[00:03:11] Tony J. Robinson: campground space. Same. And we launched Robinson Capital, which is a new company I started earlier this year with the goal of commercial real estate transaction. So yeah, man, just really nose to the ground right now trying to build out this whole ecosystem around the hospitality space.

[00:03:25] Ashley Kehr: Since we last spoke, Tony and I authored a book together Real Estate Partnership. 

[00:03:30] Tony J. Robinson: Oh yeah. And I wrote a book. 

[00:03:32] Ashley Kehr: So here it is. Or here, anyone watching. But yeah, so that took up a lot of time for the last year, I would guess. I think that’s when we started writing it. It’s been a really fun journey to get to do that with Tony, not only co-host the Real Estate Rookie podcast, but also to write this book together.

[00:03:48] Ashley Kehr: I’ve been hosting BiggerPockets boot camps where we’ve been educating people on getting started in real estate investing, how to get your first or next deal within 90 days. So I usually do about two to three of those boot camps a year. Then as far as investing, I have about 30 long-term rentals, a couple short-term rentals in my portfolio.

[00:04:08] Ashley Kehr: I recently renovated a couple cabins and have been renting those out as short-term rentals, and it’s been a lot of fun. It’s also been a money pit, but I’m glad to have my strong foundation of long-term rentals to fund a passion project for me and I have a burr that’s currently under contract and then a house flip I’m actually going to do will be my first house flip locally.

[00:04:31] Ashley Kehr: I partnered with another investor in Seattle and did a house flip, but this will be the first I’m doing on my own. 

[00:04:38] Robert Leonard: We’re going to spend probably the majority of the conversation today talking about partnerships in real estate, specifically your guys’ book, and all the stuff you guys talk about in the book.

[00:04:46] Robert Leonard: But before we do, it’s kind of timely. I want to ask you both. I’ll ask Ashley as well, but it’s probably going to be mainly Tony, just given how many short-term rentals he has, but. I stayed in a, I want to know how your short-term rentals are doing for both of you, and I’m curious, like I see things on Twitter that like, oh, the Airbnb bubble’s finally popping, or, I see that all over social, so I’m like kind of curious what your guys’ experience has been lately.

[00:05:07] Robert Leonard: I know, if I remember correctly, Tony, you were in Joshua Tree and some fairly vacation destination. I’m curious how that’s all going. And then I also want to talk about I generally don’t like Airbnbs personally. That’s why I don’t invest in any, I don’t mind the business model. The business model’s fine.

[00:05:23] Robert Leonard: I just don’t personally like to stay in them all that much. So that’s why I don’t invest in them. I generally just prefer hotels. But this past week I was in LA and I stayed in an Airbnb and it was a fine experience, but I actually felt really bad for the Airbnb owner because it was in an apartment building and the apartment building lost power.

[00:05:41] Robert Leonard: And so he had to refund everybody that was staying there. He had to refund me and like I had to find a new place and it wasn’t his fault, right? A transformer exploded, so he was like kind of screwed. So that was not a great experience for him. So I’m just kinda curious to hear how things are going for you.

[00:05:54] Robert Leonard: You guys on the short-term rental front. 

[00:05:57] Ashley Kehr: Tony, before you go into your spiel, I know you have way more information on this. I just want to say that’s really interesting that you were refunded because I’ve actually had in my Airbnbs the power go out, whether it was a storm or whatever, and nobody has ever asked for a refund or nor have we ever given one.

[00:06:17] Robert Leonard: Wow. Yeah, I didn’t even ask. He just, so I was out of the Airbnb at the time. It was during the day and he called me and he’s like, Hey, I don’t know if you’re at the Airbnb, but there’s no power and I don’t want you to be, I mean, we’re, I was in Southern California. It’s hot, I was on the ninth floor, I think out of 10.

[00:06:34] Robert Leonard: It is, I mean, it’s got some elevations. It’s could be pretty hot. And so he’s like, yeah, I just don’t want the unit to be super hot for you. So you can either like, we’ll either just refund you the two nights or just go stay at a hotel that’s similar priced to whatever your nightly rate is that you paid for this Airbnb and we’ll cover the hotel.

[00:06:51] Robert Leonard: So that’s what he did. He covered the hotel for two nights and that was it. And it was super nice of him. I really appreciated it. And I don’t know really why he did that, but he did, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And it was totally out of his control. He felt super bad, but it was, yeah, it was out of his control. A transformer exploded and there was nothing he could do.

[00:07:06] Robert Leonard: They were working on it. But yeah, it did suck though, being on the ninth floor and there was no elevator, so I had to like climb so many flights of stairs. So that wasn’t ideal. 

[00:07:14] Tony J. Robinson: But yeah. So I can give my 2 cents here, just like any other type of asset class. The markets for Airbnbs are local, and there are definitely some markets that have seen revenue pullbacks in the last couple of years, but there are definitely still markets across the country that are seeing revenues increase year over year.

[00:07:38] Tony J. Robinson: We put out a YouTube video, my wife and I. So if you guys search up the Real Estate Robinsons on YouTube there’s actually a back-to-back series of videos that we’re doing, or three videos, really. The first video in the series that we did was debunking the kind of bust idea itself. There was this tweet that went viral a few weeks ago by this influencer named Nick Gurley.

[00:07:57] Tony J. Robinson: He was saying that like there’s going to be a mass wave of forced selling from all Airbnb investors because every market across the country is seeing revenues collapse. And he said something like how the Smoky Mountains is down 50% and some of these other bigger markets are down 50%. First Air, D n A came out and said, Hey, this guy’s data does not align with ours.

[00:08:15] Tony J. Robinson: And Air d a is one of the largest data aggregators in the short-term rental space that exists. Airbnb came out and said, this guy’s data does not align with ours. Now Airbnb, they’re probably a little bit biased, right? You would expect them to say that. But we, in that video, we kind of debunk some of that data with our own research and some of our own properties performance.

[00:08:30] Tony J. Robinson: And we shared that on our video. Our best property in the Smoky Mountains is up year over year. And some of them are down, but probably not for those reasons. We had like some maintenance issues. We had shut it down for a little while, but I’d say the Smoky Mountains as a market is probably still going pretty strong.

[00:08:44] Tony J. Robinson: Joshua Tree as a market, that entire market is seeing revenue pullback. It’s probably down about 17% as a market year over year. We have some properties in that market. They’re up year over year. We have some properties in that market that are down year over year. So there’s a mix. There’s a mixed bag there, right?

[00:08:57] Tony J. Robinson: Depends on the product. Depends on the owner. But there are multiple markets across the country that are still seeing revenue increases. And the video that we put out on our YouTube channel last week was highlighting five markets that we found within like, I don’t know, two hours worth of research that saw really strong revenue increases.

[00:09:15] Tony J. Robinson: So I think the point, Robert, is that pre pandemic. And even like early pan, like post pandemic, like 2021, you could probably buy a property anywhere, any major market across the country, slap any kind of property up on Airbnb and you’d make a killing because there wasn’t as much supply. Guests were limited in where they had to choose.

[00:09:35] Tony J. Robinson: Prices were elevated Today, if you want to be a successful host in the Airbnb space, you have to be disciplined in the market that you’re choosing. You have to be disciplined in your analysis of those properties and you have to be a better host in general about how you do those things. So I think as long as you check those three boxes, market selection, deal analysis, property management, you can still be successful and profitable.

[00:09:54] Tony J. Robinson: As an Airbnb host. 

[00:09:56] Robert Leonard: Have you had any issues with changes to the Airbnb platform? I believe they made some big changes to like the algorithm and what properties they’re featuring and things like that. I think they’re showing like really unique properties now and like more your experiential stuff, like how has that impacted you?

[00:10:11] Tony J. Robinson: There was a lot of I think fear when Airbnb rolled out their summer release last year that kind of focused on unique stays and they kind of changed how the search results were being displayed. They pulled back some of those things so that there’s a little bit of that element of what was there before.

[00:10:22] Tony J. Robinson: We’re in a bit of a unique situation because like for in Joshua Street, for example, most of our portfolio out there is considered a unique stay because they’re tiny homes. So we naturally got a little bit more love from the algorithm just because of the structure of our buildings. In the Smoky Mountains, the majority of the properties out there are all cabins, right?

[00:10:40] Tony J. Robinson: So there’s not a whole heck of a lot of uniqueness out there. So I wouldn’t say we’ve been incredibly impacted by the change. Again I think it’s probably more so those properties that are in the mediocre middle, where it’s like, Hey you’re not a unique stay. You’re not a luxury stay.

[00:10:52] Tony J. Robinson: You’re not even really like a top of the line like economy stay, you’re like grandma’s green carpets and furnishings from Facebook marketplace and like that kind of listing is probably the one that’s being impacted the most. 

[00:11:03] Robert Leonard: Awesome. Yeah, thanks for the update. I was just curious, and again, like I said, it was top of mind for me given that I just stayed in an Airbnb for the first time in a while.

[00:11:10] Robert Leonard: But let’s talk about real estate partnerships. It’s a topic that’s actually pretty near and dear to my heart. Almost all of my real estate deals have been with partners. I’ve had really good luck so far, especially compared to some of the horror stories that I’ve heard and I’m sure that we’ll talk about today.

[00:11:24] Robert Leonard: So let’s start by talking about when and why someone might want to use a real estate, a partnership in real estate. 

[00:11:31] Ashley Kehr: So I think that the first thing to look at is why do you need a partner? What are you missing? Is it you don’t have time, you don’t have money, you don’t have experience, you don’t have the knowledge.

[00:11:43] Ashley Kehr: Or maybe you’re just afraid to get started and you want to do it with somebody else first. Figuring out if you even need a partner. And then from there, you want to kind of analyze what your strengths and your weaknesses are. The last thing you want to do is go into a partnership and partner with someone who wants to do the exact same thing as you.

[00:12:02] Ashley Kehr: So nobody wants to do the bookkeeping. Nobody wants to analyze the deal. Everyone just wants to be the one that designs the houses or whatever that may be. That’s not going to be a great partnership because you’re not going to be able to share the roles and responsibilities. So you really want to find someone who will compliment your weaknesses.

[00:12:22] Ashley Kehr: What are you not good at? So I think just like starting at analyzing yourself and looking at what you are good at, and then looking at, okay, I’m really good at this, but do I even want to do that too? That’s also an important piece of it. And then from there, figuring out, okay, here’s what I need in somebody, and I also need them to have capital because I have no capital.

[00:12:45] Tony J. Robinson: So Ash talked about the, like the missing piece component. So yeah, I, I think everything Ashley said is in incredibly valid and important. Thank you, Tony. I think the only thing I’d add to that is, And obviously our, the entire purpose of our book is encouraging people to use partnerships in the smart way, but there’s also a, I think, a slice of the population that might not need a partnership.

[00:13:05] Tony J. Robinson: So if you’re able to kind of check all those boxes that you need on your own to get that first deal, that you have your eyes set on them, maybe, honestly, you don’t need to partner someone. If you’ve got the time, you’ve got the ability, you’ve got the desire, you’ve got the capital, you’ve got the resource, you’ve got the experience.

[00:13:18] Tony J. Robinson: Maybe you don’t need a partnership. I think it’s important to kind of see, okay, what pieces of the puzzle am I missing? And then fill it in that way. But if you have all the pieces it, it might be beneficial in that first go around just to kind of do it yourself. 

[00:13:30] Robert Leonard: What are the different types of partnerships that you guys outline in your book?

[00:13:34] Tony J. Robinson: Yeah. So there, there’s two key types of partnerships that we talk about. You have a debt-based partnership and then there’s an equity-based partnership. And both kind of have their pros and their cons with a debt-based partnership. And I’ll, let’s say that Ashley and Tony agree to go into a deal together using a debt-based partnership.

[00:13:53] Tony J. Robinson: And let’s say that I want to flip a house, so I do all the work. I find this off market property. I come up with a scope of work and a budget for the rehab, but then I say, I don’t have $100,000 to fund this rehab. So I go to Ashley, who’s got a hundred cases in the bank. I say, Ash, I have this property that I found it’s going to cost me $100,000 to complete this rehab.

[00:14:13] Tony J. Robinson: Can you loan me $100,000? Ashley says, yes, Tony, I’ll give you that $100,000. I need a 12% annualized return on my money, right? So if I’m going to give you a hundred thousand dollars, you gotta pay me back. What is that? A thousand bucks a month. And the benefit to Ashley in that scenario is that she’s getting a fixed return.

[00:14:33] Tony J. Robinson: So even if I botch this flip, and maybe I don’t make as much profit as I was thinking I was going to make, Ashley’s still going to get her a thousand dollars per month because that’s what we agreed to in that debt partnership. The inverse of that is true as well, where she doesn’t necessarily get to participate in the upside.

[00:14:48] Tony J. Robinson: So say I was only expecting to make $30,000 in profit, but then I just like crush it and I make $300,000 in profit. Ashley still only gets that 12% interest for someone that’s looking into a debt partnership. There are pros and cons on both sides, so if you want limited risk and limited upside as a person lending the money, then a debt partnership could be good.

[00:15:09] Tony J. Robinson: If you want to keep more of the upside for yourself as the person that’s borrowing the money, then a debt partnership could be good, but also there’s that risk of you having to guarantee that person’s money back. I’ll quickly touch on the equity side, Rob, and then I’ll shut up for a second here.

[00:15:22] Tony J. Robinson: But the equity partnership is what I think most folks are thinking of when they think of a partnership in an equity partnership. Say it’s the same exact flip, Ashley and I say, Hey Ashley, let’s go into this deal together. Both of our names are going to be on title for this property. We’re going to share ownership in this property.

[00:15:40] Tony J. Robinson: We’re going to share equally in the downside, and we’re going to share equally in the upside. So we say, Hey Ashley, I found the deal and I’m going to work on disposition. So I’ll be the person, like say I’m a realtor and I’m going to get it listed and work with the buyer’s agents and do all this stuff.

[00:15:52] Tony J. Robinson: But Ashley’s going to manage the rehab. So we come in, we divvy up the responsibilities, I take the initial acquisition and the disposition. Ashley takes the middle chunk of the property management in the middle, and we say, Hey, we’re just going to split everything down the middle. So I’m going to put up 50% of the cash.

[00:16:05] Tony J. Robinson: Ashley puts up 50% of the cash when we go to sell. I get 50% of the pro the profits, Ashley gets 50%. So those are kind of the two basic layouts of potential partnerships versus either debt or equity. 

[00:16:17] Ashley Kehr: For my first partnership, I actually did a hybrid model of that. I had a partner that put in the capital, the full purchase price of the property, and we actually set it as a mortgage for him.

[00:16:29] Ashley Kehr: So he had a lien on the property and he was getting principal and interest payments every single month for the money he had put into the property. Plus he got 50% equity of the property, so he was getting 50% of the cash flow and then also getting, when we sold the house, eventually he got 50% of, the profit in that property.

[00:16:47] Ashley Kehr: That was like very generous for me to do to him. I did all the property management, I oversaw the little rehab. We had to do everything like that. I found the deal. But it was a way for me to get started. I really wanted to show this guy that I knew what I was doing and I wanted to also make him feel secure in giving.

[00:17:05] Ashley Kehr: He gave me his life savings. Well, yet he drained his bank account and gave me that money and I, so I wanted to like, here’s how you’re going to get paid back, plus you’re going to be making this extra money on the interest. And it was five and a half percent. And then also you’re going to make some of the cashflow and then when we sell it, you’ll get part of the profit of what has appreciated and the equity, we’ve built it from the mortgage pay down too.

[00:17:28] Ashley Kehr: So there’s definitely different ways, and that’s the big struggles. Everybody wants to know. How do I structure my partnership? And there’s so many variables that come into it. So with this book, we tried to ask, have you look at the right questions to ask yourself and ask your partner as to, okay, what do we both want out of this?

[00:17:49] Ashley Kehr: And try to help you figure out how to structure it to what fits your guys’ needs. 

[00:17:55] Robert Leonard: Did he get his whole life savings back? 

[00:17:58] Ashley Kehr: Yeah, we actually did sell the house a couple years ago and we’ve done a couple other deals together. But yeah, he actually, after he did his life savings, he actually went and put a home equity loan on his house to buy the next one, so he was into it.

[00:18:13] Robert Leonard: Wow. That’s a lot of faith in you, but Yeah, that’s a good point. Ashley and Tony outlined the two separate sides really well. And then, like you said, you can kind of combine the two of course, and there’s the nearly infinite number of options that you can, you could do in between. I think a lot of people listening are probably have in the back of their mind horror stories about partnerships and just, that’s kinda like the underlying theme I think that a lot of people are worried about.

[00:18:36] Robert Leonard: And we’re going to talk about a lot more about partnerships, how to have successful ones and stuff. But I want to kind of just get the horror stories out of the way and hear what you guys have heard on your podcast, maybe things you’ve experienced yourself. Let’s talk about some of the horror stories first, then we’ll dive back into the nitty gritty of partnerships.

[00:18:50] Ashley Kehr: Well, I actually just heard yesterday of a Ponzi scheme. Somebody I know gave their money to somebody to partner with them, and it ended up just being a big, huge Ponzi scheme where they were taking, I think it ended up being like $230 million they had taken from people and just taking more money to pay back, not even pay back the other people, but to pay them their monthly payments or quarterly payments, however, their deal was structured, but

[00:19:17] Ashley Kehr: I think anytime you are giving money to someone, that seems to be more detrimental to someone as a partner that you’re losing out, but also you have to think of all the other ways you can lose out, like putting in so much of your time towards a deal and then it falling apart because of your partner or something like that.

[00:19:38] Ashley Kehr: It’s not just the monetary value that you can lose out in a partnership. There’s, it can damage your reputation. And that Ponzi scheme I heard about yesterday, it was somebody, the person I knew had tried to get other friends to invest in that. And does that hurt that guy, anytime can he go out and recommend anyone else investing with anyone ever again after that?

[00:20:02] Ashley Kehr: So I think there are so many elements that when you connect yourself with someone in a partnership, that it’s more than just losing money on a deal, that there’s a lot of different ways that it can actually affect you. 

[00:20:16] Tony J. Robinson: I just want to, I want to ask that because I think that so many people would benefit from entering into a real estate partnership, but their mind goes to that question first, Robert, of like, well, man, there’s so many ways this can go wrong, but there, there are ways to mitigate the risk of entering into a partnership and as do our best, Ash and I do our best to kind of illustrate those ways.

[00:20:36] Tony J. Robinson: But like, for example, you can, and this is what we encourage everyone to do, is to try and date people before you necessarily get into bed with them. The ZI scheme might be a little bit tougher to avoid that, right? But in a general real estate partnership, you want to date someone a little bit, I think before you really get into bed with them.

[00:20:53] Tony J. Robinson: So you can date people in two ways. There’s two easy ways to date someone. It can either be with the amount of capital or the duration of the partnership. So if we go back to the example I was given earlier about Ash and I partnering on a flip together, flips are great ways to kind of date someone because typically you’re in and out in several months.

[00:21:11] Tony J. Robinson: So if Ash and I partner on a flip together and say it’s a, whatever, a five or six month project, we’re only tied to each other for that one deal, for the, those six months. So if we get to the end of that project and we say like, ah, man, Ash, like Tony’s kind of a, an idiot. I don’t know if I really like working with Tony.

[00:21:28] Tony J. Robinson: She can just walk away from me because that transaction is in it. There’s nothing that’s still tying this together. The second way that you can, someone first I say is by the amount of capital’s invested. Let’s say that Ashley and I buy a long-term rental together. Let’s say, it’s in a very inexpensive market.

[00:21:43] Tony J. Robinson: And say we’re buying the house for like 40,000 bucks or something like that. Like that’s our cash investment is 40,000 bucks to $20,000 each. Maybe even something small than that. Say it’s like a $5,000 investment for each of us, right? I can sleep sound at night knowing that I could lose $5,000 and walk away from that partnership without it ruining me financially.

[00:22:03] Tony J. Robinson: So if you are going into partnership with someone, maybe don’t put up your life savings, right? Or pull a HELOC on your house. Again, Ash is probably in a different situation because she knew that person personally. But if this is someone that you don’t know on that level, trying to invest a dollar amount, that wouldn’t wreck you financially if that deal went sideways.

[00:22:19] Robert Leonard: Ashley, you mentioned that it’s more about asking the right questions going into a partnership than it is like following a specific exact structure. So I want to touch on both of those things. Like, let’s say someone, I think this is very common, especially for people listening. I. People who are new in real estate, might have someone that’s bringing all the cash to a deal and they’re going to do the majority of the work or all the work while the other person’s pretty passive.

[00:22:41] Robert Leonard: I know there’s not like a set rule here, but like how do you generally value and balance what each person’s bringing in that case, like money versus time and effort, and then what are the types of questions that they should be asking to really figure that out? 

[00:22:53] Ashley Kehr: Yeah. I think the best way, if somebody is putting in what we call it, sweat equity.

[00:22:58] Ashley Kehr: So they’re going to be maybe doing the bookkeeping, they’re going to be the property manager, they’re going to be the project manager on the rehab. Any of those things is okay. How much would it cost for us to go and hire somebody to do that job? So then what you can actually do is for anyone that’s kind of putting in work into the partnership, It’s not just putting in capital.

[00:23:20] Ashley Kehr: It’s to have them write out. It’s like, okay, Ashley, you’re getting paid a hundred dollars per month to do the bookkeeping. So that way if Ashley ever stops doing the bookkeeping, there’s a hundred dollars to go and actually pay a bookkeeper to do it, and it’s not affecting that equity value. So we’re still 50 50 and, but I’m paid a hundred dollars for the bookkeeping, and then our cash flows after, you know that expense has been paid out with all the other expenses.

[00:23:46] Ashley Kehr: So what’s ever elapsed? So that way it’s not, okay, we’re going into this partnership 50 50. I’m going to do the property management, I’m going to do the bookkeeping, and then you’re going to do maintenance. And then I decide one day, you know what? I don’t want to do anything anymore. I’m not going to do the property management.

[00:24:00] Ashley Kehr: We’re going to hire a third party property management company, but you still have to do the maintenance. And then that’s where it becomes all that’s not fair. You don’t have to do anything and you’re getting 50% of the cash flow. So I think right there is putting dollar amounts and paying each other for your roles in the business.

[00:24:17] Ashley Kehr: And also I. As much as you want to like DIY and how, effective it can be doing things all by yourself or all on your own when you begin and not outsource everything, like it’s a great way to get started. You learn all the real roles and you’re not spending a ton of your cash flow hiring other people.

[00:24:36] Ashley Kehr: But as you grow and scale, You really do get burnt out on having to actually open the mail. All the rent checks that come in, all the, the bills that come in writing the checks, like you don’t want to do that stuff anymore. And so I think really planning in your operating agreement, your partnership agreement of how to have a plan to outsource some of these roles and responsibilities can really help you figure out your equity position.

[00:25:05] Robert Leonard: How can someone overcome imposter syndrome? We see this in so many different areas, but I know people experience this when getting to real estate partnerships, especially if somebody’s giving you their whole life savings like they did for you. Ashley, like I’m sure you probably had some imposter syndrome.

[00:25:19] Robert Leonard: Tony, you might’ve experienced this as well. So like how do you guys get over that? 

[00:25:23] Tony J. Robinson: I still fight imposter syndrome today because it’s like as you become more successful, the circle of people that you hang out with becomes more successful, right? And the thing that you’re measuring yourself against for that imposter syndrome starts to change as well.

[00:25:38] Tony J. Robinson: Like when I first started investing in real estate, I didn’t really have any other friends that were investing in real estate. So when I got that first deal, I immediately became like the smartest person in the room when it came to real estate investing. And I know Ashley always talks about living in Buffalo, like she doesn’t have a big network of folks in that area that were also investing in real estate.

[00:25:56] Tony J. Robinson: So I’m sure when she started doing it, she was that person in, in. But you know, now as you start to, to grow and develop and you meet other people and we have friends that are buying, Hey, I’ve got $800 million in assets under management, or I’ve got this thing happening, or this thing happening, you start to question like, man, am I really doing this the right way?

[00:26:12] Tony J. Robinson: It’s so funny, this is such a timely question for me personally because I just reread the book the Gap in the Gain by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan, and it’s an incredible book for anyone that’s entrepreneurial. One of the ask. To whatever situation you currently find yourself in, where you’re feeling like you’re less than, or you’re feeling like that imposter syndrome, rewind your life’s tape 10 years and compare Tony 10 years ago to Tony today, and you’ll be so impressed by the amount of ground that you covered.

[00:26:46] Tony J. Robinson: If you’re always comparing yourself to your past self as opposed to some future ideal or someone else’s definition of success, there will always be progress there because you’re measuring backwards. So I think people get into that imposter syndrome when they start trying to measure externally versus measuring inside themselves.

[00:27:05] Ashley Kehr: I find myself in rooms either I walk away feeling usually two different ways. So if it’s a room of real estate investors or at a meetup or something to do with real estate, a conference, whatever it may be, I’ll walk away and just be like, I actually do know quite a bit about real estate. Or I walk away like, I just learned so much about real estate.

[00:27:30] Ashley Kehr: I do prefer the latter, where I am literally the least experienced person in the room and I don’t even know how to actually converse in conversation except, oh yeah, Uhhuh, like I literally have no value to add because everything is such a high level that they’re talking about. But those are the rooms you want to be in to like kind of soak up all that knowledge and.

[00:27:52] Ashley Kehr: Learn everything, but I think also getting yourself in rooms where you are helping other people. And even if you don’t have a single deal yet, if you listen to one real estate podcast, you have some knowledge of real estate and what it is. Attending local meetups, even going on the BiggerPockets forums and engaging with people, even if it is just like congratulating them on, their house hack they just posted about, or something like that.

[00:28:19] Ashley Kehr: You don’t have to go in and answer questions, but just start engaging with people and you’ll really start to build these connections, which will also help you feel more confident that you are a real estate investor, that you’re involved in this community. Think of churches, cults, people love a sense of community like that is what everybody wants with threats on what most people, and they want some kind of sense of community.

[00:28:43] Ashley Kehr: So once you throw yourself into that real estate investing community online or in person, it will just help like feed that nurture that you need. 

[00:28:53] Robert Leonard: To Tony’s point, I think it’s something like almost never goes away and you just, for me it’s not so much the skill of like learning how to make it go away.

[00:29:00] Robert Leonard: It’s more so just learning how to do it anyway. And that’s like my, one of the skills that I’ve been working on the most is like, not even just imposter syndrome, just anything I don’t feel like doing is just learning the skill to just do it anyway. And that could be imposter syndrome, that could just be feeling lazy and not wanting, I know Tony, you body build, like not wanting to go to the gym, like whatever the case is.

[00:29:19] Robert Leonard: Like just being able to do it anyway. And that’s how I have just tried to get over imposter syndrome. I don’t know if I could ever like get rid of it altogether. It’s just do it anyway. And that just sort of helps. 

[00:29:30] Tony J. Robinson: And I just want to, I want to add something to that, Robert, because like this conversation that we’re having with the three of us on this podcast right now, It wouldn’t be happening if Tony, four years ago now wasn’t able to get past imposter syndrome.

[00:29:44] Tony J. Robinson: So before I became the co-host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Rookie podcast, I had my own podcast called Your First Real Estate Investment, and it’s still out there on the internet if you guys want to go find its, its still exists, but I launched that podcast in the summer of 2019. I didn’t get my first deal until October of 2019, so I launched this podcast about investing in real estate three or four months before I ever even closed on my first deal.

[00:30:11] Tony J. Robinson: Now, I wasn’t trying to put this facade on or pretend to be this super expert real estate person. I started this podcast and said, Hey, my name’s Tony J. Robinson. I want to be a real estate investor, so I’m going to go out and interview other real estate investors about their first deal. Come along on this journey with me.

[00:30:26] Tony J. Robinson: And I think that’s what people miss, is that you don’t have to pretend to be someone else. All you have to do is accept your journey, share that journey with other people, and you’d be surprised how many people will resonate with that story. 

[00:30:39] Robert Leonard: There’s a saying that you just have to be like one step ahead of the person that you’re trying to help.

[00:30:42] Robert Leonard: Like you don’t have to be a thousand steps ahead or even 10 steps ahead. You just have to be one step ahead. And this is probably a fake story, but I heard this somewhere, I dunno if you guys have heard this, but there was a guy that went into like a college class and pretended to be the professor and he taught the whole lecture and he didn’t know anything about the topic, but he was just, he read one page ahead of the students and he could teach the previous page because he had already read it.

[00:31:05] Robert Leonard: So he taught that page and then he was one page ahead and he could just continue to teach it. And it’s how you get over this, right? You just realize like, Hey, you don’t have to be Brandon Turner, right? You don’t have to be like this big successful real estate investor. You just have to be one, one step ahead.

[00:31:19] Ashley Kehr: I just want to add, there’s so many different aspects to real estate investing too. Tony and I at P Con, we did the a rookie meetup and someone said something about they don’t have a deal, they’re new, they don’t know what experience they would bring. We asked, what do you do for your W two job? And he said, I’m a project manager.

[00:31:39] Ashley Kehr: So then we asked how many people here would love for somebody to manage their rehab and almost every single hand went up. So I think too is like not only just looking at real estate investing and what your knowledge is of that, but what other skills and resources to have around you that you could use.

[00:31:56] Ashley Kehr: And you can bring that to a partnership too. There’s a lot of value add that you can bring. 

[00:32:02] Robert Leonard: So let’s talk about that. You guys have a checklist for 10 things that people should look for in real estate partners. Take us through each of those. 

[00:32:10] Tony J. Robinson: There’s certain ingredients that I think help make partnerships more successful.

[00:32:15] Tony J. Robinson: And, Ash and I kind of wanted to give folks something that was kind of plug and play, I guess, as they’re kind of evaluating people, potential partners to say, does this person work for me as potential partner? So the first thing is communication skills. I think one of the fastest ways to derail not just a real estate partnership, but any kind of partnership is that one or both people lack good communication skills.

[00:32:39] Tony J. Robinson: And I don’t mean communication skills in the sense of like what we’re doing right now where they’re talking on a podcast or getting in front of a stage of people. I mean like interpersonal communication skills, being able to clearly articulate themselves and having the confidence and the courage that difficult conversations, what happens in some partnerships and honestly, even in just some relationships.

[00:32:57] Tony J. Robinson: Is that one partner starts to feel a certain way about the actions of the other person, and they don’t have the courage or the confidence to bring that issue up. So what happens? This person starts to, these negative emotions start to build up, and before you know it, there’s this feeling of resentment or anger or every single little thing this person does now becomes exponentially more annoying because now it’s not even about that one instance.

[00:33:21] Tony J. Robinson: It’s these days and weeks and months and years of built up tension that I haven’t brought up to you. Being able to communicate when things are difficult, I think is one of the most important skills that you need to look for when you’re evaluating someone as a potential partner. 

[00:33:36] Ashley Kehr: Yeah. In the book, we actually put together a partnership pyramid, and at the top of the pyramid we put communication as the top piece of it.

[00:33:44] Ashley Kehr: And then we did structure underneath, and then goals kind of as the foundation. The next piece that we find important is the financial components. So you want to make sure your financial stability, along with your partner’s financial stability is solid. So you know that’s doing some kind of vetting on your partner and also being open to sharing what your finances are.

[00:34:05] Ashley Kehr: So for example, if, and I want to be clear that this doesn’t mean partner with someone that has money. This is make sure that they can manage the money they do have. So if you’re partnering with someone, They can’t even pay their credit card bill, or they can’t even manage their own money, but yet you’re going to rely on them to manage your rehab project, manage the budget, whatever that may be.

[00:34:29] Ashley Kehr: So I think getting a good sense that both partners are in a good financial position as if they, maybe each partner needs to have so many cash reserves. We talked about bad things that can happen with partners, and one of those is, oh my gosh, we need to replace the hvac and we, our reserves won’t cover that.

[00:34:46] Ashley Kehr: Each partner needs to put in three grand. Well, partner B may not have that and say, you know what? I don’t have it. I can’t put it in. That’s another big component of partnering with someone too. 

[00:34:58] Tony J. Robinson: Third piece would be reliability, and this one’s I think, is a little harder to kind of get a gauge on, but you just want to know like, is this someone that I can count on?

[00:35:06] Tony J. Robinson: I think one of the best ways to get a sense of someone’s character is to not necessarily pay attention to how they treat you, but how are they treating other people? Like when you observe them interacting or talking about other people, what is their energy? What is their dialogue? What, like, like what are they saying?

[00:35:24] Tony J. Robinson: If every time you talk to that person they’re secretly saying negative things about other people behind that person’s back. Like, what do you think they’re doing about you behind your back? If you see them kind of taking shortcuts when they’re doing other projects with other people, like what do you think they’re going to be doing when they’re working with you?

[00:35:38] Tony J. Robinson: So look for these kind of more nuanced, I think signs to see like, is this a person that I can count on? Because when you get into a partnership with someone, that’s basically what you’re doing. You’re entering into a contract with one another to say, I trust you to do the things that you say you’re going to do.

[00:35:52] Tony J. Robinson: You trust me to do the things that I say I’m going to do. And if either one of those pieces aren’t working, though, the whole partnership starts to break down. 

[00:35:59] Ashley Kehr: The next component kind of ties into that too, is each partner having an understanding of the partnership and your actual contract, the partnership agreement, and having an understanding of what happens now, what happens in the future, or what happens if this happens.

[00:36:16] Ashley Kehr: So being transparent with each other, going through the contract, making sure each person is clear on what the terms of your partnership agreement are. 

[00:36:26] Tony J. Robinson: The next one is about project management. And again, this kind of varies by the person, depending on what skills you have and what your partner has.

[00:36:34] Tony J. Robinson: But it is a good thing to, to look for is that project management piece, and Asher, that example earlier, the person at BP Con where everyone wants to be that person’s partner because they had the skillset, but. If you can have someone in your team, a partner who understands how to take this big, messy thing you’re working on, it could be Hey, we’re buying this Airbnb, or we’re setting this Airbnb up.

[00:36:53] Tony J. Robinson: We’re managing this rehab, we’re doing this wholesale deal. Like all of real estate investing, all of business is just. Basically process and project management. So if you can have a partner that has those skills to take this sequence and this sequence, and make sure each one is getting done at the right moment and passes off to the next sequence at the right time, that’s an incredible skill for you to have and something that’s important to look for.

[00:37:13] Ashley Kehr: The next one is financial planning. This can do with just their own personal finances and also the finances of the business. So if you have a project up is, are you both going to be able to budget and plan for what the rehab expenses are, what the holding costs are going to be, and also making sure, as I mentioned before, about having reserves in place, if each partner needs to put money into, the L C or the joint venture, whatever that may be, if they need to bring money to the table.

[00:37:44] Tony J. Robinson: The next year are somewhat related, so I’ll kind of clump them in as one, but it’s someone who can manage the income and the expenses. One of the fastest ways to derail any type of real estate transaction is to not know your numbers. And, ask me how I know, right? because I, I’ve been there before where it’s like, man, this flip is only supposed to cost this much.

[00:38:01] Tony J. Robinson: Why do we spend, $25,000 more? So it’s always been official to have one person on the team that can kind of keep the checkbook in check, right? And they can say, Hey, here’s the budget for this project, for whatever it is that we’re working on. And, here’s how we’re going to manage these expenses to make sure we don’t exceed that.

[00:38:18] Tony J. Robinson: Or the flip side is true as well. Like for us in the short term rental space, we have the ability to actively manage our income as well, right? Like, hey, are we pricing our property appropriately given the current market conditions? And some people come in and they price incredibly low and they leave a bunch of money on the table.

[00:38:32] Tony J. Robinson: So someone who can kind of look at the financial picture of the partnership and say, how do we maximize income, reduce expenses, is, is also important. 

[00:38:42] Ashley Kehr: We talked a lot about like examples of roles and responsibilities, and one of those was property management. But besides property management, there’s also asset management and one of the key roles of asset management is doing market research.

[00:38:55] Ashley Kehr: So having an understanding of the market that you are investing in and continuing that research and understanding of where you’re investing. One of those things can be looking at what are market rents. Who’s going to be the person that’s going to be continuously monitoring that, things like that, and doing that research.

[00:39:13] Ashley Kehr: Some really good resources are Nightscout or even Bright investors, a new platform that just came out where you can tend to keep tabs on everything you need to know for market research, but also that’s where you want to stay in alignment with your partner. It’s like, okay. At our quarterly meeting, is this still the right market for us and we need to continue in this?

[00:39:33] Ashley Kehr: What changes or do we need to pivot or maybe going to a new market or changing strategies, something with the current market conditions.

[00:39:41] Tony J. Robinson: And the last one here, and this kind of puts a bow on everything we’ve just talked about, but you want partner that has a complimentary skillset to you. I would never partner with someone who’s an exact replica of Tony.

[00:39:54] Tony J. Robinson: Like, I don’t need someone who’s super analytical. I don’t need someone that’s the big visionary. Like if I’m partnering with someone, I need someone who’s a good integrator. I need someone who can manage all the minutiae. I need someone who can allow me to focus on the areas where I’m uniquely qualified and where my strengths are best leveraged.

[00:40:09] Tony J. Robinson: So as you’re looking for a partner, that one is incredibly important. Find someone that can fill in the pieces that you lack, that can be strong in the areas where you’re weak and someone that can balance you out in the investment as much as possible . 

[00:40:24] Robert Leonard: Thanks for going through all of those. I wanted to ask, what are some of the biggest mistakes people make when picking partners and then what they make, what the mistakes are they make once they’re actually in the partnership.

[00:40:35] Robert Leonard: But having gone through those 10 things, I think it’s pretty clear, right? Like the mistakes people make when picking partners is like, you pick people that don’t do these things and then when you’re actually in the partnership, you make mistakes by not doing these things, right? So it’s, you gave the inverse the mistakes are essentially the inverse of everything that you just gave. Is that safe to assume? 

[00:40:52] Tony J. Robinson: Yeah, I think so. And then, you kind of touched on this, but I think a big mistake that a lot of people make when they’re getting into some of those first partnerships is they choose the partnership based on proximity. They say, Hey, we’re friends. I know you.

[00:41:06] Tony J. Robinson: I like you. I think we make great partners together. But they don’t do that extra step of really assessing whether or not there’s a skill fit there. And that’s why you see a lot of partnerships that kind of get derailed before they start, because from the beginning, they weren’t set up the right way.

[00:41:22] Tony J. Robinson: And the second mistake you see a lot of folks make when they’re getting into partnerships is they don’t have those difficult conversations upfront and they wait for shit to hit the fan before they try and sit down and solve for those things. But if you can, have those like, Hey, what happens?

[00:41:37] Tony J. Robinson: Like, like Ashley said earlier, like, what happens if the property doesn’t generate enough revenue? What are we going to do? You should have the answers to that question solved before you enter into that agreement. What happens if one of us wants to sell and the person doesn’t? Real estate? You should have that answer before you get into that agreement.

[00:41:53] Tony J. Robinson: What are Tony’s responsibilities? What are Ashley’s responsibilities? And what happens if one of us doesn’t hold up to those responsibilities? You should have that answer before you get into that partnership. So I think starting the partnership or choosing your partner based on proximity and then failing to have those difficult conversations upfront are two mistakes that I think can really derail a partnership.

[00:42:11] Robert Leonard: As part of your book, you have sample paperwork. That’s almost like a template for somebody partnership. Are those the types of things that you’re putting in that paperwork? All of those questions that you just answered basically, and all the things that you need to think through all the situations that might happen.

[00:42:26] Robert Leonard: Like what are the most important parts of the paperwork? 

[00:42:29] Ashley Kehr: Yeah, so we did a joint venture agreement, and then we did an operating agreement for an L C. So we gave those a sample. And of course, Tony did the joint venture, so it’s specific to California and minus out of New York. So very, Definitely get your own from your own attorney.

[00:42:45] Ashley Kehr: This is just a, a starting point for you, but a lot of the 10 things that we went through, we also give that checklist of things to actually ask you and your partner, but a really big thing and any agreement that you’re doing. Is not only putting in there what’s happening right now, but putting in those exit strategies so that if something does come up.

[00:43:07] Ashley Kehr: So in the book we have a chapter that talks about different clauses that you may not think of, your attorney may not think of, kind of be unique things that you can add in there. So for example, buy, sell. What happens if somebody wants to sell? Are you getting first right of refusal? Can they go out to the open market?

[00:43:26] Ashley Kehr: And all of a sudden, Robert’s now my partner Tony sold, his shares to him, his percentage. So a lot of things like that. Oh, so life insurance policies. What happens if Tony dies? I’m now automatically according to his will, I’m now partners with his wife, Sarah. What if she wants something to do with the partnership, and I want nothing to do with the partnership.

[00:43:47] Ashley Kehr: What happens there or what if she does want to, but she’s like, yeah, I want to keep Tony’s share, but you know what? I’m not going to do any work. I’m not going to do anything, which would never be Sarah, by the way. But you know, then I’m now stuck with Tony’s wife as my partner, but I’m having to do all the work.

[00:44:03] Ashley Kehr: So putting in a life insurance policy where the business actually pays the policy. Tony is the owner of the policy and I am the beneficiary of the policy. So if Tony were to die, I can take those funds and I can buy Sarah out and I can give her that money. And now she has this nice lump sum cash. She doesn’t have to worry about owning a business, and I now have full control of the business.

[00:44:28] Ashley Kehr: So we go through different things like that. 

[00:44:31] Tony J. Robinson: You know what’s super funny, Ashley, is that Sarah and I literally just had a conversation maybe like two days ago and she was like, if you died, I don’t know if I’d want to keep running the business. Like, I feel like I would just like sell everything off.

[00:44:42] Tony J. Robinson: So Robert, if I end up under a bridge, just know that Sarah and Ashley conspired together so they could split that that life insurance payout. 

[00:44:51] Robert Leonard: I’ll go to bat for you, Tony. 

[00:44:53] Ashley Kehr: She’s leading to get to your goal. What was your goal, Tony? A hundred and million? 

[00:44:59] Tony J. Robinson: A billion in real estate. A billion. Billion. Yeah. You wait until that’ll billion.

[00:45:02] Ashley Kehr: You’ve got some time, what? Five years? I got, 

[00:45:04] Tony J. Robinson: yeah, I got a little bit of 

[00:45:05] Robert Leonard: time though. I’ll be your witness. Tony, I’ll be there for you. So I found and met my real estate partner actually at the gym and I didn’t really like set out to do that, but looking back, I’m actually glad that I did and I personally think it could be a good place to meet partners, real estate or otherwise.

[00:45:24] Robert Leonard: What do you guys think are the best places to find real estate partners? 

[00:45:28] Ashley Kehr: So for me, all of my partners have been friends first, then business partners. So I spent a lot of time, like my first partner, we grew up next door to each other, so we knew each other since we were two. We knew each other for about 25 years before we actually invested together.

[00:45:46] Ashley Kehr: But a big component of that was his dad was an investor. And I look at what your dad is doing, why don’t you do that? And he’s like, yeah, why am I not doing that? And then my second partner was actually the boyfriend of one of my other friends and he already had, when a rental property. And so we started talking real estate.

[00:46:05] Ashley Kehr: It was about a year before we actually partnered on a deal. And then my third partner. We met on a boat and he talked and complained about how much he hated his job. And so I was like, well, there’s this thing called real estate investing you could maybe do. And so then he started working alongside with me and then eventually became my business partner.

[00:46:26] Ashley Kehr: But so for me, I’m very like picky and choosy as to who I partner with and I really have to like establish, I’ve definitely like jumped into getting to know other. People like who want to partner and I just, I haven’t pulled the trigger with anyone else yet. I did partner with my brother and sister each on a deal, but that was different than having stranger partnership and stuff.

[00:46:50] Robert Leonard: Would you do it again, family giving into business with family, would you do it again? 

[00:46:55] Ashley Kehr: Yes. If I have full control of the deal. 

[00:46:59] Tony J. Robinson: I took a slightly different approach from Ashley. I think we have. 19 or 20 partners across our different properties. And two of those are family, one of them, Sarah’s cousin, one of them is my first cousin.

[00:47:10] Tony J. Robinson: Everyone else were stranger obsessed basically before we did that partnership together. And they they all came through the platform that we’ve built, they were reach out and say, Hey, Tony, I’ve seen you on the podcast, on YouTube, wherever you love the opportunity to work with you.

[00:47:21] Tony J. Robinson: That’s how started. We were, I think, picky to an extent of who we worked with as well. It, it wasn’t like I find a deal and then I look for the first warm body and say, Hey let’s do this together. There was a little bit of like us getting to know each other. So there’d be a, phone conversation, zoom calls a lot of email exchanges before.

[00:47:39] Tony J. Robinson: And as you start to talk to people, you start to get a sense of like, Hey, who will I enjoy working with this person? And there are several partnerships that we’ve. There are several people who wanted to partner with us, who we ended up not working with because during that initial kind of vetting phase, we just kind of got like, not the right vibes from them.

[00:47:58] Tony J. Robinson: Ours were mostly strangers, but we did take the time to make sure that we got to know them, and that’s part of the reason why we have so much in our joint venture agreement, because we don’t personally know a lot of these folks. So we had to make sure that a lot of those things were dialed in upfront because we didn’t know who these people were and if we could really trust them, if it wasn’t written written down.

[00:48:16] Robert Leonard: What are your guys’ goals right now? Tony, you mentioned, I believe a billion in real estate, but like, what are you guys working on? What are you working towards for both of you? What are your biggest goals right now? 

[00:48:26] Tony J. Robinson: On the real estate side? Yeah. My, my goal is to buy $1 billion worth of real estate in the next nine and a half years.

[00:48:32] Tony J. Robinson: So I set that goal at the beginning of this year, and the reason why that number’s so big is because first, I have friends and mentors in my life that are marching towards that goal. You talked about Brandon Turner earlier, he’s bought like $800 million worth of real estate in the last like four years or something crazy like that, right?

[00:48:48] Tony J. Robinson: So I know that I’ve, I’m seeing it, I know that it’s a possibility. And the ideal situation is that once we get to that number, that we start just selling off a bunch of those assets. And then, I’ve got, hopefully a couple hundred million bucks that I can just go sit down and, lay on a beach in Costa Rica, Portugal for while and so real estates.

[00:49:06] Tony J. Robinson: Really focused on growing our coaching program. We launched that last year and we’ve been like solely putting that together. And the amount of fulfillment that we’ve gotten by growing Alpha hosts our community has been light years beyond anything I could have imagined. Because when we’re recording content in the podcast, when we’re doing it for YouTube, it’s one to many and we hit record and I never get to see who’s on the other side.

[00:49:28] Tony J. Robinson: But through that program, we’ve helped countless people get that first deal. And to see those messages kind of pop over and over again that’s a dopamine hit unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. So I’d say tho those are the two big goals for us. We’ve got some smaller things, like I’m launching a property management company in the short term rental space.

[00:49:43] Tony J. Robinson: We have our cleaning company. We’re doing some more arbitrage. So those are some ancillary goals, but the big ones are the community that we’re building and the building dollars. 

[00:49:50] Robert Leonard: Isn’t that such a weird thing about podcasting? You just, like, you get into the mic and it just goes into the void and you like, you never hear anything really.

[00:49:57] Robert Leonard: Like, you get emails and dms and stuff on social sometimes, but like, it just goes out into the void. There’s nobody like really talk back. That’s always like been the weirdest thing about podcasting to me. 

[00:50:07] Tony J. Robinson: I think it’s so weird that Apple, the biggest podcasting platform there is hasn’t tried to like turn podcasting into more of like a social network where people can interact on specific episodes and have comments and followers in that thing because they just added that to 

[00:50:20] Robert Leonard: Spotify.

[00:50:21] Tony J. Robinson: Did they really? 

[00:50:21] Robert Leonard: A little bit, yeah. I’m pretty sure you can comment on episodes now on Spotify. 

[00:50:26] Tony J. Robinson: Okay. Yeah. Apple’s behind the game, man. 

[00:50:28] Robert Leonard: Not surprised Ashley. What’s going on with you? What are your biggest goals right now? 

[00:50:32] Ashley Kehr: It’s way more difficult than it is for me, than Tony to think big picture.

[00:50:37] Ashley Kehr: Like I struggle so much with like seeing five years down the road seeing a what I want a year from now. Like that is even a struggle for me. But what I want in one year from now is next summer I want to live at a lake house. I’ve got to get a property under contract and get a lake house that I can afford, and then also maybe rent out as a long-term rental over the winter months or something like that.

[00:51:02] Ashley Kehr: But that’s like my personal goal right there. But also, it’s a, an asset too, so having a lake house waterfront property is only going up, so might as well buy it now, but, As far as business goes, I launched a property management company for my long-term rentals this year. And then we have 130 units right now, residential and commercial.

[00:51:22] Ashley Kehr: It’s just my units and then one other investor. We’re not taking on any clients, it’s just our own rentals that we’re doing. Sometimes I think owners are worse than tenants. As looking at myself as an owner, we’re trying to work with a property management company, but so I’m just really dialing down the systems and processes.

[00:51:44] Ashley Kehr: I’ve hired a couple VAs and I’m just trying to get that to run as automatic as possible. Already I have very little interaction then. Right now my main focus is just defining those systems and processes even more and dialing down everything that’s happening. But my goal is to just be really passive with that, but also stabilize my portfolio after, has been with a third party property management company, and just really maximize my cash flow on each property.

[00:52:14] Ashley Kehr: And then of course, continuing to add some short term rentals and some long term rentals. 

[00:52:22] Robert Leonard: Awesome. Well, I can’t wait to check in with you both probably Tony, nine and a half years. And then and Ashley, I’ll check in with you. My parents have a camp. It’s not a lake house by any means. It’s actually just like a seasonal camp site in a campground, but it’s near the water, basically on the water up where I live.

[00:52:37] Robert Leonard: So next summer, when I’m there, I’ll be thinking of you and I’ll check in with you and hopefully you’ll be doing the same. As we wrap up today, tell everybody where they can go to find you guys. Tony, you mentioned your YouTube. Ashley, I know you got some social going on. Tell people where they go to find your books.

[00:52:49] Robert Leonard: Everything where you want people to go to connect with you guys. 

[00:52:52] Ashley Kehr: Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at Wealth from rentals. And you can also find us on the Real Estate Rookie Podcast and our new book, Real Estate Partnerships at biggerpockets.com/partnerships. And then I also have another book called Real Estate Rookie that you can find on BiggerPockets, Amazon or, and Barnes and Noble.

[00:53:14] Tony J. Robinson: You guys can connect with me on Instagram. I’m @tonyjrobinson. If you’re on Threads, someone threads @TonyJRobinson. Same on Twitter, on YouTube 

[00:53:23] Ashley Kehr: Actually X Tony, isn’t it X now? 

[00:53:27] Tony J. Robinson: Oh yeah, I guess it’s X now. Yeah, if you’re X-ing. But on YouTube, my wife and I are at the Realestate Robinsons. We talk all things short-term and until on that channel as well.

[00:53:35] Tony J. Robinson: And if you guys want to check out Alpha hosts, just head over to therealestaterobinsons.com/alphahost and we’d love to help you guys build that business out as well. But if I can just end with one quick story, Robert. I’m so passionate about the book because partnerships have really, for both Ash and I like, changed the trajectory of our real estate business.

[00:53:51] Tony J. Robinson: Like most people, when I graduated from college, I got a job in, the corporate world. Climbed the corporate ladder, had a really healthy six figure salary and two days before Christmas in 2020, I end up losing my job. Where we go from this big salary down to zero in a, two minute conversation with the HR director at my job.

[00:54:09] Tony J. Robinson: It was our ability to leverage partnerships quickly, efficiently, and effectively that allowed us to keep buying real estate. And when I lost my job, we had two active short-term rentals. By 12 months later, we were up to like 15. And the majority of those deals came from partnerships that we had formed with other people.

[00:54:27] Tony J. Robinson: So there’s a tremendous amount of power in real estate partnerships when you do it the right way. And our hope is that the book can can give you guys the roadmap and the framework to do it the right way. 

[00:54:40] Robert Leonard: Awesome. Thank you both for joining me today. You took time out of your valuable time out of your day to join me. It was great to catch up with you both.

[00:54:47] Robert Leonard: I’m super pumped to hear that you guys are doing awesome things. I’m not surprised. I’ll put all the links to your guys’ resources in the show notes below for anybody that’s interested in connecting with you guys and till we talk again. Thanks. 

[00:54:59] Robert Leonard: All right, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Millennial Investing.

[00:55:03] Robert Leonard: I’ll see you again next week. 

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