S3E19 – Robin Binkley – Generating over $5K/month in passive income with real estate

Key Timecodes

• (00:43) – Show intro and background history
• (01:47) – Deeper into her background and investing path
• (04:20) – Understanding her business model
• (06:11) – Deeper into her real estate business and numbers
• (08:14) – How she transitioned from her career to that passive income business
• (10:45) – How she handles unexpected costs, and how much is her revenue today
• (12:30) – Is she full-time with that business today?
• (14:07) – The importance of a people and relationship mindset
• (15:49) – How to overcome the fear of the first step
• (17:56) – How other investors can join her business
• (19:12) – How to balance education and action to succeed in that business
• (21:22) – Building a team based on confidence
• (21:51) – A key lesson learned in her journey
• (24:36) – The importance of a good CPA advisor to help with the taxes on that business model
• (26:15) – One key action the listener can take today!
• (31:23) – The worst advice she ever received
• (33:26) – The best advice she ever received
• (39:32) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:03.860] – Intro

Hey, this is Sean Tepper, the host of Payback Time, an approachable and transparent podcast on business investing in finance. I like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go. My next guest recently retired from her career in health care to focus on real estate investing full time. Her and her husband put together a plan to lead their full time jobs, and now they are well on their way to achieving financial independence. In this episode, we talk about who you should network with, how to create a plan, how to execute on that plan, and a deep dive into the numbers of her business. Please welcome Robin Binkley. Robin, welcome to the show.

[00:00:45.030] – Robin

Thank you so much. I am glad to be here with you today.

[00:00:48.280] – Sean

Yes, thanks for taking the time. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your background?

[00:00:52.480] – Robin

So a little bit about my background. I actually ran nursing homes for over 20 years. So I was in health care administration, and I retired from that going on six years. And so I maintained my license, if you will, after I retired just because I’d worked so hard for it. And my husband has had an engineering firm here in the Houston market, and I bring him up because our business is together, Reap, real equity investment partners. And so we can certainly talk about that a little bit longer. But so I moved from personal investing to working on creating larger deals. So syndicating, which was not something that I really knew about. So I created then our syndication business not so long ago. Really, it was October of 2021 when we really created that.

[00:01:47.100] – Sean

Very recent. So there’s a few things I want to dive into. We’ll talk about what you invested in, what you invest in today, and then let’s talk about this is a big one. A lot of people are trying to make that transition from a full time job to creating their own business. So I think that’ll be a fun little journey as well. First things first, when you were investing on your own, were you investing in real estate or the stock market?

[00:02:10.810] – Robin

So a little bit of both. We actually bought our first commercial property when we were both W2 employees, if you will. And that was just one of those unusual deals where my husband had been and his business partner had been leasing. Their business had been in place for 25 years in the same building, and they had been leasing that building from the owner. And he was getting ready to flip out of that. And Brett made a crazy offer where the owner financed it. And we put $5,000 down on a commercial property in the Houston Market in the heights, which is a smoke and hot area of town. It’s very unheard of. It was really all from a Robert Kiyosaki book that Brett had read. And he just took it and made the offer. And that’s really what got us into larger projects outside of single family homes. So that was the segue. But we were both W2 employees, but we were not even realizing syndication. Right. Had never even heard that term.

[00:03:16.610] – Sean

Was this rich dad, poor dad? Yeah. Yeah, pretty obvious. All right. He’s got those four quadrants. So instead of that top left, which isn’t that the employee quadrant, you want to be the investor. I think it’s the bottom right. I could be wrong in.

[00:03:31.100] – Robin

This, but. Yes. So it takes you on that journey of where are you and where do you want to be and how you really get there. But it was really just taking in over the years, as I said, we’ve been investing and doing a lot of reading, but at some point you can’t just read and you have to take action. So to take action, you got to make an offer and you got to be okay with a no to get to a yes. And so that’s really what prompted the offer. Not really feeling that the owner would say yeah, but I think it was the relationship, the long standing relationship, and that we had some credibility. He had known us for so many years, 25 years. So anyway, it’s just one of those things.

[00:04:21.040] – Sean

Let’s drill into that because a lot of people listening are thinking, $5,000? That’s not a whole lot. How do I do this? So let’s break down the structure here. How does it work? I assume there’s some revenue split you’re sharing with this previous owner?

[00:04:36.470] – Robin

Well, so what we did was we put $5,000 down and it’s an 80,000 square foot building. So it allowed us to have multiple tenants, other tenants outside of just our engineering firm. We had engineering, land surveying all wrapped up into the same commercial building, which we are still in today. We still have this property today. And so we have other tenants, which is another source of income. But anyway, we did a deal where it was owner financing for five years, and then we had to flip out of that and we had to get a loan with the bank. But what it allowed us to do, never having any experience with managing a commercial property, we had never done that. We had never dealt with leases and contracts. We’ve dealt with our own lease and contract, but not tenants. And so there was a giant learning curve there. There was a lot of deferred maintenance on the building. So it’s not like we jumped in with eyes wide open as far as you’ve been in the same building and understand where are the leaks, what needs to be repaired, things like that, but not the whole property because there were other renters in there for different businesses like travel agencies, childcare, the city of Houston, and other business entities.

[00:05:55.290] – Robin

And so it was a giant learning curve. One of the things I would say about it is a lot of times in these deals that we find ourselves in, we have experience, but this is an area we had zero experience and we just jumped in and just made it happen.

[00:06:11.000] – Sean

Right on. Now, with 80,000 square feet, I look at this business as what I would call professional services building. It’s not industrial. You don’t have any manufacturing or anything like that. So a lot of the businesses, thank you for listing. That’s where I was thinking of other professional services. You said the city of Houston is in there where it’s really just you get people moved in, give us some desks, internet connection. They’re off and running. It’s not like you have to do big renovations.

[00:06:39.340] – Robin

You do have to do some minor renovations because some of these are three to five years, and so maybe they want what the space looks like, a micro redesigned with cubicles, and or they want a wet bar or some minor cosmetic styled things like that. And so you just have to have to look at who’s the tenant, what’s the length of the lease, and what’s it going to cost you at the end of the day. And so a lot of things learned in that arena. And we also have another commercial building similar in the Bryan College Station area, which is not far from Houston. It’s about an hour and a half.

[00:07:20.060] – Sean

Got it. Okay. And how many units do you rent out?

[00:07:23.270] – Robin

That’s probably got 10 additional tenants outside of our self. Got it.

[00:07:27.930] – Sean

Now, with the owner financing, because I know my audience is going to ask this question, and we dive into the numbers on this show, people want to get down to brass tax. So with that, what revenue split did you have to do with this owner?

[00:07:43.850] – Robin

Honestly, I wish I could tell you the details on that, that you’re wanting to know. My husband specifically handled that deal at that point in time and still manages that. So I can’t really tell you those details on that, not because I don’t want to be forthcoming, but because I don’t really handle that. What I can talk more to you about in that situation is globally how the transaction worked, what we did, and how that allowed us to get into investing in other areas, other asset classes outside of commercial.

[00:08:14.800] – Sean

Got it. Because what they’re thinking about already is, okay, so let’s say I were to do an owner finance property that’s got… We’ll just keep simple math. We’ve got four tenants and each are producing or paying, let’s say, $1500 a month. We’ve got six grand coming in per month. How much of that would go to the owner? How much of you goes in the pocket? Which probably a smart play there is don’t put it in your own pocket, put it back into the equity of the business.

[00:08:44.080] – Robin

Because.

[00:08:44.710] – Sean

You were leading up to your transition point, your husband sold his service business. So you, I assume, or let’s hit this question. How many units when you first got started and how many units did you have when he left his engineering firm?

[00:09:02.050] – Robin

So Brett is still W2. Even though he sold his business, he is still in the process of transitioning out of that because he stayed with the organization for two years. So it’s not been two years yet. Got it. Outside of that, the commercial building is owned separately. It’s a completely separate business entity. We have handled it such that the income coming in from the tenant goes back into the business because there have been things that we’ve needed to do, like replace part of the HVAC system or things of that nature that are unexpected. And because the building is older, there’s been deferred maintenance. We’ve had to do some repair on the roof. We’ve had to do some painting, just some general things that you have to keep things updated, but also to keep things looking well so that people want to have their business there. But we pay ourselves out of that monthly. And this is not what the property generates. The property generates more than this. It’s just what we have elected to pay ourselves and Brett’s partner in this particular project. We could certainly pay ourselves more, but we just feel like it’s always wise to have cash in the bank to take care of some of the unexpected when you have property that large because there’s always something that comes up.

[00:10:23.840] – Robin

There’s an old water leak, or I could name all kinds of stuff, new signage, and some of the unexpected. So that’s really how we’ve handled that. And that’s been a great opportunity to then move into some different… Give you the confidence, if you will, to step into some other spaces.

[00:10:44.940] – Sean

Right. Now, that’s smart because we’ve got people who do commercial as well as residential. And of course, with that, the nature of the beast, you want to be putting some capital away so you can pay for those unexpected events that happen to your property, right? That’s great. You are actually able to take a draw from the property. You’re not putting 100 % back into the business. With that in mind, I do have to ask, can you share what are you taking out of the business to pay yourself?

[00:11:13.850] – Robin

So we were taking about $5,000 a month. It’s not much. And we’ve bumped that up just a little bit. And so, again, there’s two partners. You want to make sure that it’s a minor distribution that we’re taking compared to what we make. And the property has increased in value to a lot in that area of town. And so it was a great way to buy something at one price and understand that it’s appreciated exponentially over the last several years in that area. So when you start looking at replacing your W2 income with your investments, what you really have to make sure you’ve done, which we did and still do and still refine and tweak, is figure out what your investment philosophy and what level of passive income are you looking for. What do you really need to live the lifestyle that you’ve designed for yourself? And sometimes you have to just start at a real basic level. But we’ve been able to, with our investments, work steadily towards our financial goals with our investments, with our investment income. Not just because we sold a business, but what did we do with those dollars to generate passive income?

[00:12:29.920] – Sean

Now, do you have a job outside of the real estate or are you full time in this?

[00:12:35.570] – Robin

I am full time in this. As I said, I retired from my past life and have no regrets on that whatsoever. I will tell you, I’m 54 and it’s a great season of life to really just go back and do all the things that in your mind or your thoughts you’ve wanted to do or you’ve dreamed about. And so you’ve got to really take action and put measures and processes in place to be able to do that. So this is something that we have always wanted to do is invest more full time.

[00:13:10.310] – Sean

Yeah, right. Well, we’re big here with Tykr. You want to make money work for you as opposed to you working for money.

[00:13:18.090] – Robin

That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.

[00:13:20.290] – Sean

Yeah. So I asked the question on if you were full time or not, because I know you said you retired from that. But sometimes people will take on a consulting career and let’s say they work five hours a hour or 10 hours at a higher dollar rate. In this case, sounds like you’re all in on this new venture with your husband. Yeah.

[00:13:37.040] – Robin

So I did some personal consulting in health care for about a year after I retired, but it was just by random opportunities that came up. I was not building a consulting business for health care. That was not my desire. I just did it because I had the time and the skill set, and we worked out opportunities. This is more of what I’m interested in, and certainly, Brett also as a married couple working together.

[00:14:06.100] – Sean

Yeah, absolutely. I like what he’s doing, and it’s de risking the business model by him maintaining his full time. It sounds like he’s fulfilling the contract, seeing out two years transition. I see that a lot with service businesses, sometimes with product businesses as well, but service because there’s a client base.

[00:14:26.220] – Robin

You’re selling people and relationships, at least in our business line, my husband’s business line, which was civil engineering. But it also carries over into real estate and investing. People do business with people that they like and trust. So you’ve got to be able to really connect and really work on relationship enhancement.

[00:14:51.730] – Sean

When is his timeline? When are the two years up?

[00:14:56.710] – Robin

His two years is actually up in August. He has not set specifically that that is going to be his per se retirement date. He’s been doing a lot of thinking and processing over that. And so we will see what’s to come by the end of the year or next for him. Financially, we have set some goals for our investments to generate a certain level of income. We’re not quite there, almost there, but working on that. And that’s going to be a continuous thing because with some investments that you make, there are investments that have a time limit, a five to seven year time limit. And so you’ve got to be able to not eat your seed corn and put your investment dollars back into another investment. You’ve got to be able to track that. So we hastily work on that and just make sure that we’re growing in that space.

[00:15:49.160] – Sean

Right. You got a plan in motion. And I know in this case, especially real estate, the hardest step is always that first step. It’s the same thing for investing in the stock market. It’s like that first stock you buy is always there’s the most fear right there. So you guys get the ball moving. You’ve got between 10 and 20 properties or not properties, but units, it sounds like total. Is that correct? Generating some passive income.

[00:16:12.700] – Robin

It’s not so much separate units as much as they’re encompassed in the same hub of building. But we do have a very small handful of residential homes. We’ve got some lifestyle investments, investments in resort areas on some larger investment properties that I invested in where I’ve got that they’re managed in more like short term rentals, like in the Beaver Creek area on that mountain. So that’s a very high end level of investment that we have there in Belise. So on Amber Guise Key. We’ve diversified a little bit with what I call lifestyle investing in places that we love to travel, that people have to spend a good amount of money to get there and want to stay in luxurious locations.

[00:17:03.290] – Sean

Right on. Let’s take a quick commercial break. Do you feel like stock investing is too confusing, too time consuming, or too risky? It doesn’t have to be. If you ever considered investing on your own but you don’t know where to start, I welcome you to check out Tykr. Tykr guides you through your investment journey by steering you towards safe investments and away from risky investments. There were two main reasons why I created Tykr. Number one, I wanted to remove emotions from investing. In other words, I wanted a software to make buying and selling decisions for me so I don’t have to. And number two, I wanted to save time. Analyzing stocks can take hours, if not days, and I didn’t want to spend all day looking at the computer. I have other hobbies in life I’d rather be enjoying. If you’re interested, you can get started with a free trial. Visit Tykr. Com. That’s TYKR. Com. Again, Tykr. Com. Now with your business, is there Is it just you and your husband investing, or is this a fund where everyday people can come to you and say, Hey, I want to invest in what you’re doing?

[00:18:09.620] – Robin

Yes. So we do have a website. It’s called Real Equity Investment partners, and we absolutely have all of our information out there. So folks can pop in, take a look at perhaps seminars that we’re going to where we continue with education, but also what are we working on, what sorts of educational material are we putting out ourselves to give folks some little micro nuggets, micro doses of education. I really feel like that’s super important. But you’ve got to be able to immerse yourself in education and then do something with the education that you’re getting. You can’t just be a seminar junky, or you can’t just listen to 10 million webinars, or you can’t just listen to solely only podcasts. At some point, you have to do something with all of that. And so that’s really what we’re taking action on, if you will. That’s been what moved the needle for us is just that line in the sand where we said, okay, let’s really do these things that we’ve been talking about, reading about, hearing about.

[00:19:12.290] – Sean

Right on. There’s so many people I know with real estate and the stock market analysis paralysis. They sit and they think and they read and they research and then they think and read and research. And that cycle goes on for years. They’re not doing anything. That’s huge opportunity cost, missed opportunity cost, opportunities. So I like it. Yeah, that’s good. You get educated, but you got to start taking action. You make some mistakes along the way.

[00:19:37.690] – Robin

I do think you alluded to though, maybe one of the projects perhaps have we been in. So this past, we worked with a team. We bought a multifamily 200 door apartment complex in the Atlanta, Georgia area. That was with one team. That was back in February. And so we’ve been working on the occupancy and rates and that whole business line. Multifamily was new for us. We’ve got a great team. And that’s key with whatever project you’re looking to get into is who are you marrying yourself to? Because those relationships can be three, five, seven years long. And so I need to know who you’re going into business with. And then most recently at the end of this year, myself with a couple of other ladies, we had a Bitcoin mining fund. Also a very different asset class to be involved in. So our investment philosophy is a little bit different in that we’re not siloed in one specific area. We’ve had self storage facilities. We divested a couple of those. Those were great, but we divested them because the market was right and we were able to make some money on that and put those dollars into another investment.

[00:20:56.930] – Robin

So as I’m mentioning these things, you can see, gosh, she’s all over the map. And that is true. We are. But that’s okay. That’s our investment philosophy. It’s like, where does the money make the most sense for us? And so if we feel like now, if it’s a great investment for us, we want to bring along those folks who are in our network to look at it as an opportunity for themselves to invest in.

[00:21:22.920] – Sean

So you’re looking for people to join you on your journey, invest side by side. You’re looking for the right personality, some like minded people. As you said, you’re going to be marrying these people for five, seven, 10 years, somewhere in there, right?

[00:21:36.960] – Robin

Yeah, it’s true. I’ve heard some horror stories about that. And you know, the deal is when you’re in business with them, you’re in business with them, so you got to make the most of it. You got to do it. But we’ve not had that experience. It’s been very positive.

[00:21:52.000] – Sean

Can you share any major lessons learned or one key lesson learned on this journey?

[00:21:59.780] – Robin

I know I would say that the key lesson learned, and I’ve mentioned it a couple of times, is not just go to seminars, not just listen to material, not just read, but do something with what you’re learning. Even if you do something and it flops, but you never know until you try. And so that’s really like a very… It sounds very fundamental, but it’s so very true. And so you might be asking yourself, well, gosh, I mean, in order to do whatever it is, I need a team to work alongside me. So the flip side of that is creating the infrastructure for your own business, whatever that is, with your CPA. So vital. I lean on my CPA so much just for the structure of our business, but also my learning. I work with an accountant then in addition to that, which is part of that team. We’ve aligned with a legal team also. And so we have collaborative meetings, which is far down the road. Not everybody starts there. We didn’t start there. The journey took us there. But we have collaborative meetings so that our asset mapping of all of our assets and all of our business structures are lined out and we know what works best for what business.

[00:23:23.700] – Robin

What level of investment do we need to make? And so another huge tip is align with a CPA that is real estate educated and have meetings throughout the year. Don’t wait till two months before taxes are due. Have monthly meetings and talk about your investment strategy so that you know what investment you need to be getting into or investments, plural, by July. Because come October, your CPA is wrapping your stuff up. There might be a little bit of polishing, but for the most part, you need to know what you’re looking for. So that is a huge, huge thing that we’ve worked on and has helped us grow ourselves exponentially financially, but also mentally and educationally from being able to share with others that are getting into real estate or syndicating. Gosh, they’ll say, What do I do? And I’m like, Man, find a CPA. Start there. Find a good CPA. Understand your investment philosophy. Where are you going? What are you trying to achieve? And then in between, you pull that together with other folks.

[00:24:36.540] – Sean

Great advice there, especially in the CPA. Real estate, there can be a lot of complex taxes there. The layman is not going to know. So definitely, I can attest to that. Even with I’ve got two other business Tykr’s the main one. Then I’ve got another LLC as well for other investments. And yet I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have my tax guy guiding me on that journey. Where can we save money? How can we leverage the LLCs to shelter taxes? That’s right. Same thing with real estate.

[00:25:07.320] – Robin

That’s right. And really getting ownership of the things that you’re purchasing or your investments out of your name and into a business structure so that you eventually have that management company, you’ve got foundations and trust and all of those pieces. You grow there. So that’s excellent. But it’s a huge piece of the basic leg structure of what we do.

[00:25:34.180] – Sean

Let’s take a quick commercial break. Hey, this is Sean. I’d like to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for taking the time to listen to this one. I have a quick request. If you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review? The reason is the more ratings we get and the higher those ratings are, the more Apple will share us with the world. So thanks in advance for doing that. And then I have a quick comment. If there are any questions you want me to ask the guests, please head over to our Tykr Facebook group. You could drop a question right there. I’ll go ahead and make a note and I’ll do my best to ask that question on the podcast. All right, back to the show. Before we jump to the rapid fire round, is there one key action our listeners can take today?

[00:26:24.220] – Robin

I would say that the one key action is look at who you are hanging around and who’s in your circle of influence because the people that you hang out with and the folks that you talk with are the people that you’re going to mirror the actions of. And so if you can have great and wonderful friends and people that have been in your life and are beautiful and they’re not going to go away, but they’re not the people that are on the same track as you, educationally, with growing yourself, putting yourself out there. So look at that and really identify. If you look at that and you say, I don’t really have anybody like that, make a list of who you want to be with and start putting yourselves in those environments. I really would. That is a simple thing that any one of us can do at any level of financial income. We can look at who are we hanging out with and does it build us up with where we’re going in our real estate business? Or is it just mediocre because your friends aren’t really into what you’re doing? And we’ve had a lot of experience with that.

[00:27:29.150] – Robin

Our friends weren’t really interested in what we were doing, and some of them still aren’t. But I tell you what, they’re watching us on social media, they’re watching us with deals, they’re watching our finances change, and so they’re asking a lot of questions. And so we are putting ourselves in those environments with the folks that we want to hang out with and be with and learn from. And so that’s again, that can even be locally. Who in your local market? But look at people that are working on the things that you desire and put them on your list and start going to those things, whatever it is they’re attending or doing.

[00:28:04.080] – Sean

Great advice. There’s so many people I know that they’re stuck in those same circles, and that’s great. But it’s not. If you can look ahead into the future, I try to do this all the time as, okay, where do I want to be in five years? And what actions do I need to take today? Not tomorrow, not two weeks from now, not a year from now. What do I need to do today to get myself to that point? In a lot of cases, you got to be talking to new people.

[00:28:27.510] – Robin

Well, Sean, we could talk all day about this, but I know this doesn’t allow us to get into your rapid fire stuff. But goal setting and reviewing those goals every day is really important and key. So another topic, another time. But that really goes into who are you hanging out with? Who are you surrounding yourself with, educationally, personally, all of that?

[00:28:51.350] – Sean

Totally. Okay. All right. Time for the rapid fire round. Ready. I’m ready. You’re ready? All right. Try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less. You’re ready? Okay. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:29:04.610] – Robin

So my favorite podcast is with Robert Helms and Russell gray with the Real Estate Guys radio show. I also, secondly, like Bronson Hills’ Mailbox Money, a nd I.

[00:29:14.780] – Sean

Love that. I’ve had Bronson on the show.

[00:29:17.300] – Robin

Yeah, I like.

[00:29:17.870] – Sean

Bronson a lot. Yeah, good guy. Second question here, what is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:29:24.140] – Robin

Oh, gosh, I have it right here, Who Not How, lives on my desk, and it is teaching me currently how not to be the doer of all things, figure out what am I good at, what can I do, but who can I give the other things to so that my business can grow?

[00:29:40.070] – Sean

Nice. All right, movie question. What is your favorite movie?

[00:29:43.860] – Robin

Okay, just saw this movie. Again, it’s old, but it’s called Oceans 8. And the reason why I like it is not because Sandra Bullock pulled off a jewelry heist, but because it’s the power of women and collaborating and renewing yourself and becoming something more than what you’ve been and really making lemonade out of your lemons. She had been put in prison, set up, blah, blah. But I love how she took random women from all walks of life and really pulled off a major heist. It wasn’t the heist, it was the other pieces that I liked.

[00:30:24.120] – Sean

Yes, the character development. So you’re selling me on it because I remember seeing the trailer is like, I’m a big fan of Oceans’s 11, 12 and 13. Love those movies, right? And I didn’t know what to think of this, but knowing that you have this eclectic group coming together with not the most polished backgrounds, it sounds like, right? That’s fun. That sounds like a lot of fun.

[00:30:47.880] – Robin

But, Sean, isn’t that real? And isn’t that how we connect with people every day? People don’t come to us polished. People come to us broken. People come to us aspiring for more. And sometimes you’re able to just open a door and they do more than they ever thought they could or should deserve. And so to be able to be that person that opens up those doors for folks, whether that’s just something they heard or something they read, and we just usher them into an area. To me, that’s beautiful. That’s what it’s all about.

[00:31:23.180] – Sean

Right on. All right. We got a few business questions here. What is the worst advice you.

[00:31:28.600] – Robin

Ever received? Oh, gosh. Worst advice. It’s not really advice, but I’ve had folks approach me about deals where they were in a super hot seat and needed help with raising capital. And it was just like I was in the afterthought on a last minute, like, can you raise X number of dollars? And we go to closing in two weeks. So it’s not bad advice as much as it is be cautious of who’s calling and why and really explore the deal. And I think there are certain deals during certain windows of time that flourish and then certain deals that are better and in other windows of time. You may look at it, it may not be great to syndicate multifamily right now, but getting into ATMs and carwashes might be right up your alley. I’m just throwing that out there. So it wasn’t really bad advice as much as it was, look at who’s approaching.

[00:32:26.910] – Sean

And I’d like to add to that is a red flag in the dialog. Today’s day and age, if we want something as consumers, we can buy it. We don’t need to be sold on anything. So if anybody’s trying to sell you anything, run the other direction. You should be able to communicate, here’s the value, and if you want it, great. If not, who cares? If you use that approach, that always sells better than you got to buy this in the next.

[00:32:59.130] – Robin

15 minutes. Yeah. It’s like, I’ve got two weeks and I need two million dollars and can you do it?

[00:33:04.410] – Sean

I’m going the.

[00:33:06.030] – Robin

Other direction. That happens a lot. Recently. I say no more than yes. And that’s a good thing, too. Say no more than yes.

[00:33:18.200] – Sean

Warren Buffett teaches that the most successful people in the world learn how to say no.

[00:33:23.080] – Robin

A lot. Yes.

[00:33:25.800] – Sean

All right, let’s look at the equation here. What is the best advice you ever received?

[00:33:30.160] – Robin

Set your goals. Set your goals. And for years, I always lived in what New Year’s resolutions was I going to make? It was always, I want to lose away, I want to go do whatever or whatever. But it was really when we got super focused on our syndication business and understood the true essence of goal setting and how that carries over into your business. You really need to have 90 day reviews of your business. Where are you? Set some objectives and follow that. That can be everything from doing a syndication to being on podcast to posting X number of times on social media, whatever that might be. But it’s also when you set goals for your life, they have to be tangible and they need to have timelines and they need to… And they can be stretched goals. You want to have big, hurry, audacious goals, but you have to put in the work to get there. And then as you’ve done that, we attend a goal setting every year that’s powerful. And we do review our goals all the time. And there are separate goals. Brett has his goals. I have my goals. And then what we’ve done is we’ve taken that home and we have family office meetings and we’ve created vision boards with my adult children.

[00:34:48.380] – Robin

And so we have family office meetings monthly and we’ve got them doing book studies. We’ve got them reviewing their goals and all of that. In fact, the book study we’re doing right now with our family is The Gap and the Gang, right here. Love this one. It’s a great easy read for a family office meeting and understanding what the author is trying to say there. So that would be my powerful point is goals.

[00:35:14.660] – Sean

You’re really hammering on that today. And I appreciate that because a lot of people, they set goals that are too ambiguous, such as I want a new house or I want to be a multimillionaire by X age. And that’s cute, but what is the how? Break it down in tangible, measurable steps, like, so how many sales do you need? Or how many phone calls you got to make? Or how many customers do you need? Or in your case, how many properties do I need to generate this much revenue so I can quit my full time.

[00:35:46.420] – Robin

Corporate job? That’s right. And another tip with that is work on your connections, your database. You have to get out there and meet people. And then you have to follow up with people. And so if you’re looking to grow your business, you can’t sit around at home and just be on Zoom all the time. I mean, that’s powerful. It’s a piece of it. But you got to get out and make personal connections with people and go a little deep. Sometimes you don’t have to go deep. Sometimes you can just go a little deep because you would be, I don’t have that many active investors in my database because I’ve worked on my deepening those relationships. And so if I’m going to invest in something again, they’re going to come along for the ride. So there’s power in that.

[00:36:36.650] – Sean

Thank you for touching on that. I had a friend come to me about a year or two ago, and he said, as I near 40, I’ve got a lot of friends, but there’s no meaningful, deep relationships. I don’t know a lot about these people. And he’s like, I need to transition from a whole bunch of friends to a few friends. I know what their interests are, what their hobbies are, what their kids into, what are their family. Get to know people at more than just a surface level.

[00:37:06.280] – Robin

It sounds easy, but it’s intentional and you have to schedule it and you have to just do it and you have to be dedicated to doing it. And that’s really how we’ve grown our database, if you will. I have a lot of people in there, but the people that I really wholeheartedly connect with a lot, I mean, we do dinners, we do lunches. If we travel, if they’re out of town, we actively work to connect with them.

[00:37:31.280] – Sean

Right on. Great advice. All right, so we got the time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would.

[00:37:41.490] – Robin

You say? Dear younger me, you know there’s a song called that and it’s a Christian song. It’s actually pretty beautiful. I wouldn’t go that far back in time. I think what has me where I am right now is every piece of what I’ve journeyed through working a W2, raising three adult children, creating a family business, being able to coach them along about financial education. You don’t learn that in school. You don’t even learn that in college. So I’ve got adult kids who are married and one that’s left in college, and she helps me in our business, and they all do. And so I wouldn’t go that far back. But what I would probably do is go back maybe about seven years, not that long ago, because at that point, that’s when we really did our first commercial deal. I wish I had known about syndicating. I’d never even heard that term. And so I would go back maybe about to that window of time, and that would have changed the trajectory a little bit. The passive income that I have now with some of our other investments, I would have understood what does it really mean to syndicate into a bigger deal and do that with other people using other people’s money.

[00:38:58.640] – Robin

But you have to be mature enough to steward other people’s money. So I wouldn’t go back to my 20 s for sure. Definitely not my 30 s. My 40 s were great. Leave them where they were. But maybe.

[00:39:12.360] – Sean

About 47. It’s not that long ago. You’re contrarian because I mentioned before the show, most people go back to 18, 19 20s when they.

[00:39:20.720] – Robin

Were there. I wouldn’t because that’s built the character of who I am today. And without those bumps and bruises, I would not be who I am today. So I wouldn’t try it, would not try it.

[00:39:31.920] – Sean

I love it. Great advice. Well, I really enjoyed this interview. I hope a few of our customers reach out to you to either network, to learn from you, maybe even partner up with you. So where is the best place they can reach you?

[00:39:44.200] – Robin

So right now, I would love for them, just so I can track it, I would love for them to hit my website and go to next level@real equity investment partners. Com. And the reason why I say next level is I had the privilege of co authoring a book with Kyle Wilson. I was in his book. And so there’s a free download that your viewers can get my chapter to just read a little bit more about me, my background, my journey, and my investment philosophy. And so it’s a fabulous way for them to do that and touch base with me through there.

[00:40:21.340] – Sean

Make sure you send me that link. We’re going to make sure that’s in the show notes. People can just listen to the show, click the link.

[00:40:28.300] – Robin

And we’re going to go there. Yeah, we’d love that. It’s a great.

[00:40:30.910] – Sean

Great read. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Robin. This is great.

[00:40:34.840] – Robin

Thank you. I really appreciate it. I love your questions and how you’ve got everything set up, so it’s beautiful. Really good.

[00:40:41.240] – Sean

Thank you. All right, we’ll talk soon.

[00:40:42.880] – Robin

Have a great day.

[00:40:44.660] – Sean

Bye bye. Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. Also, if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple podcast and leave a review? The more reviews we get, the more Apple will share this podcast with the world. So thanks for doing that. And last thing, if you do hear any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please keep in mind this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not make a buy or sell decision based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. Talk to you.