From unpaid Intern to COO & Partner of 6 companies: Special Guest, Tina Phoenix Howard | EP.32

Hi, guys. Caitlin here, your marketing and communications coordinator for Freedom Real Estate Group and its family of companies. And today we are back here for another Freedom Vlog episode. But we have a special guest. As you can see, our coo, Tina Phoenix Howard. You wanna say anything at all before we get started?

Ready? Let's go.

Perfect. Okay, so the first question. I always say it's an easy question, but when I did my interview, I actually found out that it was a lot more difficult on who is Tina Phoenix Howard?

Hmm. Lover of real estate, brains, passive income, military wife. Although my husband is about to retire. Landlord, daughter, best friend. All those things.

I love that. I think that's so far, probably one of my favorite answers I've gotten. All right, moving on to the next question. On when did you get started with Freedom Real Estate Group?

Hmm. Officially, I just had my two year work anniversary with frag. Unofficially, been working with Danny and Flip for quite a number of years on different projects here and there, always with real estate. They gave me my start. Actually, I started as their intern many moons ago.

Yeah, know that.

So, as I mentioned, I love real estate. Always had an interest in it and started kind of teaching myself. Had started with tax liens, had an LLC with some friends, and we bought some tax liens and did some different things. But as a military wife, we moved around a lot. So every time I got to a new place, it just felt like I was starting over. And then when we got to Washington state, I saw a post from Danny looking for interns. And I thought, I wonder if I could do this virtually, you know, that way I'm not starting over every time I move and I can stick with the company and just see where it goes. And then I saw that they were investing and I said, okay, no better way to learn than to actually see it happening and get my hands dirty and get in there and see. See if I can marry the information I found out on my own to the actual real life deals, which I did.

Oh, I love these. I always learn more than what I thought I knew. So I love that I was going to say something on that. It'll come back to me. That got into my question on how you got started and when you got started. So you answered both of those. What exactly do you do in your role?

SEO. I like to think of it as I take the vision of the CEO and the founders and the partners that take where they see the company going. I put the actual steps into place, I help it come to fruition into the real world. So Danny And Flip, both are very visionary, and they have ideas on where they want the company to grow.

And.

And it's my job, my responsibility. I take full responsibility in helping make that come to pass in the most efficient way possible and to help all the team members as well make the most of their role and get the most fulfillment out of what they do every day.

I can definitely vouch for that. I remember when I first started in my role, you were kind of the go to person on I don't know what I'm doing, help me. And you definitely do have your hands absolutely everywhere. And you're so knowledgeable. It's amazing. Anytime I'm like, who do I go to? I immediately always want to go to you just because I know you know what you're doing. But I'm like, no, I need to go to other people. That's so funny. But I do remember what I was going to say back on the last question, talking about how you were moving around from different states and everything. As you guys may know, our office here is based in Dayton, Ohio. And Tina, you are in Georgia, correct?

Yep. I work virtually for the team in South Georgia, near Savannah.

Perfect. Which is why we are on a zoom call and not recording this in the office as we normally would. Although we would love for her to be in the office. But one day, I don't know, it's.

Storming over there today, but here it's a beautiful, sunny, and gorgeous day.

It's starting to get a little lighter out, though, so hopefully. Growing up, did you know that you always wanted to be in real estate, or did you want to do something completely different.

Growing up? You know, when you're a kid, people always ask me, what do you want to be when you grow up? You know, I'm like, I have no idea. But I do remember thinking that I had an interest in psychology, psychiatry, because I seem to always be the friend where people would always come to with their challenges. I want to say problems, but, you know, what kind of problems you gonna have as a kid? But, you know, whenever they needed to, like, I guess, talk about stuff, they would come to me. So I just thought, you know, I could see myself doing that as a living. And I actually did go to school for a little bit on it, but quickly realized real estate was pulling my strings a little harder.

Interesting. That kind of goes back to when I was saying you were knowledgeable. So you're knowledgeable and wise, which is another reason she always gives great advice. Or you always give great advice, and you always Know how to, I don't want to say, say the right things. But you always know exactly what to say and how to say it. So I always appreciate it.

Thank you.

You are very welcome. Flipping it a little bit. What do you like to do in your spare time when you're not working? I know you work a lot, but when you're not, what do you enjoy?

Well, I do work a lot, but mainly because I do enjoy it. It's very satisfying to me to see things come together. But in free time I like to spend as much time as I can outside. I feel like working as much as I do and always having all these screens in my face constantly. I try to get outside as much as possible. So that's, you know, going to the park for a run or you know, hanging out different, just exploring out of doors. I mean even on my property here I could just step outside and I get to see lots of critters. I love taking pictures of animals, birds. Kind of a amateur photo person. I know just a little bit. But it is something that I want to learn more about and really spend more time with photography. I really enjoy it.

That is interesting. Another thing I didn't know about. I'll be keeping that in the back of my mind.

What do you mean you don't see all my pictures that I post on the. On critters.

Okay, I do know that, but I didn't know photography specifically.

Oh yeah.

So I know that now.

Yeah, I took a class or two or two.

I did a lot of. I took a lot of graphic design classes when I was in high school and then even more so when I got into college. But I really enjoyed them a lot.

I tried something about visual, you know, bringing an image together. Yeah, yeah.

And there's so there's so much more that goes into it than you know, a lot of people are like, you take a camera, you push button and point. You point and push button and I'm like kind of picture you're wanting. Yes. If you had to give everyone in the world or if you chose to give everyone in the world one piece of advice, what would that be?

I would say treat others. You know, this is age old advice you hear all the time. You know, treat others as you would have them treat. Treat others as you would have them treat you. So to me that just sums it up to like be kind. You never know when somebody is going through something or you're misunderstanding what they meant or it's. I'd rather be mistaken in the way of like not taking in, not taking it personally, or I'd rather default and giving them the benefit of the doubt, like, oh, they must have something going on, or, you know, I don't know, everything that's happening right now in this situation. And there's no reason to escalate things unnecessarily. And if you are kind to people, that has a ripple effect. And you never know when just treating someone as another fellow human being how that is going to affect now the rest of their day and the people that the rest of the people that they're going to come in contact with. So I always try to keep that in mind. So that is one piece of advice I would give. Just think of others and not always have that knee jerk reaction to negativity. Have the knee jerk reaction to positivity.

Absolutely. Yesterday we. I don't know if you were in our morning meeting yesterday, but yesterday we were talking about first impressions and how people are so quick to judge based off first impressions. And as I have gotten older, I have realized that people are going through all kinds of things that you may not know about. So I typically try to give people second and third impressions before I start to form some kind of opinion on them, just because you never know what could happen. My very best friend, the first, like, handful of times we did not get along at all. And now we get along like two peas in a pod. We're so close and it's insane. And if both of us would have just gone off that first instinct that we got the first couple times we met each other, we probably wouldn't be friends now or let alone even best friends. So I really love that advice. And I always say be kind too. So that's my favorite thing to say going into. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

Oh, flying. Flying, flying, flying. 100%. I think that's why I'm so enamored with birds. I don't know if it's like the sense of freedom or, or what, but I know that I don't know. Have you ever had a flying dream?

Yes. Yes.

Those are my absolute favorite. And so you actually just. If I had a superpower, that 100% would be what I pick. Like, please, please just let me fly. I don't know if I'd want wings necessarily. That might be cool too, though.

So my flying dreams always end up me, like crashing or falling. And then I jump in my sleep and wake up.

Oh, my goodness.

That's how long I know. Or like, you know, like when like you're riding like a roller coaster or something, or you step off something and like you jump in your sleep and wake up. That's how my flying voice went.

Oh, my gosh.

I want a piece of one like yours.

I've had some really good ones. I mean, I don't want to go into great detail, but they were just like, I would wake up and just be like, wow, that was amazing. That was fantastic. And sometimes I'll go to sleep, which is hoping that I'll have one. And they don't happen that often, but when they do, I really relish them for sure.

I love this question. I love asking that one. All right, I have two more questions. Second to last one is how do you handle stress on a day to day basis?

This is important to me. You know, a lot of time I take on a lot, so it's very easy to get overwhelmed. So there are a lot of things that I do have tried, but I'll just give you kind of like the bullet points of what works for me. Physical activity, definitely. You know, running, biking, a lot of cardio stuff, you know, whatever. Anything that makes makes the sweat happen. Because something about sweating just makes me feel like I've accomplished something, I've done something, you know, I'm working it out, I'm actually doing something. And then also meditation.

Trying to be.

More consistent with it, because I can tell by the date on the days that I actually do it or after a period of time, I can tell a difference. You know, short period of time and kind of attached to that is Wim Hof breathing, which is a, you know, it's a quicker way for me to get to a different state of mind. After meditating for like, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes. Just depends on how, you know, scattered my thoughts are. I can definitely, I click. I can feel my state changing. But with Wim Hof breathing quick, fast, my state has changed, like immediately. So that those are the things that work without a doubt. And the other thing I would say is get enough sleep, but I never do, unfortunately. Working on it get you on the.

Sleep part, which I'm definitely working on as well. But meditating. I also recently picked up meditating. And I love it. I. At first it was kind of one of those things. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna try meditating. I'm probably not gonna do anything or whatever. And I fell in love with it. And I did notice such a difference with it. And so now I tell everyone I'm like, Lauren, my Assistant. I. It's. I'm like, do you ever just, like, take a break from your screens and just meditate for, like, 10 minutes? Like, it's so rejuvenating. And she's like, no. I was like, try it. Like, I tell everyone. I was like, just try it. It's amazing. And the more, like you were saying, the more you do it and the more consistency you get with it, the better you get. And I think, for me, at least, the more rejuvenated I feel afterwards. I love meditating.

Yeah. The biggest difference for me is I feel, like, less reactionary to things. It doesn't. I don't get triggered as quickly, or I can take things more in stride. And also my creativity. I could tell I have a lot more ideas and a lot. I don't know. It just turns a couple of things on that I like to keep running.

It is nice for anyone watching this. If you have not meditated, you should.

Try it at least once.

There's a lot of great videos on YouTube. All right. Is there anything additionally that you just want to add in general? Anything that I missed at all?

A couple of things that just popped in my head was my latest thing is when I go outside, I like to get feet into the dirt like I used to. Not, you know, because we have a lot of ants in the yard. Fire ants in Georgia. Right. I'm always afraid I'm gonna get bit, but that. And also I wanted to just give a shout out to our team because our team is so incredible. And even though at times my job can be very challenging, as all of our roles are, at times, everybody works really well together and always looks out for one another and really tries to help each other. So I've never worked with such a great group of people, and I just. I would like to add that. For sure.

Yeah, absolutely. Lauren and I actually, right before we jumped on this zoom call, we were just talking about the work environment that we have and the people that we work with, and it's truly amazing. I 110% agree with you on that. So that's funny or ironic that you brought that up, because, like I said.

I'm not even in the office, and I can feel it. Yeah. Support and just the camaraderie and. And the fantastic company culture that we have. So kudos to the team.

Absolutely. All right, well, that is all that we have for you guys today. I'm sure we will be doing a later podcast with Tina on Real Talk to get to know her a little more, if not her specifically. I'm sure we'll have her on sometime soon just to talk about another topic to be determined. So check it out.

Flying dreams.

Flying dreams. There we go. We post new episodes every Tuesday. As you know, vlog episodes come out every Wednesday. We always like to end these with Invest Smart, Live Happy. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Bye.

Bye.

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