Dani Lynn Robison's investment firm survived the 2008 crash, COVID, and the 2022 interest-rate spike by building on conservative structures: low leverage, essential housing assets, and keeping every employee during the pandemic. When a contractor committed fraud on a deal, the firm absorbed the loss rather than pass it to investors.
I want to talk about the hard years because I think one of the most important things you can know about any investment company is not how it performed when everything was going well. It's how it performed when things got hard. The character of a company shows up in the moments where they have to make hard choices. We've had some hard years, and I want to tell you about them. Let me start at the beginning. 2008, Flip and I had just gotten out of the art auction business. That was our career together on cruise ships. The financial crisis hit, the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, where the housing market crashed, banks failed, and millions of people lost their savings and their homes. We lost work almost overnight, and that's when this company started, not from a position of abundance, from necessity. From a decision to build something real, something that would hold up even in the middle of one of the worst economic environments in modern history. 2008 was a year that almost broke us before we actually got started. And I'll tell you what it did instead. It built the discipline we still operate from today. It taught us to build structures that could survive the hard times, not just the good ones. Now COVID. Here's what 2020 looked like for us. We had investors and properties in various stages of renovation and operations, and suddenly nobody knew what the world was gonna look like in 6 weeks, let alone 6 months. But during that time, we made a commitment to our team and to our investors. We were gonna make it through without ever having to let people go or letting the business get off track. And we succeeded. It wasn't easy, but with enough determination and team effort, we didn't miss a single investor payment. Not one. Not during lockdowns, not during the uncertainty, not during any of it. What we did was we got to work. We communicated with our investors constantly because you deserve to know what's happening with your money, especially when things are uncertain. We kept our heads down. We kept our commitments. Every single investor received exactly what they were owed. And then 2022. And if you're in real estate, you know what happened in 2022. Interest rates went from near zero to the highest they had been in decades in one of the fastest rate increases in US history. And for operators who were carrying variable rate debt, meaning debt where the interest rate moves with the market, this was devastating. We saw operators who had great-looking returns in 2021 suddenly in serious trouble in 2022. We weren't overleveraged, and because we stayed focused on needs-based assets like workforce housing, we made it through. That said, 2022 was not easy. No one who is honest will tell you that 2022 was easy. What I can tell you is that distributions kept on coming. Every quarter as promised. Now let me tell you about a deal-level failure, something that had nothing to do with the economy. We had contractor fraud. A contractor submitted paperwork and progress photos showing a renovation that was progressing on schedule, and we were paying him based on that documentation. When we did a physical inspection, we discovered the work wasn't done. He had been billing us for work that was not finished. Here's the decision we had to make. We could have told investors there was a problem and asked them to absorb some of the impact, but we didn't. The company absorbed the entire loss. Our investors received every dollar owed exactly as promised, and we took the hit. Why? Because our investors come first. Not when it's easy, when it's hard. That's when it actually means something. I share all of this not to alarm you, but because I think you deserve to know what this team looks like under pressure. In one of our next videos, we talk about what your life looks like as a Freedom Investor, who you talk to, how updates work, and what to expect from day one. If you want to talk through any of this with us, go to chatwithfreedom.com and schedule a call. We'd love to meet you, answer your questions honestly, and let you decide for yourself. I hope this was helpful, and I hope we have the opportunity to work together.
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