IAM1186- Founders Specialize in Return on Impact

00:30 - Intro

Outlisting to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:45 - Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have 2 special guests on the show today. I have Susie Sevier and Michael Barnard of Adventurous Real Estate Investors. Susie and Michael, great to have you on the show.

00:55 - Michael Barnhart

Thanks so much, Gresh. It's a pleasure being on your show. We're excited about this.

00:59 - Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely excited as well too. Before I jumped into the interview, I wanted to read a little bit more about Susie and Michael so you can hear about all the awesome things that they're doing. And Susie and Michael are the founders of Adventurous Real Estate Investors. They specialize in return on impact. Through real estate investing, they create immeasurable impacts in their family, with their families, in their communities, and with the families and residents they serve as well. Suzy and Michael are super excited to have you on again. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

01:26 - Suzy Sevier

We are.

01:27 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here is a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:36 - Suzy Sevier

Absolutely. So actually our whole entire CEO story started because of COVID-19 and the lockdown. So just for the listeners, like Michael and I actually do live in Cambridge, England. Yes, we are American, but our business is in the US. And like for the first lockdown over here, it was a little over a hundred days. And Michael and I were like, okay, well, what are we gonna do if we can only leave the house once a day to work out or go to the grocery store or pharmacy? And in that, like we started a mini book club.

One of those books was A Multiple Streams of Income by Robert Allen. And a few chapters in, it talks about real estate investing. And it was like, wow, the power that they have, this like real estate investing does is phenomenal. And, you know, after we had that like epiphany of, oh, you know, we need to do this. And like, we found out that the world of real estate had gone virtual, and we had all the same opportunities as everyone else.

And, like, because we are a military family, like it just will completely change our lives with moves with after Michael can retire with like my job career and identity. So that was why we started it all just because we wanted to take control of our lives and like have as much control as we could, especially like being a military family.

02:51 - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I love, love, love that because I think one of the things I read about, you know, less-than-ideal economic times is we sometimes forget about the opportunities that come about from those times. And I love how you took that time where you were kind of, for lack of a better term, I guess, locked down as many of us were in so many shapes or fashions, and you had this new opportunity that came about as a result of it.

03:13 - Michael Barnhart

Yeah, absolutely. We just saw, you know, COVID and everything like that, and all the lockdowns were horrible and just a bad experience for a lot of people and a terrible thing that happened to a pandemic. But through those situations like you were just mentioning, a lot of times you'll find silver linings and it's capitalizing on those silver linings and making sure that you find the positive to everything. And then we came out, you know, now we own 3 new businesses, and, you know, over the year and a half. So yeah, that's great.

03:41 - Gresham Harkless

Nice. Yeah. I love that. And yeah, as you said, it's, it's definitely a difficult and challenging time for so many ways, but we start to see that there are, you know, a lot of times opportunities because there's so much disruption. Everything has changed, as you mentioned, you know, real estate as a whole. A lot of times we can kind of be where the puck is, so to speak, and have a lot of opportunities that come about from there. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know you touched a little bit on how you're working with your clients, and how you serve them. Could you tell us a little bit more about how that goes and what that looks like?

04:09 - Michael Barnhart

Yeah, so what we do, the main business that Susie is now, actually, so she left her job and now is doing this full time. And so she is the CEO, effectively of our company for adventurous real estate investors for that specific company, what we do is offer investment opportunities to limited partners.

So partners who want to passively invest in real estate syndications, syndications, basically where a group of people pull their money together to purchase something very large and expensive that one of them couldn't do on their own, right? But everybody gets to take advantage of that.

So we offer those services to our investors. Opportunities. Opportunities, yes. To our clients and our investors. Awesome, absolutely. Sorry, I was just gonna say we typically focus on, you know, multifamily, large multifamily apartment complexes is what we go after.

05:00 - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, And like you mentioned as well too, it's not something that is, I guess, you can only do it if you're in a certain geographical area. Sounds like that opportunity is amongst many areas because you're able to kind of syndicate from, sounds like maybe all across the world.

05:12 - Michael Barnhart

Yeah, so a lot of people will get nervous about, if we were to get into real estate investing, so a lot of people do get nervous about like, hey, if I'm not within driving distance of my property or whatever, there's no reason for me to invest there. But it all comes down to mindset, number one. And number 2 is making sure that you have all the systems and processes in place and set up so that you can be successful from anywhere in the world. We're successful from over 4, 000 miles away from our properties, so anybody can do it effectively from anywhere in the world or from anywhere in the universe, if you will, End up on Mars or whatever.

05:49 - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. We have a few billionaires that have been, taking that trip as well too. So they too can do it as too, even if they're on an entirely different planet. So I love that. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

06:07 - Suzy Sevier

Absolutely, that's a great question. So our secret sauce is the return on impact. And what that really is, is that to break it down. So there are almost 8 billion people on this earth. And if even a fraction of us like a quarter of us, created a mindset where we wanted to do like 1% better, like with ourselves or somebody else every single day, like what that ripple effect would be. And so we have brought that into our business and it goes into our business plan.

It's with our limited partners like our property management company, with our vendors, you know, which then spreads to the residents and the families that we serve because like we want to create an environment where they are no longer just surviving, but they're thriving because then that ripple effect goes into their family and into their community.

That's really what sets us apart is that when you start to talk about people and the impacts that you're making inside your business, everything else just shoots off because talking about people as opposed to money, which trust me, we still do that, but like the conversation changes and the passion comes out within people. And that's truly the most important thing to us.

07:15 - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely love that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have but what's something that makes you both more effective and efficient?

07:26 - Suzy Sevier

Yeah, so what makes us more effective and efficient? I'll start it. But so Michael and I will toggle. Like, So what that is, it's like a time tracker app. And what it is, you put in the tasks that you're doing, and then you start it, and then you end it when it's done. Then you put in the new tasks, and you see what you're doing throughout the day. And you do it day after day after day. And after like a week or 2, you look at it and you're like, hey, what tasks am I doing over and over and over?

We truly think that the biggest hack for us was when we found those tasks that we were doing over and over and over were the tasks that we needed to hire out. And when you hire out those tasks, you can then focus on your, you know, like your queen bee role, the role that really makes you that successful CEO. And like, you just have so much more brain space and you have so much more time in order to propel yourself.

That's really the biggest time hack just figuring out what tasks you're duplicating and hiring them out. And I know it might seem daunting at first like, oh, well, I don't have like the money to be able to do that. But trust me, like when you are giving yourself 150% instead of just 60, everything just comes in faster. It'll come in faster and faster and faster. And it'll take you half the amount of time that you were gonna get there before just because of that.

08:50 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice and might be something you would tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine.

09:02 - Michael Barnhart

So this kind of plays into our little hack that we just gave like the toggling and stuff like that. This is just advice that we learned very early on, right? And that is what we manage. So as we're real estate investors, we're also asset managers as well. And so that's part of our business. And so we manage or lead property management companies on the ground, right? And again, we're strategic vision. We provide that for a property management company.

But in order to do that, you have to have effective and clear communication, right? So the way we do that, and this is our piece of advice here, is we use a project management software tool. There's Asana, there's money.com, Trello, and things like that out there, check them all out. They're all great, but we use Asana ourselves. And through that, it gets rid of email completely, which is just gonna be freeing in so many different ways. And then you can create specific tasks in there. So if we're doing a remodel in the leasing office, we can have that as a task item in there.

And then our property management company can upload all the documents like the bids and invoices and things like that that go to that specific task and then we can approve them as well through the whole system. So it has like an app for your phone and everything like that so we can effectively communicate with our property management company 4, 000 miles away on an hour-by-hour basis, definitely on a daily basis if necessary. So that is the nugget there is make sure that you're organized enough to run and set up a project management software for your company, whatever you're doing.

As a bonus, the hack kind of plays into this too, because once you start toggling, you find out what all those, you know, those daily tasks that you're doing, put those into, create a new like project in Asana and create tasks and write all those tasks out. Now, once you've written all those tasks out, go in and make Loom videos. So Loom is like an online recording software. You can record your desktop and the things that you're doing. So go in there, create a video of you doing that specific task, and then upload that link to that task.

Now you can then use that to hire that out to somebody else. Also if something bad was to happen to you say your CEO or some bad COO or some other person would have to take over your role. Now they have everything that you've done in a task and videos of you doing all those key roles. And so if something bad happens to you, God forsake, but if something does, at least somebody could take up, pick up the torch, and keep walking the business forward or running forward. 

11:31 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So now I wanna ask you my absolute favorite question which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping that different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Susie and Michael, what does being a CEO mean to you?

11:43 - Suzy Sevier

So being a CEO, I guess means to me slash us is like being able to live out your passions and have the time and freedom to be able to do that because that's really when you are your best self and the world deserves and you deserve to be the best version of yourself because so many of us become CEOs because of the passions that we want to have moved forward. So like if you have something deep, deep down, just go and get that passion and do it. So it's just really the passion and the time freedom. I just can't say it enough. Passion, passion, passion.

12:15 - Michael Barnhart

Yeah. And just like Susie mentioned, it's freedom, right? And so you're no longer if you're working at W2 or whatever for somebody else, like you are working to help them accomplish their goals, right? As a CEO, you are working to accomplish your own goals, right? And the goals that you set for the business, which is really awesome. So

12:33 - Gresham Harkless

yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love it. You know, everything that you all are able to do. We talked about the word impact, and I think the freedom to even realize that you're able to do that. I think so many times we don't realize that that's something that you can kind of take the bull by the reins, so to speak, and to do to have that freedom and that passion in both of them, in a lot of parts, to have the freedom to be able to follow your passions, which I think is extremely powerful and something that people don't realize that they're able to do. So I love that that builds a foundation and everything that you all are doing. And of course, I love that definition as well.

13:00 - Suzy Sevier

Yeah, thanks. Because I mean, like we strongly believe that everyone was born to make an impact. You know, it just takes a little, some people a little more time than others to figure out what that is.

13:09 - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. But I'm a big believer in that a lot of times when we lean into our passion, lean into our story, lean into our gifts and all of those things. Not only does that make an impact, you know, for us and those people around us, but when people are looking, you know, across the street or across the world even, and they hear and they see and they feel that passion that you have, it's something that kind of emanates and creates those ripples literally everywhere where people realize that they can do it themselves.

13:33 - Suzy Sevier

Absolutely.

13:34 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Susie and Michael truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was just pass you to the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you want to let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you both are working on.

13:49 - Michael Barnhart

Yeah, I'd love to share one more nugget with your listeners Grush and so that is when we started a morning routine that has been so crucial for our success as well because Suzy and I are working together, even though we have different swim lanes in the business. So effectively, I'm the CEO. She's the CEO, right? And so every morning what we do is wake up early, and we journal together. And then we write down like our you know, goals for the day and things like that and make sure they're aligning.

But then we share them with each other and by sharing that with each other, we make sure that we're aligning ourselves with the weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals that we have set to make sure that we're on the right vector, the right trajectory in order to hit those goals. And so I think that's very critical for us. It's like basically like a team huddle every single morning, which is pretty awesome. But then we also add meditation to that and exercise, which has been huge for us as well.

So if you're not doing a morning routine out there, just start doing something little, maybe 5, 10 minutes every morning, some kind of meditation or some kind of journaling, just write down the goals, things you wanna get done for the day. And I promise you, you're gonna start knocking, crushing goals like you have no idea. So yeah. But also you asked how to get, how best to get a hold of us Gresham.

That is if you just go to adventurous rei.com forward slash info, that's a landing page there where you can read more about return on impact. This is, what you mentioned You can find our podcast, The Adventures of a Real Estate Investor. You can find our YouTube channel, The Adventures of a Real Estate Investor, which talks about asset management and also getting started in multifamily and other videos like that. And you can also connect with Susie and me on LinkedIn, all on that one page there. And if you connect with us on LinkedIn, make sure that you say, hey, I heard you on Gresham's podcast, love to connect and we will make sure we will connect with you.

15:39 - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I truly appreciate that. We'll definitely have the links and information in the show notes as well too, to make it even easier. I love that you gave us a little nugget. I love nuggets. So I appreciate you for giving us, you know, that additional nugget as well to a lot of times, in order to, I think Tony Robbins said in order to win the day, you have to win the morning.

And I think if you have set yourself up for success in terms of winning the morning and making sure that as you said so well, you're in alignment with everything that you're doing. It again makes that ripple effect even more powerful. So I love that you both are able to do that and remind us of how important that is. Appreciate you both and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:12 - Outro

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