28 Dec The Importance Of Vision And Having The Right Tools With Robert Syfert

In everything that we do, we must always have a vision. This is true even in the real estate investment realm. In today’s episode, we have Robert Syfert sharing his wisdom as the Co-Founder and Chief Visionary of RealEstateInvestor.com. With over 20 years of experience in the real estate investment industry, Robert has become a specialist in creating software, tools, and services that enable real estate investors to do things better and faster. He has sold and managed hundreds of investment properties and has built three successful startups from the ground up. Tune in as Robert shares the advantages of using the right tools for investors to be the game-changer for growth. Also, learn from all the issues he encountered along the way and how to deal with them.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF VISION AND HAVING THE RIGHT TOOLS WITH ROBERT SYFERT

Robert Syfert is the Cofounder and Chief Visionary of RealEstateInvestor.com. Tell me more about how does it work? What is it like being a chief visionary? Being visionary in the real estate world is pretty challenging.

Someone has to cast the vision. As they say, “Without a vision, the people perish.” Without having a clear cut where we are going, people don’t know how to get there. How it works is if I take a step backward and say I’ve done real estate for years, hundreds of flips and turnkey rentals, and owned a property management business and all of that. As I was learning, growing, and scaling that business, I found ways to make it more efficient by leveraging technology.

Years ago, once I figured all that out, I was able to take this to a much bigger scale, which opened the door to a massive need in the industry. I went down the path of creating software that wasn’t just for myself, which is what I had already built, but something that could be used by anyone in any part of the country, no matter how they were doing real estate. At the end of the day, it’s very clear that we’re all doing the same thing, which is relationships with people that lead to transactions.

There’s a process that everyone’s going to follow to do a real estate transaction. It requires as much as people think this is a house is a business or multifamily or whatever it is, it’s not. It’s a people business. The more you focus on the people side and are able to automate that conversation and continuity with people, the better those relationships come. It leads to more transactions.

Literally, me casting a vision in RealEstateInvestor.com is nothing more than saying, “Here’s how we’re going to continue to add more value to estate investors.” Having been one of myself, I have a unique position of being able to say, “Here’s everything you’re going to have to do if I break this down to what are all the steps that must occur, no matter how you’re doing real estate. What are the challenges I personally ran into? How did I overcome them? How else could we solve those for people moving forward?” That’s what casts the vision on how we’re going to create everything that we create for people.

If we look at real estate investing, you’ve typically got two groups of people. You’ve got the passive investors and the active investors. I’m presuming your software or marketplace is primarily targeted at active investors rather than people that invest typically in REITs or other types. Is it a fair assessment?

That’s a fair assessment. It’s more geared towards an active investor running a business to acquire a flip, wholesale, or hold actively. They’re actively buying or going after more properties versus the passive person who’s like, “Bring me deals, and I’m going to buy them.”

The pathway there as an active investor is in various stages. It’s the early stage where someone who has capital wants to become a real estate investor typically starts. Your overall proposition is that we will provide you with the structure to enable you to get to what you want, which is a profitable real estate transaction but not to trip up along the way with the usual traps that most people fall into.

Someone has to cast the vision. Without a vision, the people perish. Without having a clear-cut vision of where they are going, the people won’t know how to get there.

That’s a good breakdown. I might steal some of that. No matter if you’re starting out and looking to go do your first deal, there are things that you could do better and more efficient with the right tool, that to your point, will structure organize you in a way that you eliminate most of the issues that you would find out the hard way by yellow sticky pads and notes, losing track of it and, “I knew I was supposed to call this guy back, but I don’t remember who he is.”

I don’t remember what I said in my last call to the guy that’s scaling and has a team and needs structure and organization around them. The system is built to manage all of that. It doesn’t matter where you’re at in that journey. Either way, it’s going to structure and organize you in the most efficient way possible so that you always know what you’re supposed to do and what’s the next thing that you should do. If you have a team and you’re scaling what they’re supposed to do and a way for you to look over that and make sure it’s getting done.

You’re competing directly with CRM systems, of which there are many. The important thing is that this is a very industry-specific process. Where would you say the bulk of your customers are?

We’re spread throughout the United States.

Not geographic, but in terms of where they are. Are they early-stage investors?

By the demographic within the industry itself, we are probably about 50/50. Half of our customers are what I would call newer. They’re either getting started or have done a handful of transactions and looking to scale that. We also have about half of the people that are scaling. They’ve done some transactions and need a way to be way more organized so they can scale more efficiently.

Give me an example of both spectrums. Let’s say we’ve got an early-stage investor, someone who has had a liquidity event of some sort desperately wants to get involved in real estate investing himself or herself directly. How does your process work? How would that guide them? Most importantly, what banana skins, issues, or traps would I have typically fallen into that you would be able to save me from?

I’ll start with the traps. The traps are the problems you’re going to have when you get started, which is the lack of organization or any track. Usually, that’s a trap or a problem because you’re not even aware you need it. If you are, then that comes into the, “I have to go get XYZ tools so that I can get the tracking done with the phone system.” That doesn’t like keeping track of people and where they are, their properties and addresses, and everything else associated with that person.

I need something else, and it could be as simple as a whiteboard or yellow pad, or sticky notes. Therein lies the problem, though, is you’re already starting to create more separation, which may not be a big deal. It may not seem like a problem when you’re first beginning. Maybe you only have a handful of people you’re talking to, but as quickly as you start to do any marketing or having conversations, you don’t generally do a deal the first time you talk to somebody. It requires follow-up and multiple people.

In that, you start to have that problem of chaos eventually, lost the note, don’t know where that went, was this and this system or that system? In its simplest core, that functionality is, instead of having multiple tools to do all that, you have one. Our baseline lightest version of our product has call tracking built-in, the property and the lead and everything all associated in one place, and transitions and keeps track of what you’re going to do. It also allows you to text, email, and keep all the communication in one central place, so you’re not looking all over the place.

Vision: The more you focus on the people side and can automate that conversation and continuity with people, the better those relationships come, which leads to more transactions.

Because it’s task-oriented around what you’re doing, it’s also reminding you, “It’s been a week. Follow back with this person because you said you were going to.” Every day you can log in, and it’s telling you, “Here are the five people you need to talk to now. That’s all you have on your list. Go do more marketing.” Without that, you’re left with, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, but I know there are some people I wanted to call.” That’s the problem of getting started in generating businesses and unclear of what the next steps are. The other problem that you’ll run into is most people, in my experience, suck at follow-up. They’re not good at it at best. There are data to support this too.

At best, most real estate investors trying to get going might follow up with someone a second time. Our system automates all that right out of the box. In the latest version, it’s going to send emails, texts, and voicemails from you to your prospect at a certain series of times forever. It’s automatically following up for you. You don’t have to think about it. If they reply, it alerts you that you got to reply.

All in one place that brings you right to here’s all your communication with them so far, all the notes you have, the property or properties they own, and you can continue on that conversation in one simple place. You’ve already put yourself in a very structured, organized way, and you only have one tool. The best part is that as you grow, the next problem you’re going to have is you’re going to realize maybe you’re running appointments or sending a series of contracts that you need to follow up on.

Herein lies the next problem, “What’s the next tool that I need to get in order to do that electronically or to keep track of these files or to schedule my appointments,” which you can do with multiple tools, but you’re layering more problems for yourself because you’ll end up in a chaotic mess, wondering how you get nothing done at the end of the day. Yet click a button, and you go up to the next level within the software that adds in the features you’re going to need next in your business because this is the natural evolution of a scaling business. It’s already there. It already has all that built-in.

Do you find that the biggest challenge you have is getting people to understand what problems they’re going to have that they don’t necessarily know yet?

It depends on the person. Some people know they have a problem and have no clue how to solve it. There are the people who are like, “Yeah, but that’s not a problem.” It’s not yet, but it will be. We get both. It’s one having them understand that is a problem. Why there’s more is because these are the problems you’re going to have. You could go start with some other tool, but you’re going to need to change it because that tool only solves that problem you’re aware of. It doesn’t solve the next three that you’re guaranteed to have because everyone before you who’s ever done real estate always happens to have these problems.

You’ve got a reactive and a proactive model. We’re focusing on the investor who is relatively new at the game. You’re providing a solution to a problem that the investor doesn’t know that they have yet. You’re effectively providing them with a structure or a business model to follow. Does your system also dabble as a roadmap for success for people that want to become successful real estate investors but don’t necessarily know where to start? You’re solving a problem at the same time is providing them with the stepping stains to become successful. Is that one of the other benefits of what your company does?

Yeah. With our company globally, besides our software, that’s the foundational piece that keeps you structured and organized. We have services that we provide to help you scale, coaches and roadmaps, and step-by-step processes to help you solve your problems in a much more focused on you process. With the services, it’s literally like the next issue you’re going to have is, “I don’t want to do this job.” Here’s the most likely one that you’re doing that’s annoying you. It’s $10 an hour of work. That’s why it’s annoying you. We have someone who could fill that gap for you right now.

What you’re enabling people to do is, if they’re investors, you’re enabling them to focus on being the investor and allowing them to run the business rather than being consumed by the business.

Working on your business rather than working in your business.

That’s a very important thing too. When you start as a real estate investor, I don’t think many people view real estate investing as a business. Do you come across that a lot? Does that change as people go through the process?

At the end of the day, we’re all doing the same thing: relationships with people that lead to transactions.

It does. A lot of people, myself included when I started out, knew that it could be a business, but it still wasn’t in the beginning. It was me. It’s solo doing everything. Within that, you realize I’m spending a lot of time doing a lot of stuff I don’t enjoy or like. I don’t need to do it. The next problem you have, generally what I run into with people like that and even myself, is the fear of even hiring someone else, who are you’re going to hand it off? How can I trust someone else to do this? No one can do it better than me mentality.

That’s when they start to realize as they see the actual money coming in from real estates like, “This could be a business.” People could do this stuff, and I could hire people and make even more money, providing a bigger and better service to people throughout the world, buying more houses, fixing up more communities, whatever your exit strategy is within real estate.

Tell me a bit more about the other services you provide outside of this software-driven framework, the other moving parts. My view is that real estate investment is a collaborative process. I completely agree that you cannot simply go in as an individual. You have to work with project sponsors and the city. You have to understand what the moving parts are. How do you help educate people that want to get involved in real estate investing?

Obviously, we come on podcasts and share information there. We share information within our communities. In and above that, as you’re growing and scaling, we do weekly webinars, courses to teach different stuff for different stages. We have all the ancillary services that we add on, like marketing. Some people don’t want to figure out how to pull a data list on what properties they should be going over and should they do direct mail or text messaging or cold calling, or all of it. They have no clue how to do or implement any of that.

You can figure it out, but you don’t necessarily have to spend the time to do that. We can handle all the marketing for people, all their data compilation, what they should go after, what’s working and what’s not working, and have the team and resources that are trained, managed, and hired to be able to do that. In addition to that, the other usual number one problem, even if you enjoy marketing, you’re doing all of your own.

What you don’t enjoy is qualifying all those leads as you start to get a bunch of leads until they’re ready to talk to you to get a real offer. We call them our sales ninjas, who will be mining and refining. They’ll constantly stay on your lead until the time that they’re like, “Yes, I am ready to sell now. It would be a good time to sell. You can come out on Friday at 2:00,” or virtually if you’re doing it over the phone. They do all of that grub work, is the best way to say it, the constant mining and refining because it’s like a coal mine.

You got a bunch of coal, and you got to sift through all that coal until you can find the gold. You should focus on the gold because that’s where the money is made, and someone else that you could pay, which is a service we offer, can get it done for you and continue to do it. The reason we offer the service is it makes it a lot easier.

The challenge that most people will run into once they realize they have to hire someone is, “How do I hire someone? How do I interview them? How do I train them to do this job? How do I manage them to make sure they’re doing what they need to do so that I’m not losing money by paying them?” We already have all that in place, so you don’t have to figure that out.

Again, this is all about for us is what the problems you’re going to run into are? What solutions can we create to solve those problems before you have them? You may recognize you have them, but most people don’t. When they run into them, we already have a solution because we already know the problem you’re going to run into.

Typically, what problems do you come across with companies or real estate investment entities that start off small have seen some success of growing to a certain size but then find it difficult to get to the next level? In other words, the challenge of scaling. What issues do you see there typically? How do you solve them?

The biggest ones, this is where the one becomes looming if you didn’t set up yourself out of a gate on tracking because you have no clue what’s making you money. You’re in this spending money on marketing, and I’m making more than I’m spending. I’m making money, yet it’s a shotgun approach. I got painted signs, texting on, cold callers, direct mail going out, some PPC turned on, and I don’t know what’s making me my money. That’s a problem you don’t even know you have until you figure that one out.

If you set up right out of the gate, you’re already tracking that. It’s very clear. I spent $1,000 here and there, but this one’s the one that made me all the money. We can cut those two off and put my money in there. You’re already being more efficient and making more money with your money. It makes it easier to scale.

The next issue that most people I see run into is hiring. It’s when and how to hire that first hire, generally. Depending on who this is, usually going to be one of two people, most of the time. Usually, it’s more one than the other. I’ve seen most likely that anyone who has had some level of success, usually, whether they were good in the beginning or not, has gotten good at talking to a prospective seller and negotiating a deal that is a win-win for both parties. That’s what got them to some level of success. What that person is usually not good at are the paperwork, the transactional processes, the checklist, the following up and making sure that it fosters.

What the problem is that they run into is while they’re getting some success, they stop everything else while they work on this handful of deals that they can manage. When they finish those and collect the money, they go back and turn this back on. They don’t realize that creates this ebb and flow of inconsistency and deal flow simply because you’re inconsistent and don’t realize it. When they hire the person who can handle all that stuff, they get to where consistency starts to happen. They’re starting to build a real business.

They have a person who manages all this stuff they’re not good at to make sure the process continues to happen. They stay focused on the next conversation, the next deal and someone else handles all this stuff to make sure it continues to happen, or they’re crappy at sales, but it’s usually a minor part there because they wouldn’t have had success.

Most of it is the mechanics of the machinery of real estate transactions. What most people who are going into the business don’t have sight of is the level of detail and the number of moving parts in any real estate. If you take a typical fix and flip, for example, it may seem like it’s a case of a quick facelift, but if you encounter problems with contractors or the city or lenders or insurance, that becomes a sequence of moving parts that all have to be juggled. There’s this huge value in training. What came first? Was it the structure or the training that gave birth to the software?

It’s the structure first and foremost, and it’s why it’s the foundational piece. That came from my own experiences, failures, and hard lessons on the problems I ran into, and solving all those problems for myself created this environment and say, “I created this thing that solves all those problems, replaced a bunch of people and figured out how to leverage it all. How much further could someone have gotten if they had this software, to begin with?”

I figured that out because I was by myself, 12, 14, 16-hour days dropping the ball, having the ebbs and flows, things falling through the cracks, building some system, and then still had problems. I built and figured all that out by going through all the problems I went through. The system became the, “Now I’ve got this show dialed in that had I this four years ago when I started, I wouldn’t have run into all of these problems, but I would have taken this four-year learning curve and dropped that into a few months and got very efficient. I would’ve jumped right to this problem.”

It’s a problem I’d much rather have, which is the “Now I’m ready to hire somebody because I’m having success very fast.” If you have the right structure, system, and organization, you’ll have much faster success, which leads to why you need the services and the people because that’s the next problem you’re going to have.

One comes across so many different real estate investment coaching programs that touch on very little in terms of day-to-day running, which is the most important part. What are the things to avoid when you’re looking for someone or some process to help you along your real estate investment journey?

The biggest one that I see, especially now, is hiring someone to your point that isn’t talking about the process. Are they not talking about the process and the little details that come up because they don’t know and haven’t done actual deals? That has become a bigger problem than ever before. I see this a lot. The new guru is the guy who did a deal and then saw how much money a guru is making and says, “This was easy. I could tell people how I did that deal and say, ‘This is how you do deals and buy my product.’”

They become product salespeople because maybe they’re good marketers. The biggest problem is making sure that if you’re going to get coaching from someone, make sure they have a track record. Not only do they have a track record, make sure they’re actively still doing business because stuff is changing to your point about contractors.

If they’re not actively doing flips or in the middle of that, they wouldn’t know things like right now, the supply and demand issue on things being on backorder, and it’s going to be months before you can get that thing you thought you were going to rehab next week, you can’t even get the window, or you thought you were going to rewire this house, electrical wiring went up double because of the market, or a tile you thought you were going to replace for $2 a square foot, the labor now is $6 a square foot. That shot your entire budget because you listened to a guy who’s running off of numbers that existed five years ago, but those are not the reality in this right-now market.

You had a guy who does know is in the market literally meeting with contractors. You’re already ahead of the game because they’re still dealing with the same problems you’re going to deal with. They’re not theoretically telling you what problems you’re going to deal with and have no clue what the real market’s bearing right now.

In terms of where the markets are, they’ve been incredibly high grades in most parts of the USA. Much to people’s surprise, considering when we went into the early part of 2020. You touched on one thing, which is the supply shortage and the challenges of getting building materials. What other issues are you seeing now that have surprised you?

People think real estate is a house business or multifamily or whatever it is. It’s not. It’s a people business.

That’s a big one, the supply chain. In certain areas, some things don’t seem to be as affected, but some are mind-boggling. A simple one, I’m in the middle of a huge project right now. One of the things we ran into that was totally left field was we couldn’t run any plumbing pipes because they couldn’t get the 90-degree elbows for the pipes to connect. We literally had to wait weeks, this should have been done, but now we’ve lost weeks, which is a cost for holding costs. This is now throwing off projections of other things being able to get done. I’ve had the same thing, windows if you think you’re going to replace windows in a house.

If you’re planning on building a home, for example, you may be six months from now before you’re going to get the part you think you’re going to get that in 2020 would have been in a week, “I’ll have that on.” “No, you won’t.” Labor costs started to go up because there’s such a supply and demand issue. A lot of the laborers and the contractors realize they’re raising their prices simply because they can’t even keep up with the demand of how much work is being wanted out there.

Two, it’s justifiable because if you can get a good contractor, I’m seeing some in some areas 3 to 4 times the cost of what I would normally pay and have paid for years. Hundreds of houses is now tripled on some items. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve seen. I questioned some of it on the bigger scale from a more governmental or bigger social and economic scale. For example, my window order was delayed.

Vision: The system is built to manage all of that. It’s going to structure and organize you in the most efficient way possible so that you always know what you’re supposed to do and the next thing that you should do.

Think about this, if I have a new construction home and this is a big project, there are 100 plus windows and doors, and I can’t put them on, that means anything can get into the property. I can’t finish my mechanical work, my plumbing work, and my electrical because I can only put in what could get wet without harm. I can’t do a dry wall. I literally have to stand still on a project and pay my investor and loan costs, whatever they are, taxes and insurance for that timeframe. That’s an additional holding cost that was never anticipated simply because windows are sitting on a shipping cargo. I don’t know why it can’t get here because that doesn’t make sense.

These are all the challenges that one doesn’t think of. What are the opportunities there? Are you seeing opportunities come out of left-field in the same way that challenges are coming out of the same space? Are there areas surprising you in terms of opportunities that you might want to talk about?

Some of the opportunities that have been created by some of this too are targeting or going after landlords. It’s easier to buy a house from a landlord because you’re going to find a lot of landlords who don’t want to be a landlord anymore. They can’t maintain their properties as easily as they used to. The price of fixes has gone up, so they’re done with it. When there was the moratorium on evictions, a lot of people never thought that something like that would even be possible. We’re about to see, and I don’t know to what scale there’s a lot of speculation on the scale of what’s going to happen with the foreclosures that should hit the market. There’ll be an opportunity there. I don’t know how much for the normal investor versus the bigger funds.

You were talking about all the people in forbearance who can’t meet that rather large lumpy payment they’re supposed to make.

Even if that gets pushed to the end, they probably didn’t pay their taxes and insurance. There are so many other factors in that. If they couldn’t afford the payments then, what makes you think that they’re going to afford a big lump sum? I believe there’s a big blooming opportunity coming.

You’ve got all these things that are slightly out of kilter. You’ve got high labor costs, lack of supply and materials, but you’ve got rampant house price appreciation, which is probably driven by huge demand and very few suppliers in terms of the stock that’s on the market. You’ve got this underlying current of foreclosures. It is very dominant, which means having structure and rails to work on when these things operate. Are you seeing much more collaborative requirements coming from the people you work with? In other words, how do we deal with these problems? We have probably never seen that perfect storm of problems before.

No. This is a relationships business and 100% it’s all about people. I met with a guy at one of our projects. He’s in commercial construction. He’s going to be able to do something for us in a couple of weeks. I’ll pay a little more, but the nice thing was because of that one relationship in his network, I’ve now going to get introduced to people that might be able to save me a bunch of money on stuff I was being told I couldn’t get because he’s got so much work for them. He’s still keeping the price down on the labor, and that one connection now is going to save me money.

The other collaborative thing to give you an example and another opportunity I’m seeing is a deal we did. I wholesaled the deal because I had to over-consider what was going to happen once we saw the full renovation budget. Because of the experience we’re having said, “I’m not renovating that because I can already tell you, you’ve got to run into this, this and this, with that much work, and that’s going to mess this whole deal up.”

The cool thing was because of the market we’re in and being so active, collaborating with a couple of other people I know, I found a buyer for that opportunity that paid more for the house than conceivably should’ve paid for the house. They’re going to hold it, and they’re okay with the fact that it’s going to take them over a year ever to finish that rehab project that normally would take me like two months.

Are you saying more people coming into the real estate market as investors now than at the same time in 2020 or the year before that?

Yeah. We’re seeing more people. The bigger issue that I hear more people saying is they can’t get inventory. I haven’t had an inventory issue per se. Going back to your guru crushing earlier, the other issue that most people run into is when they’re not active in the market, they’re still sticking teaching the whole, “You have to buy at this percentage of ARV minus repairs or else you don’t have a deal.”

That sounds great in a dry market without all the factors that are occurring. That might be true. I did a deal that I could tell you made no sense. I’ve watched deals get done every week that makes no sense on any of those formulas, yet they’re happening because more buyers were coming into the market that wants to get into real estate.

Some are speculating, and they’re overpaying as a result. Some are doing the math. I believe they’re hedging on the fact that they think the values are going to continue to go up and some of that smart money that’s buying. The guy we sold the one house to is literally trying to buy 30 houses a month in a market. They’re not dumb.

He’s not somebody who’s got cash burning a hole in his pocket.

No, it’s still a smart purchase. They’re still making money on it, but not the way I would have structured it. It doesn’t make sense for me, but it makes sense for them because they can factor in the holding costs. Since they’re going to hold it, they’re factoring in what it’s going to be worth 5 to 10 years from now in their formula.

What are you seeing on the horizon that you think is going to change fundamentally? Do you see something that’s happening that is going to upset the status quo or alter the status quo significantly?

The biggest thing that I see is two things in the near future. One, what’s going to happen with these forbearances that are no longer happening? How is that? What is going to happen? Is there going to be a flood of inventory? Is there not? I don’t know. I’m not going to speculate in a way because I don’t see the bank foreclosing on that many people. I am also not naive that it could be a backdoor deal with some big funds that come in and buy.

It’s happened before, hasn’t it, with Blackstone?

The other thing is prices continue to rise on expenses for properties. I cannot understand a market where that isn’t going to drive the price of values of properties up as a result. You’re not going to be able to fix and repair houses, and the costs keep going up. It’s a sales pitch or not, but at the same token, it’s the truth that I’ve watched of we can lock in this price now if you want to move forward or we don’t know what the price will be. It might go up. Some other material costs might go up, and we’ll have to raise our prices. The price they would have given me a few months ago was $20,000, $30,000 less. I see that having no choice, but to affect the actual price of a house at some point.

What leaps out of the page here is how dynamic being a real estate investor is. It’s not simply a case of finding a property, fixing it up, and then flipping it. It doesn’t matter how busy the market is. There are so many dynamics associated with it. Having people like you to guide newer investors through the processes is so valuable. Where is the major growth going to come from your particular business, other than the investment side? Is there a particular area that you’re seeing as something that’s going to explode you think over the next 2 to 3 years?

When you have a bunch of coal, you have to sift through all that coal until you find the gold. Focus on the gold because that’s where the money is made.

There’s going to be a massive opportunity to be able to buy a lot of properties personally. If you’re structured and organized correctly, and you have the right processes in place, you’ll be able to take advantage of that.

It’s being prepared. If there is a significant market change, either way, you’ve got your ducks in a row, your finances, team, and processes to be able to benefit from that without tripping over yourself from a process perspective.

Obviously, continue to learn. There are different strategies and ways to acquire properties like seller financing deals and stuff like that. The project I’m working on is a seller-financed deal. It made it make sense by doing it that way. If you’re not familiar with those things, that’s okay. The more that you systemize and process yourself, the more you need to learn so that you have multiple ways.

It does. You’re building a foundation. With proper processes, you are building something that has longevity, as opposed to the proverbial house of cards.

It’s building out a rock instead of sand.

At which point, we shall switch gears. I’m going to introduce you now to the Hooked On Start-Ups’ patented quickfire questionnaire. The only thing is it’s not technically patented, but it is a quickfire questionnaire. Question number one is, what is your favorite word?

I don’t even know. That’s totally left field. Focus is my favorite word.

There are no marks here, by the way. Everything is the right answer. Question two, what is your least favorite word?

Can’t.

Question three, what are you most excited about right now?

My new house.

Question four, what turns you off right now?

Vision: There’s going to be a massive opportunity to buy a lot of properties. If you’re structured and organized correctly and have the right processes in place, you’ll be able to take advantage of that.

Liars.

It may mean people that don’t do what they say they’re going to do.

It’s deception, lying, be straight to the point. Let your yes be yes, and let your no be no.

None of this fake it until you make it stuff. Question five, what sound or noise do you love?

It’s the sound of the ocean.

What sound or noise do you hate?

It’s batteries that fail on smoke detectors.

It takes you a month to figure out which one is going off. I’ve seen how houses were destroyed as a result. Question seven, what is your favorite curse word?

The F word.

It needs to come out.

It didn’t come out in this episode, which is quite good for me.

I can see the sense of relief on your face. Question eight, what profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?

Fitness.

What profession would you not like to attempt?

Garbage truck.

Having said that, in the olden days in England, we used to call them dustman and what happened is this truck will come along, and there’ll be none of this stuff where the truck lifts the trash can up. Guys would go out and pick up the trash can and throw it on that bag and then tip it in. I’ve seen it in New York as well. Those guys, I wouldn’t mess with them.

It’s up in the Midwest where I lived. Down here in Tampa, the truck picks it all up. They’re not even allowed to step off the truck, which is so weird.

They were the real guys, the dustmen, the trash guys. My final question, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

You did a great job, my son.

Robert, it’s been such a pleasure having you on. Final question, how do people contact to find out more about Real Estate Investor and all of these great services you provide.

You can go to 1 or 2 places, go to RealEstateInvestor.com, and that’ll lead you down whatever path you want. If you want to know more and connect with me directly, you can go to IAmRob360.com and connect with me anywhere that works for you.

It has been such a pleasure, Robert. I hope to stay in touch. I can’t wait to find out more about the services that you provide. I will be on your website next, doing a deep dive. Thanks again for being a guest on the show.

Thanks, Matthew. It’s a pleasure being on.

Important Links:

• RealEstateInvestor.com
• IAmRob360.com

About Robert Syfert

Robert Syfert is the founder of InvestorPO, Property List Manager, and USA Portfolio Real Estate and Visionary for RealEstateInvestor.com.

Robert is an innovator in the real estate investment industry who creates software, tools, and services that enable real estate investors to do things better and faster. He’s passionate about being part of the solution and finding answers to the problems that hold real estate investors back from growing and scaling their businesses.

With well over a decade of experience in the industry, he has sold and managed hundreds of investment properties, and has built three successful startups from the ground up. Robert’s a family man who believes that every real estate investor can achieve success and financial security in this industry—without compromising their free time… They just need the right tools to get there.

Robert is a highly sought out speaker in both real estate investing and software solutions. He’s a philanthropist, and he gives back to the industry through his mentorship program and business coaching services.

Robert believes in sharing his success with others through teamwork.

Robert gave up the cold Michigan winters of his youth to move to Tampa, Florida where he enjoys spending quality time with his family. When he’s not spending time with his wife or chasing his energetic son around the pool, he can be found looking for new ways to change the industry, one solution at a time.