WS1132: How I Gained Financial Freedom in 2.5 Years with Bryce Robertson

EPISODE 1132

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:01.6 

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication. 

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

0:00:24

WHITNEY SEWELL (WS): This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. 

0:00:28.5 

WS: Today, your co-host is David Robinson. David is a client of mine and he is doing big things in the real estate syndication industry. I know you are going to enjoy today’s show.

0:00:40 

DAVID ROBINSON (DR): This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, David Robinson. Today, our guest is Bryce Robertson. Bryce, how’re you doing today? 

0:00:49

BRYCE ROBERTSON (BR): I’m fantastic, Dave. Thanks, mate. 

0:00:51

DR: Yeah. Bryce, also known as “Your Real Estate Mate”, is an Aussie-born real estate investing entrepreneur, number one international best-selling author, world traveler, and adventurer. He has raised millions of dollars and a culmination of success in mobile home park investing. Bryce lives the freedom trinity of financial, time, and location freedom. Bryce is also the host of the YouTube channel and video podcast, Freedom Hack Radio, co-author of “10000 Miles to the American Dream”, writes weekly articles for BiggerPockets, and has the number one top-selling mobile home park investing and capital-raising home study courses. So, Bryce, obviously, you’ve accomplished a lot in the world of real estate, and we’re excited to get into your story and to your unique ability. But if you don’t mind, let’s start by backing up and just telling us how this all started for you.

0:01:48.4

BR: Yeah, I got it. So, I was born and raised in Australia, and then I knew I didn’t wanna go to university. So, I ended up ending high school early and got into the trades, actually as a welder steel fabricator. I knocked out of my apprenticeship, and in my early 20s, I left Australia and started traveling the world ’cause I had a goal of traveling the world for six years. So, I had a little bit of money in my pocket, so I went over to the UK and that was my base camp. Base camp was in London. I worked almost every day for three months, saved up a bunch of cash, then took off in Europe and traveled around Europe until my money ran out. Then I came back and I did that cycle again. So, I spent three years in the UK, Europe, and Africa doing that cycle. 

Then I went over to Canada, lived in the mountains up there, got into some downhill mountain biking, and snowboarding. I had my own little business out of the coal mines, and I was even getting in some firefighting there. So, I really just kinda stayed there for about two years, saved up a whole big bunch of cash, and then I took off on an 18-month surfing, scuba diving trip down in Central and South America.

0:02:47.1 

BR: In the last six months of that trip, I actually met my wife down in the Caribbean. She’s a native from California, so naturally, I ended up in the States. But when we came to the States, my wife and I made a commitment with each other that we wanted to recreate the life that I’d been living. Except this time, we want to do it so not only was our money not running out, it was to keep growing while we’re actually traveling, and that’s when we started our venture. 

0:03:11:

DR: Wow, what an incredible story. You’re quite the traveler, and it sounds like you have an interest in a lot of different things. Most interesting is just this freedom that you had at an early age and a desire to keep that moving forward after you met your wife. What were the steps that you needed to implement after meeting your wife? You made that commitment to her, she wanted to have that in her life. What were the steps that you took to maintain that type of lifestyle?

0:03:40

BR: Yeah. So we basically just had to start at ground zero. You know, I wasn’t an entrepreneur. I didn’t have business experience. I wasn’t an investor. I had to go out there and get educated. So in the beginning, I started pursuing the three top ways we can make money. And that’s in the stock market (I suppose today you could also include crypto in that current category), owning a business, and real estate. So in the beginning, we actually did all three of those, and I actually had about seven different side hustles going on.

0:04:05.9 

BR: I was trying to fix and flip homes, learn about 4x trading, doing all these things. But I was spinning plates and having mediocre success in all of these areas. So then, I decided I need to laser focus on one thing, one thing only, and just absolutely put all of my energy into that. So it was definitely gonna be real estate. We looked at all the different types of asset classes and investment models in real estate, and mobile home parks kept coming up; pie cash flow, not that much competition. Really, totally sort of the opportunity for affordable housing in the supply and demand. So, I just knocked it down and I got into mobile home parks.  

I went out there, got educated, and then after about three months, I put my first park under contract. And when I did that, I wasn’t in the best situation that most people think I would get the deal done ’cause I had a negative net worth, $2000 in the bank, unseasoned credit ‘cause I haven’t been in the States long enough to build credit. But I went out there, I raised capital from friends and family, and essentially syndicated the deal. Got that deal closed three months later, and once I did that, I felt 10-foot tall, and I just knew that anything was possible. So basically after that, I just rinsed and repeated, and then this time I actually…

0:05:15.6 

BR: Beyond that, I went out, built relationships with investors, started bringing investors into the deal, and we’ve been syndicating deals ever since.

0:05:23

DR: I love it. What a great summary of how you’ve accomplished what you’ve accomplished to date. You mentioned very briefly, getting educated. What was that process like for you? What were the steps that you took to really educate yourself to feel confident enough to go out there and start making offers?

0:05:40

BR: Yeah, the funny thing about that is I thought in the beginning, I need to learn how to real estate invest in all these, and I was certainly pursuing that. I was going to REI meet-ups, reading books, searching online. I even set my realtor’s license and everything, even though I don’t do that. I just wanted to learn. But really what I really needed to learn, and what I did end up learning and where I dug deep was a lot on mindset and self-development — how I need to communicate better, how I need to negotiate better, how I need to have a higher health capacity. Really, those are the foundational things behind being successful as an entrepreneur. And so I came across a book, my wife came across it actually, by T. Harv Eker called “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”.

0:06:22.8 

BR: We read that, we were blown away. We went to his three-day wave course, and then we ended up working with T. Harv Eker’s Potentials for about two years. That was a pivotal point for us. We learned how to do so many things in the business world. We learned how to mix spirituality into business and get grounded. It was just an absolutely phenomenal life-changing shift for us there. And then came full circle a few years later, when myself and some mates wrote a book called “10000 Miles to the American Dream”. T. Harv Eker actually endorsed that book for us. Now, we basically applied all of the things that we learned, we came full circle on that one.

0:06:59 

DR: Oh, that’s great. And I love that you mentioned these soft skills. A lot of us as we start to educate ourselves about the investing side, really focus on the hard skills — the underwriting, the technical aspect of market research, and all that. And you really dove into the soft side of things and I love that. You mentioned that it took you three months from this time of getting laser-focused on mobile home parks. If I did hear you correctly, I think you said it took you three months to get your first deal under contract. Many people get stuck in that zone of learning and educating, and learning and educating, and they never take enough action to get that first deal on a contract. What helped you to break through that?

0:07:39

DR: Just determination, man. Really the main motivating drive is these two — what I started off with… and that was that I had a day job and I didn’t wanna have a day job anymore. I didn’t enjoy it anymore. I’d been in that career for about 20 years, I want it out. I felt like a slave. I wanted freedom. So that drove me really, really hard, so that meant that I had to work even harder to work myself out of that situation. So I was very driven. I really didn’t know all of the steps that I needed to take. I went out there, I dropped $30,000 on a mentoring and education program, which ended up being essentially pretty useless. We didn’t really learn anywhere near or get that much value out of it. But I suppose essentially, we did in some other capacities out of a mentor, that was my on-speed mentor, ready for me for any real estate challenges. So I had found a park, I wanted to put it on a contract, and I told you what my circumstances are — I had a negative net worth, $2000 in the bank, unseasoned credit.

0:08:34.3 

BR: So I called up my mentor, no answer. Kept calling, no answer. So I called the people from the organization and said, “Hey, I need my mentor”. So finally a day later, he gets back to me. He says, “Hey, what do you wanna do? You wanna put this park on the contract? You got a negative net worth, $2000 in the bank, unseasoned credit.” He said, “You’re dreaming kiddo. It’s never gonna happen. You’re not gonna do it. Why don’t you just come back down to the club and do a little single-family deal like everybody else?”

I literally just hung up the phone and I never called that guy back ever again. And that was my second motivation. I was like: Yeah, dude, you’re gonna tell me, I can’t do that? Watch me. Right now, I’m gonna do it. So I ended up calling on one of my other mobile home park, I suppose, mentor,  someone who had a lot of success in the mobile home space. He said, “What? You’ve got a park? But under any circumstances, do you have it on a contract?” I’m like, “No.” “Dude, you need to put that under a contract. I’m gonna send you a contract right now.” Boom! I put it on a contract. All I knew was what the next step was. I didn’t know how I was gonna raise the capital. I didn’t know how I was gonna do all the due diligence. I just knew that I needed to get it on a contract. So I did that. And then once I got on the contract, I’m like: Alright, what’s the next step? I need to do inspections. I need to take a deeper dive there.

0:09:42.9 

BR: We do need to do that. Boom! But there — and we need to get financing. We need to raise capital. And I just took it step by step. If I had a setback and thought about how I was gonna do all of those steps, I probably would have just said the same thing as my mentor and told myself I was dreaming. But I didn’t wanna do that. And so I just took it step by step.

0:10:00 

DR: Yeah, and thanks for sharing that because there are so many that get stuck in this analysis paralysis phase because they look at the entire project. It’s daunting to think about everything that goes into taking down one of these bigger deals. I’ve found a thread of consistency among those that really take massive action early on, and it’s just that — it’s focusing on the one step that’s in front of them, and then the next step after that, not getting overwhelmed by the entire complexity of the deal. I love that you mentioned early on that after you got this first deal under your belt, anything was possible. You were standing 10-feet tall. Talk to us about that moment in your life and in this journey for you. And what kind of impact it had on your trajectory moving forward,

0:10:51 

BR: There’s a monumental shift. It busted any myths or doubts that I had about myself, about what was possible. Because even though my determination on the inside of me was saying: Screw you to my previous mentor and that I was gonna go out there and prove it, I still don’t know how I was gonna do it.

0:11:07.0 

BR: And when I actually did it and I achieved it, I looked back and I was like: Wow! That wasn’t even that hard, especially if I compare the, I suppose the slavery that I went through for the 20 years before and how hard I had to work in a career just to earn money to live essentially paycheck to paycheck. And then I looked at what I did in a short few-month period and how much that changed my life financially. And that if I could compound that and do a couple of deals like that a year and just like, the possibilities are endless. So fast forward, I kept on going. I kept on syndicating deals. And then after two and a half years, my wife and I were fortunate enough to be able to retire ourselves and become financially free. I looked at that and I’m just like: Wow, two and a half years compared to 20 years? And it was much easier to do it in real estate and business. Even though culture or our mind would tell us that it’s so much harder, but it’s actually significantly easier to do these entrepreneurial things, in my opinion, than it is to wake up at 5:30 in the morning.

0:12:08.8 

BR: Go to the daily grind. Do something you don’t really wanna do. You have to ask your boss for time off and then just have the thought of doing that for the rest of your life. It was just an absolute no-brainer to me. So that when we became financially free, I then became very, very compelled to share my experience so other people could replicate it. They don’t necessarily have to do it in the mobile home park space, but just: Hey! Here’s what I did in two and a half years. It wasn’t actually that hard compared to what all of you are doing there on a daily basis, and just kind of screaming from the treetops that you can live free. I truly believe that anybody listening to this podcast or watching this on video, you can absolutely have financial freedom and live free.

0:12:50

DR: Love that. And that’s a great segue into this topic of what you call the freedom trinity: financial, time, and location freedom. Maybe you could just talk to us about what that means to you.

0:13:02

BR: Yeah. So essentially, that was something that I was trying to achieve in the beginning before I was even an entrepreneur. Traveling around the world is to have time and location freedom and just be anywhere. Do what I wanna do and enjoy my life. I never had the financial aspect nailed. So when we were focusing on getting all of this started in America, that was the focus. It was the financial component. But once we became financially free, now a massive weight was lifted off our shoulders. And I realized I don’t have to work anymore. I can work if I want to work. I can do what I wanna do. And then, now I have free time. 

See, a lot of people, they might be financially successful, but they don’t have any spare time to do anything. They’re essentially slaves to their business, slaves to creating wealth. In my opinion, that’s not freedom. Sometimes we have to do that for a short condensed period of time to get to the next level. Sometimes I still do that and I obsess with work for a short period of time. But I know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel because I want time freedom as well. Because ultimately, what’s the point of making all of this money? It’s not about things we can buy, it’s about the experiences we can have or what we can do because money is no longer an issue or a limitation.

Then it became: Well, okay, I’ve got the time to do what I wanna do, and I’ve got the financial freedom to have the capacity to do things financially. Now I wanna be able to do this from wherever I wanna be. And so the next step was to set up so they didn’t have to be dependent on being somewhere in a specific location. Let me give an example of the Freedom Trinity and how this worked in my life. So in the beginning of 2019, my wife and I were going to a surfing trip down in Costa Rica. It was meant to be for three weeks. We’re gonna go down there. Do a little bit of surfing, check out some properties, maybe open up some kind of backpackers hostel or something like that, check out some real estate. We’ve got about 10 days into it. We’re like, now the opportunity that we thought, it is in the vibe we’re looking for. And so my wife said, “Well, let’s go down to Chile”. We’re gonna go down South America. So we got a plane ticket. We went down to South America. We started hiking in Patagonia. We went to Argentina. 

Next thing you know, we spent three months in South America and had an absolutely amazing time. We’re in the Amazon jungle trekking. It was phenomenal. And then after about three months being in South America, my wife says, “Hey, you know it’s really cool, and we could stay in South America, but I’d really love to go to Europe right now. I just found some kick-ass plane tickets to France. You can surf over there, let’s go over there.” She got me hooked on that, “Hey-you-can-go-surfing-over-there”. Funny thing is, we got there, I never even went up surfing. But we ended up spending three months in Europe, traveling around wineries, eating at Michelin-star restaurants, staying in castles, have an absolutely amazing time. And the interesting thing was, when we started out, we were gonna spend three weeks. We ended up spending six months. We went to 20 countries. While we did that, I launched my book, I launched new investments, I was building my business as I was away. I was probably working somewhere between half of a day to two days a week and traveling all over the world having these amazing thing experiences, but yet still growing my business at the same time. And so that was a real-life example of how the Freedom Trinity showed up for us in our life. 

0:16:08

DR: That’s great. And I want to bridge the gap a little bit, or maybe just give the listeners some context. When you first started focusing on mobile home parks, got yourself educated, and took down that first deal, give us some context as far as the time frame. How long ago was that when you took on your first mobile home park deal?

0:16:25 

BR: That was 2015.

0:16:26 

DR: Okay, perfect. So, look at this, here we are two years into it. So, by roughly 2017, you’re financially free. In 2019, you have yourself in a position to be able to take a trip that was supposed to be three weeks, turns into six months and your business didn’t skip a beat. What a wonderful example of what this business can do for those that really want to put their head down and make it happen. I’m wondering, in the time that we have left, if you wouldn’t mind just sharing some practical strategies or tactics that you’ve used in your business that’s helped you achieve what you’ve been able to achieve,

0:17:03 

BR: Everything revolves around self-development. It’s not that I have the skills of understanding how to do transactional deals like, yeah, that helps, but it’s only like 20% of what we need to know. It’s in understanding how to solve problems. It’s understanding how to be the man you need to be or the woman you need to be to communicate what you need to communicate to effectively achieve what you need to achieve. It’s all about self-development. So really, for me, I’m on a continuous path of peeling layers of an onion to get over my own shortcomings, to continue working through that.  I mean, it’s something that’s probably gonna continue for the entire rest of my life. And it’s really just spending a lot of time — I like to read books, I like to meditate, I do take a lot of courses. I like to have conversations with friends on these kinds of topics. I search a lot on the internet and I watch a lot of videos. I’m just always continuously learning, and we instinctively know what’s the biggest block for us right now. What’s the one thing that if we change in this given moment right now that would have the biggest compound effect of positivity in our life. And if any of us are honest with ourselves, we can just stop, close our eyes and breathe for a couple of minutes and we all know what that is. And so that’s what we need to work on.

0:18:18.8 

BR: That’s what we need to change. That’s what we need to shift, and as soon as we nail that, we move on to the next thing. In the beginning, I came from Australia where we have tons of slang in Australia. So my communication was completely off. I would be telling jokes to people when I first got to America. I’d get to the punch line, I thought it was awesome. And then people will be looking at me googly-eyed, “Dude, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve lost me like five minutes ago.” So I had to literally change my whole vocabulary. Then I had to learn all the business and investing language. So, there’s just a lot to learn, a lot that we need to do. 

But these stories about some… Donald Trump, for example, became a billionaire and then he went to zero, became bankrupt, and then he went to a billionaire like that overnight because he’d already built the connections. He’d already established who he is as a business person, so he had the capacity to communicate. Have the resources to do all of these things, and that’s really what makes us successful entrepreneurs. It’s building that foundation of who we are, how we communicate, how we can handle stress, how we can handle things, how we can solve problems, and continually growing to be better people.

0:19:25.4 

DR: Well, Bryce, this has been a great conversation, a motivational conversation. And one that hopefully inspires our listeners to go out there and take action and really focus on themselves and building themselves up in that self-development piece. Whitney talks about that a lot. How that’s had an impact on his business, and just reading, being around people that are being successful, and working on yourself on a daily basis. As we start to wind down here, I’ve got a few final questions for you. 

What are some of the things that you’ve done that have helped you to achieve the level of success that you’ve achieved? Are there any daily habits that you focused on?

0:20:00 

BR: Meditation definitely has a huge impact. I can’t say that I do it every day, and I’ve actually been slacking off on that lately.  But when I do sit down and meditate, especially when I’ve got tons of deal flow going on, that is one thing that gives me the ability to get grounded. I can easily have my emotions get raised through lots of tension, a lot of stress when I have a lot of pressure on me, and a lot of demand. So meditation, I find, is very beneficial. 

Also, same thing, I’m a little bit slacking on working out lately. But adding in workouts in my daily routine makes a huge impact. It makes me feel a lot better. I could have a lot of stress or a lot of things that I’m dealing with, and my mind is just going crazy. I’ll go smash you, workout, and afterward, I can’t even remember what I was even flustered about. And then I try and keep up on reading. Ideally, I’m reading a chapter a day. But continuously reading, continuously tapping into peaceful things, meditation, self-care, and exercise, and working out.

0:21:00.8 

DR: Yeah, I can agree with you on working out. Getting the morning workout in, it just clears the day, clears all the challenges of the previous day away, and allows you to move forward with a clear mind. What’s the best source that you have right now for finding new investors?

0:21:16 

BR: To be honest, I think the biggest results we get for investors are podcasts or live events. If I’m speaking at a live event, I meet a lot of investors there. I also write for BiggerPockets as well, so I made a lot of new investors through that. But yeah, it’s all about getting out there on the stage for me, getting my face out there in public — videos, podcasts, live events, and writing articles.

0:21:38  

DR: Yeah, love it. Last question I’ve got for you, what’s your favorite way to give back?

0:21:42 

BR: Well, a favorite way to give back is this — it’s writing articles, it’s writing books, it’s helping people become financially free. We’ve got a lot of investors in our group. We send out a lot of deals. So when we underwrite deals, our investors have to make money. If they’re not gonna make money to the capacity that we want them to make money, then we’re not gonna do the deal.

So, we give back by providing what we believe are exciting investments to our investors. We give them the opportunity to be financially free or expand their wealth. And also through literature, through writing books, writing articles, podcasts. I’ve got my own podcast, Freedom Hack Radio, where we talk about Freedom Trinity. I’m all about letting people know: Hey, one, it is possible. You can do it. And then showing people how they can become financially free and live the Freedom Trinity of financial, time, and location freedom.

0:22:28 

DR: Well, Bryce, this has been a great conversation. I’ve really enjoyed learning about your story and the experience you had in the early years of traveling in your 20s, and trying to figure out what you were gonna do and how you’re gonna maintain this lifestyle, meeting a wife, making a commitment to her to be able to maintain this lifestyle, realizing that you really had three choices, right? You were either gonna focus on the stock market, business, or real estate. You really leaned into the real estate aspect and focused on mobile home parks as a specialty. And then you went and attacked it. You really focused on those soft skills that we talked about — the mindset, the self-development, and how that really helped you get your first deal under contract. And then, that just springboarded the rest of the next five years. And after two years, being financially free and being able to achieve that Freedom Trinity that you talked about, the financial, time, and location freedom. 

An inspiring story today. I appreciate you coming on and sharing your journey with us. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you and learn more about what you have going on?

0:23:29 

BR: Yeah, just reach out to our website. It’s propertyworkzusa.com. Workz is spelt with a Z or Zed at the end of it. That’s propertyworkzusa.com. Have a bunch of free resources on there. Click on the invest now button. You can start up a conversation with our team, and we can take it from there.

00:23:46 

DR: Awesome. Well, Bryce, we’ll have that info on the show notes. Thanks again for coming on and sharing with us. And we hope you have a great day.

0:23:52.9

BR: Thanks. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

0:23:55  

ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to the Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]