Robert Orfino - One of the Best Real Estate Investors on the Planet

Expand The Business with Casey Eberhart

Robert Orfino, real estate investor and expert, joins Casey Eberhart on the "Expand the Business" podcast for an incredible interview about the present state of real estate, real estate investing, and even house flipping.

Robert is a master at leveraging traditional media and social media to expand his brand and marketing message online.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Robert spent countless summers on the Jersey Shore. When not vacationing, Robert worked with his father doing construction. Robert later attended Kean and Rutgers University, and set out to find a “good job.” Aside from his knack for creating things, he has a life-long relationship with education and is constantly seeking self-improvement. He also readily admits he is a die-hard NY Giants fan and a long-suffering Mets fan. At the age of 42, Robert had been working for someone else’s fortune for 20 years and began to understand the importance of wealth and how to create it. In 2007, Robert caught the entrepreneurial bug and left his job to start his own green consulting firm. Within the first year of business, the firm was directly impacted by the financial crisis in 2008. However, Robert persevered through the major financial setbacks that followed and began working as a So-Cal contractor rehabbing Freddie and Fannie Homes. In 2012, Robert took an opportunity to work on flipping homes for private investors. During this time, he flipped almost 200 different homes. Robert continued to work in the So-Cal Real Estate Market until 2014 when it made a major comeback and deals became scarce. By 2015, Robert sought out a market gap for flipping houses in New Jersey, the number one foreclosure state in the country at the time, and proactively assembled a team to build business back up again. Although the market had been tumultuous for quite some time, Robert saw an opportunity to raise capital for the New Jersey and New York Real Estate Markets and founded a Distressed Real Estate Investor Fund.

Here is the transcript of the podcast interview between Casey Eberhart and Robert Orfino:

Casey Eberhart: (00:01) And welcome everybody to today's episode of expand the business. My name is Casey Eberhart. I am your show host for this hour of amazing insight in helping you, the business owner expand the business. So we are super excited to bring to you guys, everything that we can come up with to help you expand your business. Whatever business you're in, whether you're in traditional business, brick and mortar, business, network marketing, investing, whatever businesses you this show is designed for you. So as an upfront, if you want to download a quick audio, on getting more referrals, just head over to www.ExpandTheBusiness.com. Oh, we've got some goodies over there, some surprises for you over there. And I'm super happy to have you do that again, go over to expand the business.com so super excited today because we have an amazing interview with one of my favorite people on the planet. Casey Eberhart: (01:00) Robert Orofino is one of these guys that you just can't help but to learn stuff from because number one, he's super open and willing to share his ups, his downs, his wins, his breakdowns. In order to help you and I expand our business and really kind of create the life that we all dream of. He is a real estate investor. I've happened to be friends with and have known Robert for several years. I know that Adam, and ask him to go a little bit in depth in this, but you know, one of the things that he and his partners have been able to do in the real estate game as they've made, as far as I know, at least three moves. They've moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Houston. And then from Houston they've really expanded out. They have a radio show that's on drive time in Houston, Texas. Casey Eberhart: (01:47) Every single day they've got podcasts, they have webinars, they have meetup groups, they hold live events, they hold live meetings. They've created a real estate investing fund for investors. Maybe you have a little extra money that you're scared of a scaredy cat. I've been in the real estate market. You don't want to, you don't want to get too much exposure. You can talk to Robert and they've created a fun. So people that are scared still have an opportunity. They have their fingers in every piece of the pie in the real estate market that you've probably or possibly could come up with. And if they don't, they're going to go out and really create the network and the relationships to be able to bring that into the fold. So I thought, well we would do today is really have kind of a deep dive in sort of the structure, the blueprint, the layout, the architecture of what Robert has been able to do in the real estate game, especially in the market he happens to live in at the moment. And I say at the moment, which is Houston, Texas. So He's a partner in Mr Texas real estate, which we'll talk about. He and his partner in a minute. And he also runs and owns Dana point marketing. So with that being said, Mr Orofino, welcome to the show was a Robert Orfino: (03:00) pretty amazing introduction. I'd like to meet that guy. Right? So that was, thank you very much for all those kind words. And it is certainly, um, I always point out that Steve jobs speech we talks about, you really can't connect the dots looking forward, turn around and look back. You can see them. Well, you're one of the dots. Casey Eberhart: (03:21) Well I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But those dots are created by all of us being just connecting, right? So thank you for saying that. You're also one of the dots all and my network, but also many, many others. So Robert, take me back, uh, in the wayback machine to when you were in New Jersey and when I first met you, you were a contract investor slash flipper in, uh, and for those of you that don't know the term flipper, it's somebody that buys a piece of real estate, put some equity into it in terms of capital as well as um, um, not only capital but sweat equity contract or build it out, make it pretty, and then turn it back on the market and sell it off from there. Kind of walk me through how you got started as an entrepreneur back in the flipping days. Robert Orfino: (04:10) Sure. So back in New Jersey, I was a, I was a consultant. I was a green consultant, energy efficiency, that type of renewable energy. Um, you know, I was uh, back in for anyone understands it, uh, the uh, green building. But that was, that was I did right. So the US GBC am original member of that. Um, and I did a lot of consulting out there and I said, okay, I want to become an entrepreneur and the green industry's taking off in southern California, so I need to get the southern California. So I left my job there and I started my own consulting business and within the first six months I booked over $300,000 worth of consulting. It was great. And then September, 2008 hit and the whole world got turned upside down financial world. And I was out there alone with not a lot of, of safety net underneath me, just a couple of retirement accounts. Robert Orfino: (05:10) And I, uh, I found myself in a very large hole very, very quickly. By 2009, we had some bad deals and we had some bad partners and um, we had a lot of the projects just stopped. There was a bond on those projects, which means you're going to eventually get paid, but the eventually it could be 2012, 13, 14. Right? So here I am, entrepreneur trying to figure this stuff out, working both coasts and it, it wasn't working and we're going down a slope in a whole very, very fast. I remember 2009, everyone's still sort of in denial, right? And in 2010, now, everyone's like freaking out. In 2011 was the bottom of the market. So in 2011, I had no more consulting gig. So maybe one or two right here. But I had a buddy who was doing construction for Fannie Mae at the time. Robert Orfino: (06:06) There was tons of foreclosures. They're fixing them up. He says, I have too much work. Can you help me run it? So I came out to California full time, took over the San Fernando Valley, and I started with doing deals, doing rehabs for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, um, all those FHA stuff. Um, but by that time I was already 450, $2,000 in personal debt in the, I owed for $52,000. And next to every single one of those, those dollars was my signature. So you can imagine how panicked we were and how crazy everything was. And we got into real estate and started climbing out of the hole. So 2011 wasn't a bad year for us. But then 2012, Fannie Mae says, we're not rehabbing homes anymore. Now back out of business. But I have a construction business. I've gotten loans on that business. I've got employees. And um, I'll just tell you the, the low point for us is we're, I was down to $6,000 in my bank account and I have a $12,000 monthly nut, right? Robert Orfino: (07:10) And I don't have any jobs on the horizon. And I think to myself, I'm not the smartest guy. And from this moment on, I'm just going to do what smart people do. So I did a little mantra about wealth and all that stuff coming to me and I won't bore you with that. Um, but right after I did the mantra and I was driving down the four oh five, you know what I'm talking about, I got to go to, I got to get to Ventura Boulevard. That's where my po boxes, I go to the Po box now 10 minutes after the mantra about all good things of being positive and wealth coming to me. I opened up the Po box and there's a check for $6,000 exactly what I needed to get through the month of February. And from that point on, I do not want to figure it out or double think it or overthink it. Robert Orfino: (07:59) I just do the mantra. Right? And that turned me on and I got through the month of February, I got a kitchen job, I got a bathroom job. And then later on that year I got picked to work for the best way to call as the clearing house where the hedge funds and for those who don't know the hedge funds, Blackstone is a big one, call me homes. There was another one who worked for, they put billions of dollars of capital on the street buy houses and so we literally could have as much construction work as we can possibly handle. We are doing now 11 jobs, nine 11 jobs a month and we're running through that in 2012 was great. Um, 2013 slowed down, but we had made a name for ourselves. So we are the top two contractors in that clearing house and we kept working all the way through 2013, 2014 I started doing some more green work, slowly climbed out of that hole, but I had always now around real estate business, I'm trying to network with these folks and try to figure out how to get more work. Robert Orfino: (09:01) And I started reversing engineering how this whole business works. And in 2015 I said, hey, I'm going to go do this myself, except I go back to New Jersey to do it. And I go and do it in New Jersey for two years. We did fairly well. We flipped a bunch of houses out there. Um, I was all about just creating cash to pay back my debt. They create a little nest egg so that we felt secure. Right? So just like everyone else in 2013, 2014, 2015, everyone's thinking security, right? They want to have security. We're no different. Um, then I started networking and meeting a lot of people we carry on. And then in 2017 I met some friends from Houston. They introduced me to the marketplace. Um, we had a hurricane that came and I was working the opposite and the, all of the leftover deals in New Jersey from superstorm sandy. Robert Orfino: (09:58) So I understood how flooded houses and when a wind damage houses work. Uh, when the hurricane came here, I already had a base here I'd already done and started doing some education stuff. So we decided we were going to move to Houston and I moved there about 14 months ago. I've, I've been here in Houston for 14 months. Since then, we're able to acquire about $3 million worth of properties. I've doubled my net worth. I'm using all the things that I learned from quite frankly, failure on my, on my last 10 years of being an entrepreneur. And so we, we definitely believe there's no such thing as failure. It's only learning. Sometimes the lessons are very expensive. Sometimes you can shrug them off, right? But there's only learning in coming out of failure. And, uh, with that mindset, I was able to partner up with Jason Bible out here. Robert Orfino: (10:53) He had been very successful. Now we started this new venture and like you said, we have a fund. We have our, our own rehab crews. We have a real estate office, a team that we bought. We work with Keller Williams platinum. So we're able to work on all that stuff, uh, in this marketplace based on all the things I learned. And when I say learn, I'm mostly saying I failed in the past. And I can remember sitting in the lobby in, uh, Gora hills. There's a company out there that nobody knows about. They don't have a website, they don't advertise, but they do $1 billion in real estate transactions every year. They touch every single piece of it. And I sat there and I said, if I ever have the opportunity, meaning of the market opportunity, this is what I'll build. And now I'm here in Houston with the opportunity and we're building a very massive real estate machine. Yeah, it is unbelievable to watch. So I have several that I kind Casey Eberhart: (11:54) of want to push in and, and drill a little bit in on. So when you first moved from New Jersey out to Los Angeles, you said that in your first six months or first nine months, I think that you had $300,000 worth of consulting gigs on the books. How, how did that come about? How did, how did moving from New Jersey to Los Angeles, just because we, you know, I live in Los Angeles, we be, we are, uh, we are very, and I'm doing air quotes. For those of you that are listening green out here in California, what, what allowed you to get in the door? What allowed you to book that kind of book of business? Because I think a lot of people are, you know, get so stuck on, oh it, I'm afraid, I'm scared. I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do. I'm terrified of failing. So on and so forth. What allowed you to like break into that $300,000 market? Robert Orfino: (12:48) I want to say within the first 90 days of me having my own business, I picked up two mentors, both sales and marketing and Robert Orfino: (12:58) they said, Hey, forget this, forget this 30 page proposal and all that. There's all the, all there, all the folks that are collecting those proposals are making do is free work. Yeah. And they said, we've got to figure out a way to get to the decision maker. Once you get to the decision maker, have an honest conversation and they'll say yes or no. And that's, that's where I learned from, from two folks. And so we were able to get to some very big decision makers in the automotive world. Dealerships were one of our bigger clients. We are able to meet with again, really, really big companies like sonic automotive, Penske automotive, auto nation. We want to treacly the manufacturers like Mercedes Benz. Um Oh we worked directly for a Volvo and a lot of those, a lot of the green companies that wanted that for that we were able to go right to the manufacturer and talk to them Hyundai and get real honest conversations. What do you, and then ask them, what are you looking for? How can I help? So going out as an entrepreneur, I learned within the first 90 days to forget what I, what I want and ask how I can help and just give me that. Just how can I help? What are you looking for? Do you want a green, a bigger green footprint rate, I can help you with that. And that's how we land that we forgot the forget the whole sales process, finding the decision maker and help them. Casey Eberhart: (14:25) So it was really about building, I mean essentially, you know, uh, I think a lot of people, um, skip the part of building relationships and building out a network of people that you yeah. You know, sir, um, service that network for lack of a, for lack of a better word. You also said something that I think is really interesting and I think a lot of people kind of Miss Nuance, um, because they are being trained and taught by people that went about it the hard way. So you could write a bunch of proposals and you know, you are absolutely right. The people that are receiving those proposals. If you don't know a lot of proposal type, um, work that's given out, the reason those companies send out requests for proposals or RFPs is so that they can get a bunch of ideas from a bunch of different consultants all for free. Yeah. They may ultimately hire one or they may not hire them, but at the end of the day, they've essentially allowed the bigger game players too, give them free advice and may not ever even call them. And what I loved was that you bypassed all of that and really went in and tried to have conversations with people that were meaningful and figure out how to help them when I'm assuming not every single person you are able to help win. But in that event you then went off and figured out how to help them when once they were done. Speaker 3: (15:51) Yeah, no, we got, we got, um, a very, um, polite thank you's, but not very many followup calls. Yeah. Casey Eberhart: (15:59) Yeah. And so, so Robert, as you were, as you were kind of building out that network with the automotive dealers and, and putting those folks, how important in your success today, if we go all the way back in the wayback machine, how important was it or is it, do you think for entrepreneurs, even if they're just a marketing, not just say, but a marketing firm or a sales firm, or they've got a specific product or maybe somebody just a network marketer or whatever, how valuable is the skillset of building an actual network of people? Speaker 3: (16:37) It, it's everything. Well, you know, we all, we hear all the cliches about the network, right? There's a ton of business cliches and we love to post it on Instagram and Facebook, but you have to actually do it right? And you know, your network is your net worth. That is absolutely true. Um, and we just kept building out and out and out. We, we, we would, we would take meetings from seven o'clock in the morning to 11 o'clock at night and we'd be in crazy places. I'd be at five star hotels smoking a cigar on the beach front deck at 10 o'clock at night, and the next morning I'm at someone's, uh, auto body shop, right? And, but it's just constantly taking these meetings and networking and what can I do? Right? Um, what can I bring? How can I bring value to the folks in my network? Speaker 3: (17:29) How do I connect people in my network? Right? How do I make them, I mean, I've gotten, I've sat down in front of the general manager who complains that he doesn't have a good sales manager. I go to the, three days later, I'm sitting in front of a sales managers saying, I gotta get out of this, this place. I'm like, Hey, do you know this new tire? And over here, why don't you give them a call? Low and behold, I got a a sales guy, right? Well, let me just connect. And so when you start playing that person, that connector in the middle, it becomes extremely valuable. But here's the key, Casey and we, we just went over to this with our real estate team this week. We said, someone will come up to you and say, uh, Hey, do you have an inspector? Speaker 3: (18:11) And what a lot of these big real estate firms do like Keller-Williams and remax on, they say, here's the sheet, here's all our our vendors and just go ahead and call them. And I'm like, that is such a great way, because it took someone time to put all that together to build that relationship with those vendors. And you're just about to just share it and throw it out there. Like it's meaningless, like it's worth nothing. And so, you know, I have a personal rule and I've extended that now to the real estate teams really simply. I just had a guy sitting right here in my office before we got on here worth several million dollars. He's an investor of mine. He's given us money, he works with us, he wants to work with us more. Just told me he's going to invest in my next project. And he said, hey, I need a property manager over here. Can you just text me a number? I said, no, email me. And then I'll do the warm introduction Casey Eberhart: (19:07) because here's the way, hang on a second. That's gold. Go go by. W if you, if you are listening to this, I want you to listen to what Robert just said with a, a very cleaned out here because this is probably the best or biggest lesson we're going to have on this. Go back and let's say it again. So you've got a guy that's, these were sort of several million bucks. He's going to invest in your fund, he's going to do some projects with you. He needs a property manager. And instead of just giving him the sheet of, of, of people saying, hey, Robert Orfino: (19:37) or texting it to them, I said, no, email me and I'll do the warm introduction. And what, what, what does that means is I'm in, it's like I'm collecting interest on the currency. He wants an introduction to a property manager for his third ward and, and, and cashmere gardens. I mean he, nothing too. You are, you know, it's a section of town that's a little rough and he wants to find the right guy. And I said, I have the right guys. He's a good guy. And so I'll just give me his number as I know you mean the email and then I'll do the introduction. So I'll introduce both of them so they both understand the value that I'm doing, bringing them together. Here's the most important thing. If I just gave him the number, he may say, Hey, I got the number from Robert Orofino. Right. But that will be soon forgotten. Casey Eberhart: (20:29) Yup. Robert Orfino: (20:29) That email and that warm introduction, we'll sit there and when the property managers got to go back and find John's email address, he's going to look for my email. I don't remember that I handed that over. Now I'm happy to exchange the currency of my network, but I want to get a little interest Casey Eberhart: (20:48) when I do that transaction. They'll both remember me for it, hopefully. Absolutely. And so it's so funny. Um, obviously you and I work together. Um, and I know this, I know this, I'll call it a strategy, although I don't really even think as a strategy. I think it's just at this point for both of us, just kind of a way of being, but you know, here's the thing I used to, I used to, when I would get on stage and present my first slide on every slide deck was a slide that says, if you learn nothing else, it's this connectivity is today's new currency. For sure enough people who will argue as Bitcoin, some people argue that it's real estate. Some people are gold bullions and people will argue that's oil or dollars or whatever connectivity. Your network is. Today's new currency. And so let me take what Robert said and kind of expand it one more layer deep so that like a social bank account. Casey Eberhart: (21:38) When you meet somebody, you have some in your network, you have a social bank account. It's, it's like you've opened a joint checking account with someone. Every time you deposit something into that account, it gives you the ability to withdrawal later down the road. If you try to withdraw out of a checking account that there is no money in or there's nothing in, you're in the deficit, you're in the hole before you ever start. So let's go back to Robert's example of the property manager. Where I would, where I would do it is I would leverage it out even further. So, so I've got a guy in front of me, he says, I want a property manager in the lower ward. Is that what you called it? Lower Ward. So what I would do is I would say, okay, listen, Bob, or Sally sue or whatever the investor's name is, I'm going to make a few introductions of the top three property managers that I would recommend. Casey Eberhart: (22:29) So what I would do is I would call all three of them ahead of time and tell them, hey, you're going to get a call from Sally sue or Bobby investor. I'm going to send an email, but I want to make sure that you know that I vouch for them. They're great guys. I know a little bit about them. So when you call you when they call, you have a little bit of backstory. Then I would do a warm introduction just like Robert said to all three property manager firms knowing full well that the investor is going to pick one, but what the other two are going to get out of it is they know now that Robert's working on their behalf. Number one, it gives him more bank account, more bank account juice in that social bank account. The other thing does is it also psychologically limits the liability that Robert has if something goes wrong with the investor and the one person he introduced him to, so let's say Robert Introduces Bob the investor to a property manager a and something goes to hire a Toro horribly wrong. They get in a lawsuit they hate each other for what Robert is looking for is that extra interest that could also come back to bite him if something goes gets crazy or unravels or they're not great personalities or whatever. If Robert only gives him one investor or one property manager. Then Speaker 3: (23:46) the other thing that that does is if that property manager is not a good fit, then we leave the investor high and dry. He's going to go find somebody else to give him another referral for another property manager. So I always like to give two or three referrals on the same thing so that way all three people know I'm out working on their behalf. But also it gives them the ability to pick the one that works best for what they're looking for. And it's psychologically go, I can go back to the investor or Robert can go back to the investor and say, Hey, I know the property manager Adan work, but you've got B and c here. Or if something goes haywire, you go, hey boss, that's why I gave you three. Let's go back to the other two and see if those, one of them is the better fit, don't to work. But the leverage is massive. Speaker 3: (24:36) So Robert, I know that you used, um, I know that here in Los Angeles you really built out meetup as a platform and started to build your network using meetup. I talk a lot about meetup, I work very in depth with meetup groups and people that organize meetups. Talk to me a little bit about kind of how that worked for your business and how that helped you grow the network here in Los Angeles. So you know, probably listening understands what meetup is and if not, it's, it's a, it's a platform that allows you to organize an event and use that platform to broadcast out. It is a little labor intensive. Um, they don't have a really good email CRM set up internally for you to use. That's probably by design. Um, however, here's the trick. Like I've done it. I, we have many, many meetups across the country. Speaker 3: (25:33) We, a lot of them are webinar based, some are acts or are, are in-person based. And I've, I've seen a lot of the folks in my industry say, well, I'll just do what Robert's doing right? And then three months down there meet up is gone. Right? I pick a lot of those meetups up Soto. I absolutely. So do I. We, we, we pick up these old, these you said meet up all the time, revive them and put them into a webinar based meetup. So you really, really, really have to have thought on content, right? Like you can, you can get your friends to come out to the first one and the ones, your friends who didn't make the first one will probably come out to the second one. The third meetup is really are you getting any traction? Right? And the third meet up might be as small as three or four people, but don't freak out, right? Speaker 3: (26:26) Is the ones that get traction are the ones that stay. People will go to meet up and look at all the past meetings to say, oh look, there was that. This guy knows what he's doing. This guy has traction. You've got to build out the traction. You've got to stay with it for six months. Once you do that and you'll have three, four, 500 contacts, maybe a thousand after six months, um, that you can tap into, that you can work, that you can make introductions to, that you can rely on. And um, you know, in that world, you're gonna find some, as you call them, raving fans and your raving fans will support you in no matter what you do. And so that's a really, really good way to do it. Again, it becomes a little labor intensive. So we've hired someone just to sort of Julian house stuff for our meetups, but it is a very good platform that caused, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks a year. Speaker 3: (27:19) It's nothing much that allows you to start positioning yourself as an influencer or an expert. Right. And at this point, you know, the joke is that me and my partner, it's like we're not going to any room that we're not on stage for now that might sound egotistical and all that other stuff, but we understand at this point in 10 years of doing this that it is much better to the beyond stage than it is to be in the seat. Right? And so meetup allows you to position yourself to share your expertise to the marketplace. Um, and it's a, it's a very, without paying a lot of money to the coaches and all this other stuff, you can positioning yourself as an expert, share your expertise, share with say what you need to say, share too, because people want to know the things that, you know, I don't care if you're a florist or a real estate investor, people want to know. Speaker 3: (28:14) And so you can position yourself as an expert in the delivery, your expertise to that room versus trying to figure out how to get on everyone else's stage. And then when you figured out that a lot of these stages are revenue driven, you're never going to get on that stage. So if you could just deliver your expertise to the marketplace or meetup, we find it to be, and the very, very exciting platform for us to use. Yeah. So let's, let's unpack that a time a tiny bit. So if you're not aware of how meetup works, you guys as an organizer of a meetup, they will basically play matchmaker. So you have a whole bunch of people that are out in the, in your local community that are looking to be around likeminded individuals. And so they go to meetup and they search on criteria, real estate or network marketing or you know, I want to go hikers, florist, whatever. Speaker 3: (29:03) Yeah. I want to go hiking or wedding professionals or photographers or you know, motorcycle riders, soccer players. It's, it's basically a place for people to go find people of likeminded. Well, as an organizer of meetup, it allows you to say, Hey, my meetup is based on these 15 search terms or these 15 categories or criteria. So when you start a meetup, meetup is gonna send out an email to the millions and millions of people that have said, hey, notify me when a meetup starts with this particular topic. You know, I, I'm, I'm a, I'm somebody that wants to knit and quilt and I'm a beekeeper and love hiking, right? Casey Eberhart: (29:42) So it'll, it'll start to match make and it is essentially a free or almost free lead generation machine. Yeah. So what Robert is talking about is he can start a meetup group on real estate investing in San Fernando Valley. Meet up is going to put a bunch of people in there. Now he could email all those people individually. You could email them all as a group. He could set up a Webinar to let them all come to a webinar. He could, um, create an environment for him to bring in other speakers, other folks as well. So if I take this step, take a half step further. If you are afraid of public speaking and you don't want to be on stage, use it to leverage and bring in other folks that might have more knowledge in the particular area that you have. You could say to Robert, hey, um, come on in, come on in. Casey Eberhart: (30:31) Uh, I want to have you do a half hour to my real estate group and he will because he wants to be onstage right now. The reason you want us to be on stage is because there is a phrase in the world of business, um, that not a lot of people use anymore. It used to be used quite frequently back in probably the seventies and eighties, but it goes like this. He or she who has the marker, makes the money. And essentially what that means is most of the time, all things being held constant, the person doing the presentation almost always as the expert and that expert is going to be positioned and seen as the guru, if you will, more than somebody that's just sitting in a chair. Right? So if Robert is doing a presentation in front of 40 people or 30 people or 20 people or 400 people, he is at that point perceived as somebody who has the marker, who's making the money, the, the, the cache and the influence goes to him. Casey Eberhart: (31:28) Now, one other, one other thing that is, uh, a great meetup strategy is Robert said they don't go to events if they don't, um, if they're not in the front of the room, well, here's the thing. A lot of events, they're either going to have to pay to sponsor to beyond or they have to do a big revenue split, so on and so forth in order to get on those stages. Well, what if somebody, like you has a meetup group and you've got 50 people that are all about real estate and you're kind of the guy or the Gal in your local market, and then you look at Robert and you're like, Robert, wow, he'd be amazing to come have speed. Well, here's the thing. He also has rooms where there are people. And so you could do what's called in the business a stage swat. You know, Hey Robert, you come speak on my stage, I'll come speak on your stage. And then, um, it's a great way to leverage of those folks and give the content or give the audience the best possible experience. Yup. That's how it works. Well, you got to put your time in. It is a little labor intensive when you, you've really got to deliver expertise to the marketplace or people won't come. Casey Eberhart: (32:39) Absolutely. And here's the thing, the number of people that aren't consistent, aren't willing to put the work in are super lazy. Those people won't survive, but their meetup groups will survive. So those lazy folks that come in and start it and they do one and two people show up and they're like, ah, this is stupid. I'd rather just go sit in an audience somewhere and listen, um, and network better. Well, here's what happens, guys, like Robert and I, as soon as that organizer gets so lazy that they don't pay their bill or they stepped down as an organizer, meetups are going to actually send an email. I'll say, hey everybody, that's a part of this group. We're desperate to have somebody step up and step in as a leader. Robin, we'll own that group before the end of the day. He's just, if there's 200 people in that group, he's just generated 200 leads in his ideal absolute market with, with, with not being lazy with one click of a button. Speaker 3: (33:33) Yeah. And we think them all the time. We pick them up from, uh, it's, you'd be surprised how many, how Vegan influencers that people are. They let these things drop and you know, guys doing million dollar slips up and down the, the, uh, Pacific coast, that's one drop. I pick it up. I started doing my webinars six months later. He remembers he had a meetup emails me and says, Hey, what happened? I want to, I want to do some more. And it's like, hey man, you let this thing go now, normally if it's in the first 30 days case, I just give it back. Yep. Yeah. Here you go, man. That, that's fine. Sorry. Hey, how's it going to keep it going? This what I do. But if you want to do it, if it's just a real oversight, but I'm met people come back to me a year and a half late. Speaker 3: (34:19) I used to own this meetup. Where were you when you have an obligation? Well if people are, are, are taking the time they're picking you, they're subscribing or allowing you to enter an email box, which is a pain in the ass for everyone. You have an obligation to deliver. And if you're not delivering then you know, meetup season in my way. Yup. See who say, hey you, you didn't respond. This is too bad. But again, it usually in 30 days, okay, you can have it not a problem if it's six months or a year. People coming back to me cause they see the, I've grown the group from 265 to 1500 people. No, he can have that back then. I'm looking, I'm working at now. These people are getting value and expertise for me so we don't, uh, we don't hesitate to jump on some of these meetups when they become available. Casey Eberhart: (35:10) Well, you brought up a really valid point is that number one, um, the labor is really you guys, the Labor that Robert's talking about is, is not as heavy duty burden as most of you are spending on your business anyways. It's about finding a, a banquet room at a local restaurant or a small hotel meeting room or go talk to your Keller Williams franchise and see if you can use their conference room or you know, your insurance agency that has a training room. Heck, we have here in the valley, in the Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. We have a Ford dealership that has an amazing training room where they train all the reps that you can, that you can rent. And then being able to provide as much value as possible. And if you become the person that provides value to the network, the reality is then your influence in that network is going to be huge. Casey Eberhart: (35:59) Right. You know, and it can be a super old school. Like I was just showing my little nephew, I have a 17 year old nephew who, uh, just graduated from film school camp and direct and he wants to be a director and I showed him my own, my old networking book. I used to back in, in the wayback machine. I used to have my network in a three inch binder and that binder had sheets in front of it that had names and phone numbers on it. Then there was business card sheets where I'd put business cards and I'd write notes on the business cards. Then there were sheets that were profiles of people so that if I knew Robert's wife's name was Katherine and he was in my network, I'd write Catherine, what is she interested in? She has an amazing life insurance business where she can help you create a bank for yourself, um, as an investor using the, using the tool of life insurance. Casey Eberhart: (36:48) So I'd write Katherine Orofino Life Insurance, I'd get her phone number, and then I would literally my daily activity that would be to work that notebook. How can I connect people? How can I make connections? How can I introduce Catherine to somebody else's if it's somebody else's network. Right. Because the better off you get at staying in touch with your folks. Staying connected. Now I have been to use a greeting card and gifting platform to be able to do some of that in conjunction with a CRM system in conjunction with kind of old school. Um, your network is so unbelievably valuable in terms of expanding the business. Robert, what tools do you guys use down in Houston? Oh wait, before you answer that, let's, so let's move to Houston. So you basically said, hey, I've got an opportunity in Houston, I'm going to pack up the fam, we're going to move down to Houston and we're going to kind of make our mark in Houston. What percentage of the architecture of your marketing plan in Your Business Plan did you take from Los Angeles and basically start to recreate down in Houston? Robert Orfino: (37:58) Oh, Robert Orfino: (38:00) everything at work. So we immediately started doing meetups for sure. Um, and, and what I was, what I was able to become in, in La, the little niche that I built, cause I was the guy who told you all the dirt, right? All the inside baseball stuff. There's no secrets with me. I, I'll sit up there and tell you, hey, I'm going to sell you a product products, not 1000 bucks. I'm going to make $400 for everyone I sell and it should work for you. And if it work, call me up and I'll give you your money back. Right. I was able to sit, just go, just completely honest with everything we did open books, right? And that was a lot easier, uh, to, to deliver to a marketplace like, like Houston, I was, everyone else is doing the whole, you know, you can become a millionaire and lot, you'll be, have this great lifestyle and all that stuff. Robert Orfino: (38:59) I'd stand up there and say, that's nonsense. That's nonsense. That's nonsense. This is what works. But oh by the way, you've got to put in 35 hours a week. So if you don't have 35 hours a week, it's going to be very difficult for you to do this. And we started breaking things down. This is the real amount of time. This is the real cost, right? And you know, my joke is if, if you can really do real estate for no money down and bad credit, why does the guru won $1,000 on your credit card, right? Because they're making money off of that. Then it's, you're in real estate. Guess what? You need money, right? So you may have a dream of doing this for no money, but I'm, I'm the dream crusher when it comes to it. And then I can really explain why this can work this certain way, what you really need and how your resources need to come together. Robert Orfino: (39:56) And we, we've had people come to our rooms and say, I don't want to do this. I want to do. And I'll say, great, what's your, what's your phyto? How much money did you make a year? How much money you have saved? And they're all bad answers, right? And I turned to him, I'll say, Casey, I'm going to give you the best advice you're ever going to get, that you're probably not going to take. You need to get in your car and drive Uber for the next year and save every dime that you made from Uber so that you can then have a deposit to go buy a house, or you have enough money to start a marketing program. Or You have the money so that you can do a flip. But you're gonna have to put the time in. Most people, you know, come to us and in our world I'll say, hey, what are, how are your sales and marketing skills, right? Robert Orfino: (40:44) These are like the real conversations we have. I'm not very good at, I'm a bit of an introvert. Okay, well you're not going to do well. You've got to break down that wall. And I would highly suggest you just go spend $500 with a, was an organized multilevel marketing business direct sales program where they've got tons of marketing and sales coaching already up on the website, make a small little investment. And I don't care what it is, candles, pills, lotions, oils. I don't care what it is, bottle that program. Because when you follow that program that someone's put a lot of time and effort in, just follow that program so you can get better at marketing one yourself and your expertise and products and too you become a better person on the clothes. And so you can break out of that for $500 versus going down in real estate, man, I feel a charging 25 $50,000 for coaching program. Robert Orfino: (41:42) Stay out of that rabbit hole and for $500 just work on your skills. Know that I'm going to go sell post it notes for the next six months so that I can hone my skills and move into this other space. So we, we give the hard truth and some people respect it. Some people don't. We don't have big rooms of a thousand people like some of these other events because we tell people once they come in the door, hey save here Saturday, there's, there's no magic here. There's no pixie dust. This is all work and resources. And if that's not what you're looking for, I tell him straight up, Casey, you should probably leave right now. Go to the park. It's a beautiful Saturday. Enjoy the day. Casey Eberhart: (42:31) Yeah, you know, you, you brought something really, really valuable and it's obviously near and dear to my heart as well in that, you know, somebody that goes, if somebody comes to me and I'm in the same situation, I have a lot of people come to me and say, Hey, I want to.dot, dot. Finish the sentence. Right? And what it really comes down to is they want to have what somebody else has, but they don't want to do what that person did to get there. They want to leapfrog it or, or, or take the, shortcut it with somebody that understands the power of investing. And I always go back to rich Dad, poor dad, Rich Dad, poor dad, the cashflow quadrant. You know, you want to own businesses, you want to invest in businesses. You know, something like a network marketing business is one of the best investments in terms of return on capital that you could ever get. Casey Eberhart: (43:28) Not only the entry point is not millions or hundreds of thousands, it's usually a few hundred bucks. It's going to teach you skills like marketing, Internet, social media, shaking hands, getting nos, building up your thick skin and the money that you make can be astronomical and it can also be zero. But if you go into it looking at what is the skill I'm going to get out of this experience and not focused on the money piece, it's huge. You know, like I've, one of my best friends, uh, this was when I very, very first started my coaching career. He was one of my very first clients and he said, I, um, I want to start a consulting firm. And so we have this conversation. And He, I said, well, what skill do you think you need as a consulting firm? And he understood the market that he was consulting in, but he had zero skills in sales, right? Casey Eberhart: (44:23) So we didn't really know how to talk to people. He was a super nerd computer. He can write code, he can be total nerd, um, nerd and geek, but he can know interpersonal skills. He had no um, no experience and so I was like, look, let's go find out. This was in Seattle who is rated the best sales training program in the country and let's go to work for them. And it just so happened to be xerox as though he went to work for Xerox for a year and he basically cold called high rise building offices trying to sell them copy machines. The skillset that he generated out of that was massive. Yeah, right. Same with people that, that that you know will say, oh, I'm broke. I'm working in a whole foods for 13 bucks an hour. I have no money. I'm super in debt. Casey Eberhart: (45:16) What do I do case? What do I do? I'll say, go join a network marketing company that the products or services or something that you can kind of get behind and understand that you are there to learn the skillset of building a network, interpersonal communications, how to maybe play a little bit on social media and focus on the return on that dollar for dollar investment and Start Your Business Mind in how do I look at a balance sheet? How do I look at a profit and loss statement? How much money do I put in every month? How much money do I get out every month? The the network marketing space is a mimic of real life business. Robert, you and I have both owned brick and mortar businesses. You know, I've, I've owned a bunch of businesses. You first off, you don't go buy a business for under 500 bucks. Casey Eberhart: (46:05) Number one with employees that have already taken into account websites and insurance and customer service and shipping product development, you're going to do that all on your own. You're into millions of dollars or you can go tap into a company or in a firm that's done all of that. And your job is simply to bring customers and other distributors to the table and then run it like a business. So you've got your goals, you've got at the end of the month, you look and you go, okay, well this month I spent $400 on vitamins, but I was able to move $300 worth of vitamins. So I'm now in the whole 100 bucks. And then I got paid $400, I'm net 300 up and run it and get into the habit of running that business like a business. And so often I think most people will start a business and then they run it like a hobby and then they get irritated and agitated that it, it throws off hobby money and then all entrepreneurial is bad or network marketing is bad or real estate investing is bad. You know, Robert Orfino: (47:04) it happens all the time. And that is one of the key things is to run like a business. Um, you know, we, I'm a big believer, there's a book out there by a Michael Kollwitz a the pumpkin plan. It's a really good sort of, hey this is how I'm going to start and make sure I'm putting the things away. Make sure I understand what a balance sheet is. Difference between a balance sheet and a p and l, right. Cause there is a difference. Um, make sure you understand those things and run it like business for sure. Um, it's almost like you're playing in my head. I, I have a webinar coming up this Saturday called run it like a business because too many people get into the real estate game and don't understand, um, Robert Orfino: (47:43) all the benefits you can get from running like a business. I always say, hey, there's five ways to make money in real estate. It can be a wholesaler between, you can pedal paper contracts around and wholesale a contract, one person to another. You can flip a house. That's HDTV. Look at all the, how beautiful my kitchen is and I'll make some money there. It could be a landlord. Everyone knows where the landlord is. Um, you could be just an investor, a person who just what's funny out and owns the notes or a mortgage, right? Private mortgages, there's a fifth way. If you get to the fifth way, you're doing really well. That's called depreciation. And a lot of people will buy large apartment buildings or are expensive properties just for the depreciation. But we understand that there's a massive tax benefit for real estate and you have not prepared yourself to take advantage of that tax benefit. And you're right, it's a hobby. It's just a hobby. And so when you start running it like a business man, there are two types of tax codes in this country, one for individuals and one for businesses. I'll let you decide which one you think is better. Casey Eberhart: (48:55) Yeah, yeah, Robert Orfino: (48:56) and if you've read that it's the business passcode is better than why don't you own a business? Why aren't you running your hobby like a business? Casey Eberhart: (49:05) We've kind of touched on real estate and network marketing is kind of cool that way. You know, I always crack up. It's like if you're going to buy products or using network marketing company, you guys understand that that's a business you have. You get open up to just a little taste of what Robert's talking about in terms of tax deductability things like your haircut, your, your clothing, your office. Did you use your Internet, your cable TV, your magazine subscription has all become tax deductible for 50 bucks or whatever your distribution distribution thing is. You have been fantastic at attracting and doing deals with partners and I know that a lot of times people get scared from partners. They had a bad partner or their mom's brother's girlfriend's dog catcher was a bad partner. How, how do you help? Not a, do you, I'm assuming that you like doing deals with partners. What makes a good partner? How do you, what, what are some pitfalls? What are, what do you look out for when you, when you are looking to partner with someone? Robert Orfino: (50:04) Yeah, so this is that learning process, right? It was $125,000 lesson. Um, I had a bad partner and I use a lot of my own capital to push a deal forward. Only at the end of the realize that, um, what was being told to me wasn't reality. And so I had spent over $125,000 for some green energy projects and I lost as at all. And then we're going to do that again, obviously. Right? And so I much prefer a joint venture and illimited joint venture, meaning there is a clock ticking. So the most I'll stay married to any one partner at this point is about five years. Right. Even even my, my partner would've been everything. Everything we're doing. Jason is a partner or mine. I've already told him, Hey, I'm done. Like I got a five to seven year horizon. I'm done. You're 10 years younger than me. Robert Orfino: (51:04) You want to keep going. God bless you. Keep me on as a, as a consultant and I'll let me own a little bit and I'll sell my share to someone else. And you feel that you want to bring in, we can get, you can walk away clean on this stuff, but I'm done. I have a number in my head, I'm very close to that number and I'm done. Right. I'll go start a little cafe will be my next business. I like making breakfast. Um, so I, I would tell people that you are going to do jvs joint ventures, you're going to have a really defined the roles in which people are supposed to do. Um, and then have a time limit for the partnership. That's really important. And the big thing is what happens when it hits the fan. Yup. And the way we do a lot of it is we have an attorney journey that we both respect and we say he doesn't like you, the one who was anymore. Robert Orfino: (51:59) So let him in him, let him do the, uh, the wisdom of Solomon move. And I don't have to pay for arbitration mediation or lawsuits. Right. And if he, if he says, Robert, you're wrong. And Jason is right, I can accept it. Right. And so we have the worst case scenario decided upon while we're still friends. Yep. And that's, that's the thing with partnerships and, and you know, be careful, I'll just tell you, in a real estate world, a lot of people will call it a joint venture, but it's really not. It's a, it's another form of passive investing, which is kind of illegal. You got to make sure you're, you're really have a role responsibilities for folks and what they're going to do. And we have, um, you know, and making sure your partners are taken care of is really, really important. I'm making sure that all the goals are laid out moving forward. Robert Orfino: (52:53) It's very hard for partners really to move forward at the same pace you all to beginning and then something happens and this happens. So you've really got to define the roles and what the expectations are. I would be spending probably, I mean, I would literally probably go to a hotel or something and just shut my cell phone off and sit down with my potential partner and stay there for three days and work out every detail. Who's gonna, who's this role? What's this role? Who gets hired first? Who gets hired last? Who through all of it. Really, really planned that business. It's still, when there is a problem with an event, Evan, there always will be. Yeah. Well what does our agreements say? Oh Lo Casey, you're supposed to be doing this. Are we changing the agreement now? Dude, I'll, I can take that onto, I get a little bit more of the, of the ownership. I get a little bit more of the cash. How are we feeling about that? Uh, so having very good partnership agreement. I like to do a joint venture limited five years sort of maximum. Um, then that's the best way to do it. Casey Eberhart: (54:05) Yeah. I was actually listening to, I've become recently, I've become obsessed with a real estate podcast other than do a ever, ever, I try to listen to an episode or so every day, especially as we grow the, expand the business podcast here, and the guy that was being interviewed today was talking about joint ventures and partnerships and that there's essentially a real estate delta, which is three prongs to a triangle. And it is, somebody needs to come and show up with the hustle. Someone needs to come and show up with the knowledge and someone needs to come and show up with the money. And good partnership is when you can come with at least two of those three, those, those three things. But the key is that you don't want to find a partner that has the same two of three or the same one of three of those Delta points that you do Robert Orfino: (54:57) for sure. And most importantly, when we're starting out, be aware of the person who has none of the three be the partner, right. That's, that's a, that's a red flag right there. Casey Eberhart: (55:08) Awesome. So Robert, I want to touch on one last area before, before we let you run. Um, and that is the idea of the importance and maybe you don't think it's important, but maybe you do a of how important is it for you since you guys, since you and Jason are kind of the pinnacle influencers in your ecosystem in Houston. I know you have a, a radio show you do every day, you guys are doing tons of Facebook stuff, tons of Facebook lives. You kind of become the B guys that have been able to cherry pick some of the deals that come through just by your influence. I know that in a lot of situations you're the smartest guys in the room. So I want to flip this and ask how important is it to you to have coaches or advisors or mastermind people where you have somebody that's pushing you guys that's making you stretch, that's making you think rather than, you know, I'll say it differently rather than you always being the smartest one in the room. You're involved in scenarios and situations where you're not necessarily the smartest one in the room, Robert Orfino: (56:14) right? So I will tell you that I wake up every single day and one of my quick little mantras is, is you know nothing Speaker 3: (56:25) and we're going to learn something today. So I take life in general as I'm the dumbest guy in the room and everyone here can teach me something. And it's because when I get caught up with being the smartest guy, I have failed. I have absolutely failed. Now My, my partner, Jason is very smart. He is clearly, Eh, it's clearly 10 IQ points or more higher than me. I could see it in the conversation. I become a very good reader of prison. I can see it in the conversation. I have to ask questions about the formulas in the words. I'm like, Hey, can you go over that? And a little bit different way. And he has the patience to work with me on that. Um, he, he's a genius when it comes to this stuff, right? Um, no I don't. He can't do what I do on a lot of places and we wouldn't be successful if we tried to do this alone. Speaker 3: (57:24) Um, but for sure he's a genius when it comes to business and real estate. It looks at things much, much differently. Comes up with a lot of great ideas. Just being around him is very humbling. Uh, but it's also a very exciting, every day when his outside the box thinking hits my, I've been punched in the face many, many times. Practical thinking we can come up with something that no one else is doing. And so I get coached every day by my partner. We pay for coaching. Um, we are in, we've, we, and I'll tell you, um, I've been asked to coach a lot. Uh, I don't have a for you. Say yes, let's have a chat. Yeah, let's, let me put it this way. I don't cook, but I don't say no. Someone who says, Hey, I could really use a couple hours of your time and I'll say, great, I'm at $7,000 an hour. Speaker 3: (58:23) And they're like, whoa. I'm like, yeah, okay. So you can just join my membership where I kind of give all this stuff away anyway. Or you can join my mastermind, which is where I really like to work. What I have found over this last 10 12 years does that that mastermind format is where I excel because I can walk into a room again with that mindset. I'm a dummy and I'm going to soak up so much knowledge today. Right now I enjoy the one on one hour with my coaches. It's absolutely critical. I need it, but for me, I would rather present a mastermind to the public for real estate and to do coaching because here's the reality of Real Estate Coaching Siren. Good job. I'll get back to, but on the reality of, I know I'm all over it, and the reality of Real Estate Coaching is 90% of everything you need to be a landlord, a house flipper, wholesaler [inaudible] is on the Internet the last 10% really the loading order, how you do things and when, which order is what you will pay people to learn. Speaker 3: (59:33) And in that case it could be a coach, but I would much prefer a mastermind, um, masterminds and maybe have lots of Q and a so you can get your questions answered, throw it up on a Facebook page, like your groups have a question to ask them for the group. And a lot of people give you that wisdom of the group. It's really important for me. Um, I will, I will take on a coach when I have a very specific problem, right? How do I get more contact through Facebook platform, through Instagram, through youtube. And I'll sit down with you every month and an hour and we'll go over it. Are you doing this? Are you doing that? Hey, I just heard someone do a speech on this. You guys go look it up and see if that applies to you. So we'll, we, we like that coaching but in a mastermind event and I know you also run a mastermind, um, those are phenomenal and those masterminds you want to walk into and absolutely take on the understanding that I am the dumbest guy in the world. Speaker 3: (01:00:36) Casey, you mentioned a name to me, Roland. Yep. And I was like, boy, that name sounds familiar. And I went back and I was like sure enough, I'm in his, I was in his mastermind, I paid him, he and Ken Colder did a mastermind together in that room. I was in that room with him when he had just bought the survival opening survival life.com and he was giving my all these knowledge bombs and I was like, for sure I'm a dummy in that room. Well man was I getting my money's worth right now? And being in that room with that mastermind, having access to those people, being able to call an email and text them is critical. I don't think you can do it on your own. I think it's, I think one, it's just foolish. It's, it's, it's, it's foolish to think you're going to reinvent the wheel. Casey Eberhart: (01:01:30) I think there's a lot of people that have the personality type. Well if I'm going to do it, I've got to do it myself. Cause it's the only way it's going to get get really done. And in these mastermind groups, what really occurs is that you're paying or you're investing in access of the people, not only in the group, but access to the person who are running it in terms of who their network is. I mean, you know, Roland now, um, is one of the owners of a mastermind room called the war room. That is phenomenal. I mean, Roland, Roland Frasier is, is one of the most astute business people on the planet. And uh, uh, I can't wait for him to know that this has come up. He'll get it, he'll get it to kick it off and just let me get his podcast a huge shout out. It's called the business lunch. You, you, if you're not subscribed to it, go subscribe to Roland Fraser's business lunch. It is phenomenally Leery, sits down with guys that most people would never have access to and just kind of has a conversation over lunch. It's fantastic. So, um, Robert, before we wrap this up, Robert Orfino: (01:02:34) okay, Casey Eberhart: (01:02:34) last kind of words. I want to give you kind of the floor for a minute or so and just kind of give some advice to the listeners on the show and kind of how they can help expand the business. Robert Orfino: (01:02:45) Uh, I will tell you that obviously we talk a lot about networking and that's a really big thing for us here. Um, by becoming, dropping ourselves into a lot of existing networks and saying, hey, we're here. We're going to tell the truth. We're going to give you sometimes the ugly truth, sometimes good truth, um, just okay. You know, the Internet, the Internet and Facebook and that whole world, that whole social media world is, you know, they're filled with people that look like they're leaving a good life and looks like their business is killing it. But I always say, Hey man, give me 20 minutes with any real estate investor and I'll figure it out. You know, how close they are to jumping off a cliff, right? Because there's a reality there. Um, and I think what happens is people look at this and say, Oh my God, am I, why am I failing? Robert Orfino: (01:03:38) Right? And it's, here's, here's the reality of it. They've all failed. Some of them just fell a lot faster than you. And so they race ahead of you. Um, we think that being in this business is a fantastic way to create wealth. And if you're not in this business for ego boost, you don't need to post. You're, you're betting in Vegas full of cash or pose in front of a lambo or a private jet and you can just go about your business and doing it. So in the Internet world, right, there are people that are creating wealth and growing their business and there are people that are positioning themselves in the marketing world. You don't need to do both. Casey Eberhart: (01:04:24) Yup. Robert Orfino: (01:04:25) You can just put your head down and say, I'm gonna retire in five years. And those are the folks we love to have around us. Um, I'll also say that a big thing for us was, uh, multiple streams of income. I know you hear it all the time, Casey, if you could just focus on one thing, you'd be a billionaire, right? Yeah. I to thy own self be true, understand your limitations. And what motivates you to get out of bed every day and follow through on that. And I know that I cannot focus on one thing at a time. Casey Eberhart: (01:05:03) Me Either. Robert Orfino: (01:05:04) I can focus on being a really good manager and then the executive above a number of different organizations. And I love multiple business trains because some months we do rail over here, some months we do well over there. It's all pushing it forward. And then the key is when you, if you do that, he is hire people that are smarter than you, right? Like I have a Ph phd mom who doesn't want to work 40 60 hours a week. She just wants to put in a 25 30 put, she has a phd in math, in math and she does my books and she's a lot smarter than me and I make her explain things to me all the time and I don't take an ego hit from that. I enjoy having really smart people around me when I have a really smart people around me who are teaching me every day. Robert Orfino: (01:05:56) I know that I'm growing and I feel good about my life and, and I'm almost to the point where, uh, I'm going to be out of the little bit of debt I have left and I don't really have to worry about too many things other than just making other people around me successful. So if you, if you take it failures, just a learning lesson, not be afraid to not have an ego, it would smart people around you. Take the advice of smart people. Um, find the, find you figured out your problem, finding an expert on it and pay them to fix your problem for you will be a lot faster than trying to do it yourself. Um, multiple streams of income and every day try and learn something and teach something every day. Try to learn something and teach something. And by doing that, you put yourself in a position to be needed and to be respected. Casey Eberhart: (01:06:54) Awesome. Well, Robert, this has been a fantastic chat. I so appreciate you taking time out of the day to have a chat. Um, you guys can connect up with Robert on Facebook. He's all over Facebook. Dana point marketing. If you are anywhere in the Houston area, you can connect with his partner and he Jason Bible, uh, at Mr Texas real estate. They've got Facebook groups and meetup groups and, and really tap into the knowledge. Robert, I want to thank you once again for jumping on, for those of you that want to subscribe and hang out with us, uh, on many, many more episodes. Please number one, subscribe to the show at expand the business or wherever you get your podcast. Number two, if you want some free goodies, go to expand the business.com. Get your free goodies over there. And third, we'd love a review on the show. If you like the show, we do some short form and some long form interviews and just super excited to be back. So Robert, thank you very much. Super excited to come down to Houston and hang out and see what you guys have going on. Appreciate you for the rest of you. Have an amazing day. Now go get somebody else. An absolutely awesome day. Ciao for now guys.