GI302: From Passive Investor to Real Estate Syndicator with Randy Smith

GI302: From Passive Investor to Real Estate Syndicator with Randy Smith

After a 25-year career in corporate America, Randy turned his focus to real estate investing, becoming a Limited Partner in 25 passive investments across 12 operators and 8 asset classes. Since launching Impact Equity in June 2022, Randy has helped over 115 investors place $9 million across 17 projects with 6 world-class operators.

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Transcript:

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Randy Smith. After a 25-year career in corporate America, Randy turned his focus to real estate investing, becoming a Limited Partner in 25 passive investments across 12 operators and 8 asset classes. Since launching Impact Equity in June 2022, Randy has helped over 115 investors place $9 million across 17 projects with 6 world-class operators.

Randy:
Yeah, thanks so much, Randy. Charles, excited to be here.

Charles:
That’s quite the background. And you know, you, you definitely have gotten a a taste of being a LP investor, limited partner, and then also being an active investor. So it’s, it’s great to have you on the show. Yeah. Glad to be here. So give us a little background on yourself, both personally and professionally over that 25 years prior to I guess passively investing in real estate, where you got started.

Randy:
Yeah, so I I, I was a sales guy in corporate America for about 25 years. I spent my last 10 years with American Express, and prior to that I was with a company called Waste Management for 10 years. So I, I started in phone sales, moved up to phone sales management, ended up consolidating a number of different call centers phone sales call centers for various organizations. And then in my last what was it, eight or nine years, I, I ca went back to carrying the bag again. So got up in the field, I covered territories, I flew to markets. I covered from Phoenix. I covered Las Vegas in Nevada for a couple of years. I covered Utah, I covered New Mexico, and spent the last five or six years just covering a, an Arizona portfolio where I managed small business clients.

Randy:
About halfway through that my 10 years with American Express, I started investing in single family out of skate, trying to do it so many folks when they get into the space, I wanted to buy single family ’cause it seemed easy. And I ended up buying five or six assets and found pretty quickly that that was not gonna be something scalable for me. So that’s when I, I jumped into the passive investing space. I figured my time was better spent focusing on my job. ’cause I made very, very good money in my W2 and leave the investment dollars over to the experts and let them go manage these assets. So that’s when I jumped pretty much full speed into passive investing for a couple of years before getting laid off from corporate America.

Charles:
Oh wow. Okay. So when you were doing those first deals, those were turnkey single family houses in different markets, I imagine. Is that what they were or,

Randy:
I started with turnkey in Kansas City and I will just like, the short story long is that I picked a bad operator and they were anything but turnkey. So being the control freak that I am, I decided that I wanted to have more control of that construction process. So I did the burr strategy on a handful of assets in, in Atlanta. And my timing was impeccable because the, the values were going up like skyrockets and we made a ton of money on those when we finally sold those in June of 22.

Charles:
Interesting. Yeah, that’s that’s definitely a great timeframe for buying and selling properties. Definitely selling properties,

Randy:
Yeah. Yeah. I literally sold at the, what I would think is probably the very top of the market and it was just dub lock honestly. I had decided I wanted to shift everything over into, into passive investing and, and that’s what we did. So

Charles:
Can you tell us a little bit about your transition from being a passive investor to what you’re doing now as an active investor and syndicator? Yeah,

Randy:
So being, being a sales guy, I you know, I was constantly talking about what I was doing as a passive investor and a lot of other sales people were coming to me and saying, Hey, that sounds really interesting. I’d love to get somebody in the market as well. How could I partner with you or invest in the type of deals that you are investing in? And when I was still in my W2, I actually had a conversation with one operator that I would ultimately end up partnering with. And he talked about this fund of fund structure. And honestly, it just sounded really intimidating. It sounded like it would take a lot more work than what than what I had the time and resources available. So I kind of just put that on the side. And then when I got laid off, I went back and revisited that conversation with that operator and they essentially handed me like a business in a box and they said, you know, this could be a good opportunity for you. You’ve got a large network and let’s see if it works. If it, if it goes well, then you’re off and running. If it doesn’t, you really have no exposure ’cause there’s no cost to get this thing started. And ultimately, I ended up raising just shy of a million bucks in like two or three weeks and I was off run it as they say it, <laugh>.

Charles:
So what were some of the skills that you found? You know, skills and knowledge, let’s say that were transferable between being a passive investor to being an active investor, because there is a few more plates that you’re spinning on the active investor side, but a lot of it’s very pretty similar. I mean, you know, when I’m underwriting a deal as gonna be an LP versus being a gp, you’re utilizing a lot of the same information and knowledge that you have.

Randy:
Yeah. So I, I would say like ultimately my, my superpower is sales. I spent 25 years in sales. What I found in corporate America that I was, I was really good at understanding complex processes and then really not dumbing down, but being able to share that process in a simplified, easily communicated way. So, you know, in my corporate world, what I would do is I would end up perfecting some process and then I would become the subject matter expert and I would teach the rest of the team and the rest of the organization how to go out and do this thing. So essentially that’s what I did in passive investing. I went out and spent a couple of years figuring it out, and then after I refined my process, I was able to easily explain that process to other people, and they were people that were in my network, so they already knew, like entrusted me and it was just a very simple marriage at that point to move forward.

Charles:
Interesting. So can you give us like a little overview of your firm today? I mean, what is your investment strategy and your criteria for investing alongside your, your investors?

Randy:
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it’s evolved quite a bit. I will tell you my due diligence process on that first passive investment was I listened to a podcast and I liked the guy and he had a big, long beard, so I trusted him. We’ll just say that without saying who he is. I think you probably know who that is. So that’s evolved quite a bit. Today we focus almost exclusively on multifamily value add. That buy box has evolved and changed quite a bit over the years, but I like working with operators that have, call it 300 million plus in a UM. These are groups that have been in the space for i I will say more than five to seven years because I’m looking for folks that didn’t start in the huge you know, growth that happened in late 19 or 19 2000 fifteens plus.

Randy:
So I’m looking for groups that have track record of, you know, 10 or 15 years, of course multiple exits. And probably more importantly than anything, I wanna work with groups that their current portfolio is not struggling. So there were a ton of folks that bought a lot of assets back in 18, 19, 20, 21, where those assets are really struggling now. And I am doing my best to find the operators that either one were sitting on the sidelines during that time period or two, we’re kind of going against the grain and getting you know, fixed rate debt, long term fixed rate debt during that time. ’cause The people that had the floating rate debt, they’re the ones that are struggling today, right?

Charles:
For sure.

Charles:
How do you verify that beforehand? I mean, there’s so much information you can get from an operator, but you know, without finding their passive investors yourself, which would see would be very difficult. How do you verify that these people are checking those boxes that you just mentioned?

Randy:
Yeah, well, I I think first of all, you mentioned a really good point, like finding people that have already invested within, and not just people not just asking those operators. Who are some of your investors that I can talk to? Because everybody’s got two or three buddies that they can forward and, and they’ll tell you whatever you want. So more importantly, I find operators from other passive investors that have been investing with them for six to eight to 10 years plus. And I’m very, very fortunate to be a part of a very, very large passive investing community through GoBundance which is just high net worth entrepreneurs that invest very, very heavily in the space. So more often than not, I’m getting referred to, to operators by people that have been investing with them for many, many years. Okay. Now to go one step further in my due diligence, what I’ll, my, my general conversation will be, you know, tell me about your track record. How many deals do you currently own? How many have gone full cycle? And then after I know how many they’re currently managing, I just simply ask them for their most recent investor updates. And if they’ve got 30 assets and they give me 10, then I say, where are the other 20? Right. And, you know, those seeing those investor updates, whether they’re quarterly or monthly and whether they provide financials or don’t provide financials, that can tell me 90% of what I’m trying to uncover about the existing portfolio. Yeah,

Charles:
That’s, that’s definitely a lot of information there that is really helpful. The financials is a big thing. And also the, the, just the communication. I, one time was at a conference years back and they’re on stage and they said you know, who’s on the list of different real estate syndicators and everybody raises their hand. And then who’s, you know, passively invested with one of them and then who’d like to have more co communication with that active syndicator they have. And pretty much everybody’s hand was still up. So it’s definitely a lacking thing that hasn’t changed in years that was pre covid. I mean, it still hasn’t changed where people want more information, even if they don’t respond to your emails or anything like that. The more information, the better. And I feel that they know you’re on, they’re on top of it now. And that’s gonna make it easier for your investors too. I find it because now they’re not reaching out to our team, right, for an update on everything, whereas, hey, here’s everything. If you have questions, follow up with me. And they’re just gonna go through and find out what they feel is most important and then if they have any questions, they can respond. But that’s kind of what I’ve seen with working with Syndicators, being a past investor as well and being an active syndicator.

Randy:
Yeah, no, I would, I would agree. I think regular cadence with investor updates is really important. The level of the financials that they share, I think is really telling of the professionalism of that group. And just the transparency to have what, what do they say? Bad news should travel much faster than good news. And that’s not always the case. ’cause Those are, I mean, those are hard conversations to have when things aren’t going as planned. But it’s important that they do have it.

Charles:
It’s also in those in instances, I’ve, I’ve found it with with speaking to syndicators and I said, you know, if you just, even though it’s not, what you’re doing right now is not going completely what your performer was, which it never really does per se, you know what I mean? It’s above or bial. But the thing though is that more communication is going to even this out a lot easier. Right. Because people are coming to you for updates. If you just provided some updates, no matter what kind of progress you’re having or what’s happening, positive and negative, they know it and they’re not going to, they’re gonna feel, and it’s also a trust issue too. If I’m getting a lot of bad information, a lot of bad news, or I’m getting, you know, I would like that rather than no news. So I have some idea what’s happening and then also some sort of proactive strategy of like what we’re doing to move this to, we’re closer to what’s supposed to be happening. You know what I mean? Exactly. But they drop the ball by just, you know, by just having the you know, the telephone that there’s no information. You know what I mean, quiet telephone that comes off and then you’re like, everybody else working with people, working with investors is left holding the bag in the sense of, well, you know, how do we know what’s going on? Yeah.

Randy:
Yeah. I, I had I kinda learned that lesson in corporate America. We had we had executive vice president that would do burrs with a soap business unit reviews on a quarterly basis. And, and I think it was his whole purpose in life to come in and find the one thing that, the one rock that wasn’t uncovered and just tear you apart on it. And after going through those for a couple of years, I basically learned that my goal when he came in would be to come in and tell him, here’s everything that’s going wrong. Like, literally, I want you to know everything. And from there I’m gonna tell you what the, what we’re gonna do to make it right. And I will tell you some of the, the most successful Burr reviews I ever did were those where he just sat there with a smile on his face and said, there’s nothing that I can dig into because you shared at all. So and I think there was a good lesson to learn that many, many people do not figure that out at any point in your career. Yeah,

Charles:
No, that’s a, that’s definitely a a, a great example of what it is. ’cause I found when I speaking with investors and you provide enough information, you don’t hear back from them. You always wonder, you know, what’s going on. But then when they reach back out, you will hear something of something that it was our fault on our team’s fault that we didn’t provide enough information. So now it’s like, okay, so let’s put out these updates more often. Let’s make ’em a little bit more detailed. Let’s make sure they understand the, all the terms that we’re using too in these really high level, you know, we throw around terms, but in normal just speaking with other people in the business and you’re like, you know what, I should like, you know, we should really like dumb this down just a little bit so people understand.

Charles:
‘Cause No one’s gonna be like, no one that’s getting an update’s gonna be like, well, this is not the right, you know what I mean? They’re gonna say it’s much easier to understand, right. How many people are full-time in business. That’s why they’re coming and partnering with you. You know what I mean? So so we talked a lot about finding operators and vetting ’em. Now let’s talk about, you know, you’ve invested over 30 syndications. How has your underwriting evolved over that time from just liking someone on a podcast to where you are now, which seems to be a little bit more thorough?

Randy:
Yeah, so it’s I, I mean ultimately today my due diligence checklist is like 110 different data points that I go through. You know, and it’s everything from, you know, entry, exit cap rates, a lot around. I think the number one risk is with debt these days. So I really like to get an understanding of what’s going on with debt, how the estimates for insurance and taxes are come up with, ’cause some of those, those are some of the biggest surprises that at least up until the last couple of years, a lot of people were just putting the same numbers in over and over and over again without getting new estimates. Some of those oh goodness, I’m, I’m trying to think through the list. A big piece is like digging into those investor updates and finding out what’s really going on with the current assets and digging into those to see like, why, why did you perform over this compared to what you’re actually performing?

Randy:
What we saw is a lot of people were doing exits and getting really great returns on the back end because of cap rate expansion, but there are in I improvement, did it actually match what their performance was so they could still be providing two or three X equity multiples and not even growing in OI. So why was that, you know, if they were doing a value add plan and they said they were gonna renovate a hundred units and they only did seven, what happened? You know, so as cap rates are expanding that NOI improvement and that execution of the business plan is critically important, so people that aren’t able to execute on their, their value add plans, they’re getting crushed right now. So really digging into those type of details and seeing why that is. How

Charles:
Does your, how does a kind of a market review down to almost like the neighborhood of the asset go for you in the sense of like when they say here, you know, this is where the address of the property is yourself, high level, the first five, 10 minutes, when you’re looking to that, what are the things that you’re really looking into that you wanna see that are around a property or that you wanna see with some of the comparables, something like this?

Randy:
Yeah, so I, I mean, I, I like to use the the strategy where big large corporate dollars are spending dollars, then that’s usually a good a, a, a good sense, give you a good sense as to what’s going on in the market. So if you see Starbucks popping up around, if you see nice new retails, you know a actually that might be a little bit different with some of the changes in the leadership going on at Starbucks and kind of their, their growth trajectory. But looking at those types of things are important. You know, you can go to Trulia and take a look at crime stats, which I think are really important. You can go to you know, apartments.com and start looking at reviews to understand what’s going on at the asset level. You know, ultimately I, I like to drive properties or have somebody drive properties to, to give me a, a true sense and feel because there’s just nothing, nothing can beat the, you know, driving a property when the sun’s going down to get a feel for what’s going on at that asset after dark. So yeah, there’s a number of different metrics. I use city data for a lot of trending for population and demographics those types of things. Yeah,

Charles:
No, I think why I always say like the Starbucks is just I mean obviously you have people that are paying $6 for sugary coffee near you. I mean, it’s something that, it’s a huge plus and the amount of time and money they put into it it’s rare. I don’t remember the last time I saw it that a, you know, you see a Starbucks going into an underperforming neighborhood. So I just, maybe they’re out there, but it’s something that’s really not that much. And I think that just adds to a whole benefit for people that are you know, gonna be renting from you, you know what I mean? So.

Randy:
Well, and, and you know, it’s, it’s interesting too, I mentioned kind of the, the change in direction of Starbucks, that that was a strategy that worked really well for a lot of years, but new like leadership in Starbucks over the last five years or so, they were starting to go into some of these more challenging markets and they’re now starting to pull back in those markets as well. So I think, you know, the Starbucks strategy will start to be more and more accurate in the coming years because they’re really trying to go back to their own roots where they were only in the best in growing markets. So, yeah.

Charles:
Yeah. And I obviously that’s worked best for them, and that’s one of the things, but just having any type of corporate dollars around there and you know, there’s nothing wrong with independent businesses, but when you start seeing you know, larger Fortune 500 companies coming in to where you are, you know, there’s a lot of research behind it and it’s something that’s showing you that you’re on the upswing or you have something that’s already, that’s not gonna be going backwards for the most part. Right. That’s what I have found. So in the past this could be on your deals that you’ve invested into. I mean, you’ve done a lot of them but it also could be on deals maybe when you were vetting other operators. So when they’ve lost money or deals have underperformed, I mean, what are you seeing are some common traits between those deals? And I, we understand mainly, you know, the debt structure is a big one and obviously people not seeing insurance slash inflation coming, but are there any other common traits maybe you’ve seen between those deals? Yeah,

Randy:
I, I think probably the biggest one is early on, I, I kind of fell into the same trend that everybody was, is I only wanted to invest with people that had in-house property management. What I’ve learned is that property management needs to be vetted, whether it’s in-house or third party, and quite often it can actually make more sense to have the best in market third party property manager than bringing it in-house with an inexperienced asset manager or property management company. So where I see a lot of deals that really struggle is where either one, their in-house property management is not skilled and trained and have the experience or two they are not managing the property managers at the level that they should. And I will tell you that I’ve, I’ve had operators that will constantly go to you know, they’re always blaming the property manager for what’s going on, and at some point it’s the leadership team of the syndication group that’s not managing the manager correctly. And ultimately the buck stops there. So if they’ve had two or three different property managers over the course of, you know, x amount of years sometimes the picker is the problem, not, you know, who they’re picking. Right.

Charles:
No, that makes perfect sense. I think there is a, a huge thing, ’cause I always ask people that come on the show that have, you know, they’re vertically integrated type people firms and there’s not much money that’s made in it in the property management. Right. And I always, it, it always surprised me is that I, I said to myself, you know, I would never become a property manager. I feel that you can make more money if you were like starting like instead of starting a property management company for your properties, like starting like an HVAC company or plumbing, right? These things that are extremely, you pay a lot of money for when you see the bottom lines of what you pay out to these these vendors it’s a lot more than what you’re paying to make a measly little percentage on this in a thankless.

Charles:
It’s I’ve self-manage my own properties for six years. It’s a lot of work. And I just find it that, you know, I’d rather go in with an operator that says, okay, this is our seventh deal in this market with the, and we have six deals already with this property management firm. We already have a thousand units with them. And you’re like, this is rinse and repeat. Like, I’m just like piggybacking on success and the chances of me losing money are a lot less than if we had so years back, just not to go on the whole tangent, we had a we had a a deal we bought in like 2019 or something, or 2020 and a couple of partners wanted to bring in do their own management company and we voted against it. We said, no, we have really good property management in the area, stuff like that.

Charles:
And it was something that was, we’re happy we did, right? But it was also one of those things is that if it went a different way, you don’t know what you’re getting, like you said, you know what I mean? Are you buying a property management company or are you starting it yourself? I mean, it’s very difficult to find the boots on the ground people for the property managers that are gonna be very good. I mean, that’s the whole problem between it, you know what I mean? Finding good handyman. I mean, all these different parts that make up a property management company. So it’s something that we voted against, having our partners do it vertically integrated and they didn’t with our deals. I think they’ve done it with other deals and other operators since. But it’s just something that I I agree totally with what you’re saying that the vertical integration thing sounds great, but when people say, oh, we’re doing it to save money or something like this, I kind of, you know what I mean?

Charles:
It’s just kind of like, nah, that’s, that’s not, yeah, more control. I mean, you can get on the calls with them all the time. I get so many financials we get from property managers, I know exactly who’s renting, who’s not, because we we’ll handle a lot of the marketing. So I get those Excel spreadsheets that are coming and showing me why people didn’t rent, why they didn’t. You can have a lot of control with third party managers. So I kind of, I’m a little hesitant when people use that, but maybe, you know, it seems like you’re on the same page.

Randy:
I, I would agree with you wholeheartedly too. It sounds like you’re really involved with those as well, which is great. And I’m sure your investors really appreciate that as well. So,

Charles:
So over the years since you’ve been made the transition into being an active manager, what have you found other than, you know, raising money that’s kind of like what your firm really based on, but what have you found to be maybe your biggest challenge in this process of becoming more of an active investor? I imagine you still have passive investments in real estate but kind of what does that look like? Yeah,

Randy:
So biggest challenges that I’m running into today, I honestly, I, I’m really having a hard time finding deals and finding opportunities that make it through my due diligence process. As you know, almost exclusive capital raiser, if I don’t have a deal I’m looking for a deal or I’m sitting pretty stagnant. So I, I’ve made some shifts in what I’m doing with the business to kind of decrease my dependence on deal flow for new deals. And I’m starting to do a lot of coaching and consulting around capital raising. Which has actually kind of taken me kind of full circle with what I did, where, you know, in the W2 I got good at something and it taught people how to do it. I did that with passive investing. Now I’m doing that with capital raising as well. And it gives me the ability to help vet potential partners to raise capital with in my fund to fund structure as well, where I get six, eight or 12 weeks with somebody and I can truly feel whether they’re gonna be good partners for me or not.

Randy:
‘Cause We spend dozens of hours together throughout that different coaching. So that’s been a really big challenge is trying to find good deals, good operators that make it through you know, potentially like my two stringent of due diligence process at this point. Other challenges, you know, just kind of silly operational things like finding good banks to work with that, that like the structures that I use setting up the systems and the tools to, to scale and streamline and create the best investor experience. You know, we’re, we’re seeing increased expenses with taxes, with systems and tools and, and software applications just like everybody else is. And those need to be, those need to be covered by the funds which impact investor returns as well. So similar experiences I think, think that probably all small business owners are experiencing today. No,

Charles:
It’s great that you’re saying about branching off and finding a different way of kinda monetizing your knowledge and your business. And I think when I speak to passive investors initially and, and they’d be like, oh, are you full-time in the business or asking questions about that? And now as I passively invest, it’s not a question I really ask per se because I found out that some of the best passive investments I’ve made have been with small groups. The people are very well seasoned. They have money and they do deals as they need them, right as they come about, right. They’re not, like, not as they need ’em as wrong terminology as they come up. So it might be one this year, it might be two next year, they have other investments, they have something else that might be going on, maybe within real estate or something like that.

Charles:
But I like that because I know when I’m getting deals, they’re not like coming after me for an acquisition fee only, right? These are like, they’re going through like the whole process. And I think investors after maybe being burnt or going through maybe less than ideal passive investments, they start seeing and they go, okay, this is, this is what I want. I want something that goes through all these things. And they’re not just like a, like a, you know, a acquisition machine, right? Type you know, acquisition fee kind of machine syndicator that’s just putting out deals, churning them out to kind of pay their overhead. That’s that. You never wanna be on the investing side of that.

Randy:
Yeah, no, it absolutely, and, and it, you kind of hit on such a great point where, you know, I’m spending the very large majority of my time vetting new potential operators. ’cause Some of the other earlier partners that I work with, some of their, their current portfolio is struggling, so I’m choosing not to do deals with them until their portfolio gets cleaned out. But then you’ve got this challenge where it’s like you meet somebody new, they make it through your due diligence, but you don’t have 2, 3, 5 years experience with those people. And I think it’s really easy for anybody to show up for a Zoom meeting or a phone call or a lunch or meet at a conference and present well, but it’s truly like, how are people gonna show up when things get hard, when things get difficult? Like how are they gonna perform then?

Randy:
So we, it’s a challenging position to be in right now where you know, five years ago you could go through 20 questions and, and solve 90% of the challenges. Finding those good operators, those needles in the haystack, I think are well ultimately that’s, that’s what keeps me up at night. That’s what’s is constantly on my mind is finding the next deal. I just, I, I went through a vetting process with an operator over the last few weeks or so, came referred to me very strong by a number of different investors. But at the end of the day I had to step away from that. And I, I feel bad. I spent hours and hours and hours with this group going through the vetting process, and I had to, I had to tell ’em the reason why I’m not moving forward. And people’s feathers get ruffled. They get upset, but at the end of the day, my my number one priority is preserving investor capital. So if there’s any reason not to move forward, it’s better to walk away from that deal than moving forward with uncertainty. Yeah,

Charles:
No, that’s, that’s, that can be tough. And obviously after you look back and all the time and money you’ve spent you know, reviewing and underwriting and checking and, but yeah, it has to happen. I mean, it’s just one of those things, like you said, it’s a little different now than it was like 10, 15 years ago. And I know you were saying before, like looking for people that have a track record 10, 15 years, and a lot of syndicators are doing it now, haven’t been around that long as syndicators, but you will find groups that I’ve found maybe we’ve been syndicating for six years, however, we have, I’ve been a past investor for, you know, 18 years or whatever it might be, you know what I mean? Not past investor, I’m sorry, maybe investing on my own for 18 years of my own multifamily. And you’re like, okay, that’s like checking that box there because you’re just bringing the investors. I got that. That’s an easier thing to fix than like the whole business of buying properties, right? So it’s a whole different thing. So Renee, as we’re kind of like finishing up here, what are some of the main factors contributing to your success over the years from professionally, what you were before as a W2 to what you’re doing now with your firm? Yeah.

Randy:
Gosh, that’s that’s an interview question that I haven’t heard for, for years and years. I, it, it’s hard. It, it’s kind of that thing where you know, like how do you identify top performers and what traits are they? And there’s like the only, the only kind of metric or trait that I can ever point to is this idea of grit. And, you know, Angela Duckworth wrote a book on it. It’s fantastic if you’ve not read it really good, but it, it’s what differentiates what I think average to mediocre performers, to top performers. And it’s, it’s hard to even define what it is, but it’s that when, when you are coming up to challenges, when you’re having struggles, when you know it’s Friday and it’s late and you’re tired and you’re exhausted, like, do you do two more reps? Do you do 10 more reps?

Randy:
Do you push through and kind of push through that wall that you’re running into? And I, I think that’s the only thing that I can explain. It’s always what differentiated the best sales for people from the mediocre, it’s what I’m seeing in the entrepreneur space. It’s what I saw in my clients, like that ability to charge through and solve the problem no matter what comes at you. And that is something I aspire towards and something I, I try to constantly bring into my day-to-day activities. So I think that, and then again, kind of going back to that other piece, like the ability to take really complex ideas and share them in a easily understandable way, I think that can be really, really powerful.

Charles:
It’s a lot of great information. The one thing he kinda reminds me of is that I was reading something years back of somebody that went training with a Evander Holyfield, the world class boxer, and he was saying that you know, they’re in the gym and they’re pushing through the reps and the guy’s like, oh man, like, I’m at nine or whatever, and he’s like, you gotta finish. He’s like, and he got yelled at by Vander Vander was like, that’s the difference between a person just going to the gym and someone that’s a world class athlete, you know, pushing through and doing more than you have and when no one’s looking. You know what I mean? Yeah. Doing those extra reps and I think couldn’t be better. Well said, Randy.

Randy:
Yeah, no, you, you know, it’s funny, just earlier this week, I, I did a post on LinkedIn the other day, actually today Monday night I’m exhausted. Both my wife and I were sick for the last two weeks. There was a networking event and I did not wanna go. But I got my butt in the car and I drove 45 minutes to get there. And like literally out of the 200 people that were in the room, I connected with two people, but one is gonna be a potential coaching client and another is potentially bringing a deal to me that I can do with my own investment dollars. So I’m really glad I showed up. And that seems to, that seems to be the scenario every single time when you just push through and, and continue to show up.

Charles:
I think my dad told me 90% right, showing up, that’s what it is to success. It’s, that’s it, it’s actually really true. What do you know? So yeah,

Randy:
Imagine that

Charles:
<Laugh>, Randy, how can our listeners learn more about you and your business? Yeah,

Randy:
So Impact equity.net is my website. I spend a ton of time on LinkedIn, so if you, if you wanna d me, that’s a really good way to get me. And then finally I’ve got a podcast myself called The Gentle Art of Crushing It, where we interview operators and very highly skilled passive investors. So those are one of the best ways to find me.

Charles:
Thank you so much for coming on today, Randy. We’ll put all those links to the show notes and looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

About Randy Smith

Randy Smith brings over 25 years of experience in corporate sales and leadership to his role as the Founder of Impact Equity. After a successful career in corporate America, Randy turned his focus to real estate investing, becoming a Limited Partner in 25 passive investments across 12 operators and 8 asset classes.
Since launching Impact Equity in June 2022, Randy has helped over 115 investors place $9 million across 17 projects with six world-class operators. With a strong commitment to due diligence, transparency, and investor success, Randy empowers busy professionals to achieve financial freedom through passive real estate investments.
In 2024, Randy launched R.A.I.S.E. Capital Coaching and Consulting to help new capital raisers start their businesses and assist real estate groups in professionalizing their efforts using modern tools and automation.
He is also the co-host of The Gentle Art of Crushing It podcast, where he shares insights and strategies to simplify and demystify real estate investing.
Randy currently resides in Peoria, Arizona, with his wife, Jenny.

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