Outrunning Failures

Building Real Estate Investing Success with Robert Creamer

• Vish Muni • Episode 29

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Today's guest is Robert Creamer.

Robert, a graduate in Real Estate, has been immersed in the commercial real estate industry since 2005.

From solo agent to team leader, and founder of the 7 Streams Commercial Group, he launched LearnCommercial.com in 2020 to provide affordable commercial real estate education.

Passionate about helping others, Robert uses real estate to turn dreams into reality.

His motto:  "Do the right thing, destroy the box, and change the world."

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Creator/Main Host: Vish Muni

Show Advisor/Editing: DBT Marketing

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>> Vish:

Welcome, to another episode of Outrunning Failures. today we have a special guest, my good friend, Robert Kramer. Robert and I met Robert through commercial real estate and I was referred to him as an agent to have him as a mentor. And that is how I met him a few years back. And then he also has a mastermind group with that. I have very high regard for Robert. He's a real estate through and through. So with that, let me not, let me bring on Robert to tell or talk a little bit about himself. Robert, welcome.

>> Robert Creamer:

Thanks Vish. It's been a long time. Good to reconnect again.

>> Vish:

good. Thanks for coming by. So could you tell the audience a little about yourself? What got you into real estate and what kind of investments have you been doing?

>> Robert Creamer:

Well, certainly. Well, I'll do the very short version. I went to college, entrepreneurship degree. My parents freaked out, thought that sounded like a stay at home, 34 year old kid. Got me a aptitude tested like an entire weekend when I was in college and it spit out 98. Entrepreneurship was the right path for me. So who knew? I switched gears to real estate. Got my degree in real estate from North Texas in 05, got licensed in 05. So been added almost 19 years actually. 19 years now. I became a generalist during 2008 and nine during the crash because I needed to make money. what that did for me was kind of create a good, the ability to be a good coach because I've done a little bit of everything along the path I've been through, the struggles. I've, you know, I've seen what we got to do to succeed. I've built up offices, I've run a team. We're still doing brokerage work. Investor, right. Lost everything, rebuilding and you know, you name it. Right. The life of an entrepreneur is never dull. Ups and downs, it's a roller coaster. But I love it. It's, it's just part of my DNA. I think I like a little bit of the chaos. if it was easy, everybody would do it, right? yeah. As far as investment goes, I mean we've done syndications in the multifamily, on the LP side, we've done some retail, some industrial on the GP side as well. We're actually about to do a development, my first development up in Anna, Texas just wanted a contract there. So we're pretty excited. Lots of stuff going on. We've had some failures, we've had some struggles. yeah, so anything in particular you want me to go over? Because I know so Robert, so it's.

>> Vish:

Good to know, ah, you've been through and through entrepreneur and also through and through real estate because most of us become accidental real estate investors because a lot of people are retired and they realize that they need more money coming in and some of us feel W, 2 is not really exciting and we become entrepreneurs. But you've been a lifetime entrepreneur and I don't come across too many people from the day one, they know what their true passion is in your case. So I really admire that in you because that makes so much of a difference. From the day one, you figure out what your true passion is, what you're calling is. So there's no second thoughts or there's no doubts about what you want to do. So that is fantastic. So with that, coming back to the real estate investments, even though I have a podcast, outrunning Failures, it's basically, I won't call it a failure, I would call it a feedback, I would call it, lessons learned. So with that being said, I know you involved in different, spectrum of real estate classes. Can you just pick one which has been the most challenging and how that has made you a better investor?

>> Robert Creamer:

Well, sure. We, was actually my first syndication deal. I came on the LP side. I've probably been in the business probably, seven years. Eight years at the time. Yeah, about seven, eight years. And it wasn't a huge deal. Small tertiary market outside DFW, I believe it was 26, 24 or 26 units and need a little bit of rehab, light rehab. It was a class C property. Rents were low. We thought we could increase the rents. now I knew how to evaluate multifamily. I, know what I need to look for in a property management, et cetera, et cetera. But being on the LP side, I didn't really have a voice and I didn't really have a say in what was going to take place. Course I, I, I reviewed their game plan before we bought the property. Everything sounded great. But on the LP side, not having the control, I slowly saw things that I didn't agree with, didn't like, but I couldn't change. For example, in this market, all the tenants paid cash. On the GP side they said we're not doing that anymore. Well, in this market that's kind of what was par for the course. It was norm. right. also two weeks after we closed, the former owner went back to the property and Told the tenants he would give them a 50% reduction in rent to move to another property. He had first two weeks. So we went from 100% occupied to like 35% occupied the first month.

>> Vish:

Wow.

>> Robert Creamer:

And we were probably gonna go after him, but then he had a heart attack. I mean it's just, ah, just you can't make this stuff up. Right. It's just all kinds of crazy. Now he's okay as well. But, going through the process, you know, if you, if you truly understand the metrics only let me back up. You need to make sure your general partner has, number one, done this before. If they haven't done it before, they have a partner who has and they understand the market mechanics and the economics. You can't go into a tertiary or small market with a classy property and low rents and change everything up. It's just not feasible. It's not going to work for the long run. I got out of the property, I took a 50 haircut on my investment. But luckily I think everyone else took a bigger haircut. So that was probably, that was the first eye opener as to my thought process and where I needed to be involved in order to make sure my investment was secure, safe and things were done properly. So I have not gone back on the LP side since I've been on the GP side only because I've been doing this a long time. Right. We know the ins and outs and we know what to look for. And you know, I get a lot of investors. One of the biggest things they have is I don't want to manage it. I need a third party property manager to help navigate this landscape. Well, like most of our industry as far as people were hunting for new sales opportunities. Insurance, real estate. Right. They're not dating you anymore. They got your business, they put on a show for the first 60 days, they look great. Redo your books, get maintenance done and then slowly but surely they stop paying attention and they go after other properties and other opportunities do the same thing to grow their business. But no one's really managing your property. Well. That's one of the biggest things I've seen on the property management side and where people get into obstacles because the property management company is not keeping their eye on the ball like they should because no one's going to care like the owner and the investors.

>> Vish:

Well, that is impressive, Robert, because it's not just you. Most of us have been through similar situations. But what I feel is what goes around comes around. like the previous Owner who went back to the tenants only to give them a further discount. So you don't need to take care of them, you don't need to go after them. I mean there's someone, someone above, somebody else will take care of it. So you told me he had a heart attack, but nobody wanted that. But that was, that is what he himself invited us. But we don't want to hurt anyone. We don't want to, anyone to feel bad about it. But that is whatever they put out, they get it back. That is their way of getting it. So that being said, now moving forward, how are you able to juggle between being a full time commercial real estate broker and investments? I know you're also, you also have a coaching program. I'm, I like your coaching program also. So how do you manage between all these things? And I also know you have a family and you're, you're a great, you're extremely disciplined and passionate about fitness and mindset also.

>> Robert Creamer:

Yeah, well, you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else, so.

>> Vish:

Right. Yeah, that's interesting.

>> Robert Creamer:

Yeah, it can be, it can be. like I said, I think I thrive a little bit in the chaos of knowing there's a lot of stuff going on at once. I manage it pretty well. On the flip side of that, you know, I went through, now I'm a single single parent of two kids and you know, I'm a hard charger. And one of the things you hear from a lot of these mentors that just work out, work everybody, right? Work harder. Like, oh, that doesn't work for most of the population. Once you pass your 20s and you have kids and families and life events, it's pretty tough to just go grind out 75, 85 hour work weeks. Right. That's just not really feasible anymore and you're going to get burnt out. So, you know, I wish I had started this sooner, but I realized that I'm not willing to work more hours in order to stack me to make more money and sacrifice time away from my family, my kids, that's just not possible. So the only way I can manage this is to get help. So right when you're, when you're either trying to make more money or buy back your time, you only have a couple options you can do. You need to raise your price point or instead of buying a 50 unit, try and find a way to buy a 400 unit complex or whatever that may look like. Or you need to hire Help on the back end, support. And so one of the things I've been implementing now is, getting involved with more virtual assistants. Because before I had, I had this mental block, right? This mental connotation like they can't do what I can do, they can't articulate what I want them to articulate. They can't lead generate for me. They're not as efficient, they're not as fast. Well, the reality is I don't need them to be me because no one's going to be me. No one's going to care. So I finally got over that mental hurdle and it's made a world of difference. I mean I have a, virtual assistant. All their job is to go out there and hunt leads for me. So like for Syndicate for Syndicators, they could just post up on every LinkedIn, every Instagram, every TikTok, every Facebook page talking about multifamily deals and go hit up everybody who has this, who has that, and they follow up. For me it's freed up so much time, it's crazy. So that's been probably the biggest win I've had lately on buying back my time because we only have a finite amount of time. Like I said, I'm not willing to spend less time with my kids in order to make more money.

>> Vish:

Well, that is so true, Robert, because not everybody thinks that way. Like what you're telling is I hear that all the time, work hard, work hard, work hard. But if that was the case, you and me know so many construction workers would have been billionaires by now. I mean the poor guys are out there in the heat and no matter the weather, they just grinding it there all day long. I mean, why aren't they billionaires? I mean they put in more work than any of us. Because, ah, what I figured out is like you, it's buying back your time is the most important thing. And I always wanted everything in control. But sometime back I realized, you know what? I can't do everything all the time. I can't be in all the places all the time. I mean now even if someone meets comes up to 60% of my expectations, I tell them do it because they're more passionate about it. So I might as well buy back my time. And being in real estate, you know all about leverage, right? That is what we do all day long now.

>> Robert Creamer:

Yeah.

>> Vish:

Now moving forward, what kind of teams have you set up in terms of your real estate broker and what is your specialization within real estate?

>> Robert Creamer:

Well, I don't specialize to me. like I told you before, I became a generalist during the 200809 crash, I need the money. And that transitioned well into coaching. And right now it's more of a, it's more of a deal size and clients I choose to work with versus let me just take everything on the multifamily only and kick everything away. I will say one thing I have specialized in over the last 18, 19 years is I found that being a broker, I was able to help residential real estate agents with the referrals and I've been specializing in that for 18 years now. I mean I go after the residential agents. Let me be your commercial arm. Let me handle the commercial opportunities for you. So you can just collect a paycheck and not get stressed out, not have commission dollars and stop lead generating on the rest of your stuff. Right. So, you know, but moving forward I'd like to get more into the development side. I want to get more into the development side and I'll probably get back into more syndication deal on the GP side. But I do love the development side. We're going down the path this first one, but I've seen the numbers and they look fantastic. So I'm all in right now.

>> Vish:

So isn't the building M, is it building going to be multifamily or triple net or what kind of.

>> Robert Creamer:

No, this will be five 20,000 square foot flex buildings, flexibility.

>> Vish:

Okay, that's interesting. And, and then so going, moving, moving ahead. So would this be for sale or would you be keeping it for yourself?

>> Robert Creamer:

You know, I'm not sure yet. If we get a great price tag and I have an opportunity where it makes sense to exit and flip it into a different product. Fantastic. But this will be the first one. Hopefully we can do about 5 in this market, which I think we can. I'm not sure what we'll do in the first one, but I know I'll keep at least one. So I want to keep at least one and cash out. Refi. Refi, cash out. And then just hold on to it. Yeah, because you know it's all about the passive income, right?

>> Vish:

Yeah, I mean at the end of the day it's all about the income because I have an acronym called. WRITE That is W R, I, T, E. It's you need to find, you need to have a Y. That is a W, which means you already have a Y because you very clearly told that you don't want to compromise spending time with Your family with your children. They're growing up. So you decided to have an army of, virtual assistants. And then, and then R is all about relationships. You need to have a fantastic relationship, which I see you already have. it because you have an army of residential real estate agents with who assist you in your business. And I is for income. We all need a passive income, right? Who doesn't need money? I mean, if someone doesn't need money, I'm willing to give my bank account number, tell them to transfer it, and then T is for time. You all need time, right? nobody's going to complain. I have too much time. In fact, people say I don't have much time. So. Yeah, And E is for. What kind of, rooms are you, what kind of a table you want to sit, the environment, whom you associate with, with whom m you hang around. Like, I, tell people, if you want to build a, build a body, if you want to do muscle, if you want to have great body, you got to go to a gym. That is you. Not to a bar, right?

>> Robert Creamer:

That is true. That's a good acronym. I like that.

>> Vish:

Yeah. So, yeah, you can take it. And I tell people use it all day long that are applicable to anybody and everybody all the time. And.

>> Robert Creamer:

Well, a lot of it, like you were talking about earlier, I mean, a lot of it is the mindset, though, because I mean, being an entrepreneur and going through some of these struggles, I mean, sometimes it feels like quicksand. It doesn't matter what you do, how much time you spend on it, what the economy is doing, the election, right. Who knows? But sometimes you just get in this rut or whatever's happening. It just seems like it keeps compounding and you can't get the win. And that's when people quit, right? If you don't quit and you're actually getting into action, you will succeed as long as you can hang in there, right? And I heard some along. I forgot who said it, but someone had a quote. It said, you know, don't sweat the small stuff. And guess what? It's all small stuff. It's all in the grand scheme of things. It's all small stuff. So stop sweating it. Just understand this is part of the deal. Find a way around it, navigate around it. And that is one of the great things. I don't care if you're in real estate, if you're an investor, if you're a general contractor, insurance broker, lender, everyone can hire help around them to help with transaction management, management, social media, Management. Because I don't know about you. I, you know, I love what social media can do, but I have zero interest in living on social media. I don't want to look at my phone all day. I don't want to scroll and make sure I'm commenting and posting five times a day. So my brain gets out there. I need other people to help with that. Right. So everybody in our space in sales needs support and the quicker they can get it, their life becomes easier.

>> Vish:

Well, that is so true, Robert. it all comes down to your discipline and consistency. Because it's like if you see most of the drug dealers are not drug addicts. Somebody else, because they're disciplined, they are very focused on the business.

>> Robert Creamer:

It's a weird analogy, but yes. Yeah.

>> Vish:

So it is, it is a fact because people say, how come they're not addicted? Because their focus is something else. They're disciplined. Their focus is making money. That's it. At the end of the day. Right. And then, and like, don't sweat the small stuff. That is so true. Because, and people quit. The first thought of the pain, first, first thought of the, falling down, first thought of stress, first thought of not somebody not answering the call. And first thought of getting a lawyer sending you a letter. Because at the end of the day I tell people, man, you go to a gym, what do you get first? You become stronger or you get pain? What do you get?

>> Robert Creamer:

You get pain.

>> Vish:

You get pain so that you get pain before you get stronger, right?

>> Robert Creamer:

Yeah. If you don't believe that, just don't go to the gym for a year, then go do squats.

>> Vish:

Yeah. That's all. Or watch TV and read books and you might get stronger.

>> Robert Creamer:

Right. it's a, you know, entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.

>> Vish:

No, definitely not. Definitely. And you only get better. I mean, the problem is another way of testing you to see how creative you are, whether you're in it for the long term or just, you're going to just turn and run away. And so that, so what is it, for the next one year? What do you have anything big coming up or do you have anything planned?

>> Robert Creamer:

I mean, this development deal will probably be the next one. we've had such success also with, using virtual assistants. And I can see the benefit and how it can help entrepreneurs because we see a lot of entrepreneurs fail. I've coached a lot of people and the lack of them getting into action or focusing on the wrong thing and wasting too much time is mind boggling. I Mean, I, I can't even express how many times I've had the same conversation. so I'm actually helping them get more VAs because I think it's such a powerful thing and I think it's an only increase. So I've actually started helping Sphere, rocket, get more people who need their services because it's been such a big help for us. So the development and that is probably going to be the biggest things. And I'll pick and choose what else. I want to work on the brokerage side. we have one project I brought someone on with zero real estate experience. We're basically doing a mini documentary on six figures in six months with them going from zero experience to six figures. but yeah, lots going on. Need to go on a few vacations, you know, spend time with the kids. My kids are into soccer now, so it's soccer dad all weekend. That's probably, that's probably the two biggest things. I mean, you know, the real estate markets all. It's been a little bit weird for the last 12, 18, months. everyone's kind of the economics of the economy and the election, interest rates, it's all kind of factored into a little bit of a strange environment, but it's easing up a little bit and I think it will after the election regardless of what happens. So I think we will see a lot more activity moving forward. I mean we have 22 million under contract right now. but you know, it's been a little bit of a up and down battle last 12 months, but we're coming back.

>> Vish:

Well, you have a lot going on. So being in coaching, what do you think is one thing, holding back people because you are a big believer of mindset, and education. And what I found is, Okay, I want you to answer that. I can tell you my answer. So what do you think? Why people don't succeed? Because they have the mindset, they have the right education. What is that one thing, why they don't succeed?

>> Robert Creamer:

Well, it's almost always getting into action, right? I mean, almost always. I mean, because I tell, I beat into people's head, it's educate, Legion, follow up. Those are the only three things that matter. Educate on what you're selling, why you're selling it, who the buyers are, who the sellers are, what our industry is doing, what are the asset classes. What is multifamily syndication, right? You have to educate yourself on the, the foundational level before you go to the market. Then you got to lead, generate. And you got to follow up like a machine, right? I, I just pound that in people's head. The problem is they don't want to work that hard. Everyone wants that magic pill. They want the get rich quick, get rich quick opportunity. Right? And that just doesn't exist. I mean, you know, success looks a lot like hard work. And unfortunately, when people start getting a lot of no's, you know, if I told them, hey, I don't want you to kill yourself, but go talk to five people a day. Five people a day. And ask for new business. That's right. 25 a week, a hundred a month, 1200 a year. If you have, if you add 1200 people to your database and you follow up with them once a month via automation, I mean, the chances of failing are almost zero.

>> Vish:

Just five people. Five.

>> Robert Creamer:

Just five people a day. I'm not talking, you know, and the phone's like, you need to make a hundred calls a day. I'm like, I'm not doing that. I'll go crazy. Right. But the problem is people hear five no's. They get distracted. They get busy with their busy work, but they're not doing the productive things that are going to make them money. They're not focused on the 20% that educate Legion follow up. They focused on God knows what. But it's, it's the same conversation I have weekly. And it's sad.

>> Vish:

It's, so easy. And I remember you telling, it's all in the follow up. It's all in the follow up. You could have everything. If you don't follow up, you're not going to get too far.

>> Robert Creamer:

Well, the problem is, if you're in our world, we all get hit up a lot by a lot of people, right? Right. If I get hit by insurance, you'd have the best product I've ever heard. It could save my clients and me a lot of money. If I don't hear from them again, I'm gonna forget his name. I will not remember who that was. I. He just lost the opportunity because his job was failing to get in front of me more frequently. And that's our job. When people go, even on the residential side, lending, oh, they use someone else. Guess who's faulted? That's your fault. Because you did not either show your value or get in front of the minute.

>> Vish:

Right? Well, that is so true. And especially if you have the money, you have all the choices. Why would I need to go in search of somebody else? I'll just go with who's following up with me all day long, so. Yeah, that is so true. So Robert, how can people reach you in case if they want to know more about your new build and your commercial real estate brokerage.

>> Robert Creamer:

Yeah, I'd like to. I think we're going to start. I'll probably do a little mini docu series as well on what we're doing. I mean we've already had some ups and downs. We, we found a gravestone on the, on the land already. So. Right. It's been, it's been, it's been a journey. Right. I can talk about that more another time. But it's been all kinds of fun so I can't wait to kind of talk about it. We'll probably do like a weekly check in. Like this is what happened this week. This is the struggle, this is the win. This is what we're doing to overcome it. Blah blah blah. yeah, but they want to reach me. they can just email me. C R E A m e r@7s life or heck, they can even text me. I don't really. 214-564-8909 that's my cell phone. They can find me on all the social media. Robert Creamer. yeah, happy to talk real estate syndication if you'll need a va. Everybody needs a va. actually one thing, one thing I found that was an eye opener. I didn't know until I did it was the discovery call for VA is free. Right. So, but one thing they do for you because most people don't know if they need one, if they're ready for one, if they can afford one. I don't need a va. But one thing they do that's nice is if you call, they basically ask you questions about your business and they will tell you this is where you have a shortfall. This is what you need to do in order to get a va. You don't need a va actually you need to. They tell you based on what your business looks like, how many leads you have, your sales volume. They basically do a business analysis for free and tell you where your gaps are. Now whether you go with the VA or hire an executive assistant or inside salesperson or whatever it is, most people don't know how to evaluate that because we're, we're so stuck on doing the day to day operation that we feel like we need to ourselves. We don't see where we have a, where we have a hole or a gap because if you take the disc profile Test or any of those tests they spit out, it'll tell you what your basic superpower is. Right. Like this is my superpower and I'm not good at. Over here. I need help over here. That's where you need help. Yeah.

>> Vish:

Well that is so true. Most of us, including me, I think I don't need a va. But certain parts of my business I like to outsource. Like I don't want to learn how to edit a video because I know it is easy, but that is time consuming and I don't want to put in that time. So I'd rather outsource that part. So that way I'm slowly getting there and one by one. So I want to buy back my time. And thank you for putting more emphasis on that outsourcing. And that is interesting. And Robert, can you tell us a little more quickly about what is7s.com?

>> Robert Creamer:

Well, that's just our website. I mean we haven't changed names much over the last 19 years, but we wanted to have a shift. There was a reason for it. But I'm not going to go into it. Nothing on my side or anything. It was due to third party. But we it's hard finding an LLC name that is free and the website's free. Right. So seven, Streams commercial group is what we called it and kind of the name behind it or the, the average millionaire has seven streams of income. And so we call the 7s 7 streams real estate because we want people to have passive income and multi streams of income so we can all travel to bora Bora for two weeks and our business is running just fine. RVAs are taking care of our business. I can enjoy it and not be on the phone all the time. So seven streams of income.

>> Vish:

Well, absolutely nothing wrong with it. Having the more streams the better, right?

>> Robert Creamer:

Absolutely. And then having someone to manage it. Right.

>> Vish:

Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's a win, win. You're providing employment for somebody else. I mean it's not free. I mean they, they, they like what they're doing and they get paid for what they're doing. And you're, you're the one who's creating the opportunity for them.

>> Robert Creamer:

So you got it.

>> Vish:

There's absolutely nothing wrong about it. So Robert, finally, I think what I figured out is in the journey of investing in life, failures are nothing but stepping stones. And like you found a grave, graveyard grave on your site that is just a stepping stone. You clear that and deal with it and move on. You're not going to stop the construction, right?

>> Robert Creamer:

Well, it's only a stepping stone. If you don't get stressed out, don't quit. Learn from it, make the shift and adapt. Right.

>> Vish:

Find a way around. Find a way around. Go around it, go next to it, go under it, go over it.

>> Robert Creamer:

Yes, but you'd be surprised how many people don't.

>> Vish:

Right? There's no I tell people, listen, if you're set to go on a 200 mile drive, if there is an accident at mile 50 or a road closure, are you going to turn around and go back or are you going to find a way to go past it? So it depends on the motivation at the end of the day. I mean it depends what you want to do. So I tell people, listen, it's just a stepping stones man. Just get past it and don't ever stop chasing your dreams. So that's what I feel. So anyhow, thanks Robert. It was great having you here.

>> Robert Creamer:

Anytime.