Longevity and sticking with it is one of those skills that comes back to serve you in spades! On this show, we talk with Chris Freeman to tackle some tough questions, including:
• What skills have you leveraged into your investing from the W-2 world?
• Why not leave your W-2?
• Where is your spouse's opinion on your massive action here?
• What are some systems & criteria you use to deploy any active capital into passive?
• What would you say is your talent and how did you leverage that to success?
Chris is an experienced real estate investor with $20M in assets under management. His 20 years of real estate investment has focused exclusively on multifamily apartment buildings that can generate immediate cash flow. Over 26 years, he has been fortunate to experience financial success through high-tech sales and sales leadership.
Working with companies like Juniper Networks, CIENA, Lucent, and Citrix, he has learned how to achieve a high level of performance in sales while re-deploying a portion of his commissions into cash flow generating real estate. Through a consistent process over time, Chris has created enough passive income to replace his high-tech sales income. This success had inspired Chris to create High Tech Freedom Capital and help his peers achieve their own personal success.
Learn more about Chris and his business by visiting his website at https://hightechfreedom.com/. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn and on Facebook. Please check out his podcast channel and listen in High Tech Freedom.
If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!
If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook
Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift
If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!
If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook
Longevity and sticking with it is one of those skills that comes back to serve you in spades! On this show, we talk with Chris Freeman to tackle some tough questions, including:
• What skills have you leveraged into your investing from the W-2 world?
• Why not leave your W-2?
• Where is your spouse's opinion on your massive action here?
• What are some systems & criteria you use to deploy any active capital into passive?
• What would you say is your talent and how did you leverage that to success?
Chris is an experienced real estate investor with $20M in assets under management. His 20 years of real estate investment has focused exclusively on multifamily apartment buildings that can generate immediate cash flow. Over 26 years, he has been fortunate to experience financial success through high-tech sales and sales leadership.
Working with companies like Juniper Networks, CIENA, Lucent, and Citrix, he has learned how to achieve a high level of performance in sales while re-deploying a portion of his commissions into cash flow generating real estate. Through a consistent process over time, Chris has created enough passive income to replace his high-tech sales income. This success had inspired Chris to create High Tech Freedom Capital and help his peers achieve their own personal success.
Learn more about Chris and his business by visiting his website at https://hightechfreedom.com/. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn and on Facebook. Please check out his podcast channel and listen in High Tech Freedom.
If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!
If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook
Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift
If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!
If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook
Hello, everyone and welcome to the Elevate your equity podcast where we as passive investors invest with a special emphasis on married professional couples. We'd like to deconstruct first class investors and entrepreneurs that achieve reputable long lasting and practical change. And move towards a life of time, location and financial freedom. And today we've got an awesome guest on the show. We've got Mr. Chris Freeman. Chris is our has over 25 years of career experience in high tech sales and sales leadership. And Chris actively invested the multifamily real estate for about 20 years with the buy and hold strategy focused in the Pacific Northwest. And in an effort to share his experience with other high tech sales professionals he founded high tech freedom and high tech freedom is helping high tech sales professionals create passive income in real estate while crushing their sales quota. Chris, it is a pleasure to have you on how are you today?
Chris Freeman:Oh, I'm great. Thank you, Derek. And I really appreciate appreciate you having me on today.
Derek Clifford:Absolutely. So let's start at the beginning. I like to get a little bit of a quick synopsis of how you found yourself in the real estate realm. Many many years ago.
Chris Freeman:Sure. Yeah. So it really for me it started back in. You know, when I had my first real tech job where I started to make some money. I had, I had this inkling of an idea that I think maybe I want to get into real estate but I didn't really know what that meant. So I ended up I bought a duplex and moved into half of it. But at that time, you know this is really pre.com Bubble I started really investing pretty heavily into my 401k into tech stocks and back then I worked for a company that they would all the companies were doing matching but this particular company would give you if you took your matching company stock that almost double the matching and as like well this is great because the stock is going up and I'm crushing it you know the returns are fantastic. So I'll do that. And then I also like I said I had heavily invested in a bunch of tech stocks as well. So I definitely had an unbalanced portfolio and then you know the.com bubble burst, and I watched my stock portfolio crater and I watched my 401k Crater but just right about that same time I had met my future real estate partner and I was in my duplex and we were talking about maybe investing in other properties and he had he was 30 years older than me, and he had already built up a portfolio had been working in the real estate space the multifamily investing space for well over 30 years, and in fact had buildings here in the Pacific Northwest that he bought, I mean for ridiculous low prices, you know, had totally paid off and I watched him during that recession not be impacted in any way. He was still making incredible cash flow while all of his well to do friends. Were really starting to cut back and all the things that they like to do right in the prime time of their life. Right not not eating, not going out to eat, not traveling, not doing their big international trips. And I'm watching him it's like nothing he wasn't impacted I realized you know, that's what I want. And so that's really when I started my journey of you know buying smaller units buying it holding it, let letting it cash flow, never taken a penny out, letting it letting the cash flow build up in the the account and then putting some more dollars into the account then go do it again. And I did that for 20 years and we've built up about a about 110 doors here in my backyard.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, congratulations for that. And I can tell I mean you're kind of mentioned it in passing as if it was something Oh, you know, just you know, 20 years later. Now we are I know that there's a lot of blood sweat and tears that goes behind a 20 year career in investing in real estate you've gone through probably after the 80s but obviously you went through the 2000 The 2008 meltdown, right maybe got it got started in 2000 or the 2090 99 crash. So what I wanted to ask you is that's it, that's quite a long career to to be continually investing in real estate. And I wanted to ask you, how were you able to stick with it and why were you willing to stick with it?
Chris Freeman:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, there were some challenges and there were some times when, you know, if you didn't have a longer term focus or another reason why you were doing it where it would have been really easy to say I'm done because problems have happened. I mean anything from you know, people pass away. You get to calls during the holidays, you know, maybe you have a fire, there's just some really tough challenging times that if you aren't thinking about why I'm doing this, and I'll get through this, I'll put my head down and just focus on the next step. Because you know that five years from now 10 years from now you're working towards a bigger goal. You wouldn't get through it if you didn't have that that vision and that wide for me, you know, because you're probably going to ask the question, right. My goal from day one had always been to build up 300 units that were totally paid off. And that would generate more cash flow than we would ever need to kind of fund and fuel the things we want to do as a family the things we want to do on a charitable basis and create a legacy, you know, for the next generation. And, you know, why do we need that money? Well, I you know, I wanted to be able to be in a scenario where if my kids are teenagers now, if they decide that they don't want to live in Portland and they want to go live in California, or in Texas, or in Colorado, wherever I wanted the family, my wife and I to have the flexibility to say great, we'll go hunker down in their town for a month and rent a place and go to their soccer games go to their school plays and be able to maintain that relationship because my kids grew up a block and a half away from their grandparents. It was just really neat to see that relationship that they had versus me. I was always hours away from my grandparents and you'd see him two three times a year and that was it. I want to be able to I want to be able to create the freedom to do that.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, no, that's great. I think having that big Y allows the how to get legs right and I think that that's incredible that you came at it with that such a you know, very long long term vision, which is great. Let's pivot just a little bit. I want to talk more about how you proudly call yourself a W two employee right now. You're in tech sales, from what I understand and you have your own podcast and you've been investing passively and also actively from what I've been hearing also, from the last 20 years a combination on and off. Let's talk about your systems and your criteria because when you are a high tech sales employee, you have demanding hours or demanding times it comes in like seasons from what I understand it's really busy and then sometimes it slows down a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about how you set your systems up so that when active money comes in, you're saving some and then investing some passively. How do you think through that? Do you have a system process criteria
Chris Freeman:in terms of like my my income that comes in and how I redirect that?
Derek Clifford:Yes. How you how you decide what goes where?
Chris Freeman:Yeah, you know, I really for me, it starts with I need to have a an emergency fund. And for me that emergency fund is it's a year of living. So basically being able to replace my salary whatever that we decide that what that number should be and have that as an emergency fund. And then beyond that, it's if I have extra extra funds I'm finding ways to get that redeploy period. And I'm not looking to what I've learned over time was the sooner I can get that redeployed into something that's an investment the less of a chance I have or the family has of buying something they really don't need, right I mean, it's there's always the want but you know I find that if you force the scarcity by investing it in something, you save a bunch of money and ended up making a bunch of money along the way.
Derek Clifford:And you give some advice to those who maybe want to do the same thing but their spouse has been either protesting or maybe has some doubts about how how this is supposed to be improving our lives when all this money coming in. It's just going out like a vacuum cleaner.
Chris Freeman:Yeah, you mean in terms of when it goes out for investment purposes? Yes, sir. Yeah, I mean, it's hard. It's hard if you're not on the same page and my wife and I are definitely are not on the same page. At times. But we definitely are on the same page when it comes to the long term vision and the long term plan. And so everyone's thought we'll just come back around that Yeah. Are we Is this still what we're shooting for? Is it is still important to us. And then also having a win along the way. Helps, right? Because now I mean, we're at the point now where we have great cash flow coming in from the assets and that's actually freed up the opportunity to wow, you know what, maybe we'll go splurge on this item here. Or Yes, I know, my daughter, my son want to go get this item that I'm not really excited about but fine, you know, they've worked hard. They've got good grades, we'll go ahead and do it. So getting a few wins along the way, and then also just being clear that, hey, we're taking this win. And we're gonna use some of that for some fun stuff. And calling out the fact that here's how we got to that point, and we worked hard over 234 years to get here, invested in that debt paid off. This and now we can go have some fun with it. I
Derek Clifford:love the fact that you are calling out the time to celebrate what your debt what you've done with this money, right? Um, there's a trap that a lot of my fellow entrepreneurial friends fall into where we just keep working and working and working and never celebrate anything. And it wasn't until we spoke with our coaches about how important it is for you to take and consolidate those wins and then wrap a bow on it and go out and do something right like in you know, memorialize it somehow right go out there and actually get that so that that way your brain is craving a proper reward. And it also contributes to balance right in the in the work family life as well. You know, when you have all these great things to look forward to in your in your accomplishing and you're moving, and it's all about the incremental change. So I think that that's really, really important. So I want to make sure that that doesn't get overlooked there.
Chris Freeman:Yeah, that's uh, I'm glad you picked up on that. It's actually sorry, you know, like a lot of people I'm in my 2022 goal setting process and pretty much have those done it's really a matter of just transcribing them, you know, in a neat way back into my planner but I use a planner that has, you know, section for goals, has a section for you know, what are you what are three or three to five things you can do right now to go hit those goals, or at least to get started and then there actually is a field there. How are you going to celebrate when you hit this because that I wasn't good at that early in my career. I would just head down, grind it out and keep working great. I hit it onto the next one. But it is one thing that I've learned to do better over time, which was to identify how will I celebrate you know, or how will I make it fun when we hit it?
Derek Clifford:Yeah, I love it. Okay, I want to pivot just a little bit more and go back to when you were actively investing early on in the career. Yeah, when you're when you're actively investing. There must have been a point where either you were looking at mentors or watching what other people were doing and realize that man you know, I've got a full time job. I don't need another job. I don't need to be self managing. I don't need any of this. Maybe I should try passive investing. Can you talk to me a little bit about what your thought process was with that switch? And when you realize that that was a potential avenue I
Chris Freeman:mean, the passive investing or moving to active Yeah,
Derek Clifford:moving from active to passive or at least you know, mixing the two.
Chris Freeman:Yeah, um, well I've always been active with all my assets. But at the same time, I've definitely I've taken some of my self directed IRA funds and have moved those into some passive investments, you know, because I can't be active in those and down the road, because it is a job right? And so what I'm doing right now is it's, you know, it's like a second job side house or whatever you want to call it keeps me pretty busy down the road. I would love the idea of being able to step back and start to take some of those returns from some of those active GP positions that I have, and move those into a limited LP position. And just let my money work and go have some fun and focus on some other things, or maybe give back and help other people that are on that same journey. But I'm not quite there. I'm still pretty active.
Derek Clifford:Sounds good. Well, let's talk about that then. Because really, what I want to do is I want to try to empower people to do exactly what you're doing right and start up, you know, while working the job and then try to actively find their way or passively into these investments. So when you were first starting out, I mean, obviously start small with the duplex right. But then you made the jump from these residential type multifamily properties into more commercial and you're doing this while working. So what what tips do you have for people who are just starting out, trying to walk that tightrope and get going there? Yeah, I
Chris Freeman:definitely. Pretty much out of the gate. I had a partner and I would not recommend if you're gonna try to do it. You may think you're saving money you may feel like you don't want to give up control. But you know, that's sort of a scarcity mindset, which I definitely sometimes have. But having that partner there will provide you a backstop, it provides risk mitigation, there may be a time where in your W two job, you get so busy you just have you have to show up, you have a deadline, you have to do something and that guess what, that's when you're gonna have a problem in your real estate asset. Well, if you have a partner, they can backstop you and step in. You can sleep at night, and that's been that's been huge for me. The other piece that I will look at is as we started to scale, we were self managing everything. Well, at some point, you know, when we started to get 7080 units, you know, 200 units, it we were taking care of it, but one we could do better at it, how we manage it to we had no ability to scale because we were trying to do everything and you know, three, it's you know, it's there's personal my personal time has been impacted. So don't be afraid to look at third party services, property management services, that's gonna cost you a little bit of money, but if you can step back and save $1 to go make $10 Isn't that worth it?
Derek Clifford:Yeah, yeah. Great, great point there. Um, when you were back in back in there, starting to build up and build, get some scale right and start to move into this. You know, lean into it full all the way. What advice do you have for people selecting the right partner? Because I know that there's like a trial period and, you know, you're working with someone for a little bit. You know, what kind of things do you look at when you're looking for your partner?
Chris Freeman:Yeah. I've always looked for people that were totally different you have two people that are totally the same. You just agree. For me, I'm a salesperson. If I have two people that are excited, you know, salespeople are like the easiest people to sell to. So I look at a deal. I'm like, that's great. And my partner would, you know, he would always shut it down. And then that's like, alright, that's fine. And then eventually he would come back around and maybe the price change done a deal, maybe it came back to market, whatever and then he warmed up to it and you know, we were good, a good a good pair because of the differences. It he he liked to do certain things like he loved the maintenance. He liked dealing with going to Home Depot and looking at, you know, the plans to turn a unit. And yeah, I personally don't like I just have my daughter paint this weekend as I'm so bad at this. But I like the marketing piece. I liked working with the actual tenants themselves. I like doing the leases and meeting just a variety of people that came through and in some cases, you know, helping people out he did not want to talk to a tenant. And so finding those opposites can be really powerful and then figuring out a way to establish trust. And I think each individual I think this is really important is you also have to learn to let go of some things. It's just not going to be the way you want it to be. It's not going to be done the way you want to do it. And you have to be willing to let go of some of the little things to achieve the big things.
Derek Clifford:Very well said Um, let me ask you, how were you? How were you able to find your partner and how do you advise people out there to find theirs?
Chris Freeman:Yeah, so I ended up so my partner ended up being my father in law. And so that's how I initially met him and I would look at people that have been doing this because it's with somebody like myself now now that I've been doing it for 20 years. I'm not necessarily looking for more partners, but just like my partner, he wanted to be busy. He wanted to be active. He wanted to keep his mind sharp, so he wasn't necessarily doing it for the money. He was doing it for the excitement of just staying active, right, looking at his friends that moved down to palm, palm springs to retire. He didn't want to do that he wanted to be able to produce and keep the mind sharp. And if you're going to meetups and you're going to networking events you're looking at other investors that are in your market, they're out there. You just have to connect and find a way that you can help solve what's important to them, you know, and I think for any partner, you may not bring everything to them but they are going to have a need and if you can figure out what that personal need is and then find ways to solve it, and then over deliver on how you solve it. You're going to get their attention.
Derek Clifford:I love that emphasis on over deliver and looking for value first and not going in saying we'd be my partner. We'd be my partner that doesn't It doesn't work that way. I think a lot of the dynamic and maybe you can comment on this and maybe it seems odd because with your father in law being a partner but would you would you say that you should treat when looking for a partner a lot like kind of a dating situation where you're kind of like, you know, feeling each other out throwing scenarios in front of each other and seeing how they react and I hate the dating world that I've it's been a long time since I've been there. But can you see the similarities there? And would you also agree that maybe that's how this should be treated?
Chris Freeman:Yeah, I don't know. I think that's definitely a scenario. I think sometimes you just maybe go do a smaller deal. And you use kind of see how each of you work together. We did like my father in law. We did not go into this thinking that we were going to be partners for 20 plus years. And it was all business. I mean, we were not working and talking about family stuff. I mean, it was always real estate Yeah. But I you know, I so he and I are not working really working together anymore. You know, he's older than I am. And I have a new partner that that I met through through the business. And you know, he's one of my partners tied to some of the syndication work that we're doing, but it how I found him it. Everything still applies. I found somebody that he was busy, he had a lot of deal flow. He couldn't raise all the capital for the deals that he was finding. So he was at times looking for capital raising partners. And as I was looking to get out of my backyard and get into other markets, you know, I had to I had to figure out what I didn't know about you're doing bigger deals. I hadn't syndicated before. And just like anybody that gets in this space, right, right. I got to get really good at talking to the brokers. I got to get really good at underwriting I need to get really good at capital raising and you know, guess what, you don't get good at doing any of them and so I said, Alright, well I need I need a partner. And I need to focus and so I instead of trying to talk to everybody because I definitely was on calls and networking with all these people. I picked one to two people that I felt like would be good potential partner targets and I you know I'm a sales guy came up with a plan, call them every week, send them text gave them updates on how I was doing with my capital raising network, asking them about the deals they're working on. Say hey, you know, can you mind if I share a couple of your deals as examples of what what I'm looking at as well to give my investor base you know, some insights into the markets that we're looking at. And so I really focused on an individual and right about the time where I was about ready to give up on the plan. Honestly, like the day he called me he's like, Hey, you want to join this deal I got going on and I was like, Alright, great. But I was intentional, very focused. And, you know, then I think more importantly, back to the comment about over delivering once I partnered up with him. I looked for areas where they were struggling just with the overall process, be it putting together a PowerPoint presentation, doing something in Google Docs and said, hey, I'll take it and then we go over deliver on it, you know, creating a video on how to do the subscription documents for the investors right, just walking them through it, where to click how to log in how to create your profile, and that's just all stuff that I took off his plate made it easier, with a goal of over delivering because either he or any other of the few people that run the GPU team. They could be future potential partners and so I wanted to set a good first impression.
Derek Clifford:The book by Cal Newport so good, they can't ignore you. comes to my mind right now. That's that's one book that you know, as you're talking, I remember going through a phase like this in my w two world where I was trying to add as much value as I could and I think you have a happy ending. Mine wasn't so happy with my w two, just because they didn't seem to recognize or care that it was going over and above. Right, in a real world of business, you know, outside of w two like this. I think that having business partners that are appreciative of your talents and skills and something that you quite frankly don't mind doing because it's your wheelhouse, right. I think that's that's really great as well. So finding that that overall match is fantastic so awesome. Well good stuff.
Chris Freeman:You might want to get caught me on that because I do I do feel there are a lot of people in W two jobs that do try to do just what you said and that was one thing that I learned later Mike right. I didn't do this, but my focus was go over deliver put your head down, grind it out, let the results speak for themselves. But one of the things that I learned about about 15 years into my career was you actually have to go tell people what you're doing. You kind of have to promote some of the great work you've done otherwise, they just might not know it. And that's definitely helped me a little bit over over the years.
Derek Clifford:That is great advice for WT folks because you know I was trained as an engineer. So it wasn't my forte to be out there and communicating and talking with people about the things that I've done. It was more to let the results speak for themselves. And as you might imagine, that is very different in the multifamily world than then then you know the WTO or at least what used to work for me in the engineering world doesn't apply right now. Right. So let's, let's let's change gears a little bit more because now you have this thriving business, right? You've got multiple partners or you've moved through some partners. Now you're helping to place capital and doing some of the operational stuff on the accounting or, you know, presentation side administrative side. Um, what advice do you have for those folks who are maybe looking to do the same thing there? And this part two to this is what was happening at home while you were kind of making this transition like was there a sense of balance?
Chris Freeman:Yeah, well, the balance piece I mean, I've always worked hard at that. I like to work and so sometimes, you know, I've got to pull myself back a little bit. Christmas was a great example, right? We just had just had the holidays. I felt myself itching to go jump on the iPhone and see what was going on. And, you know, I check in to see what investors had followed up with me but you have to you have to put that as a goal and a priority. So I'm always working on that. To your to your other question. What advice would you say in terms of getting into larger real estate deals or just getting started?
Derek Clifford:I would say getting into larger real estate deals if they've had the experience that you've had in working with the potential partner on some smaller ones or maybe have already have experience in smaller multifamily themselves and looking to get into like the general partnership role.
Chris Freeman:Yeah, I'm a big fan of go do an LP investment first, even if it's with maybe a potential partner that you might want to work with down the road. I know lots of stories of sponsors that have brought on a partner that was a previous investor because you do get to know him a little bit over time. And there's, you know, there's you have a multi year relationship, sometimes with an investment. You know, there's an opportunity to build some rapport and get to know both sides of the party.
Derek Clifford:Absolutely. I think that's incredible advice. Let me ask you to as you're working your W two it seems to me to be pretty obvious, but I just wanted to make sure that I wrap this up with a bow as well. Right What is the I mean everyone has a talent everyone has like these these natural innate gifts or these abilities that that you can easily use to kind of swing your momentum into the multifamily space because there's so much to do, right? So much value that needs to be added and there's so many different roles that can be fulfilled. Um, what was yours? And how did you bring that into the multifamily space?
Chris Freeman:Yeah, well, definitely. I from a sales perspective, I've always been very organized. Always very organized with my funnel, my pipeline, your forecast and so coming into the multifamily space when I was looking at properties or looking at brokers or looking at you know, even investors just being very organized and that that helps. Then not clearly the marketing marketing and sales side right I get, I'm very goal centric, and I get very excited and you know, I like I like deals and I like I really, I really have always been passionate about the delivery of what it is that we said we're going to do, actually delivering the outcomes of that. And, you know, building happy customers, you know, that's the truly successful salespeople. Out there out there are the ones that generate multiple sales with their clients because they've delivered value the first time around, and it's no different in the real estate business when you're raising capital and doing a syndication is if you can go deliver and take care of your clients communicate well find out what what it is that they're trying to achieve, what are their dreams and goals and, you know, either bring them the deal or don't bring him the deal because it's not a good fit for him. You'll be successful and so I definitely bring that to the real estate business from my sales career.
Derek Clifford:How do you keep yourself organized with all of this, you said that you're very organized with your funnel and your pipeline? Can you give us a little bit of a glimpse behind the scenes to understand a little bit more about how you track all this and what you do to keep yourself organized?
Chris Freeman:Sure, yeah. So I've been I've been a heavier user of Evernote so just taking off trying to take all my notes in Evernote and keep a pretty logical file structure there. I keep a I use paper, I have a notebook that I take and kind of write down tasks. So if we're having a conversation and I need to go do something, I'll write that down. And then at the end of the day or the beginning of the next day, I dump in swipe all up sorry, swipe all of those two dues into my To Do app. And then every day when I sit down and I look at the day, I've got my three big things I need to get done for the day, which should align with the three big things that I need to get done for the week. And then I have some subtasks that I want to try to tackle but the big three the most important and if I get them done well great I go to my To Do app and I start to you know I've got a few key categories and start to tick some of those off if I if I have some downtime. I try to simplify it you know i It's I can catch myself moving into spreadsheets and next thing you know I've got spreadsheets in Google Sheets all over the place and those are actually a little bit harder to track. And then you know CRM has been fantastic so I've got both active campaign and I use Zoho and then Salesforce for my w two job. To track the contacts track the next steps track the the follow up. Put the notes in there diligently so I can remember what we talked about when we talked about it. Pre schedule that follow up call if if appropriate.
Derek Clifford:And if you don't mind me asking the time that you set aside to figure out what you're going to do each day. When does that happen? And how regularly does that happen? Oh, yeah,
Chris Freeman:every day every morning. So you get a 530 walk, get my coffee, walk the dog, do my reading. Spend a little bit of time journaling and then I break open the calendar and I've already mapped out the week so I have that more or less mapped out but then mapping out the day. Start by filling in the calendar. Start thinking about okay, well I have some big tasks that I want to do. That's great that I have them where do I want to put those into the calendar? Even like today is like alright, well, I know I have this session scheduled. Let me make sure I carve out a little bit of time to get organized and prepare and just being very intentional about that. And then you know, I take a quick look in the morning at this week at a glance to see okay, I know I'm gonna have a few things coming up later in the week. How do I want to slot those in? What can wait what's the priority? What What can wait and what can't wait?
Derek Clifford:As I was listening to you talk Chris I hear the word intentionality. And I hear that getting spread out everywhere and everything that you're doing, you're very intentional about what you intend to do. As far as intention goes when you are planning out your day, do you have like a theme? How do you break out like what is it you want to do for your day? Like is there a theme? Or is it just kind of do Do you let do let the the waves of the day kind of go or do you have like a weekly goal and a monthly goal and a yearly goal that you break down into it or tell us a little bit about how you set your goals there?
Chris Freeman:Yeah, no, it's it's a great it's a great question because it's not hard to be busy. I mean, if you're a busy person, you're gonna be busy, but you can be busy doing the wrong things. And so, I definitely when I'm creating my I don't really do monthly goals, but when I'm creating my weekly big three, usually those should tie back into my annual or quarterly goals. And then as I'm working on my daily, big three, those they don't always tie back into the weekly there might be something that's just urgent that came up that I have to go tackle. One of the things that I do try it out of the out of my three big priorities for the day. I always try to make one of those revenue generating. If I'm not generating revenue, if I'm not creating pipeline if I'm not finding ways to grow, I'm not delivering, you know, and then there's other things that just you know, tasks that need to get done. But that's you always have to have a revenue generating task is one of your top priorities.
Derek Clifford:So let's just dig into this. I know that we're getting close to the end of the show, but I just want to make sure that I'm understanding this correctly, because this is actually pretty selfish, that I'm because I'm curious and I'm asking these questions, and hopefully the audience is along for the ride here on this. But what does this mechanically look like? Do you have your yearly goals posted up on the wall and you're literally looking at them while you're doing your Sunday goal setting and then every day? So tell us a little bit about how that works mechanically Yeah,
Chris Freeman:actually, I use a planner. It's called the full focus planner. It's Michael Hyatt. And I'll just probably can't really see here cuz I've got my background, but in the very beginning, there's a section called annual goals. And so I have those there. And then in my journal, I also have kind of my affirmation section where I go and read beyond the one year write the big things that I want to accomplish in life. I read those every single morning. But as I'm creating my week, I can go back and look at the annual goals and say okay, let me just take a quick look and make sure that my week is you know, it's never perfect right? They may not align this week may not align to any of the annual goals but let me just see if there's something that I can make as a priority for the week that does and then as I'm going to my day I've got a I can flip back to pages to my week planner and say right here my big three for my week. Let me just make sure how am I progressing on these because next thing you know, it can be Wednesday and I forgot about my big three for the week, because I'm so sucked into the day. And it just keeps me grounded. You know, having to go back and take a quick look at the week plan. As I'm looking at my daily plan. Yeah,
Derek Clifford:that's that's one of the things that's why I want to ask you about this because I have you know, whenever we go into the year setting the 2022 goals which we're in the middle of as well. So you and I are kind of on the same wavelength here. I always say you know, I'm gonna have these great goals for the year. But then you know, you have your goal sheet and they either get put away in Google Drive somewhere or they're literally on a piece of paper somewhere sitting on I don't know a dresser. That's that that doesn't get looked at. And so that's why I'm so curious about how you're able to keep those annual goals in focus. You know, in, in the in the brain the whole throughout the whole year so that way you're truly truly setting goals and accomplishing them or resetting them if you've already if you hit them early, like if you hit them in q2, then it's time for you to reset your yearly goal. Right,
Chris Freeman:right. Yeah. Well, so I'm actually working on a single podcast episode, just a short is part of my high tech Freedom podcast, an episode on goal setting. And I think one of the things that I've struggled I struggled with and I've seen other people struggle with as well as they set too many goals, and then they don't achieve them and they feel like crap, and then they dread having to set them up again, there is something exciting about doing the process, but then you know, you know deep down inside whether or not you're actually hitting any of them. I recommend just set one big one for the year. Right. So I had a few last year. But what the one that I'm really the most proud of I had a goal and a little self centered here but I had a goal of doing 30,000 Push ups for the year. And it was just purely for health purely for core strength. But to me that was a pretty big goal. And that, you know, I shortened last year my goals down because also you know the pandemic kind of made things crazy. I really only had about three to four last year that I put any emphasis on and that was one of them. And it just helped me focus and get back to getting more wins to now where I'm ramped. up my list back to 10 for 2022
Derek Clifford:says great advice. I love this. This is awesome. And I really wish that we could continue to talk about this all day but I don't I don't want to hold you for the afternoon because I know that it's the it's still the holiday season. We still had plenty of planning and lots of other things to do and this has been excellent so far. So thank you so much for your welcome, my pleasure, great content. But let's go ahead and head into the Rapid Round, which is the same five questions that we asked all of our guests. I'm going to go ahead and answer ask them to you and there should be answered in about a 32nd duration or so if possible. So we'll start with number one. If you are ready. I'm ready. I've never had anyone say no, I'm not ready and then but anyway, number one, what book has had the biggest impact on you and why outside of Rich Dad Poor Dad or the Bible because we get them all the time?
Chris Freeman:Yeah, I've been I've been a really big fan of who not how and I especially coming from you know the technology sales world and you're an engineer you probably spend a lot of your time always asking yourself, How do we go address this? How do we do this? And it's been really it's been a big part of my scale is being able to step back and say okay, well who can help me with this? I don't necessarily have to be the one to do it. And I'm getting in the habit now of asking that every time I run into a challenge.
Derek Clifford:Absolutely. Yeah. And the the impact filter that Dan Sullivan, the author he provides helps you get clarity on how to distill how into who which is, which is super, super cool. I love love that book. By the way, Chris, while we're here. I know it's supposed to be a quick answer. But have you read his most recent one, which is the gap in the game?
Chris Freeman:It's on the list. Yeah, I heard him talking about it on a podcast. Sounds great.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, it's incredible. I highly recommend that you get that one. Well, you have it but I'd move it up the list. It's a really good one, especially for goal setting. It's fantastic. All right. Number two, if people wanted to emulate your success, what do you think right now is the first actionable thing that they could do to follow in your footsteps.
Chris Freeman:You know, get educated. It's hard to run forward in this business or any business without some initial level of education and if that is join a paid program, get a coach or maybe your Titan funds read a book, listen, no podcast, but definitely get educated and start surrounding yourself with other people. Because you'll start realizing that there's things out there that you weren't thinking about or asking yourself, you know, just by the nature of surrounding yourself with other people and hearing them talk so going to a virtual meetup in person meet up, join a paid program just get involved.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, excellent. Number three, what is one tool process or hack in the last three months that has helped you save time and or effort?
Chris Freeman:Well, I think marrying my my paper planner with my To Do app and just diligently doing that sweep every day of action items. Sometimes just moving it out of my to do list or out of my paper planner. Now I've got it there. I can not worry about it anymore because I can always come back around and find it.
Derek Clifford:I love that getting it out of your brain and into something that is out there so you don't have to constantly worry about that thing. It's something that once I learned it was it was a game changer for me. So thank you for sharing that. You're welcome. Number four, if the people you know had to describe you with one word, what would that be?
Chris Freeman:I don't even know if I could pretend I don't know I think people have their they have their own self view. That's different. Than what everybody thinks so I would say driven
Derek Clifford:I think so. That's great. I was gonna go with the organizer intentional, but I don't know that people that you know, so. I'm glad that you came up with that one. I think that's that's very fitting to number five what small thing do most people not know about you?
Chris Freeman:You're gonna ask that and I sort of spaced on the answer. It was I think most people don't know that. You know, a lot of people didn't know that I was in real estate for a long time. You know, in my w two job was very protective of that very secretive of that. And you know, I don't know why I mean, people do things on the side. That's out there now, but I think for a long time that was it that Chris had built a successful real estate portfolio, all while working, and nobody knew.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, I'm wondering now now that the Rapid Round is over. I'm just wondering like what you know what you will talk about that afterwards. But I think that that's a really interesting thing. It's, it goes to the mindset shift, right, that occurs after you start investing in real estate that that happens that you're like, oh my gosh, like I should have done. I should have been more vocal about this. And yeah, it's it's, it's very, it's a very interesting thing that I've kind of noticed in my own world as well. So so thank you for sharing that. Well, Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show. Again, we could be talking for hours because we have so much in common and so much stuff to you know to unpack here. But what I'll do is I'll give you an open stage right now for you to basically tell all the listeners where they can find out more about you and what you have to offer.
Chris Freeman:Yeah, you bet. So I you know, an easy place to go is you can go to our website. It's high tech freedom calm, and you can contact me there or subscribe to our newsletter where we provide both real estate investing tips as well as sales tips, you can opt out of the sales tips. If you're not interested in that or if you're just interested in the sales tips of not real estate. You can do that as well. Or you can go hit me up on linkedin.com. And I'm just Chris Freeman, on LinkedIn. And if you're interested even if you're not in high tech sales, everybody has a role that involves sales whether or not you know it, everybody can impact their company in any way by helping to sell it sometimes it's internal sometimes it's external. So if you want to learn a little bit more about you know, sales and then you know once you make that money, how do you invest it? Come check out my podcast called high tech freedom we launched on January 1.
Derek Clifford:Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Chris. And also, one thing that you forgot to mention is all the links that you provided for your social media and for your website. I'll go ahead and add those in the show notes. So for those listeners out there that are looking to learn more about this, all you got to do is click on the description and go into any of the links that interest you or any of the social media platforms or podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts and you can find Chris there. So once again, Chris, thank you so much. For coming on the
Chris Freeman:show. Thank you, Derrick. I really appreciated and enjoyed it. Yeah,
Derek Clifford:you, listeners. Thank you also for listening to the podcast. And wherever you're listening to this please like review, subscribe, comment, wherever they're watching this or you're you're listening to it on wherever you listen to your podcast. We really appreciate you we want to interact with you and make sure that we're appeasing those algorithm Gods so that we can get exposure to more and more people as we work our way up towards number one. So thank you guys so much for listening. And Chris, thanks again for coming on the show. And this is Derek I'm signing off