The date was June 23, 2017. Our family just arrived in St. Augustine, another New York family seeking refuge from the cold winters and exorbitant cost of living. One of the main reasons we moved was because I had just “retired” from my restaurant, and I was looking to expand our real estate portfolio by setting up shop in sunny Florida.
God had a different plan for our family. I kept hearing how expensive the Jacksonville market was, so we decided to continue buying properties in Knoxville, TN. This left me with a problem. After twenty-five years of investing and running a business, I was left without a job, or a purpose.
Fortunately for me, my business partner Jake & I wrote a book on investing in real estate, and had started a podcast. What if we started a community for real estate investors and coach them on how to invest in real estate?
For the next seven years my focus was two-fold. Continue to expand our real estate portfolio, and grow our multifamily investing community of investors called The Jake & Gino community. I was able to leverage my experience as a life coach, and real estate during this period was extremely desirable.
The results we created were incredible. Over 150 members quit their job to go into real estate full time, while the community purchased over $5,000,000,000 (that’s 5 Billion) in assets. It was so rewarding how the community was creating such impact and changing family’s lives.
There was one thing that was confusing to me during those times. Our education was top notch, all the members had direct access to myself and Jake, and we held several in person events per year. But, only a segment of the community was having success, while another part of the community was struggling.
When I picked up the book The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel, the answer to this gnawing question finally hit me like a ton of bricks. Success, in many instances, stems from our relationship with money, and the behaviors and patterns that we have created through our lifetimes. That was evident looking back on my investing journey. When I once held limiting, disempowering and self sabotaging beliefs around money, my results were rather predictable. Not Good.
But, when I became a life coach, and started to work on my thoughts, along with personal development, and creating a healthier relationship with money, my portfolio exploded. I went from owning 4 units, to owning over five hundred units in less than five years.
I realized, that in the Jake & Gino community, the focus of the training was on the mechanical portion of investing. Topics, such as cap rates, returns, financing, etc. (Topics that my wife admits that are as exciting as a visit to the dentist). Members came to learn how to buy real estate. So, naturally, that is what we gave them. Unfortunately, we were missing a huge component, the psychological aspect of investing.
When we ended up selling the education company, this question of why some members created massive success, while others were floundering, kept eating away at me. I was looking for my next adventure in life, and this frustration led me to Money Coaching. A quick AI search pointed me to The Money Coaching Institute, founded by Deborah Price over twenty-five years ago. I realized that I stumbled across, in my opinion, one of the pioneers in the psychology of money, a person who created a framework that was helping people build awareness, shift habits, and create healthier relationships with money.
Was this the missing link? Could Money Coaching answer the question of why some investors resembled Warren Buffet, while others were unable to create success?
I quickly decided to enroll in her sixteen-week program to become a Certified Money Coach (CMC)®, and I convinced my wife to join as well. When my wife heard money coaching, her immediate reaction was “I’m good”. I promised her this was not the type of course where they pull out excel sheets, devise a financial plan, rebalance your portfolio, and make sure the portfolio is performing. So, she decided to join, and we became coaches together. I thank God that she we joined together, as it brought us even closer, and we were able to understand our relationship together towards money, and begin to heal it.
What is a Certified Money Coach (CMC)®? A money coach helps clients uncover unconscious money patterns, beliefs, and behaviors, and guides them toward healthier financial habits. It is built around self-awareness, transformation, and practical guidance through Deborah’s proprietary four core sessions. Now, you may be saying to yourself “All you need is four sessions to see an immediate impact?” I was as skeptical as you are, but, as we began the training, and I was being coached personally by Deborah going through the core process, the experience was enlightening and transformative.
I’m not going to give away the entire process. If you’d like to learn more about money coaching, and see how it can impact your life, schedule a strategy session with me here à Strategy Call.
What made it so impactful? I love that Money Coaching brought me back to my past, and made me create a “money bio”, a bio of memories from childhood all the way to the present day. Once my bio was complete, the money coach, in this instance, Deborah, read through my bio, began to highlight patterns of behavior, money “traumas” that I experienced, and asked me empowering questions based on my bio and these patterns. I was blown away by how many of these patterns were inherited from my parents, and I also witnessed the new patterns that I was able to create.
When you begin to witness that many of your money issues stem from the past, and how you were raised around money, and the things you heard, or didn’t hear, you can start to see why you act a certain way when money comes into the conversation. In our calls, we highlighted the positive aspects I had towards money, but the main focus was on working on patterns that were challenging and disempowering. The core process has a unique methodology on how to uncover and work on these patterns.
Deborah’s use of money archetypes is another tool she uses in the core process. Archetypes represent unconscious beliefs and behaviors around money. By naming and describing these patterns, clients can begin to recognize how they show up in daily decisions, relationships, and long-term choices. She has developed a money quiz that the coaches use as an assessment tool to reveal a person’s money archetype. Click HERE to take the quiz to see what money archetypes are showing up in your life.
Let’s get back to the process and why it’s been so impactful. Remember, the process brings you back to the past and allows you to remember and reflect upon your past. But you’re not stuck there. You need to assess what’s gone on in the past, but you also need to see where you are in the present. I love the quote “When the past controls the present, the future is a re-run.” If we don’t deal with our past issues, they will keep showing up for us.
Next, part of the process focuses on the present, and as you combine the past and the present, now you can begin to create a plan for your future. I love how the core process blends the past, present, and future. In my opinion, there are therapists that get their clients stuck in the past with no plan for the future. Conversely, as a life coach, we spent very little time looking at a client’s past. It was all focused on a person’s goals, aspirations and the actions that a client needed to take to achieve the goals set. In my opinion, Deborah has been able to assess a person’s past, have them identify and become conscious of the patterns and behaviors that they are experiencing, and then formulating a plan based on that person’s conscious goals. For example, do you want to start a company for the right reasons, or are you acting upon some unconscious patterns from your past?
As I look back at all the members that I coached in the Jake & Gino community, Money Coaching would have been an invaluable methodology, a structured framework to help people understand and change their relationship with money. Money is a symptom, not the root cause — it reflects deeper beliefs, emotions, and patterns that shape how we earn, spend, save, and share.
Money coaching helps you look beyond money as the symptom, uncovering the underlying patterns and beliefs so you can create lasting change in both your finances and your life. Our mission at Barbaro 360 is to change the world one family at a time — with Money Coaching as the vehicle for lasting transformation.
When families transform their relationship with money, they don’t just change their finances — they change their future. Schedule a call and let us help you redesign your future
