Latest / Go Big with Gib Podcast / Turning Job Loss into Financial Freedom: Randy Smith's Journey from Corporate Sales to Real Estate Success

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Turning Job Loss into Financial Freedom: Randy Smith's Journey from Corporate Sales to Real Estate Success · Go Big with Gib Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Go Big with Gibb podcast, where we talk to professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs about their big wins.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, welcome to this episode of Go Big with Gibb.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Today I have got a very exciting guest here with me, randy Smith.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Randy, how are you today?
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I am doing really well, gibb.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Really excited to be here me Randy Smith.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Randy, how are you today?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I am doing really well, gib.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Really excited to be here.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to have you.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Let's dive right into it.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I'll give you the Reader's Digest version, gib, We'll try to keep this short, so feel free to cut me off.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I love to talk about myself, but yeah, so I'm a sales guy.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I was in corporate America for about 25 years.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I spent the majority of those 25 years with two very large organizations Fortune 100, Fortune 200 organizations and spent the last 10 years in a financial services sales role where I was literally carrying the bag, flying all over the country meeting with small business owners in person and helping them with their payables process to pay their vendors.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: And yeah, my journey is kind of unique in that I was laid off actually two different times from each of those large organizations and the first time I got laid off I, you know, like a lot of salespeople I was, you know, we worked hard, we played hard I will just say that and I would get those large bonus checks and we would burn through those bonus checks and not be as smart as we should have been with those big checks that we were getting.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: So when I got laid off that first time, while I did get a severance, that severance ticking time clock was just haunting me every single day, week and month as the severance was wearing off and I was really in a position where we were starting to make hard decisions as a family like what are we going to?
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: do, am I going to end up taking?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: a job making less money than I was making before.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Just certainly I had not done a good job with my finances up to that point, so I was in a situation, my finances up to that point.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: So I was in a situation.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: So, as luck would have it, I ended up finding this next career with an even better company and ended up actually making significantly more money in the 10 plus years that I was there.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: But this time I had in the back of my head that layoffs were really a part of corporate America.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: And I would see that people were getting laid off every couple of years or so and it was usually pretty abrupt and large numbers and it didn't matter whether you were good or not, whether you were a performer, whether you were a leader, they would just swipe and they would swipe hard.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: So about five years into that career I started investing in real estate and I wanted to I used the term decrease my dependence on my W-2.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Because you have no real security in corporate America, because it'll often come at any time.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So I started, like a lot of folks do, in real estate.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: I bought a bunch of single family homes I bought out of state because I'm here in Phoenix and you just can't cash flow on single family here in Phoenix and I did the turnkey strategy.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Then I did the BRRRR strategy in Atlanta and found pretty quickly that I was not going to be able to scale that the way that I wanted to.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: So I shifted over into passive investing and shifted very quickly, started putting a lot of money into passive investment deals and then, as luck would have it, just about the time the large majority of my household expenses were covered from my passive income, I got laid off again.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of what brings you to where we are today.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I ended up launching a business where I help other people do the same thing I did, and Impact Equity was born.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: So, Randy, what time frame was that when you started Impact Equity?
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: June of 22.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: So, coming up on two years ago.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I've noticed that you've been super active in the space.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, coming up on two years, but you've done a lot in two years Wow.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so being a sales guy, activity is key.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I was a sales leader as well, so I was always beating the drum of activity, activity, activity, activity.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: So that is translated very, very well into the entrepreneurial path that I've done as well.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: And what they say if you want something done, ask somebody who's really, really busy, and I've been the guy that's just always been very, very busy and I've taken that into this world too.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: So since launching in June of 22, we've now done 16 projects and we have five different operators that we partner with, and we've helped 105 investors place about seven and a half million dollars in the last two years.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, that is quite a track record in a very short period of time.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And one compliment that I will give you is that I see you as somebody that is very selective over who you work with and what deals you work on, and you know I'm watching you from a 30,000 foot perspective.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: I may not know the daily activities of your business, but I'm really impressed with how carefully you've chosen your projects to be involved in and we know this is a reputation business.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: But tell me a little bit about how you select an operator that you want to partner with.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a simple answer.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: I will just say that and it's an ever-evolving process as well I will share with you.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: When I first started in the business, I had invested very, very heavily with one operator.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: I think I had invested in eight or nine of his deals, so it was an obvious first choice for me to partner with Rise48 when I think I had invested in eight or nine of his deals.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: So it was an obvious first choice for me to partner with Rise48 when I first got started because I had an existing relationship.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I had invested about 25% of my net worth with him.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Zach and the team regularly.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: I meet them in their office.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: We do co-sponsored events together, so that was an easy one.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: When it came time for me to start looking at bringing on additional operators, I really needed to refine that process more, and you know, gib, as well as I do, that when you're placing capital for other folks, that is much more sensitive than even placing your own capital.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: So I take that much more seriously, so you know.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I've done all the things that people in the space do I shared somewhere else.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Like literally, you can go to Google and just write what are the top 100 questions to ask a syndicator and that'll actually give you a pretty good start on questions to start asking.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: I've built now I've got this checklist that I've got about 85 questions that I either ask or I dig into and research and find myself before I'll dig into those and what that looks like is that I end up getting you know I might see eight or ten deals a week.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: And I end up picking one deal every 45 to 60 days that I will actually work on.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: So, it's a very detailed process.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: It takes a lot of time.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: It's very heavily weighted on past experience and track record.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: It's very heavily weighted on, like, the significance of their business and you know, are they fully integrated?
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Do they do everything in-house?
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Are they one of these operators that's going to blame the property manager, or blame construction management, or blame any number of different things as to why deals are going wrong?
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: I want to work with people that own and control the very large majority of the business operation.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's fantastic.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I read in your bio and some of the materials that you have on your website.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: You know you've invested in 25 passive investments with 11 different operators.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Is that accurate?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: That is accurate, yes, wow.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a ton of investments.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: You know, when did you start passive investing?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I know that Impact Equity was born in June of 2022.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Were you passive investing prior to that date or did?
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Has everything happened from June 2022 forward?
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, no, no.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: So I I started looking at the passive investing space probably midway through 2019, as I was working on these single family homes and I'm flying to Atlanta and dealing with contractors and COVID's just around the corner.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: This idea of passive investing- I thought I was passively investing with single family and you and I both know it is not passive.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: I started looking into it then and then I think I placed my first investment as an LP in January of 2020.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: So just before COVID hit is when I started, and you know I have a tendency to kind of go all in when I do anything.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: So I very quickly moved a lot of capital.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I made some early mistakes in placing that capital.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: You know, learned a lot along the way.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: So I learned with my own dollars before I started putting investor capital at risk for sure.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: You started out, you know, with your first partner being Rise48, who you had already done a bunch of deals with.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: You know it's.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I totally understand and agree that.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: You know, placing my own capital is one thing, but asking other people that trust me to invest their capital is such a heightened level of scrutiny that you want to go through right, because you're really putting your reputation on the line here.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: If I lose my own money, I can live with that.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: If I lose other people's money, you know it's.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: It's a lot.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: It's a lot tougher pill to swallow and and none of us want to do that.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: But I think starting with them was a great, a great plan for you.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Going back to some of the mistakes that you made when you were passively investing early on, can you share with us a couple of those things that maybe were oversights that you wish you had done differently?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: So I think probably the biggest mistake I made early on is I wrote too big of checks.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I wish I would have spread my dollars across to operators and business plans and asset classes and geographies.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: You can place $100,000 pretty easily across four different deals.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: So if you're writing $100,000 checks and you've only got $400,000 or $500,000 to invest, then you're only going to get a certain level of diversification.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So if you start looking at smaller minimums, any one investment is not going to, you know, make you rich or make you broke, but it's going to add to that education process and the knowledge base that you gain.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Because this really is a long game, like it's not.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: The goal is not to put a million dollars in the market and then watch that double every three to five years.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: It's probably more like put $250,000, $300,000 maybe a year over the course of a number of years and that will really create the foundation.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: And you know that theory and that strategy of dollar cost averaging in the stock market works the same way when you're dealing with alternative investments passively as well.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: So I wish for one.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: I would have diversified more.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: I wish that I would have actually started placing capital with cash instead of self-directed accounts, so that would create livable income versus just tax protected income as well.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: I was only investing with self-directed accounts early on, and I wish I would have put more cash into the mix.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I made some of those same mistakes early on and I remember thinking I guess I don't know if it was ego or what it was but I was like, you know, I'm going to write these guys a check for 500 grand and I'm going to place 500 grand here and I'm going to put 300 over here, and anything less than that is kind of.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: They're going to look at me as like, oh you know, gibb only invested, you know, 50 or whatever the case may be.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: And so I want I think I wanted to, you know, stroke my ego and say, look guys, I've got, I've got half a mil to invest and, and and one of those investments you know has just really underperformed and so it's like, you know, that's a shame.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: You put a huge chunk riding on something like that and then it underperforms.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So I like your thought process of mixing it up.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about what kind of return metrics you're looking for when you're scouting deals, because you know, I know you've got a variety of opportunities going right now and they're all kind of different buckets, if you ask me, which I really thought was great.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: You know how do you scout those deals.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I know they may not all fit into the same category, so you're looking at different things with different deals, but give me a little bit of insight on how you do that.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: I think it all comes back to like we use this term avatar, but understanding who your audience is and understanding what your audience is looking for and we all know the difference between growth investors versus equity investors Are you trying to create cash flow or are you trying to grow this net worth bucket faster?
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Those are kind of the two where you're really trying to do both of those.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: So I really look at it in alignment with my own investing path as well, when I first got started.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I was a growth investor and I wanted to grow that bucket as fast as I possibly could, sometimes with a discounted cash on cash or cash flow benefit.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: So when you're getting better returns on equity multiple, you're generally going to have lower cash on cash.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: So, being a high income W-2 sales guy, I didn't necessarily need the income because I was doing very well in my W-2.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: I was doing very well in my W-2.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: When I left the W-2, I found out very, very quickly that equity multiple does not pay the bills and cash flow does.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: So I overnight became a cash flow investor.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: So with that in mind, I really try to take a look at different types of buckets of investments and I want to make sure not only to be able to provide investments that are going to provide good long-term growth, but I want to be able to provide a diversified portfolio to my investors that has a good mix of cash flow, growth and a combination of the two.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: So when we're looking at monthly cash flow, I like to see value-add deals that are still in the 4% to 6% range cash-on-cash year one, I think, even though they're an equity multiple play, I think we still need just to make us feel confident in our investment.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: I still think it's important to have monthly cash flow.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: You know, the standard performa you're going to see is a 2x equity multiple in three to five years on those value add plays.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: So anything far higher than that, I start to get a little concerned that the operator is maybe pushing the numbers a little too much in the underwriting.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: So if I start seeing, you know, 30% IRRs or 3x equity multiples, that's almost immediately discounted and I'm not going to work with those folks because it's not reasonable to get those type of returns today.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Now when we're looking at the cash flow type of investment.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: I want to see solid 7% to 10% returns in a cash flow investment because that creates truly livable income for our investors and generally more stable and less risky as well.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: So if folks have, you know, say, they have a half million dollars in the market and they put a couple hundred grand in cash flow and they put a few hundred grand into some equity multiples, that's a pretty well diversified portfolio that's going to kick off cash flow and still grow at a very strong turn.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: So really I'm looking at a number of different variables, a number of different assets, but I want to be able to provide an overall, comprehensive solution for the investor that we're working with.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: This episode of Go Big with Gibb is brought to you by Irons Equity.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: At Irons Equity, we specialize in helping investors like you create long-term generational wealth and save money on taxes through recession-resistant real estate investments that create passive income for you and your family.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: If you want to secure your financial future, go to investwithgibcom to schedule a 30-minute introductory meeting with me, gib Irons Again, that's investwithgibcom.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: With me, gib Irons Again, that's investwithgibcom.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And because those investments that you've got, those current offerings that you have, are in different buckets it's not you know, the person that's looking for the equity multiple deal may want this one, and the one that wants the cash flow may want this one, and the other one that just wants a very conservative rate of return but kind of, you know, a guaranteed return, may want the other one.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about your current offerings.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear first about Portofino Club down in Jacksonville, florida.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Like that's a fascinating deal.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Florida, like that's a that's a fascinating deal.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I think it's.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Um, I think you guys have an amazing price on that opportunity and um, I just think it's a killer deal.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited for you.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much, gib.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: It's uh, it's been a fun opportunity.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: It's been a really exciting uh path to get to know ATX acquisitions.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: My partner and I, elijah, have spent the last year really courting this group Elijah more than myself but, yeah, we finally made the decision to move forward with the deal with them.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: And this is just a it's your classic value add opportunity, but it's in Jacksonville which is this thriving, growing market.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: You know it's a class B and a class A neighborhood.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: We got an amazing price on this.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: It actually was at a 20% discount compared to what it was actually under contract for less than a year ago.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Amazing, amazing.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: You know, it's been a really exciting opportunity to get to know them because they're such an impressive group.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: They have over 80 deals that have gone full cycle.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: They've produced amazing results in Jacksonville for us to partner with them and put not only a new market in front of our investors, but a new operator and somebody that has a track record that fits in alignment with what we do here at Impact Equity.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: So this is the first time that you've worked on a deal with ATX acquisitions.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Right, I'm on your distribution list and I receive your emails and I read about how many deals they had done, that had gone full cycle.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Amazing, that's a tremendous track record.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: And I love how you built that up because I think in the very first email of your email sequence you explained that you know we are announcing, you know pleased to announce, a new partnership with ATX.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: And let me tell you about their track record.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And when I read that I was like, wow, that doesn't get much better than that in terms of a proven track record.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: That speaks volumes to their ability to execute the business plan.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: You know that experience pendulum, you'll see everything.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: As an LP investor, you'll find everything from.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: You know a couple of buddies that met at a conference that decided they're going to take down their first asset.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: You'll find the guys that have done, you know, 10, 15, 20, 30 deals since 2019, when everything was going up and to the right.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: But very rarely are you going to find operators that have been in this business for 10, 15, 20 years and been doing the same thing over and over and over again for that time period, both through the good and the bad times.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: So it's unique that they've actually been able to weather a number of these challenging economic cycles, whereas a lot of the big players out there today have just they simply not done that.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: So it made us feel very confident in partnering with a group like this, who has the infrastructure in place and has had it in place for years, to really support this asset over the next three to five years, just to make sure it's a home run for our investors.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me a little bit about the STR fund.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like it's just crushing it.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: This has been a really fun one too.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: It's not your traditional one, too, and it's it's not your traditional, I guess.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: It's structured the same way as most other other syndications that are out there, where, as an investor, you get to become part owner in this fund that owns all these assets and you actually get, as an investor, you get ownership rights where you get discounted rates if you want to stay in these assets too, which is kind of a fun piece.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: But that is cool, that's super cool.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this, this group is, is three very, very impressive individuals One is X Apple, one is X Google and then another one is just a, just an incredible performer, who is a W2 sales guy like myself, who came into the space and just absolutely blew it up and did amazing things.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: And so the three of them come together under this pretense where let's take the syndication model and put it over the short-term rental space and bring all of the benefits of scalability and expertise that you can get when you start throwing resources at a space that has generally been been owned by mom and pop operators and they brought technology and their expertise in the space to create this fund that's.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: I mean we're kicking off like eight to ten percent cash on cash within one year and they've bought 140 some odd assets since putting this in place about two and a half years ago.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And Fund 2, which is what Impact Equity is a part of, has that general perform a W capital in three to five years.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: But this is more of a blend of the cash flow and the equity multiple and we're finding that it's actually even significantly better cash flow than what we thought it was going to be.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: And when you couple that, with amazing technology and probably one of the best design teams in the space, we kick off what you see on LinkedIn, which are just really, really impressive assets that you just can't help be excited about being a part of it, because they literally have every single amenity you could possibly ever imagine, from movie theaters to pools, to pickleball, to basketball, to pool tables, video games, some of these kids' rooms it looks like an amusement park, quite frankly.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: The thought of bringing two or three families together to go spend a long week in one of these assets and just a great destination.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: It's just a lot of fun.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the LinkedIn post that I was referring to on the Scottsdale property, I think it had a happy Gilmore theme, is that?
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not a big movie buff, but I showed it to a friend of mine that is actually a property manager of my short term rental and he said you know, I love the happy Gilmore theme.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: And I said, oh my goodness, it is.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: You know, the whole place is done out with that theme and I actually would love to rent that space.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: You know, I have business partners in Scottsdale and I go out there frequently to visit with them and I'd love to take my family there and play on the pickleball court.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: There's a basketball court, there's an outdoor pool and it's a very fun.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: The design is fun.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Right, it's all about fun.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: It's not like design like you would design your home where you're going to live.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: It's designed for, designed like you would design your home where you're going to live.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: It's designed for like an amusement park.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Let's have a blast here and look at all the different amenities.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: We've got a ton of fun themed houses as well.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: There's a Barbie one, because we get a lot of bachelorette parties, a lot of bachelor parties.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: So we really cater towards that experience.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about the Impact Equity Debt Fund and how that works.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: You know it's amazing how you can get that kind of a return.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I know it's a pretty high yield return with a little bit lower risk, I think, than some other opportunities.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: But that's just my, that's my opinion.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: But yeah, tell me about it.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, you hit the nail on the head with this.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: This is I was having a lot of conversations with investors that were holding their money, their short-term capital, in high-yield savings accounts or in money market accounts and getting you know four, four and a quarter percent return.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: And you know when there's scared money out there, scared money usually goes towards low risk and stability and predictability.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: So I started looking around my network and talking with investors that have very large amounts of money sitting in different buckets and the resounding answer was that debt funds were a place to hold.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: You know that short to midterm capital, your rainy day funds, your six months of expenses, that type of capital maybe a little bit more as you get older and you want to have a little bit more conservative portfolio, but debt funds were a way to do that.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: So I started down this journey to start looking into various debt funds and you know, you know they're a dime a dozen.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: There's a ton of them out there and I ended up ultimately landing with a group called DLP, which is run by a gentleman by the name of Don Winner, who is, if you've not had the opportunity to meet Don- he's one of the most impressive individuals that I've ever met.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Just a good family guy, christian guy.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: He's built an amazing organization that is not there just to drive returns to their investors, but also to provide safe, beautiful homes for this working class individual that doesn't always have access to those type of funds.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: For this working class individual that doesn't always have access to those type of funds, it's a great feeling to be able to get great returns while also helping with this need that we have in the United States, which is ever-growing, the challenges we're seeing around affordable housing.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: So Don started his business as a fix and flipper and then he gradually grew his business and throughout that whole process process he was training and educating other people how to do what he was doing and then he started lending to them.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: So as his business grew, the need for dollars to lend to those people grew as well, and that's how this debt fund was actually born.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: So over the last 10 years they've averaged over ten and5% returns.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: They've never lost a single dollar on a loan that they have done and they do monthly distributions.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: It's 90-day liquid, but essentially it's as liquid as any other investment that you might have and it's just good, consistent returns.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: We've been paying through our fund because we do have some fees associated with it.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: But we've been paying consistently eight and a quarter percent, like clockwork, since we launched the asset or since we lost the investment.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: So it's been a really nice addition to the portfolio.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I love that, Gosh.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: All of those offerings are just amazing and I really do love the way you select these things to be involved in.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about uh.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I know you're a guest today on my podcast, but you also have a very successful podcast, um, called the gentle art of crushing it.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I um, I joined a coaching community actually in January before I got laid off the Jason Drees Mindset Coaching Community and through one of the in-person events I met a gentleman who had this podcast the General Art of Crushing it and he was wanting to grow this podcast into a three or five day a week podcast right around the time that I was launching my business and I knew that I wanted to get into this space.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: So it was a really good opportunity for me to find a platform to start talking about passive investing with my audience, and it was already an established one.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Oddly enough, actually, the production company that does your podcast, I believe, was the podcast production company we started with when we first launched.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we launched where we had three to five different guests, plus or minus one from time to time, and I managed the Thursday edition, which is geared towards the newer, newer passive investor, and we interview passive investors, we interview amazing operators and we also interview folks that have kind of the inside scoop on the economy as well.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: So it's been a lot of fun.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I heard you talk about on social media recently that you had launched a coaching program and you were doing some one-on-one coaching.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I'd love to give you an opportunity to talk about that.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your coaching.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: I thought that was a really neat announcement when I heard about that.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your coaching.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I thought that was a really neat announcement when I heard about that.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, jim, for allowing me to chat about it.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: It's something that we just started in the last couple of weeks.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: What I found is, when you get good at anything, you become very popular for folks that are trying to do the same thing.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: So I found that I was spending a lot of time talking with folks about the kind of systems and the tools and the process that I had been using to grow this business over the last couple of years.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: So you know, like anything where there's a demand, I think there's an opportunity, and I decided to kind of put it down all on paper and essentially what we're doing is I'm doing one-on-one coaching, right?
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Now that will likely evolve into something different in the future, but for today, it's one-on-one coaching.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: We do six plus sessions for a very low fee and essentially I'm helping newer, newer capital raisers put all the systems and tools in place to raise their first or their next $500,000 or a million dollars, and I truly believe that.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: You know, if you can actually get these skills figured out and implemented into a business, you can become like one of the most sought after individuals in this space.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: So once you learn how to raise capital, you become very, very popular.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: So I'm giving new folks coming into the space the opportunity to do just that for a really insignificant price point quite frankly, probably too low at this point I'm finding out.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: But, hey, that's where we all start, I guess.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's a very compelling offer because, if you think about it, putting all those systems in place takes a lot of time and a lot of trial and error.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: And if you yeah, you can learn how to do it on your own, but it's going to take you a really long time and it's no fun to trip all over yourself when you're trying to fire up a new business like this.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: You know, having the playbook for it and then having a mentor that can tell you, you know, do X, y and Z, and you know I can vouch for how good your systems are because, like I said, I've been watching you.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: You know, from a distance, at a 30,000-foot perspective.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: You, like I said, I've been watching you, you know, from a distance, at a 30,000 foot perspective, you and I go to a lot of the same events together and I've seen, you know, just how well you've done in such a short period of time.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I mean that trajectory, you know, is something that people it'd be very hard for them to replicate it unless they have a playbook and somebody to go to when there's a problem and they need.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: They need to talk to somebody and and there's a lot of, you know, twenty thousand dollar options that are out there and I think that, well, that could work for guys like you and myself the the new guy who's trying to get into the space that doesn't want to invest twenty thousand dollars.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: I think this is a really good option for them just to get up, get running and then, yes, as you, as you start to make money, you can invest more money into your business, but this will at least get you off the.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Get you off the start?
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, randy.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Look, it has been fantastic having you here at the end of every show.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: I like to ask the guests you know for anybody that wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to contact you?
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, easiest way is just to go to my website, which is impactequitynet.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: There's, of course, my contact information on there and I do spend a lot of time on LinkedIn as well.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: So yeah, reach out to me on the website or reach out on LinkedIn.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I would love to connect with anybody interested in connecting.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Sounds great.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Randy, look, it's been a pleasure, loved having you on.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: You're absolutely crushing it.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Keep doing what you're doing.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Super proud of you, and thanks again.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of Go Big with Gibb.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: If you haven't already, go, follow us on social media at Gibb Irons.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.