From Consultant To President In 3 Months! | EP. 25

Hey, everybody. Flip Robinson here, one of the co founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies. And I'd like to welcome you to our podcast. And our podcast is Real Talk, which is real talk for the real estate investors. And today's podcast is number 25. That's where Caitlin fills in the number right there. Anyway, because I don't remember what number this is anyway, but today's podcast is titled From Consultant to President. And I'd like to welcome to our podcast today our president of the Freedom Real Estate Group Family Companies, Mr. Aaron Davis.

Thank you. Welcome. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Yes. And so before we get. Because I've got some juicy questions here. Not really. Anyway, so, gosh, it's. We're now in end of September.

Yeah.

And so how long have you been here?

Get some four months in. Started in May.

Yeah, four months in. From consultant to president. This is not the normal standard, you know, going from consultant, like mail.

Sure.

CEO, right?

Sure. Yeah. It was not a. I wasn't chasing a title or a role coming in as a consultant. I thought it was a temporary gig, but it worked out and I'm glad it did. Well to be here.

That's awesome. Well, we're ecstatic that you're here. That's just me. I'm not talking about anyone else. So I have some questions here. And so we're going to dig into this. So how would you define your leadership style?

Yeah, so I'm an enabling, activating kind of leader. Right. So I'm not boss by default. I don't grab the work and take it and do it myself. I tend to think about who's engaged in it every day, every minute, and optimizing how they're able to get their work done. So a lot of times that comes in the form of providing them more inside information. Sometimes that comes in the form of changing authorities and, you know, who's allowed to approve what and that kind of thing. Sometimes it's about aligning incentives and goals. Right. So my. I guess you would call that a, you know, I'm a macro manager. Right. I like to plug people into the big picture and then kind of let them run.

Right.

And it's really, you know, kind of like the default. It's. It's really easy to kind of fall into the opposite, you know, path where you kind of make decisions and whatever else. As a leader, you tend to, maybe you've been around more or you have a little more confidence because you've, you know, you've earned some scars. That kind of thing. So it's really easy to just instinctively make a call as opposed to the. Well, what do you think? Right. The enabling kind of behavior.

Right.

So anyway, so that's kind of my style. I mean, that's how I like to roll. I like to think very much about kind of building the capacity in somebody to. To be able to execute the work and make the decisions themselves, as opposed to, you know, kind of building a reliability on me. Right. Dependence on me, rather.

Right.

And I guess a reliability on me is good. A dependence is not great.

Right, right. And I have not had very much interaction with you on the business side of things. We always talk, but. But I've seen the differences, and it's great to watch. And it's like I'm just sitting over here with a, you know, box of popcorn just watching you do your thing, and I love it. It's great.

There is some method back there.

Yeah, there is. So how do you go. How do you approach your work?

Yeah. So, you know, I come out of the, like, software world. I've worked in that space a lot. And it's really. There's a tendency for engineers and people who build stuff to just start building and kind of skip the design phase. Right. So I use that kind of framework when I think about leadership. You know, the design phase in my mind is understanding the objectives. Not just, oh, we want to make this many million dollars or we want to have this many, you know, properties turned or whatever. Right. But the objectives, like, you know, the controls and the variables that you want to go along with those things, too, and a little bit deeper understanding of exactly what you're trying to build. Right. So for me, that's. That's the starting point. Right. A good design document or a good understanding of how the product's going to work, that kind of thing. Right. So I kind of. I start with understanding a picture of you as a founder and Danny as a founder and the rest of the leadership team. Like, what do we want this to look like in two years? And then, you know, from there, kind of backward plan to. These are the outputs we're going to need to produce in order to get there. Right. So I think that's a, you know, that's a small body of work in and of itself. I start with that. And then once you kind of have things that, you know, you're trying to do, then you can start to discern how you measure the, you know, the effectiveness of producing those things. Right, right. So, you know, if one of your goals is something Gray and ambiguous. Like, we want our employees to love working here. Well, you gotta figure out how to measure something like that. Right, right. So that can be tricky. Sometimes. Sometimes it's easy. It's just, you know, a certain number of whatever you're counting, widgets or whatever. Sometimes it gets fuzzy. Yeah.

Well, and it's because I know. I mean, most. Most everybody that's. That's listening, they. They've been following us or whatever, and they follow Danny and I, and. And, you know, most everything we've done is. We've just. We've just done it.

Sure.

Yeah. We. We need. Well, we need more money, so. Well, let's get more property.

That's right.

You know, it was just. It was oversimplified. Yeah.

One of the. One of the problems you run into as a founder, and I've done this myself, and I've worked with founders before, so it's a common thing, is that you have. There's so much instinct and backstory and depth that you bring as you build a team. And when you're able to manage a team, you know, when it's 10, 15, 20 people and you can kind of be in and all. In all the stuff, it's really easy to like, to lose how many variables go into your ability to make those calls.

Right, right.

And then when you get to the stage where you want to scale and grow and then focus on other things like multi, you know, multifamily properties and whatever else. Right. And you, you know, you have to hand over leadership of your operation to management. Well, then there's just a lot of. There's a lot of fuzzy stuff in there to figure out. And we talked about that the other day, one of our rare occasions where we did talk business. We were talking about incentives and the way people are motivated and that kind of thing. And, I mean, there's nobody better incentivized than the founders. Like, you have. All the. All the controls and variables that matter are part of your decision making. You know what I mean? Right. Picking all those little things out is tricky.

Yep.

So it's an ongoing thing that kind of like, assessing what matters, figuring out what to measure is an ongoing thing. But you guys are doing great. I. It's. It's. I think it's harder for most founders to have as much trust and to be as bold about making as many moves as. So you guys have done, in my observation, a really good job of knowing that you're gonna have to take some risks and let people make calls. And I think it's it's part of why we're making things happen. Well, so. Yeah, but that. That is a. That's a tricky business.

Yeah. I mean, just in the. The case of. Well, two things that I want I wanted to point out was. Well, number one, we had our bamboo meeting this morning, so you creating that and for everyone, you know, because the acquisition guys, they just. Well, all they're doing is just. They're just buying, right? That's their gig. They're just, keep buying, keep buying, keep buying, you know, and they don't know the whole process, like, from. From. From when they're picking up the phone to what happens all the way at the very end. The same thing with property management. They're at the end, you know, they don't understand all this stuff, you know, and. And it's not because, you know, it's not because they should know. They really. That's. That's not their gig.

Right.

Property management and the acquisition guys, I don't want them to do anything besides buy.

Right.

You know, but once they get the whole picture and see that. And so when you created the band board, that was just one of the things that I just want.

This is awesome.

I would have never thought of that in a million years. And then the other thing that I wanted to point out, and you can comment on both of these, is the. And I think you just did a podcast, I think, with Tiffany, with the. Ivan, the investor.

Yeah, we're gonna do another one on that.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

Week ahead or something. I remember walking into the training room and just. Just this timeline going across the wall, and I was just like, that's brilliant, you know, because again, I don't. We don't think that way. And you're coming in and you're just dissecting everything. And so if you want to.

You know, it occurs to me is the. The balance between really zeroing in and focusing on a lane and then stepping back and looking at the big picture. And not a balance, but it's really an ebb and flow. You kind of go back and forth that as you grow as a business, you kind of have to, you know, at some point, you know, you and Danny are buying a property, overseeing this renovation, selling a property, and you're doing all the things at some point, way back when, and then. And then, you know, you decide, okay, well, I'm gonna have somebody do this section.

Right?

And so you train them and you're like, well, this is how we do that. That's how we do this. And Then you're focused on the other things, and then you get some. And we've hired a bunch of leaders.

That's exactly what happened.

Yeah, we pieced off all these things and said, hey, you kind of manage this tower, you manage this tower, you manage this tower. And then throw it from that tower. That tower. And. And then. So now we're in this phase where. Okay, well, let's back up a little bit and let's kind of reorient all of these lanes into the big picture. Right. And so they get the race. And we've used that, you know, relay race analogy. We're beating that one up. It's a great analogy for what we do. You know, we buy, we rehab, sell, then we manage. Right. Properties. And so we. We have these handoffs and it's just this. We each run our quadrants or whatever. But, you know, we're in this phase where we've got to get this. This racer who knows this particular leg of the race really well to understand the big picture of the whole lap.

Yep.

And the whole race. And so we're backing up a little bit doing these. Some of these big picture things, and then that'll enable these handoffs to happen a little bit smarter. People will make better judgments about a buy when they're vested in some way in the sale and management of the property and vice versa. Right. So. And we'll go to, you know, we'll go through another phase again when, you know, we get everybody kind of caught up on big picture, where we then got to, you know, drill down a little bit.

Right.

And get people a little bit more depth and expertise in their particular space. And. And you kind of go through that cycle.

Yeah, I like. Yeah, you said Edmond. Yeah, that's. That's perfect.

I love it. Yeah.

So you talked about a little bit, you know, being in the tech industry. So what's, what's your background?

Yeah, so a bunch of. Bunch of stuff. Served in the army for a while. I did some. I did some sales, financial services, industry stuff for a while, and like securities and as a broker, insurance stuff. And then I got into the tech world via recruiting. So I was really like a headhunter or whatever was kind of my. Kind of my expertise. So I got into HR through that, kind of came back into tech and leadership and the consulting space. And so a little bit of a hodgepodge of like, personnel, tech and then sales. So that's kind of the bag that I'm bringing to the. To this business. The real estate has always kind of Been a side hustle for me too. Right. So now I've had these kind of professional experiences marrying them up then with my, you know, my love for the. What was the side hustle? That was a career.

Well, and I love this because I didn't even know about the army, so.

Thank you for your service.

I was sure it's awesome. I didn't even know that.

Sure. They paid me for my college loans.

Well, there you go.

Yeah, right. Thanks for paying your taxes.

Yeah, thank you, Army. But, you know, because, you know, Freedom Real Estate Group, actually, we were on a podcast last week and the guy said, you're veterans. Right? And we're like, no, no, we just love veterans.

Take all the affection I can get.

That's right. And you sort of alluded to this too. It just there you. You got ahead of me. But so, like, what real estate? What have you done before prior to coming to. You walking in the door of Frankland here?

Yeah, so a couple things, you know, I bought and sold my own homes, of course, and so you learn a little bit. And I learned to be a Handyman in my 20s or whatever because I couldn't afford to hire contractors. Right, right. That's exactly right. So. So that was a little bit of a first step as I put a little money aside and was able to. I got into buying rental properties. And so I've been a landlord myself. And I've also done several flips. And so I've, you know, bought properties with the express intent of flipping them, renovated them and sold them. So had my hand in a couple of different lanes in the real estate business. I've always enjoyed it as, you know, a secondary thing and mostly managing it closely myself. Right. So, like, I've been hands on with some of the stuff. I've actually managed the rental properties myself and so a little bit more hands on. And I wish I knew you guys sooner. I probably let you manage my property. I would have kept a couple of rentals that I ended up selling. So anyway. But yeah, so that's my experience there in the real estate business.

Well, that's awesome. So, and this isn't one of my questions on here, so. But have you always been from around this area, Southwest Ohio?

No, I grew up in San Diego. Yeah. So born and raised in San Diego. Lived there until I graduated high school and then I moved to the Midwest to go to school. Ended up getting married, kids, the whole business here. And those kids dig roots.

From Ohio. Move to San Diego.

I know, right the wrong way. I love it. Here, though, you know, like you can buy a little mansion for an affordable price. And it took me a decade to learn to appreciate the seasons for too long, too many years. Fall was just like a long, sad introduction to the winter. But now I've learned to love the fall. And having a big garage attached to your house helps with the winters.

I tell you, if no one appreciates the four seasons here in Ohio, move to Phoenix for two years and then move back. You'll appreciate everything about Ohio. True.

I was spoiled on that San Diego climate, though. I have learned to love it here. Now it's home, and I don't think I'm going anywhere.

Yeah, we actually love it, too. This is your. I'm going into year six of living in Ohio without owning a snow shovel. So what? Let's hope that works, though. Still don't have one. Wow. So how did you get to this point? So from consultant to president. Yeah, you kind of alluded to a lot of things, but how did you get to this point?

Yeah, so when I joined frag, you know, our renovations chief is. I'm connected to. I know him well. Right, right. We've got a family connection. And so he sat me down and he said, hey, he kind of knows what I do, you know, as an operations leader and that kind of thing. And he said, hey, we need help in our property management space. And I don't, you know, anybody who's followed us knows that, you know, we made an acquisition there, we built a team. We were, you know, it's a. That's a really difficult business. And it was difficult for us too. Right. And so we were, you know, not doing an exceptional job for all of our customers. There was just stuff that we weren't doing as well as we could and you guys were in a position to find the help that you needed. Our renovation, she brought me in and said, hey, man, they need your help. Can you, can you come do this? I was open to it. I was running my startup and doing some, you know, side work and consulting and whatever else, so it fit. I wasn't ready to commit to anything long term or full time. In fact, I think I had pitched the idea to Danny. Maybe I'll just help fractionally, you know, a little bit here and there when she talked me into giving a full week to it. And so I jumped in with you all in May and worked with Chris, our property manager, to kind of make some big changes there to some of the things that we're doing with the kind of a laser focus on Creating a great experience for our owners.

Right, right, right.

And so we've made big strides there. And kudos to Chris for a lot of leadership that he's displayed. And I helped with some things. Some of it was bandwidth, some it was depth that I brought out of other industries and perspective. And I think that was a really effective first couple of months in that engagement and built some trust and some partnerships that really worked. And you know what, Flip? I'm so glad that I started in that space. It was a realization that I had in the middle of it that that is our product. That's what we sell. Right. Like, we. We buy good properties, we renovate good properties, but so do a lot of folks. Right, right. What, you know, a big chunk of what we sell is the fact that we're also doing property management in house, so we can tell you what to expect. We can collaborate with people at all, you know, parts of the process. It was also one of the gaps we identified is that our customers didn't know that it was a little unclear that we really kind of owned every part of the process. Right. So anyway, being part of, like, that core product was really cool. And then figuring out where things were being handed off when they should have been a softer, warmer, slower handoff and that kind of thing. Right. And then next thing you know, all those tentacles kind of got me into other parts of the business and.

Right.

And I couldn't keep my nose out of certain things. And here we go. Right. And here we are. So.

Yeah, we just eased it in.

Yeah. Yeah. I tend to do that. You know, back when I was working in a kitchen in college, I'm like, well, hey, I can help with the grill. And I'm supposed to be working the fryer, and next thing you know, I'm flipping the burgers and whatever, and then you're running the kitchen. So.

Yep.

I got a habit of doing these things.

Well, I remember because I didn't know the. The. The background story. You know, that's. That Steve, he's. He's our renovations chief and our recruiter, too. Yeah. And. And so I remember. I believe he had told Danny, you know, that. That, you know, she needs to talk to you. And then I believe Danny told Randy, hey, I'm going to talk to Aaron Davis.

Sure.

And I believe the quote of what Randy said when he heard that was, whoa. Nothing else, just whoa. And then we're like. And that's when it got serious. And we're like, okay, we need to get this guy in. So it's it's been. And it's. It's. I love watching it too, because, you know, just like I said before, like what you've done with the, with the team, and I've seen differences in individual people.

Sure.

That. That have been. There's no other reason why that changed for those people have been because. Other than because of you. And so it's. And I just, I love watching. I love how people are thinking about things now, are thinking differently because, you know, like I said, you knew that Danny and I, we bought houses, we renovate them and we sold them and we put property management in place and move on next, you know, and now we've got this team. I think we're over 50 people now, you know, and it's just, it's overwhelming.

I'm a big believer in the, like, the collective intelligence of a group. And it's really easy when you, when you start drawing up lanes for people to operate in a business. I think most of us do this most of the time when we're leading people. Is that either because of visibility or because of not sure if I should or I'm supposed to? Whatever. We kind of cap and limit people's ability to influence other things that they would be good at. Right. So if there's anything I'm. I appreciate you noticing that because that's, you know, as I kind of alluded to earlier, that is kind of my style of leadership.

I don't.

I'm not necessarily inclined to be the fastest, smartest, biggest guy in the room. It's more about, you know, how do I kind of connect people that should be connected and influence and engage people that should be influenced and engaged in certain things or whatever that empower them to do it. There's just. There's a lot of really smart folks in this. When you have that many people, it's a stressor and it's a. And it's an asset because it's a stressor because people are not. People don't show up for free.

Right.

Right. So every time you add new brain power and add new labor to your organization, you have a burden now to take care of them. And so. So that's cool. But it's also a great asset if you can get all that they want to give.

Right.

And most people, in my experience, most people want to give more than we even ask of them. Right, Right. People like solving problems. You know, they like impressing their colleagues and doing cool stuff. Right. So I don't know. I guess I'm a little Bit of an artist at leveraging that energy, you know? Right.

So now, before I get to this last question, I've got a question that's not on here. And so this is going to come at you from the side here. So Covid hit. A lot of people started working remotely. Well, we had people working remotely for us way before. Before it was cool.

Sure.

You know, and so we've got, you know, like I said, Over 50 people now. Majority of them are in the Philippines and then. But then we also have a few here in the States that are working remotely. So what is. You know, because this is a team.

Yeah.

You know, what. What is your. What. What's your biggest challenge with that?

Yeah, so in my. Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is trying to optimize for both. Right. Like.

Right.

Like a fully remote team is almost easier than a half remote team. Right, right. Because you. You just. You just accept and concede on all those things that you can't have.

Right.

Like we can't do a luncheon together.

Or whatever for remote. Hey, we try.

I know. So you just do it some other way. If you're 100% remote, you don't do other things, like to engage and connect and make friends and that kind of thing. Right. Share ideas and get into deeper conversations. It's the hybrid thing that's difficult, but we're. We're right there with the rest of the world.

Yep.

You know what I mean? Unraveling that problem and trying to get great at it. I think we're good at it already. There's. There's a lot of room for us to get better, and the whole world's trying to get better at it. Right, right.

Right. Because it's not going away.

No, it's not going away. It's not going away ever. I mean, we have. We do have the. The benefit of a lot of our product and such is localized. Right. So we can, you know, kind of disproportionately focus on local folks or whatever. It makes sense. We have some field folks or whatever that have to be local, obviously. Right. So we're always going to have local folks. We also have, you know, we're good at finding talent all over the world. Yep. Right. And here we are, a team from all over the world. So we're taking the best of both. But, yeah, the tricky part is, do you have a meeting with 12 people? They could. All that could be done remotely. Do you have the six local folks in the room and the six. Right. So.

Right.

The answer is both, you Know, like, I've got one kind of core meeting that we're doing that I would love as many people as possible in the room. And the other one, I'm. I'm saying, you know what, we'll just do that whole meeting remote.

Yeah.

And so it's always kind of a judgment call. And it's. There is a. You know, it's a huge asset being local. Right. Like, we get to sit in the same room together and record this meeting. I get to one wander by your office and say, hey, you ready?

Yeah, exactly.

And having, you know, two or three conversations on the way that are productive. I mean, there's. There's value in all that stuff.

Is the water cooler, you know? You know, hey, what did you do last night? You know?

Exactly. But this office isn't free.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's not.

Yeah, it's a tricky one, but I think. I think we're doing a good job of grabbing the best of both worlds. And obviously, I think we can get great with the rest of the world as we learn all these tools and tricks and a ton of resources out there. So it's not intimidating to me, but it's just one more little thing we have to figure out how to do great.

Yep. So what opportunities do you see for taking Frag Freedom Real Estate Group.

Okay.

To the next level? Yeah, I don't even know what the next level is, but it just, you know, I don't even know.

But yeah, so, you know, the next level is layers of leadership. Right. That's where it gets tricky. Once you, you know, you get 100 people or whatever else, you've got leaders, leading leaders and that kind of thing. And then you really have to get, you know, it kind of goes back to what I was saying about. About founders handing off this kind of instinctive decision making in the work in the middle of the weeds, decision making to managers. And then as you get bigger, then you have to have people handing that off to other people who are then handing it off to and so on. So they're becomes layers. So the need to be super clear and decisive as early as possible about where you want to go and the tactics you're going to use to get there is important. And then your ability to influence the culture in terms of work habits and values and stuff of a workforce gets more indirect. So you have to think very intentionally about what kind of like you do the remote thing, okay, well, we're gonna start doing this stuff or whatever. What does that do to the relationships and whatever? So Anyway, you have to get a little bit more intentional earlier and faster about the things you want to influence. Because some of the things we're going to do now aren't going to be decisions we make this week that we see impact this week. They're going to be decisions we make today that take three months then to impact the way that the team works.

Right.

So, you know, I. Some of the opportunity I see. So all that's kind of the framework for my answer.

Right.

The opportunity I see to take us to the next level is intentionally just kind of like getting a bigger picture view across the whole team. Right. So that they kind of understand exactly what we're trying to accomplish from the time we do an acquisition to the time we, you know, put a tenant back in a property that's been vacated. Right, right. All the whole life cycle so that we can lean on each other a little bit more. Right. So we have a more versatile staff. More of the answers more often can answer, you know, first time the questions asked kind of thing, as opposed to, oh, you gotta ask Joe or you gotta ask Mary.

Right, right.

So I think that's a big opportunity and you kind of alluded to things we're doing in that direction. And you know, another thing is like certain cultural habits about, you know, decision makings and risk and that kind of thing. And that's, that's hairy because it's not like when you get bigger, you can now afford to mess up a lot. People think, oh, you got more money and you have bigger budget or whatever else, so you can just blow it. No, you can't. Because you also have bigger staff and bigger responsibilities. Yeah. The same amount of customers that expect certain results and that kind of thing. Right. So you can't afford to be careless with it. But for people to be innovative and for team to solve problems and to do the work on the ground at the right time, which is as fast as possible, you have to plan for, even budget for a certain amount of risk taking. Right. And so that's a cultural opportunity. I think that as you get bigger, you just kind of have to intentionally manage for. Right, right. So that's, that's where we're at.

Try to be one step ahead.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, awesome. Well, I love this. This is, this is great because I'm like, I'm like, okay, great, I get to interview Aaron. But I've learned, you know, there's things about you I didn't know.

Sergeant Davis. That's right.

Well, awesome. Well, I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast again. Again, it's Real Talk, which is real talk for the real estate investor. And again, thank you Aaron.

My pleasure.

Glad to be here for joining us for today's podcast. But we always like to end our podcast with Invest Smart Live Happy. Bye everybody. Nothing on this 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 this show are not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss.