Ep 278 - Back in Time: 5 Years...

Hey, everybody. Flip and Danny here, founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group, family of companies. And welcome to another episode of our.

Podcast, which is called Freedom through Passive Income.

That's right. And welcome to another episode. And this one's back in time. Trying to think of a song. This is five years ago.

Yes.

2017. And I can't put the song actually on there because then we would never be able to put it on YouTube because they would say we're using licensed material.

That's right. That's right.

So you just get me singing it. We're going back in time.

These episodes. It's four.

Yep. This is dos.

Yeah, this is the second one we did. Yesterday was 10 years ago. Today's five years. Then we're gonna go to three years and one year. And the point of this series is to speak to the saying that says, you overestimate what you can do in 10 years. You under. Nope. You overestimate what you can do in one year. You underestimate what you can do in 10. And how this applies to our lives. Because we're going to give our examples and we really want and encourage you to apply it to your own life. In that many of us will get stuck in the. I should have started this. I haven't done it yet. I don't have time. And then a year will pass and they'll keep on saying the same thing, where if they would have just taken small steps towards a progress, they would be surprised how much they could get done, especially over the long term of 10 years of just taking small steps. So you might get discouraged about overestimating what you can do in a year. And that's what we all do. But it'll compound. And the reality is, as time goes by, you'll look back and go, what? And so that's what we're talking about today. And surprise, surprise. If you didn't hear yesterday, Flip wrote these scripts.

I know. So it took me 260 episodes to just, you know, to hone my skill and to find my purpose and my message.

And they're not ever really scripts. They're like bullet points to remind us what to talk about so we don't forget. But usually I do them. But he's the guy with the memory. I'm the one with the vision. So, Flip, take it over.

So we're going back to 2017, and yesterday we talked about 2012, and a lot happened between 2012 and 2017, one of which is we did a lot of moving. We moved from Texas to Arizona and we were living in Arizona. And while we were there, we started doing a lot of business in Ohio. But it was business with a company in Ohio, not with people in Ohio, because there were people all over the place. And that's where we learned turnkey real estate. We're like, wow, this is awesome. We need to do this. But as we're in Arizona, we were renting. Cause we wanted to be closer to your parents. And all of a sudden, we got a phone call. And this is also the same time that the company that we were doing stuff with said, hey, if you guys were here in Ohio, we could do more business. And I'm like, okay, I kind of like that because I was born here. But so as they were saying that, all of a sudden our landlord calls up, says, we got foreclosed and we need to move back into that house. So do you want 30 days or 60 days to move? And we're just like, I guess we're moving to O. So we had moved. So we were in Arizona for about a year and a half, and we had shifted gears because we were doing sub twos, and we went to doing wholesales, and we were doing a lot of wholesale business, and we were building that program up. But we were also doing business in Ohio and other places. And so we moved from Arizona to. Because we were there a year and a half, and we moved from Arizona to Ohio. It was November of 16. So this is 2017. Sorry, 2015 is when we moved to Ohio.

Yes.

But then in 2016, we did a lot of work in Ohio, and we got kind of a burnout. And so in 2017, the beginning, we said, we're all right. That's it. We need to take a break from real estate. We've been going hardcore for almost 10 years now. And we just said, we're gonna take a break. And we started doing running. We started running, which people were like, really? So we started doing some 5Ks, and we did our very first 5K in April of 20. And we were super excited. And like, two weeks later, we did our second 5K, which is, if anyone knows, Cincinnati, the Flying Pig is the huge marathon. We just did the 5K, but, you know, so that was fun. We got into something different. But the funny thing was is that as we took the break from real estate, real estate kept coming back at us. People were calling us and saying, hey, would you like to do this? And hey, do you guys want to do this? And it was the beginning of May, and somebody says, hey, we have got a house for you. And we're like, well, okay, you know, if I got a. And we went and checked it out, and I'm walking the house. I'm like, wow, this house could easily sell for 75, 79,000 fixed up. And they were asking 20, and we were just like, and we're back in real estate. And that was immediately when we sat down and we talked about what we're going to call ourselves. And that's when we came up with the name. We came up with a few names, but the winning name was Freedom Real Estate Group. And if you're watching, you're seeing both of us wearing the same shirt.

Yep.

And it's. It's the. This is the inaugural shirt.

Yep.

Freedom Real Estate Group was formed in May of 2017, and it was Danny and I in our house. And at that point, we lived in Westchester because we had another landlord call us up and say, hey, we need to move back into our house. So we did that. That happened twice. Twice in six months.

Weird.

Yeah, that sucked. Yeah. But so we were in Westchester, and so that's how Freedom Real Estate formed. And we immediately went from that deal to another deal right away that we got off of auction.com. and then we went from that deal to another deal that we also got from auction.com. and so it was a deal, deal, deal. And we were just. It was just. We just fell right back into it. You know, it was like, you know, that whole. You fell off your bike. Get back up. We just got back on the bike and started a ride. We also did our very first private money deal. We weren't the contractors. We didn't find the property. We just provided the private money for the deal. So that was our very first one as well.

And we forgot about that one until you started writing.

Until I started looking at pictures, and I'm like, oh, look at that. Oh, my gosh, I forgot about that. And so that was in there. And then we also picked up our second bulldog, Rosie. She was a rescue. We got her in 2017, and she's owned the house ever since. But then the real historical thing, though, was that we hired our first employee in November of 2017.

Betty. Betty.

She has her own land. Betty Land. She's a force to be reckoned with at the office because you can't. When she starts talking with that Southern charm and that twang that she's got, it just turns you into butter.

She is the heart of the office. People call her Mama. Mama Betty.

I get people that call me and say, Hey, I left a message with the woman that answered the phone. She's the sweetest thing. She's sweet as apple pie.

Everybody talks about Betty. Everybody loves Betty. We are blessed to have Betty as like kind of the front gate of our office because, man, she's amazing.

Yep. But Betty, she started in our dining room because we were still working from the house. But then two weeks later, we got our very first office and we moved in.

It was like 5,000 square feet and it was just me, you, and Betty. Right.

Yes, yes. We could have all worked just at her desk and the other 4,800 square feet would have just been wasted. But no, we were both in all three different directions. It was. Yeah, that was hilarious to say. That was a big office for the three of us.

We quickly started hiring and hiring and.

We filled it up. Right.

Pretty quickly.

Pretty quickly. And then just. But to give an update. So that was the. The year that we took a break from real estate. Right. And then five months into the year, boom, we're forced back into it because we couldn't turn it down. And we ended up doing five, closing five deals that year, us selling them, but we purchased nine deals and that's starting in May because we didn't buy anything before that. So that's almost. That's going from nothing to buying one a month. Yeah, that's typically how we roll.

Yeah. Yeah. Moving into a 5,000 square foot office, having the capital to be able to hire employee, a full time employee and then start hiring more like now I look back at it and go, wow, wow, we did that. That was a big step for us.

We really didn't think about it. We just did it. And then when after we did it, we went, oh, we have employees.

Yeah. They rely on us for everything. Yes. Income, their lives.

Not everything, but their income.

And we, yeah, we could go on and on, but wow, I can't believe that that was five years ago.

Yeah. There was times when I was playing my PlayStation that I thought about.

I'm really amazed. Looking back at 10 years, it was a trip down memory lane. But looking back at five years, I'm really amazed that we've got from that point that you just said to where we are today. That blows my mind. And that's the purpose of this series of episodes, is to go look at how much was done. Even now, like, I can't believe we did it all.

And what's that graph? You know how it barely goes up? Barely goes up. Then all of sudden it just shoots straight up.

Yeah. Yep, Yep. So really, really incredible. I'm glad that we're doing these episodes because I hope that it conveys to you guys how much you can get done and you will be just like us, sitting there going, whoa. It just was a matter of taking one step at a time and just do it. Yep, exactly.

Don't think about it.

We didn't even think about it. We just did it and went, whoa.

What do you mean? We got employee handbooks. What do you mean? There's employment laws. What?

Yeah, boy. Yeah. Okay. We could.

Yeah, yeah. We figured it all out.

Yep, we sure did.

We built the plane on the way down or whatever that is. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you head on over to our website, freedomcapitalinvestments.com to join the investor club and to see all the other cool stuff on there. Make sure you're checking us out on social medias, Facebook, LinkedIns, YouTubers, Googlers and whatever else there is out there. But we like to end all of our episodes with invest smart, live happy. Bye, everybody. Nothing on the show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions and information on the show are not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit and loss.

Sam.