Be the Solution with Maria Quattrone

Revamp365: The Software Revolutionizing Real Estate Investment

• Maria Quattrone • Season 1 • Episode 333

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Drew Farnese's journey from flipping houses to creating revolutionary real estate investment software reveals how mindset shapes business success. After years of manually analyzing MLS data through Excel spreadsheets to find profitable investment properties, Drew transformed this process into Revamp365.ai – a platform that automatically evaluates thousands of listings to identify only the most profitable opportunities.

What makes this approach so powerful? Rather than spending countless hours scouring listings, investors can simply specify their profit goals and geographic preferences, then review only the properties matching their exact criteria. The proof came quickly when a veteran flipper with 20+ years of experience found two overlooked properties worth a combined $250,000 in potential profit within just two weeks of using the platform. Despite being on the market for over 90 days, these gems had been missed by everyone else – including multiple MLS feeds from experienced agents.

Throughout our conversation, Drew shares profound insights about entrepreneurship and personal development. "90% of the reason my business declined is because mentally, I decided that's what it should do," he reveals when discussing a previous business downturn. This radical self-awareness mirrors the podcast's core message – taking complete ownership of outcomes rather than blaming external circumstances. As Drew puts it: "There's almost always something you can do, no matter what happens in your life or business. You've got to take control and be accountable at all times."

Currently covering seven states through Bright MLS with plans for nationwide expansion, Revamp365 represents a competitive advantage for serious investors who understand that finding profitable deals requires analyzing vast amounts of data efficiently. Whether you're flipping houses, building a rental portfolio, or wholesaling properties, this conversation reveals how the right technology paired with personal accountability can transform your real estate investment business.

Connect with Maria Quattrone:
Facebook: Maria Quattrone
Facebook Page: REMAX at Home Facebook
Facebook Page: Rise in Real Estate Facebook
LinkedIn: Maria Quattrone
YouTube: Maria Quattrone
Instagram: @maria_quattrone
TikTok: mariaquattronerealestate
Website: MQrealesate.com
Office number: 215- 607-3535

Maria Quattrone:

This is the Be the Solution podcast, and I'm Maria Quattrone, your host Today. I'm excited to bring on Drew Farnese. Drew is somebody I met at an event I think it was circuit 2018-19, and we were at this mastermind at a mutual friend's place and that's when we first met. I loved Drew's energy then and I've been following him on social and engaging with him on social, but we haven't talked in a long time. So I'm excited to bring Drew on this morning.

Maria Quattrone:

Drew's company is Revamp 365. We're going to dive into what that is. It's a great tool for investors and we're going to talk to him about how that got started and what it looks like and how investors can use it to make money right now in the Philadelphia metro market. So, drew, this morning I have a quote for you and I picked this quote for you Life has no limitations except for the ones that you make. Les Brown, life has no limitations except the ones you make. I thought that was so apropos for you this morning, based on the changes that you've made in your business, and we think that you know, because we're doing one thing, we have to continue on that one thing forever and we can pivot, we can switch, we can develop and do something new, regardless of however old you are. In fact, drew, the other day I was talking with my family.

Maria Quattrone:

We were down the shore and we were looking at some. Somebody showed me a video and this video was of this woman. She was doing videos on Instagram and she is 106 years old, wow. And I think her name is Rosalia, or older Italian, 106-year-old Italian woman. Her thing is all about President Trump. She loves President Trump. She had on her 4th of July outfit. She's in a wheelchair and she's going on and on. She's got these cool glasses on about this and that, and you know politics whatever. It's not because of like any of that, it's she started. So I look all the way back. She started doing these videos maybe October or September of last year. She has 108 videos done.

Drew Farnese:

Wow.

Maria Quattrone:

And she's 106 at the end of it. She goes follow me for more videos here.

Drew Farnese:

Bravo, bravo bravo, that's so cool. That's so cool so welcome to the show.

Drew Farnese:

Yeah, Maria, thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate that and I absolutely resonate with that quote. It's something that I've been thinking a lot about recently. To your point, it's like what we met years ago at a mastermind, and I feel that I've been on a self-development journey for the last probably decade of my life, like really kind of always being aware and just kind of self-reflecting what am I doing to get better, what am I doing to improve myself?

Drew Farnese:

And I've kind of always had an abundant mindset, right, and that thought that we are only limited by our own beliefs and everything is something that I probably have prescribed to for years of life, right, but still to that point, just like we were talking before we got on here, the last two years of my life two, three years, whatever it was, you know um, I kind of fell into like a little bit of a tailspin, you know, and it's like business was declining and everything.

Drew Farnese:

And now I'm I'm on the other end of it and I'm feeling great, Business is great, Everything's awesome. But for a while it's like things really weren't awesome as soon as I got out of that and I kind of just looked at my life, the situation, my business for the past year that it had not done great. All that I could think was yeah, no, I'm pretty goddamn confident. 90% of the reason that my business declined is because mentally in my mind, I kind of decided that's what it should do. You know, like I kind of brought that into reality it's. It's kind of weird, but I thought about that very recently, so that resonates.

Maria Quattrone:

So basically, what you're saying is you didn't want that anymore.

Drew Farnese:

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone:

So you projected it.

Drew Farnese:

Yeah, yep, and it took me a long time to kind of realize what was happening and why it was happening and everything, because it's always easy when you're in something to just be like, well, it's external forces. There's nothing that I can do to change the course of what is happening in my life and usually that's bullshit. There's almost always something that you can do, no matter what happens to you in life or business, and just got to take control and be accountable at all times for everything.

Maria Quattrone:

Thoughts become things, whether, whatever their thoughts, are they, they happen. So it's important to keep what you tell yourself and the way that you speak to yourself and what you project. So it's a projection so like why are these things happening Right, I don't know. Sometimes, is it because we want them to? Projection, so like why are these things happening Right, I don't know. Sometimes, is it because we want them to?

Drew Farnese:

Yeah so fast forward.

Maria Quattrone:

You know, two and a half years ago, you've been building the software and working on how do I help investors make more money in real estate? Really is what it comes down to.

Drew Farnese:

Yep.

Maria Quattrone:

And so let's dive into it and let's go through this software and what it actually does and how we can help investors streamline this process and make more money in this business.

Drew Farnese:

Yeah. So in a nutshell, what we built with revamp365.ai real estate investor marketplace. It helps flippers, landlords and even wholesalers find deals that they otherwise simply wouldn't have. So taking a step back, probably six, seven years ago, I was flipping more houses. Then, when I started my journey in real estate investing, I was flipping, I was flipping more houses. Then, when I started my journey in real estate investing, I was flipping and I was a landlord and at that time I had a goal that I wanted to flip 50 houses in a year and I had in-house construction company and everything and we had a lot of capital lined up. The biggest issue that we had was finding enough deals that we could buy in the geographic location where we had our crews and everything. So basically what I was doing back then I was buying a lot of our deals from the MLS. Some of them we would get off market.

Drew Farnese:

I wasn't really doing direct marketing at the time but with the MLS what I would do is we were pretty dialed in on the quality and level of renovation that we would do on any of the houses that we would flip. So basically I would go in the MLS, I would export every active listing and I would just put it into Excel and I would basically just plug in our average cost per square foot for renovation and we had a formula to kind of determine ARV of every listing and everything. And instead of looking at 5,000 properties and trying to figure out which ones would be a good flip or maybe a good rental, it would cut down the list for me to the 20, 30, 40 properties that could be profitable and pretty much match my buying criteria. So at that time I was leveraging that and I would do it every day. It would take whatever 20, 30 minutes as opposed to spending 80 hours a week scouring the MLS to try to find stuff. And that worked. We were buying deals.

Drew Farnese:

I had a bunch of other flipper and landlord friends at the time. They're like Drew, you got to show me how you're doing that stuff with the MLS and cherry picking the stuff. That's good for you. And I tried to show a bunch of my buddies. I didn't think that it was that tech heavy, it was just bright MLS export, put it in Excel and run some formulas. None of my buddies could kind of wrap their head around it. They're like dude, that's way over my head. So at the time I was like, okay, well, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing and maybe one day, maybe one day I'll turn that into like an application right Fast forward five, six years or something.

Drew Farnese:

And it was like I had a couple of really good years in wholesale and flipping, so I kind of had a lot of profits that I kind of wanted to reinvest and not pay taxes on anyway. So I was naive and I thought, since we already have a website where we sell all our wholesale deals, how hard could it be to tie in that thing that I was doing all those years ago with the MLS to our website? It can't be too hard, it can't be too crazy. Yeah, I was wrong. It was definitely hard and it was definitely crazy and it was 10 times more expensive than I thought it would be. So it probably took about a year until we even had like a working prototype, if you will. That was probably about a year ago now that we finally released everything.

Drew Farnese:

And yeah, you know, not long after I launched it, I held like a webinar where I had like 50 people on there just showing them what it is, how it works. And two weeks after the webinar, it was the coolest thing, best testimonial case study I could have ever asked for this guy, stan Wilder. He's a flipper over in Jersey. He's been flipping there 20 years. He was on the webinar and he hits me up two weeks later. He goes Drew, just wanted to let you know your software works pretty awesome. Thanks for telling me about it. I'm like, okay, but you know what happened? Why are you telling me this? And he's like I found two deals on there that were on the MLS, obviously, and uh, both of them like just all the details. It's insane. Both of them that he bought were 90 plus days on market and so back up a step.

Drew Farnese:

Like this guy's been flipping over in Jersey for 20 years. His wife is an agent. Obviously he has dozens of connections. He told me he was on a couple different MLS feeds from different agents that knew his buying criteria. Neither of these deals showed up anywhere for him they were 90 plus days on market. So not only did he miss them, everyone else missed them as well. And the first one he was going to make 150 grand as a flip. He didn't find it. Nobody else found it. And the second one he was also going to make 100 grand on higher price point market that he's in. I think it was like a 700 purchase, 1.3 out sale, whatever, um. But yeah, to have that kind of feedback like two weeks after I launched I was like shit, all right, you know. Everything that I did all the blood, sweat, tears and money, um, was worth it. It was really cool.

Maria Quattrone:

So that's super exciting.

Drew Farnese:

And still developing and pushing new releases and stuff.

Maria Quattrone:

That's awesome. So right now you're in. What counties are you in?

Drew Farnese:

So all of Bright MLS. So it's seven states, you know the southeastern part of Pennsylvania, jersey, all of Delaware, maryland, virginia, west Virginia will be expanding to other MLS territories, probably early next year.

Maria Quattrone:

That's amazing. So how does it actually work?

Drew Farnese:

In a nutshell, what we do is we have a data license with the MLS, so we take all of their data and we actually analyze it in the backend of our database and basically just kind of come up with a few values. Right, we're coming up with an ARV a potential after repair value for the property. We're coming up with rental analysis for the property how much could it rent for, hypothetically and a couple other things. But so, in a nutshell, since we're doing all that on the backend, what it lets a user do from the front end is you can just go in there and say, hey, I'm looking for fix and flips in Delaware County where I could make at least $,000 bucks, and just put in there, I want to make $40,000. And since everything's already analyzed, it's going to be able to pinpoint properties for you that you should look at.

Maria Quattrone:

That's super cool.

Drew Farnese:

Yeah, yeah, so I know this happened.

Maria Quattrone:

You just started it and it worked great and there were no problems or anything like that.

Drew Farnese:

No, no problems. Everything worked wonderfully from the start.

Maria Quattrone:

I was going to ask you this question who did you have to become for that to happen?

Drew Farnese:

Ooh, great question who did I have to become? Well, the simple cop-out answer is the guy I am today. I don't know, but no, it's a journey and it never ends right. I'm still not the person that I feel that I ultimately need to be to accomplish all the things that I want to accomplish, but yeah, I had to work on and work through a lot of different things.

Drew Farnese:

Through the development of this, I've learned this about myself that the way that I build anything whether it's technology and software products or businesses or sales teams that I've built with the wholesale company or construction companies and crews and all this stuff the way that I'm able to be successful in building something is I usually go super, super deep into the topic and learn how to do everything. So even in software, people come to me. They're like how'd you do that? Do you have a background in technology? Did you go to college for software? No, I didn't do any of that. Basically, software was kind of the same thing.

Drew Farnese:

Like I started, I hired a couple people and they did a terrible fucking job. So in order to hire someone else and try to make sure that they didn't do a terrible job, I had to learn and research all the things that they were going to do for me. So I know a lot about different programming languages. Now I'm not a coder, I don't know how to do all this stuff, but I know enough about everything that I can basically effectively manage. It was the same journey for me. In flipping houses I learned how to do electrical, plumbing, hvac. I know all of it. I'm not great at any of it by any means, but I know enough about it that I can effectively project manage and be able to get something to the finish line.

Maria Quattrone:

It's a lot of no one stuff right.

Drew Farnese:

It is. It is, and I know like I've had a lot of coaches and mentors over the years that are super big on just the um, who not how, like, find the right person, plug them in and, you know, let them worry about all that. In my experience, maybe it comes down to me, maybe it just comes down to my shortcomings, I don't know, I'm a terrible manager. That's a whole different topic, but for me, the only way that I've been able to push something across the finish line is going super deep in the topic and understanding it at a deep, fundamental level.

Maria Quattrone:

Yeah, are you still flipping?

Drew Farnese:

Still flipping. I'm actually flipping more now than I have in five years. Ironically, it's kind of a plug for my software, but it's like four of the flips that I have going on right now. I literally bought off the MLS and they're easy rehabs, the only projects that I'm taking on right now. It's 180 degrees opposite of what I was doing years ago. Years ago I would only do full gut renovations and everything. Now I'm only taking on stuff that's super simple, cosmetic stuff. I'm trying to do stuff with no mechanicals, no electrical plumbing, HVAC necessary. We're talking just like paint flooring, maybe kitchen, maybe bathroom, $30,000, $40,000 renovations, 30, $40,000 renovations, and my software does a great job at picking up on them. So yeah, got a couple going on now. It's rocking and rolling. It's rocking and rolling.

Maria Quattrone:

Yeah, who was somebody that a mentor of yours that you really learned the most from, that really affected your life in a positive way?

Drew Farnese:

affected your life in a positive way? That's a great question and I have so many different mentors that I've looked up to over the years, some that I've paid, some that were just, you know, coaches to me that I didn't necessarily pay Right. Um, I would have to say honestly, before I even left my W2 job to do real estate full time, I was working in manufacturing and the guy that owned that company awesome guy, rob Bonifant we built clutches for race cars and I was a quality manager there and I started there when I was like 18 years old or something. And I started there when I was like 18 years old or something and I was there until I was 24. And then I left to do real estate 24, 25. I don't know.

Drew Farnese:

And that guy, he's just so brilliant, such an out of the box thinker and everything, and still to this day it's like, again, he's not one of the paid mentors that I've had in my business career, you know, but he's so out of the box with the way that he thinks about solving problems. He's like one of the best problem solvers that I've ever seen in my life. And it's ironic because the guy's eccentric, he's kind of a goofy, quirky guy. A lot of people that meet him for the first time think he's actually an idiot just because of kind of the way that he is and he's goofy and stuff. And knowing him at a deep level, it's like no, he's actually probably one of the sharpest people that I've ever met in my life and just his approach to solving problems has helped me, you know, immensely throughout my career. So props to him.

Maria Quattrone:

Oh, I love that I had one of those mentors like that when I entered into advertising sales in 1993, 1994. And he was like goofy, but he really wasn't you would think at first, and he taught me a lot, you know, and I think very fondly of him and I don't know if, thinking back like if it wasn't for him, if I would have stayed in the industry, I might have quit, because I wanted to quit. It was hard quit.

Drew Farnese:

It was hard.

Drew Farnese:

I totally understand and I just shared this on social media a month ago or something that I had a coach this was probably I don't know a couple of years ago that I was growing my wholesale company aggressively for a while and it's like I got my sales team, I got up to a total company size of like 14 people in house and, uh, everything was going great up until a point where it wasn't and we kind of just had like a bunch of inner company drama and just bullshit, right, and I had a coach that I hired at the time and basically I paid this guy 20 grand to basically just solve like one issue that I had in my company.

Drew Farnese:

And in hindsight I can look back and it's like what he told me I was already going to do anyway Honestly I was. It's just it kind of gave me the clarity and the conviction to go do what I had to freaking do anyway, which wasn't an easy decision at the time. But it's funny because people from an outside perspective looking in, they're like you spent $20,000 to solve something like that and it's like no, look at it from a different perspective. I spent $20,000 to not blow up my company and fricking quit. That's what I did, you know, and it worked incredibly, and I would have done it again any day of the week.

Maria Quattrone:

Yeah, well, it's the reason we hire professionals. That's right, the story of the guy you know. They tried to fix this boat and big boat, big ship thing and couldn't get back. So they call this guy in. He goes in with his little tool kit and he bangs some things around and moves this thing and half hour later he's like it's fixed. They're like he's like like how much, a hundred thousand dollars. He's like it only took you a half an hour. He goes oh, that took me 30 years to figure out how to do it in a half an hour.

Drew Farnese:

That's right.

Maria Quattrone:

You know, as professionals, people want to. Sometimes some people want to go. You hire a professional to get it done. It doesn't matter, you get it done quickly and swiftly. You have to pay for that. That's right, right, that's right, right. You know, I love this in real estate, how people think that, oh well, everybody should be paid the same. Or somebody with a lot of experience, because you want to pay some other person who's in the business six months, you want to pay them X commission 2%. Right, then we should take that. Why it's crazy? Yep, no, you're not paying me for, you're paying me for the knowledge of 21 years.

Maria Quattrone:

That's right 31 years in sales. Yep, there's things that I know that you you wouldn't know unless you've worked through them. You just want it. There's no, it's called experience.

Drew Farnese:

Absolutely. From a surface level. People look at it and say, oh well, if Drew could sell my house or Maria could sell my house, you know Maria should do it. For whatever Drew would do it for it's like, no, just because, like there is so much that you can't see exactly, like you said, the 30 years of experience that gives you the insight and the foresight to be able to work through unforeseen problems a lot of times before they even happen, you know so, until you can guarantee equal outcomes and equal results, no, there should not be equal income, and that's not just for real estate, that's for anything. Right, right, just like it's based.

Maria Quattrone:

I said well, do you want to hire the dentist to pull your tooth out, that this is the first tooth that they're going to pull out, or do you want to hire the one who's pulled out 5,000 tooths? I know which one I'm picking.

Drew Farnese:

Yep.

Maria Quattrone:

And guess what? She costs more money.

Drew Farnese:

Yep. That's how it?

Maria Quattrone:

goes. I don't want the pain. I want it done in one second. I don't want you trying to figure out how to pull my tooth out while you're in my mouth.

Drew Farnese:

Yep, exactly right.

Maria Quattrone:

Right, so it's. You know we go back. Being an entrepreneur is blood, sweat, tears. People don't see. You know they see the glory, but they don't know the story.

Drew Farnese:

That's a good way to put it.

Maria Quattrone:

They see the glory, but they don't know the story.

Drew Farnese:

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone:

They don't know the story.

Drew Farnese:

So what's next for you? What's next for me? Just continue working on this platform and just making it the best real estate investor marketplace. Kind of have a whole, a whole launch plan for other markets and strategic partnerships and everything to be able to just get this out there and just continue helping people to find more deals more efficiently. You know, and through that I'm sure I'll continue to flip houses, buy more rentals and, you know, just try to be the best version of me that I can.

Maria Quattrone:

I love it Be the solution.

Drew Farnese:

Yeah, absolutely.

Maria Quattrone:

Be the solution. You know, be the solution is all about 100% awareness, accountability of who we are as humans. I call it radical self-awareness. I like that. To the point of like if you're in your car and you're sitting at a light and the car behind you hits you, Whose fault is it? Hmm?

Drew Farnese:

I like that.

Maria Quattrone:

People say it's the car that hit me.

Drew Farnese:

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone:

I said no, it's your fault for being there. If I'm holding a cup of coffee in my hand, a cup of black coffee, and I'm wearing all white, and you trip bang into me and the cup of coffee spills all over me, whose fault is it? It's my fault for holding a cup of black coffee. Yeah, people will tell you you're crazy for thinking that they do.

Drew Farnese:

Oh, they do. By the way, they think I'm a nut.

Maria Quattrone:

Yeah, people will tell you you're crazy for thinking that, but they do. By the way, they think I'm a nut.

Drew Farnese:

Yep, that's okay, that's totally okay. I I've come to the conclusion Maybe this is just true for me, but uh, I don't know. I think there's a lot of things that I'm probably straight up fucking delusional on. But guess what? If those delusions are driving me towards what I want to accomplish and I'm helping people and not hurting anybody along the way, let me be crazy. Let me be crazy.

Maria Quattrone:

Yeah, I lived in a world of a lot of victim mindset at some juncture a while back, and myself even I remember things happening and I would say, why is this happening to me? One thing after another. I was probably early 20s but it was a shit show. I mean when I say a shit show, like everything looked good on the outside but on the inside a big shit show, and I would think and I would have like all these crazy stories and that would tell people the crazy stories that would happen. And in hindsight, thinking back, you know I had culpability and why was I there? Why was I at that diner at 3 am when the guy pulled the gun out? Maybe I shouldn't have been out at 3.30 in the morning. How about that?

Drew Farnese:

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone:

Because, nothing good happens then Somebody told me anything good. That happens when you're out at 3.30 in the morning or you're in a bar at four o'clock in the morning. No good outcome? Yep, right. So you think I think back to these stupid things. Luckily I'm still alive, you know, being attacked, being pulled into a man's bathroom, being attacked by the guy.

Drew Farnese:

Oh, my God.

Maria Quattrone:

You know, but why was I there? I shouldn't have been there. I don't even know if I was 21 when that happened. I shouldn't have been there yeah my own fault. Yeah well, people won't look at it like that. That's like a lot of like deep personal development and a lot of thought and reflection, and know pulling off the mask.

Drew Farnese:

I think it's easier for people to just reflect blame for any experiences in their life outwards rather than inwards. It's easier than facing yourself and saying maybe I'm the problem, maybe I shouldn't have been problem, maybe I shouldn't have been there, maybe I shouldn't have done that, maybe I should have done better, maybe I should have been better. That's hard. It's hard to say I was not good enough, I did not do a good enough job, I messed up. Most people won't even tell you that they messed up. No kidding, I fuck up 20 times a day.

Maria Quattrone:

It's got a big blowout before we got on the podcast this morning about not taking account of not me, the person I blew up on, not taking accountability for their actions and not even not accepting, not apologizing, not nothing. And guess what I've tolerated? So guess who's fault it is mine yeah, yeah. Which is, you know, I'm angry with myself about it because I've tolerated it Yep. So now I've got to make some hard decisions, or maybe not so hard.

Drew Farnese:

Right Yep.

Maria Quattrone:

At the end of the day, it's all about you know. That's how the name of the podcast Be the Solution. We solve problems. You solve problems. You solve the problem of the investor looking for the deal. How can I make this more efficient? How can I do things better? How can I, you know, not waste 80 hours a week scrubbing the mls? So I'm excited for you and, uh, continue to watch your journey. It's really great stuff, drew, and thank you for sharing with us today. We'll have you back at the end of the year, uh, to see what's in store for 2026, and maybe you could tell us about some of the new markets you're launching in at that point, and at that point I'll have used your software. We can talk about that too. So thank you again, and I'm blessed and grateful for your time this morning, love it.

Drew Farnese:

Thanks so much for having me on, maria, greatly appreciate you.

Maria Quattrone:

My pleasure.