EP 256: Building Wealth, Leadership & Passive Investing – Lessons from Schuyler Williamson

[00:00:00] Hello, and thank you for joining us today on The Gentle Art of Crushing It Show, where we focus on learning and sharing with our listeners all there is to know about how to create success in our lives. This show stands on the shoulders of giants. Our mission is to empower and inspire our listeners to create the life of their dreams whilst having a blast in the process. Let's celebrate life together. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:28] Welcome back to The Gentle Art of Crushing It podcast. My name is Randy Smith and I'll be your host today. And really excited to have Schuyler Williamson with us today. Schuyler is the author of the soon to be published, The Steady Leader. He's also got a ton amount of experience and expertise in residential real estate development and sales. He currently owns over 50 properties himself and develops 15 plus luxury homes per year. So Schuyler, welcome to the show. Thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:00:58] All right. Well, let's jump in. Schuyler, can you give us your perspective on the current state of the market and how that might be impacting the passive investing community? Yeah. Well, let me just first say that my market, we get to see the highest of the highs and we've seen the lowest of the lows here recently. So when I speak, just understand I'm speaking from knowledge in that market.

[00:01:21] And I'll just say, you know, right now, I think we are experiencing a very low demand on the buyer side. And I think that there's two reasons for that. Well, three reasons, really. One is uncertainty. And I think in real estate, when there's uncertainty, people tend to sit still for the most part, especially people that are buying homes and not investors, but just buying homes.

[00:01:43] I think the second issue is affordability and affordability, especially in our market is based on tax, you know, property taxes that we have to pay, but also the quickness and the increase in mortgage rates. Although historically, they're not that high. But when you're when everything you benchmark is on a 3% basis and then it goes to 7%, well, yeah, man, it makes things a lot more expensive.

[00:02:08] And so my move up buyers, people that want to sell their home and move into a larger, nicer property, they've sat still for three years now. And that takes a whole lot of demand out of the ecosystem there. And so my move up buyers are just sitting still. And so when you stack uncertainty on top of affordability, I think, you know, I think that that causes things to be slow.

[00:02:32] And then the last thing is, you know, we're starting to see sellers kind of come to reality and that, hey, you know, I'm actually the one that's going to have to sacrifice now to get things sold. And so with that, we're starting to see values dip, which I think ultimately is going to help everything. But we went two years with sellers kind of digging their heels in and saying, you know what, I'm going to sell it for this. And if I don't sell it for this, I'm going to rent it out this year.

[00:03:00] You know, kind of starting in January, we've seen motivated sellers come to market. And I think that's going to help things out a little bit. So I'm hopeful this year that we'll do better than last year from just a sheer unit standpoint. But I think a lot of that's going to be on the sacrifices of the sellers. And then hopefully, you know, we'll see economically how things pan out. You know, I tell folks that work for me all the time, if you want lower interest rates, the economy needs to suffer a little bit.

[00:03:29] And, you know, and if our leadership has it their way, the economy is not going to suffer. Right. So these these rates may be here to to stay at least around the six percent standpoint. So we're as investors, we're going to have to take advantage of low demand on the buy side. And we're going to have to make these these rates work for us. We're just going to have to make them work with our offers and be patient. I love it. I love it. Now, I believe you said you you focus primarily in the luxury luxury high end market.

[00:03:58] Is that correct? Is that true with your brokerage as well as your development or just in the development? Yeah, our sales team tends to sell in central Austin. And I think that's got a lot to do with I live in central Austin. Our construction company builds in central Austin. And, you know, my database is largely made up of people that I hang out with. And so we're all kind of in central Austin. So it's not that I woke up one day and said, hey, I'm going to go sell a bunch of two million dollar houses.

[00:04:25] I think it just naturally moved in that direction because that's where I live, work and play. And so, yes, the bulk of my activity is in the, I'd say, 50 to two and a half million dollar range. Now, when I'm when I'm going to the local RIAs here, it sounds as if that that higher luxury market wasn't as impacted as kind of that smaller first time buyer space, at least in Phoenix anyways.

[00:04:55] Because folks that are buying those those larger, you know, two plus million dollar assets, maybe they're not leaning or leveraging the same type of traditional financing that a lot of people are. Do you see the same thing in Austin? Austin seems to be kind of an anomaly where there's like you mentioned, really big highs and really big lows in that market. Yeah, I think it comes down to what you define as luxury in our market at about three and a half million and above you see cash transactions below three and a half million.

[00:05:24] We see this. We see a finance buyer. And so the people that have been disrupted the most have been the finance buyers. And I think that that's, you know, in our market, you've got to be above three and a half million to see really no issues. We'll keep an eye on the stock market, right? Because a cash buyer generally is drawing on their line of credit, right? That goes against their some of their taxable assets. With the stock market coming down, you know, we may see some of those cash buyers slow down a little bit because they're they're borrowing power is less than it was before the stock market came down.

[00:05:54] And if that's a trend, if we see the stock market continue to fall, that might cause a little disruption in that higher end market. We'll see. Time will tell, right? Yeah, no doubt. Hindsight is 20-20. Yeah. Well, let's let's take a step back if we can, Skylar. Can you walk the audience through your background and kind of your path origin story as to how you got to where you are today? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I originally born in Pensacola, Florida, grew up in a in a very loving, very stable household.

[00:06:24] My parents are still married to this day, but my parents had me very young in life. So, you know, I grew up, I tell people, you know, my parents finally started making money after I left. You know, so so so I grew up with very young parents that were very active and loving. I mean, we played ball. I mean, my parents, my my parents are still young enough to be very active with my children. But we just we didn't have a lot. And because we didn't have a lot, I didn't have a knowledge base of financial literacy.

[00:06:53] I just we just didn't. There was no money to invest. There was barely enough money to live. And so what I got to see was the challenges of not making a lot of money, what it caused in a family. And those were our only challenges. I should just say that I can't say enough about my childhood. But I but I did experience that when I chose to go to college. There was really two choices, you know, go play football at the University of Miami or go to West Point. And it wasn't a hard decision for me to choose West Point. So I went to West Point.

[00:07:23] I got to play professional baseball after that. But that was just one season. Then I deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. I did the Ranger airborne, all of those things in the military. But I was married the whole time that I was kind of in that combat era of my my life. And I wanted to have children. And I love the military. I believe that God built me as a warrior. And I was good. I was good with my rifle, you know, as an infantryman. And I wanted to have kids. I wanted to have a whole litter of them. And my wife said, hey, that's great. I want to have kids, too.

[00:07:53] But we're not going to have children until I know that you're going to come home and be home. Sure, sure. And that was not the experience that we were living in the military. So once I heard that and I realized my wife is sacrificing a lot for our lifestyle, you know, and the career that I chose. I exited the military and my undergrad was in engineering. So I knew enough about engineering that it wasn't something that I was going to go to for a living. Like when you're an infantryman for six years, you don't practice engineering.

[00:08:23] And I know you have to. Sure. So I went to the University of Texas, the McComb School of Business for my MBA. And to really figure out what I was going to do next. And at the MBA program, I kind of found real estate. I found sales. And I went into real estate at that point. And so I did it.

[00:08:44] I did real estate not only on the corporate team at Keller Williams here in Austin, Texas, but I started my entrepreneurial endeavor there in 2012, too, by getting licensed. Right. And then, you know, just like every, not every, but just like most entrepreneurs, you know, I kind of worked myself out of the job into my, you know, my side hustle and started my entrepreneur journey at that point. And my wife and I, we were dual income for a very long time.

[00:09:12] And I've kind of put her out of her job now. So she's, you know, focusing on the kids right now. But we were dual income for a very long time. And we always lived off half our income. So every dollar I made while I was in the military, we put it in a bank account and never even looked at it. And then we just lived off hers. And so from a very young age, we invested half our income. And to this day, we still kind of have that mindset, live on half, work, you know, work the other half.

[00:09:41] And so we started investing really early in real estate. It's funny. We bought our first house. And when we sold our first house, we took half the proceeds and bought our next house and took the other half and bought a rental property. Sold one, bought two. Then we did that again. And then we did it again. And then our income was at the point where we could just buy two or three houses a year because we were putting half aside the whole time. Sure.

[00:10:03] And that's really how we started investing in real estate was just kind of, well, you know, if we invest half of it, you know, why don't we just keep doing that? Live on the other half and just keep our arms around our lifestyle. And then slowly but surely, we just build this real estate portfolio. Are you interested in real estate investing but don't know where to get started or think you don't have the time or money? Are you stuck in your W-2 because the golden handcuffs make it hard to walk away?

[00:10:29] If this sounds like you, check out impactequity.net and schedule some time to talk with the founder, Randy Smith. Randy went from massive income to leaving his W-2 through passive income. And he can help you do the same. www.impacequity.net Love it. I love it. So that was 2012, you said, when you got into real estate? Yeah, I got licensed in 2012. Okay.

[00:10:56] So fast forward 13 years and you've got 50 plus houses now and you're leading a brokerage and you've invested in all kinds of other things as well. Talk about that journey if you can. Managing 55 homes, that's not an easy thing I can't imagine unless you've built the systems and have the teams and the tools to do that. What does that look like? Yeah, we've got it. So I've had an assistant, I call her assistant executive now, but her title is an executive assistant.

[00:11:25] In the beginning, she, and I've always given her the keys to my personal life. She knows everything about me. If I were to get hit by a car, she would be the first person my wife would call to like figure everything out. So very early in our partnership together, her and I, she was managing these properties and she's sitting right next to me. So if there was a question, she would ask me. And once the portfolio got to a point where she was like, all right, I don't like this.

[00:11:53] I'm spending way too much time talking to these people. I want to work for you, not the tenants. We actually went out and got a gal that's just on our team now. And that's what she does. And she's a, you know, she's 25 hour a week, a teammate of ours. And, and I recruited her away from an apartment complex. So she's very used to doing all that. And I give her freedom and I give her love and I give her 25 secure hours a week. And she, she handles all those issues for me.

[00:12:22] And so now we have someone on staff that manages it. And man, honestly, I don't, the only thing I answer is if there's a larger expense that needs to be approved, just because it's material, she'll ask me for approval. But other than that, she squares the whole thing away. So I don't, I don't spend too much time in it, but it started with my assistant. So I always had leverage and then it, and then it moved to an in-house property manager. That's a part-time employee. Okay.

[00:12:49] And, and so at some point you decided to go into the brokerage space and move, you know, stop, call it carrying the bag. I was a sales guy for 25 years and moved over to the leadership space. What's, what kind of drove that decision? And, and were there some aha moments there where you thought I need to get out of selling houses personally and move into the leadership role? I think I was raised up as a leader. You know, at West Point, they teach you to serve everyone around you and, and to lead.

[00:13:19] And so, and certainly in the military, my first role was an officer in the military leading a platoon of soldiers of 30 men. So I think I've been leading from the very beginning. And so I knew that if you wanted to have something big and special, you had to recruit people. Like nothing big and special. I shouldn't say nothing. It's very hard to build something big and special if you're the only one doing it. If it's, I do everything, that's, that's just difficult. And so I, I prefer the, we do it approach.

[00:13:47] And so, you know, like I said, I've had my assistant for over 10 years now, I think maybe 11 years at this point. The first thing I did was go get productive that first year and then recruit someone to help me out right away. And I just, I know this about myself because I, I, I live this life in ranger school. If it's just about you, you'll quit. In, in ranger school, I thought about quitting the dang thing every day, every hour.

[00:14:12] I thought about quitting that school because it just, you just find yourself thinking like, man, it ain't worth it. But you, but you're at the school for yourself. And then I go overseas where I'm getting blown up. I'm kicking doors open that people are shooting at me. You know, I'm, I'm doing all these things. I never once thought about quitting. Not one time in combat did I think about quitting, but that's because I was there for other people. And so I, I learned very early just through life experience that things are more enjoyable and I'll work harder if I got a team with me.

[00:14:40] And so it was natural for me to just expand things. Cause I, one, I believe that's how you build something special, but it's also just more fun for me to have people around me that I love and just enjoy life with. I love it. Well, then at some point you started, you started a construction company and that is, that has been an interesting 10 year window, I would say there. So let's dig into that a little bit. I worked, I had the pleasure of working with a lot of folks that were in that space in my American Express days. So yeah, I'd love to hear your journey as well. Yeah.

[00:15:09] I mean the construction company, I just, I woke up and I had this aha one day, like how do I generate leads for my business, but also make money at the same time? And I was just looking at the real estate landscape and in Austin five years ago, they couldn't build homes fast enough. We had so many people moving to Austin that the builders were building as fast as they could. And I was watching people just walk into their sales office and say, Hey, I'm a buyer. I want to buy something.

[00:15:38] And I thought, man, what an easy way to sell, to just build something that, you know, you're going to make a profit on and, and prospects just walk in and knock on your door. I was like, well, you know, I don't want to build on the outskirts of Austin. I want to build close to where I live. So what if I built a home and for 12 months while I'm building it, there's a sign in the ground that says, call me for this house. And of course I want to sell that house because I'm trying to make a profit on it. But if my house doesn't work, what if I go show you a couple other houses?

[00:16:07] You know, what if I can, what if I can like make you like, and trust me enough that you trust me to take you to other places. And so, um, I did that with one house. We made a profit and I generated some leads along the way that made my sales team grow a little bit. I was like, all right, well, rather than spending the money I made on that, that first deal, why don't I go buy two houses with it? And so that's what I did. I bought two and then I did it successfully with two.

[00:16:34] And then I turned that two into four and we just grew, you know, we, we grew the company patiently over time. I've, this is the one blessing that I've had, you know, kind of, kind of similar to Kristen and I living on half our income. I've never spent a dollar out of our construction company. Not $1 have I ever spent. And in the beginning I led that company, but I don't lead it anymore.

[00:16:57] We have a CEO for that company and I can afford that person at a really high level because I don't, I don't have to spend the money out of that business. I just keep investing it. And I think this year we'll actually have so much, much cash that we can distribute some of it, but maybe not. Maybe I'll invest in a, in a company in a, in a second city. I don't know. I just don't know yet. Maybe we'll sell finance.

[00:17:20] But I think, you know, as investors, if you're willing to delay some of that gratification to continue to make your money work for you, you can shorten the time, not only in getting yourself into a passive position, but you can shorten the time into growing your assets just quickly. Right. And so, so I lived off my sales income and I invested all of the income from the construction company. Kind of that mindset of living off half. Sure. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. So that's interesting.

[00:17:49] I don't know that I've met folks that started out as a realtor, moved into brokerage and then went into construction. That doesn't seem to be a normal path in that space. Do you, do you know a lot of people that have done that now that you, you've got established in this space? That seems unusual. I think it was unusual when I started and now there's some people doing it. Got it. People in the industry are talking about it now. Okay. There's more agent, but I can tell you, it's hard to do it. It's really hard to do it unless you can talk some of the talk with the builders.

[00:18:19] Cause build like true builders. They're not crazy about hanging out with all realtors. I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. Different, different type of person. Yeah. And that, you know, and that, that person, listen, the realtor, if, if, if they're the owner of the business as a builder, you got to call them leader. Think. I think I was uniquely qualified because I have an engineering background. I think I was uniquely qualified because I was a bit more blue collar. Cause I came from a combat, you know, soldier environment.

[00:18:45] And then the guy I hired or hired, you know, the guy I partnered with to lead our construction company. He's just extraordinary. He's extraordinarily smart. He knows construction. He knows engineering, you know, and he's, he's very relatable from a blue collar standpoint. And I don't know that every realtor has that background. The ones that do and are humble enough to say like, Hey, I don't know how to build a house. I just know how to design them and sell them. They, they have a chance of winning. It makes sense. But you, you gotta be pretty humble around those guys.

[00:19:16] Nobody knows how to build homes the way my guys do. I mean, those, that type of person, they know everything that's behind the walls. Every inch. They know all that the issues that could arise. They know everything. And I've been doing it for a while now, and I don't know a 10th of what they know, but I know that about myself. So I'm humble enough to say, Hey, look, it's my job to grow the business and to make good investments and good properties and design great homes. But I need you to build a great home. And I, and I'm humble enough to say that.

[00:19:44] And so we, we've got a good partnership between us all and from that regard. And it helps. So, so how, how big is the team now from the sales team to the construction team? Yeah, we've got, we've got 10 in the sales team, 11 in the construction team. And then I've got about 50 in my laundromat business. That's right. We didn't talk about that. Can you share a little bit about the laundromat business as well? I know you said that was a smaller portion, but 50 employees in that space.

[00:20:13] That's, that's a big, that's our stores are, our stores are attended laundry. Oh, it's funny. I told my wife, you know, you didn't know you were going to be the queen of laundry when you married me. Right. Right. But we, a couple of partners and I invested in a retail center. All right. And the retail center had two vacancies in, and I was like, yeah, look, we work with the best commercial real estate agents, you know, and all our other stuff. I believe in our guys being able to get it leased up. Right.

[00:20:39] And we, and the, and to the seller's credit, he gave us a great deal on it because he's like, I try, I've tried to lease those two spaces and never been able to. Well, we were able to lease one of them, but that fifth space, man, we couldn't give it away. We tried free rent. We tried, I mean, we tried everything that you can imagine to get that fifth space rented. And we had such a hard time that we started benchmarking businesses to plug in there because, I mean, you know, the value of real estate, it goes up once you have more rents coming in. Right.

[00:21:08] And we don't want, we don't want vacant space. We want every square footage of that property leased out producing. And even if we own the business, we want it doing that. And so we benchmark a bunch of businesses and the benefits of laundry, not only for getting to cashflow positive quickly to the debt that you could get good, cheap debt. And the, at the time, the accelerated depreciation benefits that we could receive from it. It was a great business. And so we built that first laundromat to go into that empty space.

[00:21:37] Day one, it started paying rent, which made the real estate more, more valuable. Sure. And you know what? It got the cashflow positive. It got profitability real quick. It got the cashflow positive real quick. We got a whole lot of write-offs on that, you know, depreciation of those machines. So we almost got our full equity investment into the deal. We almost got back that first year. Well, you know what?

[00:22:02] From this point forward, every piece of commercial real estate we buy, we want to buy something with a vacancy so that we could plug a laundromat in there. And so our whole mindset about investing in commercial real estate went to buying retail centers that had a vacancy that we could plug a laundromat in that would get cashflow positive quickly. And then we would benefit from cashflow from the real estate and benefit from cashflow from the business. All the tenants love laundry because that customer comes back every single week. Sure.

[00:22:31] And they pay more on their rents. It's a beautiful deal. And we just stumbled into it. We had a problem with a piece of real estate that we had to solve. And then here comes laundry. And laundry is a core part of our growth now. Interesting. And these are coin-off laundry where people come and do their laundry. You can use cash, but we have card systems in ours. Right. Yeah. Technology is real smart now in laundry. Yeah. It's been a lot of years since I've been in one of those. So that's interesting. Yeah.

[00:23:00] You should go back in a new one. I mean, it'll blow your mind. Yeah. I'm sure it would. Yeah. That's interesting. So how big is the laundromat portion of the portfolio then? How many units is it? I mean, do you use square footage or how do you look at that? What's the metric even? We, well, listen, I mean, your podcast is perfect because we like cashflow, right? The people I hang out with like cashflow. My wife and I like cashflow. We're very cashflow focused.

[00:23:28] So we evaluate our businesses based on a cashflow basis. We have debt in our portfolio, but we don't, we're not the ones that like debt. I mean, we would prefer not to have it if, you know, if the situation presented itself. But we evaluate each store based on cashflow. So, and we, our biggest store, just give you an idea of how big it is. Our biggest store did 72,000 in revenue in February.

[00:23:55] So they're big, they're big platform. Yeah. We got 66 machines in that, in that store. And so, you know, our EBITDA is anywhere from 30 to 45% on these stores. So I mean, they're, they're good businesses. Interesting. Yeah. I never even considered laundromats. So interesting. Well, this is obviously our podcast is about passive investing, helping to educate, inspire the newer, newer passive investor. You've done some amazing things.

[00:24:24] And I imagine that other people's money has come into play with what you're doing as well. So how, how are you working with passive investors and what kind of opportunities do you make available to them? Yeah. Let me, let me just say in the beginning as, as young investors, my wife and I, look, we loved and believed in each other. But we grew up in a mindset where you protected what you had. We were just screw up that way.

[00:24:51] And when we, we did our first deal with partners, we realized as long as you choose the right people to be in business with, the opportunities are unlimited. Then you could start to, you can start to experience and say yes to more and bigger deals. And now listen, every, every time you step into more deals and every time you step into a bigger deal, there's a whole lot to learn.

[00:25:16] So don't, don't take those jumps recklessly, be very strategic in those jumps, but like, don't be afraid of partners. Cause we were, we were always thinking someone was going to take advantage of us, you know, use our, our kindness. We now, now we like, we like partners in everything we do. And so we, we do partners with the, the rental properties that we buy. We do partners in every one of our development deals with our construction company. We do partners in the, certainly in the commercial real estate world.

[00:25:45] And we, and we partnered with people in our laundromats. So we have, we have limited partner opportunities in essentially everything that we do now, because we love, we love not only the feeling of having partners and how it makes us work harder, but having partners when you win makes the wins better too. Cause you get to celebrate it, you know, with friends and family and, and all of that. So we just, we just like the accountability and we like the joy that comes from winning with others now.

[00:26:15] And so every, every, literally everything, Randy, we do now we bring partners on. So. And we'll consider partners from a debt perspective too. You know, we love working with banks, but you know, if we can have a strategic partner from a debt standpoint, we work with those folks too. So as a newer entrepreneur myself, I have had some early partnerships that did not go as planned. I'd love to hear kind of maybe guidance or advice or some lessons you've learned along that path about picking the right partners.

[00:26:45] Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Expectations are a big deal with any, with any relationship. I think that at some point you got to share expectations. So for me as the managing partner, this is what I expect from you, the limited partner. And then you need to give the limited partner their chance to, to share their expectations with you. And listen, they may be taken on the title limited partner, but they've got a lot of ideas

[00:27:12] that they want to implement and they want to be involved in every decision and they want this and they want that. And look, sometimes it's not a, it's not a marriage that's going to work. The expectations aren't aligned. And I think that that is the first thing that you got to be clear on is what are our expectations from both sides? And do they, do they marry well? You know, for me, I would love to report to you. I'm not doing it more than a monthly, on a monthly basis because you know what?

[00:27:41] I need to run this thing. And the more time I spend reporting to you is time that I'm taken away from the business. And I don't, I don't see value in that. Now, certainly if you're upset with me or you feel like I'm taking advantage of you, or you feel like your investment's at risk, call me. We're going to talk, we're going to talk, right? I'm going to make that a priority. And in our operating agreements, it's very clear how you can ask for that meeting.

[00:28:10] But like, if someone wants, if they want to be involved in every single decision and they want reports every week, I mean, we're not, we're not a great, I'm not a great partner for you. Now, if you want to be a true kind of limited partner and know that you're working with a guy that's going to take care of your money and is going to, you know, do everything he possibly can to multiply it. And I'm going to report to you on a monthly basis in a, in a solid way. I'm your guy, right? All right. So I think expectations is one big part of it.

[00:28:38] And then I think you need to, everybody that you get in relationship with, you need to know who they are behaviorally. You know, are they relationship driven people or are they task people? Are they perfectionists or are they big picture? We got to know that about people so that we can communicate to them effectively, right? You don't want to make the mistake of giving too few details to a person that all they want is details. You know, the first time I partnered with a guy that was a CPA, I learned this.

[00:29:04] I sent him a very basic financial statement and he had a million questions. I'm like, oh man, I was like, listen, I'll just give you access to QuickBooks and you can dive into it as much as you want. It's all. Sure. But you can see, like I missed there. I talked to him as I would talk to myself and that was a miss. So behaviorally, I think you got to do, and then values. Your values have to be aligned and that we can talk about that all day, but any relationship

[00:29:33] for it to really work, your values and your motivations have to be aligned. If you guys are motivated by two different things, they're going to be second guessing every decision you make. And so I think there's going to be a culture to the team that you put together, the partnership that you put together. And that culture is made up of values and those values, they ought to be clear and aligned. If that makes sense. Thank you for walking through that. I think you hit a lot of really good points with that. I think it's also important.

[00:30:02] You need to understand yourself when you're sharing expectations as well. So not only the expectations that they're going to have on you and you're going to have on them, you've got to understand what's driving you as well. And if you've not done kind of that work yourself to understand what drives you and what motivates you, then you're probably not going to be a good partner either. So, yeah. Well, and be a person of integrity. And the way that I kind of define integrity is you do what you say you're going to do.

[00:30:28] And so if you're going to be a managing partner of a partnership, you need to do what you say you're going to do. Because that's the quickest way to step into a bear trap is make promises that you can't deliver on, whether it be because you don't know how or you don't have enough time or whatever. You be careful what you're promising. Because if you say you're going to do something, then you don't do it. Man, nothing ruins a partnership faster than that.

[00:30:57] So you should just be a limited partner if you don't have time for it. Absolutely. Very well put. Well, let's shift a little bit here. I know you've got a book that's coming out soon. Can you tell the audience about the book and what kind of drove? It's not an easy thing just to put a book out there. So I'm curious why you went down that path and what it is you're bringing to the audience. Yeah. So the book's titled The Steady Leader, and you can find it at thesteadyleader.com.

[00:31:25] It is all the models that I use to lead myself, lead my team, and lead my business. Listen, I'm not this guy that's so brilliant that I've just gone out and created a brand new playbook. What I'm really good at is seeing other people be successful, asking how, and then taking that and using it in my life. And so as you read the book, you're just going to see the best parts of other people that

[00:31:51] I've pulled into my own life, and I lead my life in that way. I lead myself, and then I lead my team, and then I lead my business. And there's kind of a different hat that I put on for each. And yet they all kind of marry together. The reason why I wrote the book, well, there's two reasons. One, I believe that everything that we're given in life is a gift, and we are to steward those gifts, meaning we are to take care of each other with what we have. So financially, but also intellectually, also with our experience, all of those things are

[00:32:21] gifts, and you've got to steward your gifts. You can't walk around this world with closed fists. Not only can you not give people stuff with closed fists, but with closed fists, you can't accept more. You've got to walk with open hands so that people can enjoy what you know, and you can enjoy what they know, right? It's a mutual deal there. And so I wanted to share with the world just some of the things that have helped me get to where I'm at today.

[00:32:49] And so the book is my effort in doing that and stewarding the gifts that I've been given. I can't lie that it also is a great generator of opportunities, both for talent, but both for adding people to my database for investor opportunities or partnerships or, you know, like just... Of course. Yeah, I'll be in... If people buy this book at a high level, I'll be in partnership with more people, which means not only can I help them more, but they can help me more. So that's, you know, that's a big component of it.

[00:33:17] And then, you know, I believe in my faith that I'm here to love all God's people. And I'm just praying that this brings some influence to my life. And I can lead in a world that's very divisive. I can try to just show people that there's another way to live. It's living with love and patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control. And we can be there for each other. We don't have to win.

[00:33:45] There's other motivations in life than just beating someone else. Sure, sure. Like, we can win together. And, you know, I just hope that I generate some influence through the book that maybe I can push that agenda a little bit too. I love it. I love it. And thanks for the transparency there as well. Like, that took a lot of time and energy and effort, I'm sure, to put the book together. And it's, yes, you're bringing a ton of value to the folks that read it, but you're going to benefit as well. And I believe you mentioned your God.

[00:34:14] I believe that God would have us all live an abundant life in all areas of our life. And I think we can do that by helping his kids, ultimately. Oh, yeah. Well, Randy, you know, John Maxwell, he defines leadership simply as influence, right? And in order to have influence over the people that follow you, you have to be living a life that they look up and they say, yeah, actually, I would like to live a life like that.

[00:34:41] I'd like to be as physically capable as Skylar. I would like to be as spiritually strong as Skylar. I would like to have financially the abundance that he has. When you're living a big life, people are influenced by that. And when you have influence, you lead, right? And then the responsibility of leadership shows up in that, okay, I have their influence. I need to lead them appropriately, right? With love and kindness and all that.

[00:35:07] But influence starts with you showing them that like, hey, I've figured out a way to live life at a higher level. And so I totally, what you just said, I totally resonates with me. I know it. I know. Yeah. I think the attraction rather than promotion is the best leadership style, right? That's right. That's right. So very good. Well, Skylar, this has been fun. This went down different paths than what I was expecting, as it usually does. But yeah, certainly you brought a ton of value and would love to dive into our final five

[00:35:37] to hear your thoughts on a few other things real quick. Yeah, you got it. Awesome. Well, let's start with the first question here. From an educational standpoint, is there a specific resource you might suggest or one that you have and make available to your team to help folks learn about investing, learn about passive investing potentially? Any special resources you share? Well, man, I have to say, I like Robert Kiyosaki and then all of the guys that kind of plug

[00:36:04] in, you know, that all his partners, like the tax partners and all that. So I really enjoy that. I think Gary Keller's book, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor is a very simple book that if you need help with the math, you can read that book and kind of understand the math, right? Because sometimes math is the hardest part for people. And then I love the book Profit First. Now, I think that from a personal finance and a business finance standpoint, Profit First gives you a model.

[00:36:34] For someone like me, who's not very detail oriented, I'm kind of big picture. It creates structure for me financially that allows me to operate with intention. Once you read Profit First and then you think about my kind of my early stories of living off half my income, you'll have an aha moment and think like, well, that's how Skylar does it. Dollar comes in, 50% goes here. 10% goes here. 20% goes here. You know, like I'm very structured in that way, even though I'm not a structured person.

[00:37:01] So I think those books are probably a great place to start for new investors. I love it. I love it. I'm curious. This is going off script here a little bit. Have you read the book, or I'm sorry, Die With Zero? Yes. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Did you enjoy the book or did it challenge it? It brought in my mindset on things. Because, you know, Randy, I grew up with nothing.

[00:37:27] And so I had a lot of pride that I was going to hand off a big financial opportunity to my children. Sure. Because I have kids. Sure. And that motivated me in the beginning of my wealth building career that like, you know what, I'm going to change the trajectory of all this. As I've grown in my faith and as I've read books like Die With Zero, my mindset on that's changed a little bit. My children will always be taken care of. But I am very motivated to give. I am a giver. I pray to be a giver.

[00:37:56] I am a giver. And that book did broaden my horizons. It took a goal that I had and it refined it. Yeah. I heard somebody, I believe in GoBundance say recently, like, help your children be prepared for life. And then you won't have to help them be prepared for wealth because being prepared for life will automatically do that. And that really struck a chord with me. Because if we can teach them to be self-supporting, self-sustaining, they don't need our money.

[00:38:26] Sure. Our money will certainly help. But yeah. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And you know, the biggest distraction to spiritual health, Randy, is worldly things. And so it's a double-edged sword. Having things is great because you get to inherit the lifestyle and the comfort and all of that. But it distracts you from true spiritual health, which is all about others. So when you're chasing the things, you got to hold yourself accountable to still thinking

[00:38:54] about people just as much as you think about the things. And that's tough for humans. I mean, our brains are wired a certain way and things make you want more things. And that's a dangerous road. Great. Are there any books that you're reading currently or podcasts that are in your weekly listen list? I love to read. So I'm a visual learner. I listen to podcasts and I think they're entertaining, but it's really, it's difficult for me to retain all that information. Sure.

[00:39:23] Sure. If I see it on the, I have like a photographic memory. So if I see it on the page, I can remember what the page looks like down the road. And sometimes I listen and read at the same time to get that effect. I do, I am liking, I'm reading about the brain right now and how to, and how to optimize your brain. So I really enjoyed the book Brainwash, which was a really interesting book. And it's, you can optimize your brain with that book, but as a parent, you need to read

[00:39:49] it so that you can pay attention to the health of your children's brains and what matters for that. And then I'm reading a book right now titled Chatter, which is all about your inner voice, which is a great book for investors to read because the inner voice more times than not is negative. And there's a consequence for letting that run wild. And so the book is here are the consequences about the inner voice. And then here's how you control and use the inner voice. Interesting. Interesting.

[00:40:18] And so I, you know, I'm kind of diving into these, these thinking books because as a leader, as my organization grows, my job becomes more and more thinking for the organization. And so I'm, I'm really in this kind of kick right now of learning how to be the best thinker I can possibly be for my organization. I love it. I love it. I love it. Great. I had not heard of either of those and I'll check them both out. Thank you. All right. So for the passive investor, what is a good due diligence question that folks should be asking that maybe they're not?

[00:40:47] If you're a limited partner and you're looking at an opportunity, I think the best thing that you can do is list all of the assumptions. And so I would, I would ask that person that's bringing the opportunity to you, well, what are all your assumptions? And start with the biggest ones. Like what are the biggest assumptions you're making? You know, in a development deal, it's that a year from now I can sell it for this amount. Sure. Sure. Right. Like that's a huge assumption.

[00:41:15] And when you get all of the assumptions in front of you, you can understand the severity of those assumptions in the model. And then you can start to ask the what if questions, because what you, what you really want to have is, well, what if this happens to this assumption? What are you leader going to do with this project? And just make sure that the person that's running that project has plans for if the assumptions change.

[00:41:42] Again, I'm a military guy, so I would plan an operation. And then if the enemy attacks me at a different part than when I think the enemy is going to attack, I've got to have a plan for that. Right. And Mike Tyson even said, people have plans until they step in the ring and I punch them in the mouth. Exactly. Your plan is built on assumptions. You need to know what those are and you need to know what you're going to do if those assumptions aren't true. That is great advice. Definitely. All right. Now, a couple of fun ones to wrap it up.

[00:42:12] So since we're both GoBundance guys, do you, have you recently checked a list, an item off your bucket list or hope to do so in the near future? Well, I'll say the book was a big bucket list item. I'm sure. So that was a big one that I checked off. My wife and I, we have our own bucket list. But for me, we own a ranch and we have some small ponds, but we don't have like a big lake.

[00:42:42] Man, oh man, I would love to have a big lake that's full of that. That, you know, in the hunting season, I can hunt, you know, I can go to the grocery store, as they say it, out in the woods. Sure. Then in the off season, I can just kind of throw a worm out there and enjoy that. I mean, I love being outside and to have the activity to be able to fish on my own property. Like that'd be great. So that's probably my next target. I love it. I love it. That's great. All right. And then final question.

[00:43:09] If you had a hundred grand, you had to invest today and you couldn't put it into one of your own deals, where would you? I tell you what, because I build homes and I sell homes and I recently franchised a business. I would invest in a home services company, like a plumber or a plumbing company or a HVAC company or something along those lines that's going to franchise. I understand the need for those services company and I understand the benefits of franchising. And so that's what I would do. First time I've gotten that one as well.

[00:43:39] So we got an entirely different perspective today by having you on Skyler. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much for being on the show. Yeah, it was my pleasure, Randy. Awesome. And to the audience, as always, we encourage you to continue that education journey. But more important than that, make the decision to invest in your first or your next passive investment deal. Both Skyler and I are convinced that once you do, you will just wish you had started that much sooner. So be sure to join us again next Thursday for another great episode.

[00:44:08] And don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you are listening. Thanks so much for joining today. Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, another episode of The Gentle Art of Crushing It. It was an amazing episode. We know we sure learned a lot and we hope you did as well. We want to take a second and thank you so much for viewing or listening to this episode. And please just know that we only ask for one favor, and that is to make this life magnificent. Thank you and have a wonderful day.