Creating Raving Fans & Celebrating Wins | EP. 13

Hey, everybody. Flip and Danny coming to you from our video room. But we swapped the view this time just to keep things a little fun here. But we are Flip and Danny, the co founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies.

That's right. And this is our podcast, Real Talk, which is real talk for real estate investors. And we are excited to have you here. This is episode 13. So we are still getting started and getting the groove of what we're sharing and what we're doing. So we're really excited for those of you who have started tuning in and are giving us great feedback on what to talk about, what you like, what you don't like, because we love that type of feedback. We want to make this great and we value your time. So today we actually decided on this topic last night because a few experiences this week happened that made us think about this and how we're doing. Are we doing a good job, doing a bad job? And as we started to reflect, we said, hey, let's talk about this on our podcast, because we have a long list of topics, you know, for our podcast, but sometimes we just talk about the most relevant thing because it's right on the top of our mind. We feel it's important. It's applicable to our business because we're talking about it. And then so we decide that we're going to share it with you. So today our topic is twofold, but mainly we want to talk about raving fans. It's a big theme for our business in terms of how we want our companies to run, how we want their focus to be for our customers, is to create raving fans, no matter what business it is. And so that could be property management and creating raving fans, from our vendors to our residents to our owners. It's just every aspect of the business, even our team, I want the team to be raving fans, right? So we're going to talk about that a lot today. We're going to give you examples of what we've done, what we have in the pipeline, some bad experiences that we've personally had. That this is why it became a topic actually this week is because we're like, you know, that's not how you create raving fans. And this is a company we were a raving fan about. So we're going to share all of this stuff, and then we're going to talk a little bit at the end about celebrating wins, because it's something we talked about, I think, on vacation, about how bad we all are, especially Flip and I Celebrating wins. So, I mean, that's an important part of life. And so we thought we would go ahead and tag that to the end of this podcast. So do you want to start on raving fans? And, you know, why is this important to us?

Yeah. Know what's funny is that we've been doing. We've been focused on that raving fans for now. For almost two or three years now. It wasn't like, right from the beginning, and. And I was with the. The minute you started talking about it, and I'm not sure where. Where you heard about it or whatever. It makes sense now. Everybody, they want to do the right thing. They want their company to do all of the right things and to make people happy. Right. The customer is always right. Whatever. But I still have not heard. I think there was the one place that we heard this from on how. How to create raving fans, but it's not anything that I've heard in any other book. No one talks about creating raving fans. They just say, you know, do right for your customer. You know, the customer's always right. Whatever. They always. All these other taglines, but nobody I've. You know, and they push to do the right things and how to have a successful business. But creating raving fans is going to increase everything else you're doing. You know, you could be doing everything right, and the customer can be. Can be right all the time, but that doesn't mean that they're raving fans. Yes, they're satisf.

Yes. Yeah, true.

So you want to go above this just having happy, happy customers. You want raving fans. You want people to go, oh, you need to go to these people right here, you know, for. For people to create referrals without even asking them, you know, you know, hey, send us a referral. No, you didn't even need to ask them. They're sending you referrals. That's a raving fan. And so it's. It still blows me away that there's. Maybe we should write a book. Let me write that down. A book about raving fan.

Well, now I'm going to Google it as soon as I get out of this podcast, because I'm sure, like, we heard it on a book, like, we're always listening to audio books. We're always reading. We're always learning. And so I'm sure somewhere along the lines somebody said something, so it's somewhere. But if, like, if they haven't expanded on it, maybe we're gonna do it.

There we go. But it's Very important to us. And it also now that because we're so focused on doing it in our six companies, we look at it every day. And no matter what company it is that we're dealing with as consumers.

Yes.

We're looking at it like she's not a Raven fan of them.

Exactly. Teaches us a lot. So we wrote down a few things of what raving fans create and why it's important to us. So we wrote down repeat business, our reputation, the referrals that you mentioned, the organic growth, and the fact that everything becomes word of mouth. And I will tell you, as a raving fan of other companies, I post on social media. Even, like, if I'm sent something and I'm like, wow, that is the coolest thing, I take a picture of it immediately post it on social media. So excited. You know, that's a raving fan piece. You just got free advertising. And all of my friends now know I work with this company or I'm in this group or whatever, and they know the cool thing that they just did. So we're gonna talk about some cool examples that either we're doing or it's on our list to do. And then, like I said, we'll talk about some bad examples that got us kind of talking about this this week. So do you wanna start with some examples?

Well, I was just thinking, like, what are some businesses that. Or some companies that we're raving fans of? So just recently we went down to Cancun, Mexico, and we are stark raving mad fans of the resort that we. In fact, we even our cfo, Randy Brown, he. We sent him there, you know, and we're like, you have to go here, you know, and then I spent like two or three days telling him everything to do because we love it there so much. And, you know, and. And every time we're there, they. They just absolutely go above and beyond and they, you know, and they make sure that everything's satisfied. And you're not only satisfied, you are just absolutely ecstatic about everything.

Yes. In fact, every week, every year we go. Or every time we go. Because we don't go every year, although we're trying to now is we upgrade to some, like, something. And it hasn't been. I think we've been there six times, but I think three or four of those times we've actually spent more money. We've reinvested in it because we love it so freaking much. And we want the next, you know, cool perk that they're going, that they've now, you know, as they expand, they offer new things. So that just. It speaks to the raving fan. Because if we're willing to continually put our money into this and continually upgrade when we already had an. An amazing package, that's huge. So really good example that I didn't even know have on the list.

Oh, what about you?

Well, for me. Gosh, that. You just put me on the spot. I will say this. I'll say the swag boxes. Whenever people send, like, you know, swag boxes with. With cool stuff, I don't always use it. So I think there's a. There's a miss there sometimes because you. You open it up and you're really super excited, and you're like, what am I going to do with that? And you end up throwing it away. I actually just recently got a swag box, and we couldn't use anything in it, so I just gave it to Jeff and I said, would you go show this to our marketing director, Caitlin, so that she can see what was sent and just help the brain work. So you have to know your audience. But I love swag boxes. And I bring it up because we're starting to do that. Like, they've created a shirt for our investors. Something about building wealth for. Not for our next vacation, but for future generations or something.

I'm planning something for Saturday night for future journeys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something really cool, really neat shirt that we're sending out. And I think one of our favorite swag boxes has always been when we got shirts and we got, like, pajama bottoms or. Gosh, we've gotten. We've gotten some fun stuff just from friends. Even, like a friend of mine sent me socks that says I tend to cuss a lot. I don't on this podcast because I respect all of you guys that don't cuss, but I cuss a lot. And I like to hug people. And so I got socks from a.

Friend that says quite an odd combination.

It is. That says, I'm effing going to come hug you or something. And it just cracked me up because it's just something about me. And that's how thoughtful that she saw something like that and then sent it. So that's raving fans, even about that person, that relationship that somebody thought of us. Another friend of ours, actually, it was Tina. There was a time that we were going store to store to store to try and find fettuccine sauce so we could cook fettuccine that night, and we couldn't find it anywhere.

It was Alfredo sauce. And so we couldn't find it. I swear, I messaged Danny. I'm like, is there an Alfredo shortage that I don't know about? Because I went to four grocery stores, and none of them had. And I'm not talking, like, our brand. I'm talking no Alfredo sauce. Any brand. Even the sauce with the white label and black letters that says Alfredo sauce. Couldn't even find that. But Tina heard about the story, and so Tina sent us a box with four bottles of Alfredo sauce, which we still have to this day.

Yes. Yes, we still do. Y. So those are things that come to my mind when I think of raving fans is people who are really super thoughtful. And what's crazy about that is it means the world to me, but I am not that person. I am not the thoughtful person that is going to listen to a conversation and then think about it later and do something cool for somebody. I don't know if that's, like, a special gene you have, or maybe I'm just always thinking about business, but I really want to hire somebody in the future for our business or make it part of their role that their job is to literally stalk people on Facebook and find out what do they love. You know, there was a time that Tina did this because she's really, like, this is her superpower, like, thinking about people and giving them cool gifts. There was a time where we were sending a gift to two of our clients at the very, very beginning. And I think it was one of our clients got a shawl or something. She's an older. Older lady, and she just got this beautiful shawl. Another one is a. Like, is he a professional bike rider or.

Yeah, competition cyclist of some sort.

So she got a bicycle stand or something that. For those custom bikes or something like.

That that I believe that he could ride inside. So he puts his bike on it, and he could ride the bike inside. But it was a special sort of stand. And I'm like, where'd you find that?

But those. I love that, and I want that to be a culture item for our. For our company in terms of how do we create these raving fans. Let's create a role that's, like, seriously dedicated to doing these types of things. Giftology. I don't even know if you've read the book, but I have it on audible. Sorry. We have it on audible because it's our same account, but I've listened to it on our drives back and forth to work. And it talks about this. Talks about all the really neat and Unique ideas. It even shares stories of this one company who had a really high value guy coming into town who liked these really, really, really nice clothes. And I can't remember the entire story about it, but you got to read the book. But they got penthouse suite, maybe hotel room, and they. The entire hotel room. They made it like a shop, like a. What's a high end guys Line of clothes.

I'm not gonna comment on that because I don't shop in those stores.

Okay, so just think of the most expensive, like, and they went and bought, like, inventory, maybe, I don't know, $100,000 worth of inventory. And this guy got to go in there and choose his clothes. A different suit every day or different, you know, outfit every day from this really hot. And, like, it made such an impact. And for the value of this particular customer, it was worth it. It was worth the money that they spent. And at the very end, they said, all of those clothes that you wore, you can have them take them home. So it was a really, really cool story. I wish I could remember it. But you know us, we're so spontaneous in these podcasts that I'm like, oh, I'm not prepared.

It's funny because you said maybe it's a gene or whatever for somebody to have to think. Like, apparently I have half that gene because last week Betty, our beloved Betty here, her husband had to go to the hospital.

Yeah.

I didn't think to send him a, you know, something like, oh, the company should send him something.

Right.

So like two or three days later, I went, oh, the company should have sent him something. And then somebody posted a picture of. We actually did. So I have those thoughts. I'm just late. Yeah.

I will say that Tiffany and I were the ones that started that conversation. I boxed with Tiffany. I said, I've been thinking about this ever since Wesley went in the hospital, and we need to get him something. But my brain, it just doesn't work. I don't even know what to get him. Who's in charge of getting people things. Because betcha Betty does a lot of it, you know, and I bet a lot of people on our team do. But anyways, that was really. Yeah, that was funny. And I think we talked about it. We think we talked about it one night. We're like, we should get Wesley something. I was like, brain, would you please remember that in the morning? I need to write things down more. Let's talk about. Before we talk about some of the other cool things, let's talk about a bad experience. We'll mix a couple bads in here. So what really got this talking about this was this week we've had, or maybe it was last week. Last week we had one bad experience. The other. This week we had another one. The first bad experience wasn't necessary. We weren't necessarily a raving fan, but he was somebody that they were somebody that we worked with. It was a company we worked with, and so we liked them. We had a good relationship. And something went like, there was a miscommunication in a conversation, and no matter how hard we tried to fix it, this other company decided to change a game plan on another program that we had going and just stop it completely because of something that happened over here that we'd already fixed and communicated about and everything was 100% fine. They refused to do what they were already on track and we were halfway through the process. In fact, we've already done our end. We've, you know, done the first half of the transaction on our end and they were supposed to do the second half of the transaction and they just suspended it, no matter the fact that the miscommunication was all figured out. And I was just like that. That not only soured the relationship, but now I don't want to work with you anymore because I found that unprofessional, disrespectful, and quite frankly, not ethical in the way of. This was a transaction that people were counting on to have happen. And yes, we can find another company to do it, but they're counting on it. And because of a miscommunication that was 100% and completely resolved, you still decided to not go through with what you promised to do.

I believe that's called. They picked up their toys in that home.

They did. So we terminated the relationship. And, you know, we were like, this is, you know, I don't, I don't understand when people don't see the long, the long game and they just don't honor their word. Especially when the other part of this thing, you know, was all resolved. So that was a situation that we weren't a raving fan of them, but we had a good relationship. And I didn't understand, like you don't have it in your head to ensure that you have long term good relationships. Like that is even not in your mindset. The fact that you, you know, this all happened. So it was really, really crazy. So I just, I shared that one. So we can go back to the good. Because I'll insert the other rough one that happened this week. In a couple minutes. So let's see. Okay, so I wrote down. We are talking about giftology. So there's a few of the things that we have done for our clients in terms of helping them achieve goals. So you guys know that we do turnkey real estate. We have private money lenders. We're now doing syndications. We've got a renovation company that does rehabs, even for local investors. Now we've got a property management company that not only serves our turnkey clients, they serve us personally. They serve local clients now as well. So we've got a lot of arms. And so as we have those arms, some people are so grateful to have one company that does so many things, that they have this, what seems to be like, one relationship. Because they could email me, they could email Jeff, they could email anybody on our team a question, and maybe we're not in charge of that aspect of the company, but they know we can walk down the hall and knock on the door and say, hey, you know, whoever that, you know, we need to answer this question. You know, Bulldog renovations or independent property management, and we get it done. So it feels like one relationship, because the people that you're accustomed to talking to can help across the board, get you answers. And so in that there's been times where people are like, you know, I'm doing this with you. And I'm doing this with you. We literally have people with master notes. They're also a private lender. They're also now in our syndication. They're talking about buying turnkey properties. They want to partner on multifamily in the future. Like, they just want to do all of these things because we're doing so many things across the board. And so in my head, every time, like, I'll get a slack that says, hey, this guy wants to partner up with this guy. They're going to create one LLC so that they can combine their funds in order to reach the level, in order to get a 10% interest with you guys instead of 8% interest. And I'm just like, yeah, we could be jerks. No, no, no. You have 100,000 and you have 200,000. So we're not combining to make 300 so you can reach the 10%, you know? But they found the solution. They offered it up to us, and we're like, yeah, absolutely. We had a father and son that wanted to do something together, and they did the same thing in a different way. The son wanted to be a private lender with one. The father wanted to be a Master Note investor with $200,000. And so even though they were in different paths, we combine their funds together in order them to achieve the 10%. So things like that, the reason that we do them and CJ and Tiffany I think come to mind recently in Slack messages where things like this are happening and Tiffany's like, what should I say? And I'm just like in the back of my head as I think raving fanned the right thing to do here is. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's a little bit different. It's out of the ordinary. We don't do this for everybody. But look at the eff that you are going to in order to achieve your goals. And we're achieving ours too, right? We're getting a new investor no matter if they combine funds or whatever it was. So I think that makes a raving fan. We literally write that in Slack. I think this is raving fan thing. Let's do it. So really having that in the back of your head every single time you're making a decision. And I was going to save this to the end, but I'm going to talk about it here, about profit first versus customer first. So profit first is big for us. We read the book, we've read like we've got so many books about profit first and it's even on my vision board. But when you're making raving fan decisions, if you're thinking about profit first, it would have been wise to stick both investors at 8%. Right? You only have 200, you only have 100. You're both at 8% and that saves the company 2% in the long haul. But that didn't create a raving fan. And so instead of thinking profit first always and about our bottom line, let's think about how we get the repeat business, the reputation, the word of mouth, the organic growth because we do something cool and think of the customer before we think of profit. So I just think that, that so, so incredibly powerful. So what, what do you want to share next?

Well, I think it's too, it always goes back to the, the old vine. They don't bite the hand that feeds you, you know. And it's especially because, you know, I'm pretty sure any company is based upon customers whether they're direct to customers or not direct to customers. The customer is the end and it's what drives your company, you know, so it's, it's always thinking about that, you know, instead of the bottom line like you said about how we did that with those two investors you know, so it's, it makes sense, you know, but we could easily said, nope, sorry, that's not our policy.

Yeah.

And there's companies out there that do that. And when they do that, they're like, okay, I still like you, but I'm not a Raven fan.

Yeah, right. Yeah. I also mentioned two examples here. Well, one, referral programs. We did that to create raving fans because we pay people to refer people in. We're saying, thank you, thank you for sharing what we do with other people. We're going to compensate you for that. So I think that was part of an idea behind, hey, let's create raving fans. Let's get word of mouth out there. Also, there was a masternote investor that works with us and he had said, hey, I heard one of your podcasts or I heard one of your vlogs, can't remember which. And I really love the idea of some of the tax benefits that we're going to get through actually using funds like this into real estate or syndications, things like that. So he's got funds that are tax deferred already. He's got funds that are just normal, ordinary funds not getting any tax advantages. So we had worked out a plan. As he went through kind of what he wanted to do, we'd worked out a plan, okay, let's take the funds that are not tax advantaged and we're currently having a master note. And let's plan how we can exit those. Because in a master note is essentially for us, we put it in a separate bank account and it's used to purchase deals. So you're like a private lender, but we're paying you every single quarter, no matter if we're using your money or not, because we have control over it. It's in a separate bank account. It's fully tracked. And so we looked at where his funds were and we said, okay, it's in these deals. Okay, so this note right here, we can cash you out on this date. This note. We can cash it on this date, this note. And it was three notes because he had sent over the course of time, he continues to keep investing more. So we had it all planned out. That was all of his cash money. That wasn't tax advantage. He was leaving his tax advantage money with us. And then we are just getting ready to make a payment. And so this goes to the raving fan, like, what do you want to do? We're not upset that he wants to move his money out of the master note. I mean, that's a lot of money that we are using for deals. But. But hey, it has to be a win for him. And so there was a win for him to get into tax advantage situations. So right as we're getting ready to cash out on the first one, he has a financial situation change, and he's like, don't need the money. Don't, don't. Nope, I'm okay. In fact, I'm gonna invest in your syndication now. Cause I have some more money coming in. So now he left the funds in the masternote and he got more funds and he was able to invest in the syndication, which got the tax advantages that he was looking for. So I. I feel like situations like that. And it was last minute, like, literally it was this weekend. Right. That he texted and said, hey, I've got some funds. Can I still get in the syndication? I know it's closing on the 30th, which is today. We're closing today. And his money was wired in yesterday for our closing today. So it's perfect timing. And he's just. He's such a great person to work with. I love him dearly, and I'll do anything to make it a win forever and ever and ever. And he wrote back, he goes, you guys are such a pleasure to work with because Tiffany's on it. Jeff and CJ and Jody, they're all on it. Making sure that all of the. Everything's prepared and done for them. That's the type of relationships that we want to have. That's what creates raving fans, is making sure that you're achieving both sides of the coin and thinking of them first before you're thinking of your bottom line.

Yeah. Thinking of being, you know, flipping the script. It's like, we don't want to. Not only do we want to create raving fans, but we want to be raving fans of them.

Yes.

And so, like, we're. We're an incredible raving fan of him, you know, and so it goes both ways, you know, and that's maybe that's the key key, you know, always think about, instead of trying to create raving fans, we want to be raving fans of these people. So what can we do to, you know, get them to be raving fans of us?

Yeah. And see their success and be like, congratulations, you know, the last example before. No, I'll go, I'll do the bad, and then I'll do the one. So the one I'm going to do is the. Do you know about the fire code that we're fixing. Okay. So I'm going to share both of them. Okay. So I'll share the bad. The bad one happened. Happened. We're a part of many, many, many, many, many groups, and we just joined up. We have a multifamily focus now. Right, Right. And so we've kind of shifted that focus and we joined another group and we ended a group because we can't do both. Like, we've learned. I've learned there's only so many things that you can focus on and truly succeed. And I'm constantly doing more than I possibly can, and therefore, I'm not hitting the heights or the success that I want to see, even though we're seeing great success. And we're going to talk about that and then celebrate in the wins. But so we stopped the one group, went to another group, but in the one group that we ended up stopping so that we could focus on this other one, our membership renewal was up on June, July 1, and we have an event coming up in two weeks, July 7 or something. I can't even remember. And so. So because we canceled the group and our membership landed on July 1, but we joined another group in that same circle of families, we had to cancel our trip to go to the event that was coming up in, like, seven days or whenever it is. And I just thought, man, I'm a raving fan of you guys. And I thought when you made this decision, you should have thought about that raving fan thing. Like, why it's seven days. It's already booked. I didn't even know our membership renewal was on July 1st. They told us. And I was just like, okay, well, if we do stop this group, it's being because we don't have time, not because we don't love them when we join their other group. So we're still spending our money with them as a whole. But why would you, like, ask us to pay for another month in order to go to an event that we've already booked our tickets and hotel for? It sent a message to me that said, not the raving fan way to do business. So we ended up canceling the trip. And it's fine. We still love the group, but it moved me down the ladder of raving fans, that's for sure. So that's an example of. It was something simple that cost no money because we paid for the tickets. We paying for the hotel room. It meant nothing for us to be at an event, just soaking in information and be able to see everybody, because seven days ago, we stopped One of the groups and joined a different one. So I just. That's a. I think it's really important for business owners and anybody to think about what decision are you making here and why are you making it? Because, you know what. What do you want from your customer, really? So I thought that was something valuable to share because it was fresh mind. So the last one is raving fan example. This is actually one of our raving fans, and I truly hope he's still a raving fan. And I don't know if we're doing a good enough job to keep him, but we're trying. So we sold a property to him, I want to say, a year or two ago, and it was rented. We're getting ready for turnover and put two new tenants in. For some reason, there was an inspection of some kind. I don't know the full story of how this all happened, but it turns out that there was. We don't have an occupancy, I think, permit on it. And the reason there's no occupancy permit on it is because there was like a fire code thing that. A firewall or. I don't even know all the details. See, we like so spontaneous with stories that come up that I don't even get all the details before I even talk about it. But there's something in there that we have to do. So we worked with the city and we essentially told them, hey, this is something. It was also our contractors that were working on it. They were subcontractors, but they got. They. They signed up for the permit. Permit. When they did the renovations, they didn't close it out, so they never closed it. So the permit, like, didn't end up going through, so they activated it. It's in the system. As this person was your contractor. They're the one that came and actually signed for the permit. So we started the process, but the contractor just didn't close it out. So we don't have the permits that were needed. So we're just like, look, this is, you know, it's not really on us. It was on our contractors, you know, and we went back to the contractor and said, hey, hey, you know, this is what happened. And they're like, oh, we must not have closed it out, you know, and unfortunately, they just ghosted on us and they didn't come back. It's not a contract we work with anymore. So long story short is that we told the owner and said, hey, look, you know, it's not necessarily our fault or our ownership, but we are going to take extreme ownership because it was the contractor that we hired and we've gone back to them and they've ghosted us. So now we're going to take care of it, right? We're going to pay for it. We're going to do everything, which I would have expected the contractor to do. But, you know, sometimes not everybody thinks about raving fans in relationships long term. So we told him we're going to take care of it. And the reason I say maybe he's not a raving fan is because he's months out of rent. He doesn't have the rent. Because we're trying to get the contractor and we're trying. First we're trying to figure out what happened. Like, what's going on, why. Why is this. This is a. Like, how many deals have we done here in Ohio? Like almost 300, I think. And this is the first. First time this has ever happened. So what was unique about the situation? What happened? Why didn't it go right? Okay. Then we, you know, chased down the contractor to have conversations and then we had to go to the office ourselves and just start figuring it out. We had to have, I think an architect come out or maybe our project manager had to just draw plans. You know, this is gonna be like an $8,000, eight to $10,000 thing on our end that we are now just forking over because the client's important to us. And even though we could say this wasn't our fault, we're not going to do it. And you haven't had rent and sucks for you, that's not the type of business we are. So we did that. And I hope he's still a raving fan for doing that, but he might not be because he still has no rent right. Coming in. So it's, you know, there's always those things of trying to figure out what do we do so that we can have great relationships, long term relationships. So that was just another example that came. I didn't even write it down, but it came to my mind when we were talking about it. Examples. So do you have any others, good or bad raving fans?

I can't think of any off the top of my head. Thank you for putting me on the spot.

Yeah, you're welcome. Okay. I just wanted permission to go on to the. Celebrating the wins because I know you have a lot to say here, so I'm just gonna let you take it over. Celebrating the wins.

It's funny because we're so busy here and it's it's always about, you know, is this done? Did this sell? You know, do we do this? What's next? What? You know, because it's, it's a, it's a hamster wheel and we're, we're running and, you know, there'll be times where something will happen. And like 10 minutes later, I was just like, what, did something happen? You know, did we do, did we just do something good? You know, because it's, it's, you know, because we don't focus on it. We're always focusing on, you know, what's next. And like you, you had said before we recorded, you know, Tina talked to us about this, about take. Just take 10 seconds, just take 10 seconds and just, you know, celebrate the win. You know, there's been things that have happened in this company that were just amazing, and it just went right by us. And we didn't, we didn't do anything. We just kept going. And in fact, I got it. Well, I have to bring this up. Last fall, we bought a 56 unit apartment complex that came with 13 single family houses and two duplexes. Am I. Oh, 12 and three duplexes. Okay. And so, and it was from one person that we bought these from. It was a package deal. It was over $2 million. I don't know the exact number. It was over $2 million. It took us, we were trying to sell it to, you know, most of it to another person for like six months. And it just kept going back and forth. And we said, screw it, we're just gonna buy all of them because we wanted the single family houses in the duplexes. So. But we said, know, screw it, we're gonna buy the apartments, we're gonna buy all those, all the houses, all the duplexes, and we're just gonna close it on one day. We're gonna do it in two weeks. And then we ran, you know, frantically for the next two weeks to get this to happen. It happens. It closes. And we went on with whatever we were doing. The largest purchase that we've had up to this date. The most amount of properties we've closed on in one date. It's huge. Records that we have not broken since. And we did nothing. We kept going. We just went. It's like, oh, so lunch?

Do you want to do lunch?

I'm hungry, you know, and so it's stop. What do they say? Stop. Smell the roses?

Yes.

Right. You know, we don't. Number one, we don't stop. Number two, there's no roses here. You Know. And so we need to do that. And there's. Gosh, there's so many things. And now, because we've gotten bigger, there's more people running things and more people doing things here in the office. Things are happening that I don't even know about.

Right.

Somebody came up and said, hey, do you know what's going on with 123 Main Street? And I'm like, no. Can you tell me about 123 Main Street? This is the first I've ever heard of that address. You know? You know, So I don't.

It's a weird place to be in the company, right? That there's so many people handling so many things that we're up here going, we don't even know all the details. We can't even share all the details on a podcast because we don't know them all. Yeah.

Today's the end of the quarter. I know. The acquisitions team has blown away all of our goals for this quarter, and they've brought in a record amount of acquisition fees. And so it's just. And I'm just like, great job. I didn't even know, you know? And all of a sudden. All of a sudden, Cheese. You know, he sends. He sends me a list of, here's what happened this quarter. And I was like, wow, you gotta be kidding me. And so. But it's taking time to. To, you know, stop and smell the roses.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think we wrote down two ideas of where we're doing a better job because we're not good at it. Right?

I'm horrible at it.

Yeah. And I'm the worst at it because I. I wrote this down, too. It's like, if you're a solution finder, I think you. I know I'm that way. I know Tina is that way. But Tina probably does a better job because she's the one that said, take 10 seconds. I think. I think she read a book that said you need to take 10 seconds to be able to set it in your mind. Because you know why we all remember bad stuff is because we certainly take more than 10 seconds to think about the bad stuff. And that just sears into your head, so you remember it. But the winds, you just fly by them, and then you forget them. You forget how good things are because you're marinating on the bad things that are happening and not spending enough time searing into your brain the good things that are happening. So for solution finders, that's really a big deal. I find it with me because I'm all about Solutions. If you present a challenge to me, my goal is to identify at least three solutions to it so that we can choose the best one. And we've made that something that should be company wide, right where everybody is doing that, because nobody wants to be presented with a challenge. And you're like, okay, can you give me some ideas? We need to train everybody to think of ideas and to help the company. And so because I am that way, naturally I default to solving problems. Then that means when the good thing happens, I'm like, yes, what's the next problem? So that I can solve it and I can get it to the. We won. Yes. What's the next problem? And so I don't marinate it on it all. I give it a very short, you know, cool. I recognize it, but that is it. And sometimes I'll hear something and I don't even tell you. I don't even remember to tell you that.

Something I find out from three other people. And I walk into Danny's office. I'm like, did you just do this? Yay.

Yeah. So I think it's important to really take those 10 seconds and think about the wins and where we're doing better. It's like the seven day flip. You want to talk about what we did on the seven day flip with the pictures and the balloons and the sign?

We, we made a sign, we hung the sign in the house. We had balloons, we had, we brought in food for the team. The whole team came out to the house and we took videos of everything. You know, it was a big deal on Face on social media. Not just Facebook, but on all social media. But we, we celebrated as a company, you know, what we just did, you know, I mean, what did we do? We just funded it. We didn't. I didn't, I didn't lift a hammer, you know, and I didn't schedule anything, you know, so is. But it was a, it was a team win. And so it's. We're doing more of that.

Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing is first Friday. So first Friday is what our CFO is putting on every single. He's also the VP of business development. Every first day of the month, he puts on a 30 minute presentation for the entire team. Yeah. It is a show of this kind of the state of the company. Right. How we're doing. And he has kind of this joke about, you know, a rating system. Like, you know, if we're doing. I don't remember. Do you remember them? Like, if we're doing crappy, it's you know, bring your box to work, you're all fired.

Yeah, bring in a box. We're. We're done.

But if you're like, you know, and every rating gets a little bit better, and then the big one's like, bam. And he slams a table, and we're all. All like, ah. And I think one time there's a dog in the room, and the one time there was a baby in the room. But anyways, I think those first Fridays, the reason I look forward to them is because it is 30 minutes of. Sometimes it is we're not doing great. Hey, something happened. We didn't hit our goal, and, you know, let's talk about it. But sometimes it's a holla or I think one time, one shy of the bam. Yeah. And I think one time we got a bam, because I think we hit a record. So those are times where you just spent time going, congratulations. And he recognizes, like, I think two people each time that kind of get. It's either something that's an executive team choice or it's a nomination from the group, and the executive team helps decide, or maybe he just makes the call based on his knowledge of what's going on. And so that time, that 30 minutes the entire company spends together is a recognition of. In celebrating the wins or recognizing the losses. But there seems to be. With all the companies, there seems to always be a win. So we're getting a little bit of both. Of encouragement of where we. We need to improve and celebrating what we've accomplished. So I think that was another area. I don't know if you like them as much as I do.

I love it. I love it. Plus, I love it when somebody else is running the meetings.

Yes, me too. Total introvert. You're a ham, though, so I don't know why you like somebody else running.

He always starts off with a joke, you know, and actually he always starts off with two jokes just in case the first joke doesn't work.

But it's great. We have fantastic leaders in our company. I'm so, so proud to be where we are. So that's. We just celebrated a win. Kind of like just now. Wasn't that good? Go flip. High five. All right, so I think we've covered, you know, two topics, you know, pretty well. It means a lot. Both of those mean a lot to us. You know, all these business lessons that we learn, you know, it takes a while to learn some of them, and I love sharing them, especially the ones that make you feel good.

Yeah. And actually, the Last thing. And this is something that I don't even know if you know about, but because our acquisitions team broke records this. This last quarter, so we're. We are actually taking the entire acquisitions team down to Cincinnati to go to a Cincinnati Reds game and then to a steakhouse or something.

Oh, my gosh. That's awesome. See, I don't even know that that is the coolest thing ever. Like, I have that we're working on our 131 0, and I, like, I have. I want to start doing trips, you know, I want to do stretch goals and, like, that the team gets awarded for, you know, great performance. That is so freaking cool, by the way.

That was not my idea. Way to go, Packer.

I'm just super glad that, yeah, again, the leadership, we couldn't, like, we wouldn't be where we are without our team and the leaders that are here, but now that's just blown up by the people that have been brought in probably in the last six months. I'm really, really super happy. I'm super excited.

Yep. And the last thing that I'm going to leave with is creating raving fans. Like we talked about, we have a bird dog program, and so people are sending us properties all the time, and when we. When we close a property that they sent us, you know, we'll send them a check. Right. Well, if they're local, which a couple of them have been, they also get to come into the office, get a tour of the office, and we take them to lunch. And so it's like creating raving fans.

Yes. Yeah. And great relationships. I love that, man. We're pretty cool.

Yeah.

I. I sure do look at all, like, the things that we need to work on all the time. So doing this podcast actually made me feel good.

Ye.

Happy. What is this happy? Oh, it's Happy Tuesday whenever we release it. So when you're listening to it, it's Happy Tuesday. So I'm happy it's saying Happy Tuesday. That's right. And actually, I think maybe it is Tuesday. It's sad that I can't remember what day it is. Anyways, all right, so I think we're going to wrap up today's podcast. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. This is Real Talk, which is real talk for real estate investors. We love having you. We appreciate you so much, and we always like to end the podcast saying.

Invest smart, live happy.

Bye, everybody.

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