The 7 level wealth-building framework 🔥💵
Hey Income Flippers,
At the beginning of 2001, I was growing a sales recruiting business with my best friend Brock.
My wife and I had just purchased a single-family home in Mclean Virginia, and we were starting to plan for our future.
I had recently finished reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cash Flow Quadrant and I had just converted our first house hack into our first rental.
I was attending real estate investment groups all over our area and consuming as much as I could read on the subject.
Life was going great…
then, something happened that changed everything.
I woke up Tuesday morning and went to the gym and then the office like any other Tuesday.
The morning was September 11th, 2001, I was making my usual lead generation calls when a sales manager answered the phone, I went into my "pitch" and he cut me short and said "Are you watching the news? Turn on your TV" and then he hung up.
That is when I saw the towers on fire.
America would never be the same.
By 2002 the tech industry was in crisis, and we lost 90% of our recruiters, and our revenues dropped by two-thirds.
My daughter was born May 23rd of that year and I found myself with a big mortgage, and a new beautiful baby girl earning a 1/3 of what I had been earning a year earlier.
Times were tough but as a new husband and father, I was determined to take care of my girls.
So, for the next 3 years, I grinded as I had never grinded before. I worked 60 hours a week in the recruiting business and then another 30 hours a week looking at real estate deals and making offers.
During that time, I had come to realize the flaw in our recruiting business—there was no recurring revenue, and every month we started at zero and it felt like Groundhog Day.
I knew there had to be a better way.
So one day I turned to my wife and said, "My gut tells me I need to get out of this business and we should get into real estate, but I am pretty certain we are in a real estate bubble because it feels very much like the dot com boom."
That was the spring of 2005.
She turned to me and said, " I believe in you and I have your back—let's do it".
So picture this, I had just grinded out of the tech recession and was not jumping into a new business that was about to experience the worst real estate recession since the great depression.
Talk about timing!
But I had a plan. Well, not a plan but a hunch. I figured that if I could navigate through the real estate crisis, I could position myself for when the opportunity became available.
At least that is what I told myself. 🙂
So for the next 5 years, we worked really hard and navigated a challenging market.
We learned a TON during that time, and we did a lot right and a lot wrong, and each time we adjusted and kept moving forward.
Through hard work and sheer grit, we managed to grow our property management division to 300 assets while renovating 20 properties a year, and purchasing 15 long-term rentals. I had also gotten my real estate license to help facilitate our investment deals but soon realized the power of having a license.
I started advising and helping friends and family members buy, sell, and invest in real estate. Over that time, I gained some serious skills that became valuable in the market.
While all this sounds great, the reality was that the properties we purchased and managed were two and half hours away from home, which meant we had to set up a satellite office as well as sleeping accommodations because of the long commute.
All this as we were raising our daughter Isabella who by this time was eight years old and had seen her fair share of moldy beat-up houses.
The truth was...our resources were scattered, and we were working ALL the time...something was bound to break.
That is when my wife approached me and said, "There is normally 100K in this account but currently there is only 5K and I don't know where the rest of the money went?"
That was when I realized 2 things:
I was running multiple businesses, and I didn't have a solid financial handle on what was going on in any of them.
We were doing too many things and while we were decent at all of them, we were not great at any of them.
It was a scary time.
I realized I didn't have a handle on our finances, and I now needed to confront the reality of that situation.
While I was good at sales and marketing, I had no concept of how to build a real business, I was just hustling doing deals, making things happen, and working my ass off.
I wasn't running a proper P&L, balance sheet, or cash flow statement. I was looking at how much we had in the bank and making decisions based on that—stupid.
Life was about to give me a wake-up call.
Later that night Kim was sobbing, feeling like she was failing after working so damn hard for 5 years. I was doing my best to console her when suddenly she turned to me and said, "I'm not happy, I want a separation.”
I was completely caught off guard! I had no idea that she was unhappy.
In my mind we were doing great, we were building a family business and moving our futures forward. Sure, we were experiencing some financial pain but that is just part of the game.
What I didn't know was that her cup was empty.
It has been that way for a long time. In our pursuit of building the business, I had ignored giving her what she needed.
Truthfully, I thought I was giving her what she wanted but I would soon learn that her #1 love language was quality time—the very thing that I would learn I was not great at.
I didn't know it at the time, but the business had consumed me. I was on my phone constantly, calling, emailing, texting. The thrill of the chase and the quest to build something had me passionate and excited.
I was having fun, but she wasn’t.
I was constantly looking toward the future but unfortunately not paying attention to the present.
Luckily, we reset the clock and started over.
We sold the property management business to create a counterbalance in our life.
We spent quality time together, I learned how to put my phone away and become more present and I started delegating more of my everyday work to the talented people around me.
Most importantly, we decided to simplify the business and focus on one thing.
Focusing on one thing gave us purpose, and direction, and a funny thing happened...we started making more money working far less.
This allowed us to hire additional people, which in turn helped us develop better systems, which helped us provide better service, which then led to more referrals, which then led to more business.
You get the idea, it wasn't just a little better, it was a lot better!
Looking back, it was extremely foolish of me to leap the way I did. I didn't have a plan, a proforma, a system, or a mentor. But something in my gut just said—"Go for it, you will figure it out."
We did, but it took time, and it was painful.
I vowed that I would create a framework, system, and platform that we so desperately needed when we were launching our business.
It's been a team effort, one that we have tested, implemented, and are constantly improving. There is no such thing as finished, and I suspect we will continuously keep improving and adapting to new market conditions and technology, but the framework and models are evergreen.
The Income Flip Masterclass was born out of my daily obsession with wanting to get better, applying what works, and eliminating what doesn't.
When I found a more efficient way of doing something it became a system, and that system created focus, and focus provided clarity, and clarity became rocket fuel for our business.
Our framework is called the 7 Levels of Wealth, and our obsession became unlocking each level of the journey so that we could help others achieve financial freedom.
Today we gross over 180 million in sales.
I've converted my self-employed job into a business.
We have expanded our business, and our company has become a diversified portfolio of real estate businesses with ownership stakes in real estate teams, title, construction, property management, investments, and training.
More importantly, we have built a platform that helps real estate entrepreneurs build businesses, develop leadership, grow wealth, and create financial freedom.
We developed the Income Flip Movement to help you do the same without all the pain and time I had to experience.
My team and I are so excited to offer this unique wealth-building experience for YOU to help you convert your active income to passive income and connect with a dedicated, global community of real estate entrepreneurs who are on the same journey.
8 Week Income Flip Masterclass Q12024
January 22—March 18, 2024
30+ hours of online lessons, PLUS+ 8 weekly LIVE Masterminds with myself and 10+ real estate expert instructors.
Register here
Keep Moving Forward.
Rob
