Freedom Through Passive Income
Freedom Through Passive Income
Ep 362 - 2022 - The Tough Times
We figured it was equally important to talk about the tough times, because we're not trying to show a highlight reel that everything's perfect all the time. And we go through a lot of tough times, that are very much behind the scenes many times. But in this episode, we're just going to share the quick ones that we could think of off the top of our head, and we may share some that come to us while we're talking through them.
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One of the most difficult situations for Dani was bootstrapping FCI, our sixth company, and then losing her executive assistant at the end of 2021. She spent a long time training him and, when he left, I was drowning. It was impossible for her to manage all of the companies and accomplish the annual goals that we had created. But, another member of our team, Jody, began to take on some of the lost responsibilities and we realized she was a star and something great came out of something awful! We started this podcast to share with you after attending a Masterminds session in December 2021 and we are so glad you, our extended family, have joined us on our journey. We enjoyed sharing our experiences with you, including starting a new company in 2022. The final tough thing we want to share about our 2022 was how hard it was to let go of the company after hiring a C.E.O. After building our companies, it was difficult to watch someone else guide them through a challenging year and we are grateful for the dedication of Aaron and all our team members. After so many years of driving our companies, we found that we wanted to be backseat drivers in the car that Aaron was driving and this was a growing experience for us to understand that to grow, we sometimes have to slow down and merge into oncoming traffic instead of hitting the throttle. But we are thankful for the opportunity to learn this lesson of patience and hope to carry it into 2023.
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Hey everybody! Flip and Dani here, founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group Family of Companies, and welcome to another episode of our pop? episode? Hahaha! Hey, we're really like, 360 something days in and you're stumbling, so it's okay. Yeah, we're just gonna keep going. Yes. Welcome to another episode of our podcast, which is called Freedom Through Passive Income. Yeah, Freedom Through Passive Income. Welcome to another episode and it's funny, fitting enough, this one's called "2022 - The Tough Times". So fumbled our way through the opening even. That's funny. I love how we're always keeping it real though, right? So we gotta just keep our trend for this 365 days to continue keeping it real, no editing.
Yeah, because we did yesterday, the good times, I figured it was equally important to talk about the tough times, because certainly, we're not trying to show a highlight reel that everything's perfect all the time. And that you know, hoorah, we don't go through tough times, because we certainly do. And we go through a lot of tough times, that are very much behind the scenes many times. And sometimes I do share them via the podcast or on Facebook. But this episode, we're just going to, we kind of wrote down all of the quick ones that we could think of off the top of our head, and we may share some that come to us while we're talking through them.
So the very first one that I wrote down was bootstrapping FCI, the sixth company, and then losing my executive assistant at the end of 2021. So the very beginning of 2022. Like literally everything that I do when I'm planning, I know what I'm capable of, and I push myself, right? And so I had trained my executive assistant for, it was longer than six months. I can't even remember how long he had been with us. Yeah, he had taken over a lot of things for me that I did not have to deal with anymore. And when we lost him at the end of 2021, going into 2022, I was like, Oh, crap, you know, I need like I need, I can't do all of this, I can't do all the stuff that I trained him to do that isn't off my plate. And then I set up all these things that I wanted to do, and put them in motion, right? Because that's how I get things done, is I put them in motion to hold me accountable and force me into making it happen.
And so I was a wreck at the beginning of 2022. And, you know, transparently just saying I am drowning, I just could not do it all. But the other part of this tough time is, we had hired a CEO, and the CEO was focusing very much on our budget. And when we lost people, he was trying to find ways not to have to replace them, so that we can conserve our budget. And so it was the same thing. He was just like, let's just see if we can do it without him. And I was like, okay, this is gonna suck like, you don't know me, you do not know how hard I push to get where I want to go with the capacity I have. And so I was pushing me already. And now I have to take all the responsibilities back of this, you know, this guy, I was just like, it's not going to work, but I am going to respect him enough to try. And so I tried and I was drowning, I was drowning. And finally I was like, I got to, I have to, I have to. And we were in a meeting and you literally said, look, Dani, I'm not going to veto this. That's, you know, not the type of CEO, you guys are the owners or the founders. So I'm not going to veto this but you know, you know, we're just trying to, you know, keep our budget down. And I just thought you know, out of respect for him in this role is like I can't just, I can't go against him. I can't just go make, I don't want him to think that the founders are just going to do whatever they want to do.
You know, even though they hired me as a CEO and they're supposed to be trusting me with my decisions, I thought I just have to abide by his decision, I have to out of respect for, we did put him in charge for a reason, we trust him for a reason. He doesn't don't know me, he does not know how this is killing me. But it was just buck up and move on Dani. Keep swimming. Yeah, yeah. So that's what I did and that is 2022 for me sucked because of that one thing, I was drowning literally and I was not able to keep my eyes on the other five companies as much as I wanted to, because I was now handling, you know, what I wanted to accomplish and then taking off, taking everything back that the executive assistant had had been doing. Fortunately, we have Jody and Jody also took on some of the workload of that. So there was a little bit of balance there. But that was the first thing I put on this list of tough times in 2022 that was first on my list. So, Flip, I'll let you share something. What you feel like was 2022 tough time.
Well, so let's just pile on, you know, because that's what happens in tough times. And to prove the fact you know, the good times make the tough times tough. And the tough times make the good times good. Right? Yeah. And, so yeah, we were just now going from, you know, 2021 into 2022. And, you know, and then you just lost your assistant, and, you know, but we're going into 2022, with a smile on our face, because somebody decided that because there's a CEO running the company, or companies, you know, we've got all the time in the world now to do a podcast every day. And I always say that from the beginning, I've been you know, oh, man. You know, at first I was like, Yeah, this sounds awesome. I won't admit that to anyone, so we can delete them as soon as we're done with it.
But you know it so, you know, I was all for it. And we were actually in Vegas at a mastermind in the beginning of December 2021. And we're recording episodes, you know, that I'm like, this is exciting. We didn't use one of those episodes, either. We re-did it. We didn't, we started all over. Yeah, so we re-recorded like, I think it was like 10 or 12 episodes, which of course we ditched and restarted all over. And so we wanted to try to get like 20 to 30 days ahead of time. That was our goal from the beginning of these daily podcasts. And I think we went in 2022 recording the day before, there was actually. And so through all that experience, also on top of the she just lost her assistant, and she's drowning. And so now we have all this other stuff, because we've got nothing to do. And let's build this, you know, let's build a company from scratch. You know, as you put it so profoundly in the notes here, where profitability is a three to four year process. And for those of you that are listening, I just did the wide eyed and surprised look. Yeah, so that's yeah, I mean, you know, if 2022, you know, comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb or comes in like a lamb and it goes out like a lion. I think only 2022 came in like the lion's lion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is absolutely the truth. And that really kind of ties back into the CEO too, right? Because we built all of our companies where the profitable companies would fund the new company, right? That's how we've built historically. And so that's hard for the CEO as well. And that's why I'm sure Aaron had this position, right? You know, FCI is borrowing money from the Family of Companies just to exist at all. So in his mind, and the way he would run a company is no way he's not going to, like, hurt the profitability of five other companies to build another one. He's not Dani, who will absolutely do that. Because I see the long term vision, right, I see how it pays off for everybody in the end. And you know, that in itself is a tough time to be, to have the fortitude to work hard every day for something that you see five to 10 years in the future. And you see it plain as day. And other people are like, you're sucking the life out of you know, this other company, or you're using their money, you're using some of their resources. And I'm like, but you guys are so going to be happy. I'm telling you, in the next 3, 5, 10 years, you guys are gonna love this because it's going to set us up all of us, the entire team, the entire companies, investors. So that's tough for me to see the vision and have somebody else who has a different vision and just doing it, you know, it is tough to wake up every single day for something that you know, that you're going to continue working on for five years. But that's what life's about. That's what success is about. That's what achievement is about. And so, you know, I don't mind it, but it still falls in the tough category.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you know, it's work because, like you said, you have the vision. I have the vision. Yup. But I sell that vision to someone else who's working on right now. Yeah. And so it's like you know, and like you said, but if you guys could just see what's gonna happen, you know, we're not working on, we're not working on selling a deal and making money in three to four weeks on that deal, you know, or having a product in hand and selling it today to make a big profit today. Yeah, you know, we're talking about let's build this company and five years from now, we're gonna be awesome. Yeah, you know? Yeah. So it's not working on instant gratification. It's working on the future. Yeah. And so that made it tough. Yeah.
Yeah, very tough. And then the other couple of things. I know, we're running out of time. But I think this is a really good and powerful episode, for me saying no to new opportunities, right? My mind is always business oriented. And what are we going to do? And what's the next step? Right? I am 10 years down the road at all times. And so I've got these ideas. And I'm like, you got to focus, you're drowning already with FCI. You can't, you literally can't take on any more. You can't even think about it. It's just impossible. So that was very tough for me as a person because of the type of person I am, and how I am just the person that just thinks of the idea. I don't just think of the idea. I do the idea, right? I think of it and I figured out how to do it, right? Some people, they think of ideas, and they do nothing, they have no action steps to go. I do both. So that was tough. Because I really, the vertical integration of our companies has made us so powerful in what we can do. And that continued growth, I know is just going to help us, you know, just grow more and more. And so that was also part of the CEO clash. As much as I love Aaron, I never say a bad thing about Aaron, because he's just so freaking awesome. And he taught us so very much, though, it was still tough to work with somebody who's now like, we let go of the wheel, right? Somebody else was in charge. And we had to respect the trust that we put in that person. And to not be able to do whatever I wanted and to go, hey, I'm hiring this assistant, because I know me and I need this assistant, or I'm going to die.
But just that in general, and the way he looks at business, and the way he runs things is different from us. And that always in relationships is so powerful, right? Because if we hired somebody just like us, well, then not much is going to change, you have to hire somebody that's different, that brings different skills, and mindsets and thinking and everything. So that was still tough. Like what I will say, one of the toughest things about hiring a CEO is, you know, letting go over the reins and not being in control and letting a different type of brain take over and do their thing. And I'm so grateful that we did because look at where the company is now in terms of his leadership and what he brought to the table. And even though this is going to be the first time that we announce it, but he is actually going back to his tech business, because when we hired Aaron, it was for a temporary time. And it was to bring in, you know, somebody that would lead the company, take it to a new level. And he let us know, hey, this is probably not a forever thing for me. I love tech. But I would love, I love you guys, I love this team, I would love to help and, you know, make my mark on this company as you continue to grow.
So we're taking back over here in 2023, which is very, very exciting. But it's all circling around, you know, the tough times of learning all of that through 2022 and letting somebody else be in charge and being so grateful for the changes. It's just been man, it's been a crazy ride Flip. Yeah, I envisioned it. As you know, we were driving the car. And also we decided that we didn't want to drive the car anymore. And so we brought Aaron in, and Aaron got behind the wheel. We sat in the backseat and Aaron started driving and we're like, hey, we don't go this way. Right? Why is he? Why is he driving in? Oh, I would have never gone this way. You know, and he's up there driving going. Just trust me guys. Just trust me. And now it's to the point where he's like, Alright, I'm done driving your turn now. And now we're back in the driver's seat going. I really didn't mind where he went. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I like where he took us. Yeah, absolutely.
And I know, we're like 13 minutes. But the last thing that I put on here is, you know how your strengths are also your weaknesses. I feel like sometimes the good things are also what contributes to tough times. And we talked about the move being you know, a really great thing we've always wanted to move to Florida, we finally got to do it. So that was on yesterday's episode. We talked about how grateful that we are that I've been able to come to Arizona for a month to take care of my mom. If we weren't in the position that we are in and if we hadn't achieved so much in life, I couldn't have done this, right? So those are all good things. It also attributes to tough times because for people like us who are overachievers, when we do something, we go after it, right? Big time when we do big things like that it slows us down and it can be disappointing and like sometimes you're just like, ughh, and you know man I thought it would be farther but you know these good things in life happen and that is life, right? And it's a growing experience for me to know and understand and be grateful for putting it on the good list, even though it feels tough when you have to slow down because of those good things. So that was the last thing that I put on the tough list for me. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. That was tough. But so grateful.
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