Danielle Robison tells real-estate investors to write down a three-year vision and bring renovations and property management in-house instead of relying on outside vendors. She argues that buying more properties spreads risk: losses on a few deals get absorbed across a bigger portfolio.
We're getting better and better at the vision. I think that's something that CEOs have a hard time doing, is making sure that the vision isn't just stuck in their head. Right, right. That the team actually knows where they're headed. There's a book called Vivid Vision. So for those of you who are business owners aspiration to become a business owner, read Vivid Vision. It's a really great way to put your brain on paper of what you see over the next three years. And when you talk about vision, it's really hard to set a vision 10 years down the road. You know, so many things change in a few years. Even five years is tough, but three years, no, not so much. You can get realistic about three years. Is it going to be perfect? Is it actually going to come true? No, but it will give you a guiding light. Right. You say, this is the direction that we're going. And then as you go down that maybe within the next six months, something happens, you go, we're just going to tilt it, you know, a little bit this way. But the point is just to have that lighthouse saying, this is where I'm going. So I think that piece of the vertical integration is really, really powerful because you're only as strong as the weakest member of your team. So it's just really important that you're working together and that you build this really foundation. We could have failed because of the people that we had outsourced things to. If we would. Had it kept it in their hands, we would not have made it this far. We had to bring it in house.
Just the first two alone.
Renovations and property management. That's right. And that goes to risk mitigation. When you're building anything, when you're investing in anything, you always want to mitigate your risks. When I'm on the phone with investors, I tell people why we do volume. Why? Because it was a risk mitigation piece for us. It was. I know in real estate, things are going to happen and it's going to suck. We're going to peel back a wall and crap. We've had septic, you know, issues. We've had plumbing issues. We're just finishing up two plumbing issues at two of our apartments that were unknown and we had to get the city involved in permits and it was just insane. That's gonna happen. That's real estate, folks. So if you want to be an active investor and deal with that crap, join us. It's crazy. It's a wild ride. If you want to be a passive investor and not deal with all that crap, all that stuff, that's actually who we serve. That's what we love. We love the passive investors because we're willing to go through those things, because we've gone through them enough. It's normal to us. We know we're waking up. We know we're getting exposed to the challenges, and we know that our job in our business is to be problem solvers. All we're going to do is get up every single morning and solve a problem and solve another problem, solve another problem. And that's how we keep on growing, is making sure that the companies are in a good place, our investors are in a good place. Crap's going to hit the fan. See, look at me holding my tongue. When it does, who cares? Because we do volume. So if 8 out of 10 deals are good and 2 out of 10 deals are bad, it does not matter. So it doesn't phase us. We don't get incredibly emotional. I used to get really emotional when things went bad, but now I'm just like, you know, whatever. It's part of the game, you know, you just know and understand that it's going to come. You wait for it to come, you address it, you fix it, you move on. So risk mitigation. Vertical integration is a big piece to risk mitigation.
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