build that list of investors well before you need it," because "you gotta know, like, and trust somebody before somebody puts at least 50K in your pocket."

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Colm McEvilly runs investor relations at Grow Capitalist and talks to investors from $10,000 to $400 million, roughly 10 calls a day. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Colm teach passive investors to stop underwriting the headline number.

In this episode:

• The most common mistake: "people going directly to the returns. You made the assumption that the risk profile is exactly the same, and that's never the case."
• His sequence: market first, then underwriting, because "it's garbage in, garbage out in a spreadsheet," then the operating agreement, which he calls "the execution plan, the recipe for distributions."
• The single assumption that fools everyone, the exit cap: "It's the biggest dial." Drop it one tick and a deal "looks like the best deal in the world."
• How he handicaps it: raise the exit cap "0.1 per quarter for the duration" so a rosy exit cannot rescue a weak model.
• The scale behind the discipline: Grow Capitalist reviews "2,000 deals for every deal we move forward on" and puts out "50 LOIs a month."

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Anton Mattli is the CEO of Peak Financing who spent his career at UBS in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong before advising family offices on debt. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Anton explain why the headline return is the wrong thing to underwrite first.

In this episode:

• The reframe: "You should not really focus solely on that return. You also should look at your risk adjusted return."
• His gauge, debt service coverage: at the standard 1.25, your net operating income has "a cushion of 25%," so income can fall 25% and still cover the note.
• Why he backs the cautious sponsor: he would rather fund one who escrows a full year of principal and interest and accepts a lower return than one who skipped the cushion to juice the number.
• The hidden cost at the finish line: an unwatched lender can pad the spread over the 10 year treasury, quoting 3% and delivering 3.10%, almost 1% of extra compensation you never see.
• Abel's frame: whether you are the smallest buyer or the largest, "it's gonna come down to the numbers."

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Logan Freeman scaled from 40 units to 775 in under a year, and the turn was not a capital raising trick. It was subtraction. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Logan talk about doing less to grow more.

In this episode:

• The breaking point: on his first deals he was "the project manager, the construction manager, the leasing agent, the broker. I was everything, and I almost quit. I was trying to do too much."
• The fix, mapping the business: "in this recipe of syndication, there is deal finding, acquisitions, capital raising, legal, marketing, operations, construction, project management. Where does Logan's strength lie, and my passion?"
• Keep only your sweet spot, "the intersection of my greatest strength and my greatest passion," and partner out the rest.
• On the brokerage side: serve a busy buyer a decision, not a raw deal. "I used to just send them the deals, and they're like, you need to get some filter."
• The line to sit with: "the decisions that you make turn to create the life that you're about to have."

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Ryan Smith did not guess his way into mobile home parks and self storage, he modeled his way in. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Ryan talk about building a repeatable decision process and finding a moat everyone else avoids.

In this episode:

• The method: "build a financial model for all the different asset classes. We wanted cash flow, capital appreciation, tax benefits, and non correlation. We built a model for storage, apartments, industrial, office, and retail, put all the models on the table and let them duke it out."
• The winner and its moat: "mobile home parks are needed everywhere. They're not allowed to be built anywhere because they're hated everywhere because of the stigma. I saw the stigma as a moat that could protect my capital."
• The track record: 8 funds, roughly $300 million raised and $700 million acquired.
• The durable metric: "net operating income growth in the long run is very important."
• The memorable proof: Coke and Pepsi spent a fortune on marketing to be 50% effective; Ryan spent nothing and 100% of people agree nobody wants a mobile home park next door.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate