Introducing our new CEO, Randy Brown | REIal Talk | EP. #18

Foreign.

Hey everybody, Flip Robinson here, one of the co founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies. And here we are for one of our podcasts. This one's a little bit different of a podcast. This is a special podcast and our podcast, of course is called Real Talk, which is real talk for the real estate investor. Normally our podcasts are of a teaching sort. Today is an announcement sort. Because today, effective. Well, Monday, August 9th at 8:00am this morning we have hired and have instituted our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Randy Brown.

Hey, thanks. Well, we're going to. No slow roll or anticipation or anything, I guess. Hey, who's the big guy in the video?

Let's hear it. Like you said earlier, rip the band aid off. That's right.

That's right.

Well, this is, I mean, this has a long time coming. It's. You've been with us while working side by side, I should say for a few years now. Yeah. And so why don't you explain a little bit about that, like how we got started.

Okay. So I think the first project I was working on for you guys was like, like a year end, 2017 wrap, something like that. And so through the, you know, some investors that we know mutually, we kind of came in contact. And I think the very first engagement was like to help catch up the books and, and give some coaching on a few processes and you know, then you guys were going to kind of handle it and get off and running. So that's where we started. And then I guess you kind of take baby steps. You grow, we grow. Right, right. You know, you take on what you guys grew like exponentially. So you, you know, shot out of a cannon. So there was leaning on our firm a lot to, to jump in and build out some of those practices until it just became, like you said, like the perfect fit.

Right.

To where, you know, we just kind of started to, to just enjoy doing business together.

Right.

And your business seemed like even though I was working as a consultant, your business seemed like my business. Right, right. So.

Right. And I've always, I've always felt the way you interacted with us and even in their meetings back to day one, that's how you approached it. You know, it was, you didn't, it wasn't like you were a consultant. You were as you were, as if you were one of us. And it's always been like that. And, and, and so going back to that beginning, how many companies did we have back then?

I, I think we had, we did have four.

Really? Okay.

Yeah, I think we, I think we had four. We had. See, even we. Right. Even back then, we had.

Yeah.

Now it's always been kind of my approach. Right. That's like my client interaction is to be a part of. Of the team. Right. But I think the three of us just kind of clicked immediate. Like, we immediately, we just wanted to be in business together, so we would turn off the kind of, okay, here's the financial implications and here's your tax strategy. Here's how the businesses should do to, you know, to. To do business together. And then it just became, okay, so what's your entrepreneurial philosophy? What do you want to do?

Right.

So there was a relationship that was buil early on.

Right. And, and real quick though, for two of those companies, though, when you came on were entity companies, you know, companies that we bought stuff with, and we don't technically count them in our six companies. So. So, so we were only just two companies. We were, we, you know, at that time, it was me. Right, but you just touched on something which is. I think one of the reasons why it was such a perfect fit is because the, Your entrepreneurial background.

Sure.

You know, as Danny and I obviously were the epitome of entrepreneurs for the last 20 years. And so it's, it's. We. We had the same mindset. You know, we. You thought exactly how we thought, and there's not very many times that we bring somebody in that that happens. But when it does happen, we latch on and we won't let you go, which is exactly what happened here.

But I didn't see it coming.

Yeah, well, and, but secretly, you know, and it's. And we recognize you' superpowers and your ability to lead people in a way that they don't realize that they're being led. You're like, let's go get them. And all of a sudden, everybody just jumps up and runs through the wall for you. It's amazing. And the impact that you brought onto us, onto these companies. I mean, you moved into a vice president role of business development and our CFO at that time, and you started what's called First Friday. So you want to talk about First Friday at all?

First Friday, just a quick little meeting. Right. So we go through some information, some. Some training, a little bit of recognition, but it's basically all of the companies a quick snapshot of the performance and what that means to the rest of the team. That way, the. The whole company kind of gets together and gets to. To see how their performance matters to the, to the group at large. Right, right. And in order for the medicine to go down, we try to put a little, you know, sweetener with it. So it should be a good time. Right, right.

And then we also recognize one, we recognize a couple individuals. But then there's the winner of the first Friday award, or we don't actually know what the name of the award sure is, but it's, but it's, it's, it's nominated by everyone else, you know, all the team members, you know, email you and say, here's who I think should get it, you know, and.

Sure.

And then we meet and we discuss. And so we've had a different team member win it every, every month so far this year. We're going to eventually get plaques and a trophy and all this, but that's, you know, work in progress.

Sure. I feel like the, like the recognition, obviously we see, we see the needle mover pieces, right? This, the activity that actually moves the needle, and those are results. Right. But your peers are in the trenches with you and they say who, you know, they can see who went through the wall. So I really feel strongly. And we, we did, but we felt strongly that those recommendations should come from the trenches, from the people actually doing the work. So, yeah, it's my favor. Right. And then making, making sure that, you know, because what they did was exceptional, that they feel it. Right, that they feel it. So we kind of make an event out of their presentation and that stuff.

So it's awesome.

I love it.

Yeah, we love it. It started in January. We've done one every month. And, and people look forward to it. You know, it's, it's sometimes you do things and you don't really think how much it impacts people.

Right.

And, and, you know, and no one's, you know, I haven't heard anyone say it, you know, you know, oh, we got a first Friday meeting. I don't know.

Great.

You know, I haven't heard that at all. But then all of a sudden I hear all, oh, I can't wait for the first Friday meeting. You know, they're looking forward to it, which is great, you know, and plus you build in there, you know, more, you know, sales oriented orientation, you know, and also you do a little, a little teaching in there as well. Again, they don't notice that, you know, you do it in such a sly way that they just, it's, it's, it's great. Your mind know how you got that going. But then the team motivation, you know, everyone just, they feel your aura in this office. You know, they know when you're here, you know, because it's like, Randy's here. Let's go. You know, and so it's always such a great time. But so we touched on this a little earlier. How many companies did we have when you met us? And that was how many LLCs, which now I don't even know how many LLCs we've got. But let's talk about how we're talking, like we bring all the people together. For first Friday, it was one company instead of six individual companies. So you wanted to touch on that.

Yeah, sure. So I think that's kind of the vision behind that. That meeting. Yes. But also kind of how as the. The companies have expanded. Right. The, you know, the. The business. You guys got into business to provide turnkey opportunity for real estate investors. Right. And so when we talked about the four companies, it was actually two. Right. It was acquiring the properties and getting them ready for sale through the renovations company. And then the actual dispositions. Right. And putting out a quality product and making sure that the investor was buying something that was quality was the primary objective. Right, right. And then there were some hurdles that happened when we were trying to fulfill that actual turnkey type of feeling. Right. Because now there's a property management piece. And so we were handing that over to a third party to manage the properties. And this isn't about going into those experiences or anything like that, but we felt that we could provide, again, the. We. It is we. Right, right. But we felt we could provide a better experience than what was out there because of some frustration, frustrations and things like that. So we added the property management company. Right, right. And then getting properties, you know, because of the market being so hot, especially this part of the world, investors coming from all over the place, you know, like Arizona and Texas and things like.

That, to buy Switzerland, they're coming seriously coming from everywhere.

Right. To buy here. So being able to rely on outside parties to. And wholesalers and things like that to provide inventory became a little more difficult. Right, right. Plus we. We developed the resources and some skills that. That might be differentiators in that space. So another company was born to acquire those properties. Right. And so now we're. Now we have, you know, we're mining for the gold, we're polishing the gold, we're refining it with fire, you know, that stuff. So. So seeing the company as not six individual businesses, but as one kind of wraparound service. Right, right. You know, so mentioning some of the others. Right. Investor comfort with Freedom Capital Group, like.

Right.

You know, and Then you know that we, we do retail business now. Right. So independent Real Independence Realty Group.

Yeah, I'm doing a lot of retail right now.

Right, right. So all of that, you know, kind of as a one, I don't like using cliches. I speak in bumper sticker like everyone knows that.

I know, I love it.

But things like One stop shop, that's not exactly my flavor, but that's exactly, you know, where we're getting, you know, the entire process. And as those goals are met. Right. So we're not having trouble coming up with inventory. Right. C4H is humming right now. They're doing a great job. So this, it's an opportunity to add external dispositions. Right. So now we can leverage our talents because we have been doing this, taking what they purchase and making them into high value retail and turnkey investments. Now we can offer that service as our inventory gets too high. There's only so many rehab crews. Yeah, right. So it's just where we're going is so exciting to me that I just, I couldn't watch it right. From Fort Mitchell. Right, right, right. So I'm glad that, yeah, I'm glad that this whole piece. I don't know how much we want to go into what your thought process was and what your next move is. Yeah, well, we'll get, we're going to.

Get into that here in a second. Yeah. So. And, but we enjoy the, the, you know, because we always kept saying we're all these individual companies. They're under one roof, but they're individual companies. And, and, but you're right, it is just one, just big, you know, like you said, you know, we, we mine the gold and we clean the gold and then we take care of your gold and then we sell you the gold that we're still taking care of, you know. So it, it's, it's, it like you said, I hate the one stop shop. But it really, it really, it's. There's nothing off the top of my head that better explains it. But so the, the thought process from Danny and I was the, you know, we've always been told work on the business, not in the business, you know, and when you're, you know, we, we started the one company and we get it going to get it going, get it going and we're just to that point where we can get out and work on the business and we're like, oh, start another company, you know. Start another company, you know. And so we've never gotten to the point where because we're you know, thick in the weeds with this, you know, and it's. And it's been a grind, but we. We finally got to a point where we're just like, we need someone now. You know, we need someone. And we need someone to come in and take this over from us. Because, you know, in June, we took our Do Not Disturb our D and D. I love it. Or Do Not Disturb vacation. And it was amazing. We taught everybody how to do everything, and we left. And then when we came back, we didn't take anything back. We just said, you guys keep doing it all. It was awesome. And that's when we real. Okay, now we can get out. And now we need someone to run this so that we can officially get out. But we're not getting out. That's the thing. So that's. That's. And I made sure that everyone knew this. Danny and I aren't going anywhere. We're still here. We're still in our same offices. We're not moving anywhere. We're still grinding it out, but we're. Our focus now is on multifamily and larger multifamily, 100, 200, whatever, 300 units. And so that's our main focus now, to include and to build up Freedom Capital Group, which is the baby of the family. So, yeah, so we're not going anywhere. We're going to still be here, you know, even though everyone keeps asking me questions and I just go, you know, that's a great question for Randy. But, yeah, so we're not going anywhere. We're just. But we're super excited that. Well, number one, that you said. Yes, that. That was. That was. We were super excited. Pumped about that, but we're super excited. We couldn't be more excited about, like, what you just said about our future and where this is going. Because, you know, I think you had said, you know, you're sitting on a powder keg. You know, this. This is. This is. It's it where we're going like this, but it's just going to get bigger. And we're super excited. We're so glad that you're on board. And welcome to the. Officially to the family. You're no longer an outsider, acting like you're part of the family. You are a part of the family now. So welcome again.

Thank you.

Did you have anything else that you wanted to talk about?

I just wanted to. It's funny, in your. The video you did last week, you talked about Randy terms, but I wanted to tease something out just a little Bit I wanted to, I wanted, I do want to tease out that you guys aren't going anywhere. You know, that was actually, it was very important to me when I, when we were going through the process of, you know, making sure what made sense in us coming together was that you guys have, you know, you know, 20 years or so of experience in there. I think not, maybe not quite 20 years, but hundreds of years worth of actual experience because of the grind and how fast you did it and how fast you grew in all the parts of the business. And so that having that resource still here was super important, you know, that you guys are, you know, you're gonna, our offices are 10ft away. Right. And so that resource will be here because your, your knowledge and experience and guidance and is just as priceless. Right. All right. And I think people are going to be real happy to hear that. You know, the culture here, you know, that was born out of you and Danny. Right. The investor comfort. You know, Danny loves to say, we've never had an investor lose money with us. Right. And so we're going to continue that trend. Right. But having Danny there, right there, shoulder to shoulder, still in the, in the trenches, but just with a shift of focus toward the, the next big thing.

Yep.

It's. It's really exciting. It's. It's really exciting. So just teasing out that when he says they're not going anywhere, he's really not. I mean, they're.

Seriously, we're not going.

Yeah. So no, that's, that was the, the last piece I had. I don't, I feel like, you know, that there should be some type of, I don't know, joke or, you know, maybe some type of, you know, you're, you're.

Come on, you're the king of jokes.

I know. I just thought of this in the moment. So I'm, I'm, you know, I don't want to, you know, not perform right now, but I, I feel like I'm racing through. I'm gonna have to go through some of the old ones that maybe someone that is on the podcast hasn't heard before, but maybe the team has heard before, but you had heard that I, I just bought the house next door to my father in law. Right. And so I have a great relationship with my father in law. People have these ideas about what it might be to live next year in laws. If I were to make a list of my top five best friends, my father in law would be on it. Right. And independent of the fact that I, you know, he let me marry his daughter. Right. But he bought a horse, right? You heard about. Did you hear about that? He bought a horse. Yeah, you did hear this. And most of the time, the horse is pretty quiet. He named it Mayo, you know, and he's quiet most of the time. It's not really an issue. But sometimes in the middle of the night, mayonnaise.

Okay, so on that note, that's the.

One I decided to go with. I'm sorry.

Awesome. Well, again, this. This wasn't a teaching podcast. This was our announcement podcast. And this is. This is. This isn't something that we just put on for the. For the podcast. This is how we act all day. It's. We have a. We have a great relationship with Randy. We like to have fun, and in fact, we like to have fun at all times. And if you ever do visit our offices, make sure you come down to Randy's office to play a little basketball, because he's got a little basket, some basketballs, and a little hoop, and he gets pretty competitive. So just be careful. But again, this is real talk, which is real talk for real estate investors. And 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.