https://www.visioninmotion.co
https://www.visioninmotion.co
You know, it makes you feel good when you hit those monetary gains. And I remember, I think three years into it, I caught up with his income and then exceeded his income. And I was like, yeah. Yes, that's awesome. Welcome to Motion Matters, where we shine a light on the entrepreneurial journey, sharing real stories of triumph and challenge. Guided by Jamie Tilka, we connect, inspire, and educate. This is Motion Matters. Hello, and welcome to Motion Matters podcast. This is the entrepreneurial podcast where we talk with fellow entrepreneurs about the trials and tribulations of their entrepreneurial journey. And today I have some fantastic guests on. I have Angie and Richard McDaniel. We both, we all met in a fellow mastermind, also retired military service, and they've been in real estate for quite some time. And I wanted to bring them on the show so that they could share their journey. So Angie and Richard, thank you for coming on the show. Yeah, yeah. It's great. Thanks for having us. It's great being here, Jamie. It's gonna be fun. Awesome. Super excited. We were talking a little bit before we started and started getting into content that I thought was really valuable for other people. So I wanted to hit the record button and here we are. So I'd like to open it up like I typically do, offer you an opportunity to just give a little bit of background. Again, I know you served in the military. You can talk about that. And then really how you and Angie transitioned into your entrepreneurial lane, and then we'll take it from there. Yeah, so my name is Rich McDaniel. I'm a Navy veteran. I was a Navy surface warfare officer, retired now almost three years to the day that we're doing this podcast. And I, during my career, I guess some highlights were, I was on basically the cruisers, destroyers, and the fleet, and I went on to command the USS Starrett. It's guided missile destroyer out of San Diego. And then for my major command, I went to command Naval Station Norfolk. It's the Navy's largest Naval base. And it's out of obviously Norfolk, Virginia. I was a Brookings fellow and did a think tank study there and did some other cool stuff, but I love my Navy service, but served just about a month in, I think it was a month and almost 30 days shy of 29 years, and then decided to pull the plug and go do our own thing. And if we want to get into that, we can, but yeah. Let me chime in because it kind of segues. So while Rich was serving, we moved 21 times in that 29 year period. We have five kids. So pretty much that time I was holding it together. He was deployed quite a bit. And when you're in the fleet, you're operational all the time. And so I was home with the kids. And then, gosh, about, I guess when I was about 41 or so quite a while ago, put the kids in school and I was like, okay, what am I gonna do with my life at this point? And when you're a military spouse, you really don't have a resume on paper because you're moving around a lot. And had my degree, never used it. And just through a series of trying to get a job and being turned down and people telling me that my worth was just this per hour kind of rate, I was like, forget this. And because we were landlords and had homes that we had, since we, PCS became rental properties, we just saw, I saw there was a gap in the market in the property management space. And so back in 2013, didn't know anyone. We had just moved to Northern Virginia, figured out a way to start Command Properties. And we started managing homes, which was active duty. So I started this company and we started taking care of people, other military members, DOD, all the three-letter agencies in the government. We started managing their personal homes and then got into real estate sales. And I became a top producer in Northern Virginia. So I'm the top percentage of real estate agents here and right now we manage about 200 million in single family, privately owned assets. Wow, that's awesome. And then out of that, that put us in a position, three years ago for Rich to decide. And that was back in 2013, I started that. I grew a team and then that put Rich into this position of, okay, now where do we go? Does he retire? Does he go out and get a job after that? Or does he jump in and we partner together? And so we decided to take the plunge and work together in real estate. And also, since we launched another company, which he really spearheaded just through our experience in the property management tenant screening space, we launched rentrisk.com, which is our national tenant screening platform, partnering with Experian for that process. So that's where we are now. Man, there's a lot that, we're gonna have to roll back a little bit because plus before we came on, like I said, Richard was sharing some of his stuff about his transition. I definitely wanna touch on that. But what I really wanna go back to that I think is interesting is what was, I'm assuming based on what you just told me that your first rental property was probably a property that you bought during a duty station and then you turned it into a rental, is that correct? Yep, yep, that was- That's correct, yep. I call it being a landlord by default. Well, so, okay, great, because that's my question. I still, and I guarantee you do too, have tons of my military friends that reach out to me and they're like, I don't want to keep it, I think it's a liability. I'm asking you, what made you decide that you wanted to keep that property and potentially look at it as a long-term investment strategy? I think we saw the value in owning property early on, right? But at the time too, even with me being an officer, anybody in the military, you're not getting wealthy there, right? You have a good lifestyle in terms of you have your needs met and you take care of your family, but you're not getting wealthy. So we saw the value in owning properties. And so we were like, okay, let's do that. Like, let's try and buy a property where we go to duty station, when it makes sense. And then as particularly when I had more money that I could start putting towards a down payment on the property and all that, we started doing that. And, but then we learned, we learned through the process. And I'll- Yeah, I think the problem comes in what we see and what we're trying to do now is help protect, particularly our military families who are landlords. They don't know what they're doing and they get themselves into a lot of trouble, whether they're managing it themselves or even in the property management space that often does not help. It doesn't solve the problem because the standards are so low. And what we're trying to do particularly with rent risk is teach other landlords how to have a great experience. And it starts with the tenant screening process. And it's amazing how little people know even today with the access of information that they still don't get that right. And that can devastate you financially, particularly if you're a military family. Yeah, because- Go ahead, Rich. Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say, your home is one of the biggest assets you buy in your life. You better know how to do it right. Like you said, you developed this process because you saw the need and I want to get there. But I would, I want to see if I could ask, can you highlight maybe one or possibly two things that happened to you from the time you got to your first property until you really started scaling this, Angie? Like with regards to property management specifically, like I'm guessing you had more than a couple stumbles in which you're like, man, this is crap. Like, how do we do this better? Just getting started was difficult because when we moved to Virginia, I didn't know anyone and I had gotten my real estate license, which on the surface did not make any logical sense with his career because we were moving so often. But I had to do a lot of networking. I had to get to know a lot of people and because I really, I was totally green. I didn't know much about real estate even. And I had to find someone who would allow me to do this highly litigious business under their brokerage license. So that was my first big hurdle. And, but just through networking and building trust and building relationships with people and also building a lot of relationships with other realtors and adding value actually through screening tenants for them. That's how I got my foot in the door and showed my value. Then they began to trust me with referring their clients for property management. So that's really how I got started and just continued to build from there. A lot of mistakes, you know, you don't totally know what you're doing at the beginning and you just learn. Yeah, but I'll tell you the thing that Angie did, like just the whole thing that we hear so many people focus on as relationship capital, you know, and just having those people that she was networking with, that she was building relationships with are what allowed her to earn the trust that she needed. Number one, to put the property management company under a brokerage, which most brokers don't allow. And then number two, it allowed other people that she was networking with to start giving her business for management contracts. And, you know, a lot of people, when they get in property management, they do it because they've either been in real estate 10 plus years, or they buy into a franchise. Literally, she started from the ground up. And the reason that was successful for are those relationships. Well, and I would say too, you know, it's the, I call property management, the redheaded stepchild of real estate. Everyone looks down on it, no one wants to do it, but it's very, very profitable, particularly with the model that I have. And if you, the issue is people have never seen it done right. They only see it, but that's the opportunity. Like if I was going to tell anyone listening to this, you know, if they're thinking about starting, you know, an entrepreneur journey or starting a business, they need to find a problem and solve it. And that's what I did. You know, it was wide open. So I'm like, okay, I'm squared away. We can do this right, you know? And- As you know, you know, we're here next to Fort Bragg now, Fort Liberty, and that's the US military's largest installation in the world. And so what I've consistently seen is most property management companies, to your point, do not have a good reputation. And even the ones that I've met that I think started with the best intentions, then they quickly outgrew their bandwidth. And then, so therefore the service started declining and then they fell right back into the same category where it's like, these people are trash, they're not inspecting my properties, I have horrible tenants, you know, I don't know what's going on. And so I constantly say what you just basically said, which is why I'm like, yay, go Angie, is that if you provide a quality product service, you really don't have to sell it because nobody doesn't want a good product or service, you know, it's just hard finding them. And so the fact that you found that as a niche of like, okay, this is subpar, I'm gonna provide quality thing, and therefore, and now you've turned it into, what'd you say, $200 million that you're managing? It's funny, you know, when you're a stay-at-home mom and you don't have this resume and your husband's getting all these accolades, you know, and he's, you know, climbing the success, you know, ladder in the military and all that, you know, it makes you feel good when you hit those monetary gains. And I remember, I think three years into it, I caught up with his income and then exceeded his income. And I was like- Yes, that's awesome. Yeah, you know, and now, you know, now we're worth seven figures, you know, as a company, you know, well over seven figures. And, you know, I was just reflecting this past week and just what we're doing now, like, you know, Rich getting the tenant screening company off the ground, which was incredibly difficult. I just thought, I've really been reflecting on this. What if I had never started? What if I had said, well, I can't do it because he's gonna get stationed somewhere else, which he did four hours away and I commuted, like that's a whole other story. But it's, you know, at some point, you just either you're gonna make excuses of not, why not to do something, or you're just gonna do it and go, I'm gonna, I'll figure it out. And that's kind of the point that I came to is like, okay, I've just gotta do this because I had this inside of me and it had to come out. And I'm so thankful I did because we would not be in the position that we're in right now, you know, getting to wake up and decide what we're gonna do every day, what work we wanna do, you know, had he stayed in, so. I called the podcast Motion Matters. I can't take credit for actually the marketing people that were working with me. She's like, what do you think about Motion Matters? I was like, oh, that's brilliant. Because in the military, you know, at least in my community, we consistently said relationships matter, right? Words matter. And in this case, I just thought it was another play on motion matters, right? Are you or are you not gonna take action? But I wanna just go a little bit off of what you just said. Let's spend a few minutes on that. Because as a mother of five, whose husband is serving active duty, which I know that lifestyle very well, you know, deployed multiple years, 300 plus days, you're basically handling everything on the home front while simultaneously doing this. So here's an opportunity I would love to hear if you could offer some advice to those, you know, military spouses that are out there that aren't fulfilled and want to do something, but are questioning that need to be inspired, that need to be, is like, what advice would you give them to say you should go after this, you know, because, and give us your input on why is the because? Wow, that's such a loaded question. And I have a lot of thoughts on it. I think the first thing is, you know, you married into it, this is your lifestyle. So the first thing you need to do is accept it and lean into it, because the difficulty that you're going through is for a purpose. And a lot of times we wanna get out from under it or we complain about it. And I think you need to lean into it and your time is going to come. It might not be right now. So you need to grow as a person. You need to grow in your mindset. You need to be tough. And whatever that dream that you have, like feed it, water it. If you're looking for, I think a lot of spouses go, okay, what kind of degree can I get? What kind of job can I get? And I always looked at that and I looked at the return on investment. I was like, no, you know, I don't like the return on investment. So I'm going to do my own thing and I'm gonna create my own path here. And I had to grow into that, but you know, don't use things as an excuse. Don't complain. But let me stop here. So people just, I wanna dispel, anybody who thinks this was all sunshine and rainbows, it was not. Like it was hard. It was really hard. And there was doubt. And there was like, what are we doing here? You know, it's like, you know, I'm doing, I'm building this business and then you could get up and be transferred to San Diego in six months. You know, what am I doing? And I'm like, well, again, we don't know what's going to happen. You know, and again, so you can either operate in faith or fear, right? And so we chose, even though we would, you know, have fears to say, okay, we got to go to faith that this is going to work out, right? And then my final thought on that is that those hardships developed us into, especially her and to the people you want to become. Your kids are watching that and they're seeing you go through those hardships and they're seeing you go through those challenges and overcoming. And then there's people that work with you in your team, in your business. And I will tell you, Amy, this hits us all the time. We're like, wow, we're not just doing this for us. You know, we're not just doing this for us and our family, our extended family, even though that's one of the big motivators, but it's all those people that work with you, you know, and you're able to be a blessing and benefit these people as they go down their journey, you know? So anyway, I just want to dispel that because I don't know if we want to go into any of those challenges, but we had a lot of them. Yes, that's exactly what I want to go into. I mean, and I know you've got something to say, Angie, but I was waiting till you finished. I didn't want to interrupt you, but that's exactly what I'm trying to peel back right here is because here's the analogy that I always use, and then I'll hand it back to you guys. I see you're standing at the proverbial cliff and everybody's swimming down in the nice, pretty blue water. You want to, but because it's a 30-foot drop, you're scared. And so fear inhibits your desires to go after it. But the second phase of that, should we get that person that has enough motivation and determination to go off, then they get in the water and one little thing scuffs their legs. They can't see. So then they run back to the shore and they give up. And that's what you're referring to, Rich, is that there's been multiple, multiple times that stressed the relationship, that stressed your business, that's caused emotional, financial. I mean, there's tons of stuff. And I would love for you guys to dig into a couple of those stories, because that's the part that I want people to understand is like, it is not easy, right? There's that whole image you see circulating on different memes and stuff, where it's like, do you want to go this way? And then it shows a guy going down into the ditch and climbing up out of the rocks in the rains. It's a pothole driven road, but on the other side, that's what we're all working for, right? For that freedom, that financial freedom, that freedom of time so that you can have the best life. So yes, I would love to hear a couple of those things that really tested you guys along that way of Angie building it while you're still serving on active duty, because I know there was had a myriad of different times that it really stressed the business and the relationship. Well, you just want to quit a lot because it's very uncomfortable. And I think that's probably one of the biggest things that people don't understand. There's this mindset that if it's hard, oh, it's not the right thing then, like it's supposed to be easy. Just culturally, I just don't think most people have that mindset and that understanding that it's really like the opposite. If you're uncomfortable and it's really hard and you want to quit, that's your sign that you need to keep going, you know? And it was difficult in the sense that, you know, he was completely absorbed. I mean, every job he had was massively difficult and I had to handle everything from zero dark 30 till late at night. I mean, he would get home and he's just done, like he's done. And so for me, like trying to build the business, but also be there for my kids because I was their stability that whole time and I was not willing to sacrifice that for some, you know, at the end of the day, I don't care what kind of monetary success you have or what kind of military success you have. If your kids are not doing well, if your kids are not successful, like that has to be the priority. All this can't be, you can't sacrifice your kids on the altar of, you know, business success or whatever. So for me, it was like, okay, I gotta be here for my kids. I'm gonna do this thing, but I'm gonna be there at the same time. And so just juggling that, you get really creative. So one of the things though, I think that this might resonate with a lot of veteran families out there is that one of the robs that was going on with us that was a challenge, ongoing challenge for numerous reasons, and we alluded to it a little bit, but I'm gonna dig down, is that I was all in with the Navy. Like, so I'd come through, I'd served in a lot of high capacity jobs, I'd had the right jobs in command, and I had gone on to, you know, have the right fellowships and just the right education, all those kinds of things. And so you're like, okay, I'm gonna line this up and where the Navy is your future, right? But I will tell you, I mean, there's always the reality and we see it. You're only like one incident, one negative relationship with a boss, what something happening, it could be a sickness, an illness, but that career can come to an end, right? And again, for us, it was the rub between, okay, me carrying on to high levels in the Navy and Angie trying to carry on with this entrepreneur endeavor. Initially, it started where she was just frustrated that she would get to some job interviews and wouldn't go forward because they found out she was a military spouse to then like, okay, I'll show you, I'll just go do my own thing to where it started building and making substantial income. You're like, hey, maybe I'm into something here. And then we started weighing this. We're like, okay, here's the income that Angie's making over here. Here's what I'm doing over here. And then you go do some tours like in the Pentagon and you see that it's a challenging lifestyle. Those people are giving all they got to not always move the needle. And quite frankly, it was an impediment to being able to go forward because you're always bracing yourself or I was always bracing myself like, okay, are they gonna send him across the country or if he stays in and keeps climbing this ladder and doing that next thing, going on to be a flag officer or whatever, which is kind of where he was kind of, his resume had him in that position. It was a huge, huge choice to go a different direction, but you're always like bracing yourself for that next set of orders and you just don't know what things are gonna be like. And so the stress of that was always lingering and always hovering. And I felt very constrained by it because you never could be a hundred percent all in knowing that it might change. I want you to highlight one example though. Highlight the example of commuting. Oh, yeah. And how we evolved on that. Yeah, so this lifestyle I think causes you or will force you to be really creative in your business. And so after I started the business, a few years later, he got stationed in Norfolk. So we're in Northern Virginia and in traffic, it's like four hours. So we made a last minute decision that we were not gonna do the Geobatch thing. We all moved down there together, lived on base, got the kids settled. And then I commuted back and forth a couple of times a week to meet with clients and whatnot. But I also, just through the relationships that we spoke about earlier that I had developed, I partnered with people. And so I built a team to kind of help me carry the load when I wasn't up here, the time that I was down in Norfolk. And so that's what really kicked off, I guess, or really caused me to always be thinking differently on how I set up my business, how it's structured. And I'm very big on partnering with people. And that's what enabled us to be successful in that tour down there. And as well as continuing to grow my business. So, but that was a major stress. We did that for three years. Back to the point of talking about these pinnacle moments in which you're really questioning, do I or do I not keep moving? As I think Rich was also pointing out with you guys talking about this, is my guess is there was probably a sit down conversation where you guys really contemplated, are we moving the family? Or do we just shut it all down? Because we've talked about that multiple times for different reasons, not a logistical, a proximity thing. Ours was more revolving around financial issues that were going on. But yeah, we struggled with that. So I'm guessing that those were some real heartfelt, emotional conversations in which you guys were trying to, because this is what I tell people too. I mean, I didn't even know Rich that you did 29. Well, as for the people that don't know, for the old style, you get 50% of your pension after 20, but each additional year, you're getting like 2.5%. So at one point, I told my wife, I go, look, if I stay 30 years, that's 75% for the rest of our life. We can live in most cities and be relatively comfortable, no private planes, no yachts, but we ain't hurting. And so that was the easy button, but you guys chose this button. And so I wanna kind of just switch a little bit and say also back to one thing you were saying, I know a moment for me, and this question is a little bit directed towards you Rich I came back from this being in Malaysia and we have five kids as well. By that time, three of them were gone, two of them had joined the service. We were down to our last one and my daughter was sitting there and she was like six. It's still honestly a little bit emotional, I get choked up. So try to be quick about it. But I remember looking at her and telling my wife, I'm like, shit, man, I'm doing it again, gone two years in a row, 300 plus days, didn't see the birthday, didn't see, missed all these holidays. And it's like, for what? I mean, I was a patriot and I loved serving my country. I wouldn't change anything because it definitely made me who I am today. I'm wondering, my question to you is, was that part of it too for you? Is that you're just like, I don't get to share in these experiences. I don't get to give the full of what I'm capable of to help Angie build this business and spend more time with the kids because I'm constantly, if you were in the Pentagon, you were probably no cell phones, stuff's in your car, it's in a locker, there's no communication. Yeah. Yeah, that was definitely a piece of it. I mean, like I said, you have to, it's almost, you have to be religious about your service. And I say that not as an element of faith, but where you, it's that kind of dedication Yes. to your service because it's a culture, each service has a culture and you know what you need to do to be successful in terms of the jobs, the dedication to the jobs, deploying, how you have to serve the people that you work with, what kind of sacrifice it involves. And so there's definitely, the Navy really rewards when you're at sea, operational time at sea, that's how you promote. And it's, I mean, and there's a lot of personal development with leadership, and those things that go on, it's very satisfying. You can bless the lives of a lot of people you work with, but you have this group of your family that's over here and they're chugging along, they're doing the best they can. And you, like Angie was always very supportive of what I was doing in the service. And she was always, she never like bad mouth anything I was doing. She was telling the kids why it was important and the kids were always very supportive. And I have very, like all my children are grown out now. Like I said, my youngest son's an Army Ranger and they're all great people. So I have no complaints there, but you do. The first 20 years of my career, I was deployed. I was at sea, aside from Navy War College and a fellowship at the Brookings Institute, I was at sea. And so even when you're not at sea, usually you're in a three or four section duty rotation. So when you're in port, those days that you're in port, one of the three or four days you're on the ship, spending the night. And so, and basically what that means, you'll work, you'll spend the night on the ship, you'll work the next day, then you go home. And so it's very demanding. And so you're just, when you get to this point, you start asking yourself on, and for us, there was an economic argument that came into play in terms of the money we were making and what we could make. And I'd already earned a nice retirement being an 06, right? Yeah. But the larger argument for us is what kind of life did we want to live for the next 10 years? And I was definitely no shoo-in, because you go to a board and get selected, but I could have hung around probably another two years at least before I retired, or impossibly made admiral during that time. Or I, but like you said, we chose to get out and we started saying, do we want to be at the beck and call of the Navy and go and pick up and move every year and a half to two years over the next 10 years? Or do we want to like kind of call the shots as we see it? We want to have more autonomy, more choice, spend time with the kids. Yeah, I mean, we're well into our fifties now and making that decision was like, okay, do you want to stay in this grinder? We felt like we would just been chewed up for 29 years. Like even after his 20 years of sea duty, every job he was in after that was high level, intense, not available, it was just intense. And then when you're at that level, you see what your future holds if you stay in it. And it's just more of the grinder and more of the Navy deciding what your life's going to look like. And we're just at this point like, that's not what we want our life to look like. Rich, the higher you get in the food chain, the more political it becomes. And then you got to play that game as well. Yeah, well, I made the decision. I didn't tell her, we had talked a lot about this and I had like- I was throwing down ultimatums basically, but anyway, that's a side story. But I basically got up on a Monday morning and I said, and I was the executive assistant for the N4, which is the head of logistics for the Navy, which logistics in the Navy is big. Obviously it's a big deal with the Naval force. I went in and you show up a little bit early, your boss shows up early before the work and so you get to have a time to reflect. And I said, I went in to the Admiral, I said, Admiral, this is it, I made a decision. He goes, what do you mean? I said, I'm going to tender my resignation. And he goes, oh, okay, wow. And it kind of took him off guard. And it took me that day and he was like, you sure you want to do it? And I was like, yes, sir, I am. And he knew some of the things that we had gone through just recently with my son, my oldest son's illness. And I said, all this stuff has given me perspective. And about a week later, he called me in and he goes, you know what? He goes, I've spent the last nine years in the churn mate, flag jobs in the Pentagon, doing various things. And he goes, there's a piece of what you're going to do that I'm a little bit envious of. And so he was encouraging me, right? He was like, he goes, because you're going to be able to go out, call your shots, work with your spouse, do the things that you want to do and build the things that you can build. And he wasn't disparaging the Navy, wasn't disparaging his own service, but he was just giving me perspective of, hey, this is not a bad decision you're doing. So that really kind of empowered me and to say, okay, you know what? I'm doing the right thing because when you get to that level you're either retiring as an O6, you're going out and work and being hired by a military contractor for 250 grand a year. Which would have been an easy button. Or you're making flag and going on in that way. And so what I was doing was definitely not conventional. It was a little bit unconventional. A hundred percent, I found myself in that same position. In fact, I don't want to delve into it too much because I want to ask you guys two more questions and I'm looking at the clock, I know we're, but just briefly, I mean, I had been afforded an opportunity for basically my dream job because of some successes I had been riding off of some stuff. And I really had to think about it. And the commander called me on Monday and he's like, what's your decision? I was like, I'm not going to do it. And he was like, wow, I didn't think you were going to say that. And I said, I just, I love what I'm doing, but it's time for me to do this for my family. Like I want to build generational wealth and my driving factor, and I've told this story before, so I don't want to use it for this episode, but I was fiscally irresponsible. I did not set our family up for success and I had dug a massive hole and I just racking my brain. I'm like, how do I, and at that time I'm like mid forties. And I was like, how do I get out of this? And I was like, I have to build an empire. And that was my driving force and I got out, but. Awesome, yeah. So I wanted to ask one more question to you, Angie, though, specifically just going back just a little bit to this fact of these turbulent times in which Rich is gone and you're continuing to build this. I mean, how did you juggle everything? And one specific question that I have for you is at what point in the growth of your business did you bring on additional help? This is a big topic for us. This is a huge topic. That's why I'm bringing it up because I waited too long and I stretched myself too thin and it physically put me in the hospital, but I want to hear why it was for you. Oh man, that's a loaded question. That means it's a good one. So I did too much myself. So, you know, the funny thing is when you're a military spouse, you learn to do everything yourself. And so you become very, very, very self-sufficient. And so I'm like the queen bee, lone ranger, do it myself, you know, grind it out kind of person. That's just my natural bent anyway. And our lifestyle only fed that. So it made this big solo person, you know, independent person, even like more of a monster. And so I really didn't hire my first person until about my fifth year. And it was completely out of, I was so desperate at that point. I hired two people at one time. They were both military spouses and the person I hired to be my assistant, she's now my operations manager. She's still with me. I hire a lot of military spouses. That's always my first go-to. And, you know, just hired out from there. I'm constantly, now it's much easier for me now to figure out, okay, I don't want to do that. You know, whereas before I was always doing everything myself, it took a long time. And Sherry, my operations manager, she has seen me make that transformation of letting my grip go, you know, off of things and wanting to touch everything. But it was really hard, really hard. And you got sick as well. I did get sick. I did, I got really sick. Is it two or three years ago now? Almost three years ago now. Is it three? Yep. Yeah, I, and it's from stress. Yeah. It's 100% from stress, so. Well, and I mean, I don't know about you, but I tell people, they think I'm embellishing the story. I'm not. I said, there's probably a three to four month period where I don't think there's a day I slept over four hours. Like I was putting in legit 14, 15, 16, 18 hour days plus, and then trying to squeeze in, doing a couple chores at home. And my wife would tell me, she's like, man, you're going to kill yourself. And, you know, I got so sick that like, I just, you know, cold sweats, body shaking, you know, getting lightheaded and stuff. And I was, I wasn't eating properly either. A whole myriad of stuff, because I just was like, I'm going to grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. Well, it's just not sustainable. So, no, I really appreciate you sharing that. One more direct question for you, Rich, with going back to the military thing, kind of just want to direct it towards, what's your advice to any military, active duty military person sitting there right now, you know, and they're on the fence about, do I continue my career path, you know, or do I go after this entrepreneurial aspiration, the small business thing that I have? I mean, what would you offer or is kind of maybe some thought processes on that decision-making? I would say they probably know in their heart what they want to do, but a lot of times they are gripped by fear or uncertainty, the world of the unknown. But I think in certain warfare areas in the military, embraces more than others, but there's a reason why 10% of entrepreneurs out there are veterans, right? They're willing to take risk, you know, calculated risk, where they understand what's involved and go forward. So I would say you're in a unique position, particularly if you're a retiree, where you have a decent pension and that that can help fuel another entrepreneurial dream, go for it. Because you can't look at what your buddy that you serve with is doing when he goes and works for a military contractor. You cannot do that. You gotta have the long game in mind. You gotta have the three to five year or sometimes maybe longer outlook because, you know, you have to feed your business in time and resources and then it will catch up and then you'll have the life beyond what you hope. But you don't wanna have regrets, you know? And I think a lot of times, guys, they sell themselves short. They sell the service they could offer to other people. They sell that short because they're just not willing to step out. And that's what got them successful in the military. A lot of times they didn't quit. They had tenacity. They kept going. They sucked it up. That's exactly what you gotta do as an entrepreneur. You gotta embrace it and know that it's not just gonna be like, oh, you know what? I had this great idea. Next year, I'll be a millionaire. You gotta step out there. And so that's what I would tell them. Step out. They know in their heart what's right. Go do it. It's gonna be worth it. Let me just tag one thing on that is last year I was afforded a unique opportunity. I was invited to New York City. They picked 20 Green Berets that were gonna come for these five CEOs of billion-dollar companies. And the point that I'm trying to relate back to what you just said is why? Well, the guys stood up there and said specifically the reason why we're looking for you guys is because your perseverance, your grit, your tenacity, your determination. And they said the problem that we're experiencing writ large across the people coming into the workforce out of even Ivy League schools, these guys pull, these guys send recruiters into Ivy League schools. They said they have no life experiences and they haven't been through any type of trenches whatsoever. So while their intellectual capacity is great, their life experience doesn't allow them to navigate really difficult problems that we've been faced with so many times. We're like, oh yeah, we'll just, we'll go this way. And meanwhile, they're just sitting there looking at it and they're just like, I don't know what to do. They freeze. Yeah, there's another major brokerage that I was actually talking to this person on the tenant screening rent risk. But he started, he found out my background as a veteran and my experience in the Navy. And he started trying to take me down a path where I could assist in getting veterans in their brokerage. It's a major national brokerage. This is the president of the company. And he said the very same thing you're saying, just the leadership, the emotional intelligence that you learn out of that leadership and the experience in the military, tenacity, the perseverance, the grit, determination. Those qualities bring so much more to the table than because, I will tell you, and I'm not knocking the Ivy Leagues, but I'm using this as an example, an extreme example, right? I would get very, very sharp young men and women that would come to my ship, particularly when I was the XO of a ship and then later a CO of a ship. And they were very intelligent people, some graduates of the Ivy Leagues, but they had a very hard time often leading. And so the skill sets and the intelligence required to lead is not always the same thing that got them through the Ivy League school with regard to their book smarts. And so some bring the whole package, but not everybody has it. That's the exceptional person, but the veteran always brings that leadership dynamic and can co-opt a team and lead a team and get them over the finish line. And that translates very well into entrepreneurship. Yeah, I mean, especially extreme situations, whether your house is burning up in flames or somebody's actually threatening the lives of your family, what's your reaction in that time? Do you freeze and then therefore, it's the survival of the fittest? Or do you pause, take a quick second, and then you, in ranger school, one of the things they said is, they're like, just make a decision. If it's a wrong decision, we'll adapt and we'll fix it, but you gotta make a decision, you can't sit here. I wanna segue out to this last little piece. I wanna get a chance for you guys to talk, because again, we're gonna wind down here. Rent risk. So, well, I'm just gonna overly simplify what we talked about, Rich and Angie's journey. You started getting your own properties, which then led you into property management, which had you, Angie, into building a real estate, and then eventually now screening people. And now you have this new company. Talk to us a little bit about this new venture that you're on with rent risk. Why don't you kick off? Yeah, so basically, for over a decade in the management company, I screened thousands of rental applications for other people. And even for our own portfolio, the hundreds of properties that we've managed over the years never had an eviction, no property damage, and all of our tenants pay on time. And so I developed this very successful model with high standards on tenant screening. And people started coming to me, more and more, especially other realtors in my sphere were coming to me going, hey, can you screen for my rental listings and blah, blah, blah. And it just wasn't scalable to do within our own software for our management company. And it was perfect timing. A series of events kind of came together right when he retired that we had the opportunity to partner with Experian and build out this platform. I knew the need was there. And just from our own personal experience as landlords, as well as what I see among other property management companies and other landlords experiencing, I'm like, my landlords have great tenants. We manage in our portfolio, my whole thing is like reducing risk and protecting my clients as a fiduciary for them. And that starts with who goes into this very expensive asset that they have, right? And so what we did with RentRisk is we took this model that I used and we built it into the platform so that self-managing landlords or other realtors can come alongside their landlord clients and help protect them, protect themselves from risk with their asset. And so not only... So with the platform, you get a complete rental leasing application and it's free for the landlord and the agent to use. The tenant pays an application fee on their side, but the landlord's gonna get a complete leasing application, credit criminal and eviction history, all the financial documents for the person. They're gonna upload their proof of income, source of income so that you know if they qualify and then they sign a release for rental history so you can check their rental history. But also, and most importantly, we provide some education there. So there's a leasing decision worksheet that comes with every application. And we give you guidelines on how do you... What does this information mean? What do you look for in the credit report? So what do you look? There's a lot of tenant screening companies out there. So we're not the first to enter the market with a tenant screening, but we are the first that shows you how to really evaluate the data. Most people out there don't know what a good and bad credit report is. They don't know the difference between Advantage Score and a FICO score. They don't know how to look and what to examine in terms of what is a good and bad financial picture on a person, on an individual. Yeah, how much income should they have to qualify? Yeah, how much income do you have when if your rent is 1,000, how much income should the person have? And so if you use these standards that we've put in place in this model, you're gonna have incredible success when it comes to picking a quality tenant. What do you feel like the success rate is on your screening of having tenants that in fact actually pay on time and don't destroy the property? Because that's ultimately what people care about. In my experience with my properties, it was 100%. We've never had an eviction. Those are good numbers. That's why I wanted you to tell it. That's great. Yeah, I mean, that is why we are super passionate about our product because we're like, hey guys- And so her company is Command Properties. So you can Google the company, right? Okay. But it's commandproperties.com. But yes, and we manage their class A properties, right? They're single family homes, Northern Virginia. But it doesn't always guarantee, even if you have a military client, you have to look at the background, the financial realm, and know what you're looking to complete this picture. So she's had numerous people come to her and say, well, this person works with me. I'm just gonna rent to them. And we're like, well, no, if we're gonna manage the property, you need to let us screen them. And then we'll screen them and we'll find out, yeah, they might have like a 690 credit, but they're over leveraged in so many areas, right? So, I mean, just a couple of examples here. You're looking for a behavior pattern. And so you take all the data, you take their income, the data within their credit, a report, criminal eviction history, all that stuff, a rental history, and you're looking for a behavior pattern of how responsible a person is. And so that's what we're looking for. It's all that data together. What kind of risk does this person pose? And people need to put on their business hat when they're looking at it, because your home is probably your most expensive asset. And so you don't wanna put someone in there that's gonna not pay and destroy it. Well, that's why I wanted to ask that question, because again, those are great stats, right? And I don't, that's the two number one concerns that I hear from, I don't know about you guys, but from every single military person. They're like, I don't know if I wanna rent my house because A, I don't wanna deal with the butt pain. B, I'm concerned that they're either gonna trash the pace or not pay me. And then it goes back to number A, where now I'm stressed out because I'm 3000 miles away and I gotta try to make some executive decisions. So if in fact, the screening process is now analyzing and reducing and mitigating, not maybe fully, but to a very low level, the risk tolerance, well then I think that that's an incredible product. And so with that, I know a lot of people in my circle that potentially will be watching this. I've had several dozens of people that have come up to me and asked me about management specifically. So I definitely wanna take an opportunity and plug this right here. How do they find your risk management software? Like how do they sign up or how do they get a hold of you on your site to be a part of it? Yeah, they can go directly to rentrisk.com and sign up for a free account. It takes a few seconds. They can add their property and it generates an electronic link that they can share with anyone who wants to apply. It's really quick and that starts the process. I would say, if anyone wants to reach out to us directly for questions, you can reach out to us on Instagram or Facebook. On Instagram, it's commandproperties. Yeah, it's pretty cool too on that though. I mean, we have partnered with some cool people like Military By Owner, if you're familiar with the listing site, we're their tenant trainer. Compass Real Estate, we partnered with the Compass Real Estate Military Division. So we're their tenant screener. We are in the last word discussions with AHRN who owns militaryby.com, militarywallet, veteran.com. They own all those sites and what most people don't know is that company, the parent company owns Veterans United. And so we're partnering with them as well. So these organizations have seen that really, I think what they're seeing is we bring a lot of value to the veteran community, also to the real estate investment and property owning community writ large. We really, what we're trying to do as a business is go out to the self-managing landlords and really kind of be their huckleberry for tenant screening, you know what I mean? We're definitely got to close this down. I look at the clock and we got to go. But I want to ask two quick questions just for clarification on this. When you said a lease application, does that mean that the end user, you know, if Joe Smith has a single family house and he's about ready to go PCS to another duty assignment and he runs his process to you, does he get a bona fide lease that's ready to be signed by that individual or is this just the application itself? It's the application, but we are adding leases to our site. We're so new additional services that we're going to add that are in process right now and almost ready to go are lease agreements that are vetted by attorneys and are written by attorneys in every state and then rent payments. So you'll be able to set up ACH rent payments with your tenant, invite them to pay. Those are the pain points that we see, the tenant screening, quality lease, and then ACH payments. And by law, everyone's required to have insurance. We're going to add insurance, bring your renter's insurance there. Yeah. Okay, one last question I want to squeeze in is, so I talked about Joe Smith, single family, first home, he's PCSing, that's his scenario. Somebody like me who wants that analytical data so that I can make an informed decision but do not have time to be able to resource it, are you guys already or considering doing that process for somebody for an additional cost or a higher membership fee maybe, but then basically saying, hey, look, this is what we think based on the data that we've screened for you. Yeah, we're not considering that right now just because we're trying, it's not quite as scalable at this point, but what I would say for that person that's busy is it comes to you very efficiently and cleanly and concisely. It's not difficult and it comes to you pretty instantly, so. Yeah, so you get the credit and the criminal background report right away. The thing is, we give you a leasing worksheet and let you go through this worksheet with that data that we arm you with, the credit and criminal background, and you answer questions about your prospective tenant. Okay. And then out of those questions, then also in our resources tab, we have a red flags. So for instance, stuff that we've seen in property management is like, if someone won't complete the entire process for you, that's a red flag. If someone's rushing you through the process, that's another red flag. If they don't want all the adults to do an application, that's another red flag. So we try to give pointers to people, but it's pretty efficient and very user-friendly, and that's the way we designed it. That's awesome. All right, well, this has been incredibly informative. I'm very grateful for you guys to take your time out of your busy day to come on here and share your story with nothing but hopes that it will inspire, motivate, empower additional entrepreneurs to take that leap of faith. And obviously we both have a soft spot for our veterans and military personnel. With that, any final thing that you wanna say with regards on people contacting? I know you mentioned RentRisk. Do you wanna talk about any other social media emails or anything like that? Yeah, my email is richinrentrisk.com. Angie can be reached, angieatcommandproperties.com. If you're a veteran transferring into the area, you need help in any kind of real estate needs, reach out to us. If you're looking for a rental, we have agents that we can plug you into to help get a rental. If you're looking to buy or sell, we help people to do that. And then we also, if you own a property here, we can advise you on the management of that property. So a lot of people in the military buy properties in Northern Virginia because they know they'll be coming back here. So we can always help in that manner. Yeah. In and around the greater DC area, correct? Yeah, yeah. Okay. And we consult people a lot on their options, what's the best option for them as well if they have a home here already. But people can reach out to me via Instagram at Command Properties on Instagram or Angela Lee McDaniel on Instagram as well. Well, yeah, RentRisk is on LinkedIn as well. So if you got LinkedIn people, I'm on LinkedIn. Nice. RentRisk is on LinkedIn as well. I'm on LinkedIn as well, yeah. Again, Rich, Angie, thank you guys so much. It's been great. And look forward to seeing you guys in Nashville, right? Yeah, we'll be there. That'll be a lot of fun. Well, you guys have a fantastic weekend coming up and thank you so much. Greatly appreciate it. Thanks for doing this, Jamie. And we really enjoyed the conversation, man. Take care. Me as well, take care. All right, bye-bye. Bye.