Building Resilience: Overcoming Challenges in Entrepreneurship

Stephen Schmidt (00:03.155)
Welcome back to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs And those service the real estate industry if you’re joining us for the second third or hundredth time Welcome back and if you’re joining us for the first time you’re in for a real treat today I got Bob Frady in the house bob is a as a recent profile would say a disruptor he has a long background in technology has built and Currently is still in one of his companies, but exited two companies

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (00:24.109)
Thanks

Stephen Schmidt (00:33.061)
and has a little bit of a real estate background, but has a specific tool that can really save you guys when you’re buying some properties. And we’re going to talk about that today and talk about Bob’s experience just in business and life and go all over. just before we get started, remember that at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses, which allows them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. That being said, Bob, welcome to the show.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (01:01.838)
Thank you, Stephen. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Stephen Schmidt (01:03.989)
You’re absolutely welcome. I’m glad to have a conversation with you today. I had a really nice time visiting with you pre-show. So I think for everybody’s sake, obviously I got a little bit of background, but can you just share a little bit about yourself and how you got started and what you’re doing now and how you got to where you’re at?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (01:24.504)
Sure. I’m just a kid from Boston who grew up in a triple-decker house. My dad was a landlord and rented out two other places. So pretty low- and middle-class background from Boston. I was good in school and I always liked data. So I’ve been working with data for most of my career. Some of it’s geospatial, some of it’s point data, all sorts of different types of data.

and went through the whole corporate thing and did well, but kept getting fired because I would get to a point to say,

We can do this. I know we’re doing this, but we can do this. Let’s do this. And they would say, just stick to this. And I would say something inappropriate, like a street thug from Boston would say, and then that would be showing the door. So I started one business back in the early 2000s. It was a consulting business. It did really well, but I figured that starting business wasn’t for me. I didn’t think I had the entrepreneurial gene because I had a little baby at the time and that was tough.

So fast forward, I built Live Nation’s email marketing system. I built a lot of marketing stuff and did a lot of cool things. And about 10 years ago, I met up with a couple friends of mine and we talked about how…

risk assessment for properties really hasn’t changed very much in the last 15 or 20 years and we thought we could do it better. So we built a company, you know, and finally I was 52 when I started the company and said screw corporate America, I’m going to do my own thing. know, waiting to get fired is no way to live. So I’d rather fall on my own sword than have somebody chop my head off with their sword.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (03:14.58)
And started hazard hub, which was a risk assessment. So floods, wildfires, wind, hail, tornado, all that stuff. we did and sold that data to insurance companies, built it up, doing great. Big company came along, said, we’re going to buy you. So we did sold it about four years ago. And when I sold that house, I bought a house here in a diner Minnesota and

didn’t know much about a dyna, but I knew a lot about the data and tried to build some knowledge about this property. And I knew that there was a rate on risk, which hadn’t been disclosed. I knew that there was subjected to ice dams, which wasn’t disclosed. And I knew that there was lead-based paint and asbestos in this house that wasn’t disclosed. so used all that data.

and said, I’m going to give you 10 % less than the listing price. And they took it, which saved me a big old pile of cash, which was nice because it’s a beautiful house. It’s a beautiful location. And then I thought, well, why can’t everybody have this? You know, why should I just be able to have this? Cause I have all the data. So I looked around and I was looking for like a car facts for houses and there wasn’t one. So I built it and that’s property lens.

And so now anybody can go into property lens, type in an address and get a report on that property customized to that property for only $69, which is nice. Yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (04:42.848)
which is pretty incredible. Now I want to go back to something where you mentioned you were going through corporate America and you had started something with consulting back in the day, but you didn’t really start your first, tell me if I’m wrong here, you didn’t start your first success till you were 52.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (05:04.364)
Well, didn’t, the consulting business was me and two other partners and I was in my thirties at the time. and it was successful, but it wasn’t successful for me. You know, those guys did great. but the first time I was actually CEO of a company was I was 52 years old. Yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (05:22.636)
So what was the gap between consulting and 52? Were you back in corporate America? What did that look like?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (05:27.702)
Yep. Yep. Yep. I, like I said, I ran, I ran direct mail marketing for Indy Mac bank before they blew up. I was gone by that time. I ran email marketing for live nation built there, the concert company, which was awesome because I was the music kid growing up.

Stephen Schmidt (05:44.416)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (05:44.862)
I worked for Expedia, I did their digital outbound marketing for a thankfully short time and did a lot of technology driven stuff. How do you marry data and technology together was kind of my specialty. And then, as we talked about before the show, I have a habit of getting fired.

Stephen Schmidt (06:00.449)
Hmm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (06:08.27)
And so I got fired one more time and it’s like, okay, my little side hustle hazard hubs and I’ll be coming my full-time gig had to make it work. it like knock on wood. It

Stephen Schmidt (06:15.04)
right.

Stephen Schmidt (06:19.392)
Well, it’s just I’ve never related to any, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody in my life that I related to more on that front because I wouldn’t say that I’m high profile enough to have a profile done on me just yet, but I’ve had over 20 jobs in the last 10 years of my life. And a lot of it is because I go in and I act like an entrepreneur and I try to solve problems. And what ends up happening is people get very uncomfortable with that because humans aren’t used to change, right?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (06:35.745)
Yeah.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (06:45.814)
yeah, boy, I tell you what, that is exactly what happened to me multiple times. And it’s really distressing when it happens because you’re like, I’m not coming at this to try to hurt anybody. I’m coming at this to try to be even better. you know, corporate politics is my least favorite sport. I’m not good at it. It’s worse, there’s golf and then there’s corporate politics. So not good at either one of them.

Stephen Schmidt (07:07.858)
Haha

Stephen Schmidt (07:15.058)
I love it. That’s great. Yeah, I’m telling you, seriously, I really, really completely understand where you’re coming from. And it even like, it doesn’t do you any good as well from a mental standpoint, because then you start questioning like, am I really as good as I think I am?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (07:29.628)
there’s always that question. You know, you always wonder whether, you know, somebody’s going to pull back the curtain and it’s like, there’s nothing there. But at the same time, you know, one of the things I did when I became an entrepreneur is I had to ignore the noise. I had to say, I really believe in what we’re doing and everybody else who’s a hater, as Taylor Swift would say, haters going to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

Stephen Schmidt (07:46.678)
Hmm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (07:58.934)
And you could tell I had a teenage daughter at the time I started the business and, just got to ignore them, you know, and if Taylor Swift can do it, I can do it. So she can play guitar and I can’t do that, but that’s the one thing I can do that she can do is I can ignore the haters.

Stephen Schmidt (08:01.973)
I love it.

Stephen Schmidt (08:14.992)
Love that. That’s so great. My team will have to take a clip of that and make that into a deal of Bob Frady going haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. I love it. So you’ve started Property Lens. You’re full swing into this now. You exited Hazard Hub with a fat check. He hasn’t told me what he made from it. I just assume. And so…

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (08:19.82)
you

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (08:28.386)
Yep.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (08:41.718)
You were you’re right.

Stephen Schmidt (08:44.716)
So now, what’s the vision with Property Lens moving forward, let’s say, and I’m sure you might agree with this, that it’s very difficult anymore to plan more than really 18 months in advance in business just because of how quick information changes and AI and all these things come into change. So what does the next 18 months look like for Property Lens and what’s kind of the grand overall vision to exit that company as well or use this as a legacy play?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (09:03.384)
Yeah.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (09:11.852)
I think that we’re still figuring that part out. course, if you built, you know, one of the things that we did in the last company is we were determined that if we build it, it’s for sale. know, every house is for sale. It’s just a matter of the price. And, and that’s the theory that we brought to business. So, you know, that’s the theory I have with this business as well. But the

The reason why we started this business is because sellers know this and buyers know this.

and we’re trying to shrink that gap. So we do that through information right now. Just gather tons and tons of data and put it all together. Put a lot of knowledge around it and try to come up with answers that help people make better decisions. We know, as everybody knows, that sometimes data isn’t always correct as it appears to be. we want, the next step is for people to interact with that data. So we call the first piece information, which is the first I.

The eye is interaction. we might show the HVA system as being 18 years old.

but it was replaced and there was no permit and no one ever talked about it maybe five years ago. So to interact with that data and then recalculate all the things we think about that house. And then long term, the third I is what we call immersion, where you take your phone and you walk through the property and you do a self-inspection when you’re touring the house and we’ll do things like how old is that electrical panel? Is it still in code? Does it need replacing?

Stephen Schmidt (10:44.588)
Hmm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (10:53.424)
take a look at the HVA systems and say, is it on recall? Is there anything there that we can do to help the buyer make a better decision? And so that’s the 18 month plan in a nutshell.

Stephen Schmidt (11:07.66)
Wow. How dynamic of a team do you have to have in order to build something like this? Are you the sole founder and it’s just you sitting behind a keyboard all day coding stuff or what does that look like?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (11:22.016)
I cannot code to save my life. It’s funny, I’ve been working in technical roles for 20 years and I don’t code. It’s like Rick Rubin. And I’m not saying that because of your beard, but Rick Rubin is a genius at producing rock acts, but he doesn’t play an instrument. He doesn’t read music because he knows what to do.

He doesn’t turn the buttons, but he knows what buttons need to be turned. That’s kind of how I view my role, is I need a team that can be very flexible. And there’s nine of us all together. There’s two business people and seven developers. And it’s challenging for my developers, because every Monday we have our team meeting and they’re like, what have you thought of this week that we’re gonna have to work on? I’m like, okay, I hear your message. I’m gonna slow down a little bit.

but you constantly have to invent and you constantly have to stay ahead of where people are or else some big old company can just come and try to replicate what you’re doing. So, you know, it’s like a speedboat. You have to be able to drive it very fast and very nimbly or else some oil tank is just gonna come and cut you off. So, you need a team that’s dynamic and finding a team that’s dynamic is very difficult.

Stephen Schmidt (12:39.2)
What are some of the challenges with that that you’ve gone through?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (12:42.562)
Well, I think, you know, one of the things we believe in at property lens is that it’s okay to make mistakes. You know, if you’re not making mistakes, means you’re not trying hard enough to do cool new things that haven’t been done. And what we found is that that’s easy to say.

but it’s really hard for people to accept. I personally blame school because when you’re in school, you don’t get rewarded for getting the wrong answer. You get punished for getting the wrong answer. And then you go into corporations where you get punished for giving the wrong answer. And to us, the wrong answer might lead you to the right answer. So you gotta go through that. Just like in selling, it’s like you gotta go through the no’s before you get to the yes. And those no’s are mistakes, if you will.

People aren’t used to having the freedom to make those mistakes. Now if you make the same mistake 10 times, then we got a problem. But if you make a mistake in order to get to a higher place, you’re not really making a mistake. But people view it that way. That’s the hardest part of an environment where you say it’s okay to make mistakes. When the mistakes actually happen, what do you do? And you know, sometimes you close the door and you mutter to yourself and then you come back and you’re like, good job. So it’s, it’s real.

Really, people aren’t used to it. And I took it for granted for such a long time that people would love it. And you have to find the people who are comfortable in that situation or train up people to be comfortable in that situation. And it’s hard.

Stephen Schmidt (14:17.982)
So like you mentioned, Rick Rubin, for example, and being an orchestrator, what would you say is your greatest gift set within business?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (14:27.116)
You know, my dad was from where Scholes, South Carolina was from outside of where he grew up in the country where even hillbillies are like, damn, that’s country. And, and so he was not well educated. He’s a smart guy, but he just didn’t have any formal schooling. I think eighth grade he dropped out. And so I would have to take all these really complex things that I was working on and try to explain it to them.

and it gave me the practice in making the complex understandable. I didn’t simplify it, because it wasn’t a dummy, but I made it more explainable. And so what I found is that I can take really complex things and break them down in a way that people understand. And once people understand what you’re trying to do, then they can…

add all the complexity they want back into it because I’m a communicator among different groups. Like I understand sales, I understand marketing, I understand technology, I understand all of it. I don’t specialize in any of it, but I understand it enough to know how it all works together. So I guess I would be the puzzle master, if you would.

Stephen Schmidt (15:39.818)
Hmm. You got, are you a good salesperson?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (15:47.822)
I would like to think so. I also think that there are some people who are just forces of nature. I have a friend of mine who is a

big muckety muck at Salesforce and she’s a force of nature. When she speaks, you know that that’s the right thing to do, even if you don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. She brings that kind of energy and confidence to the table. I don’t operate like that. I operate much more, we’re gonna make this decision together, but I’m lead you to a place where we make it together. So I guess I would say I’m pretty good, but there are a lot of people who are way better than me.

There’s a lot of people who are way worse too. I’m on the upside of the curve.

Stephen Schmidt (16:29.868)
Yeah, sure you’re on the you’re on the far end of the bell curve in the right direction, right? That’s crazy

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (16:36.174)
Yeah, but there are some amazing people out there who have skills that I only seek to emulate or hire them because they’re so good.

Stephen Schmidt (16:47.894)
So great transition actually. how, because for what you’re doing, you’re building new things, like you’re bringing new value to the world that the world hasn’t seen yet. So how important has finding people that have skills that you want to emulate been in terms of your own growth? you have, like, do you have a mentor in your business? Like, where do you go to, where do you go to personally continue growing?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (17:17.25)
You know, it’s unfortunate. was on a panel at some event a couple of weeks ago and they asked me this question and I didn’t have a mentor. I didn’t have someone who was my sherpa, if you will. So I try to work with entrepreneurs and startup folks and say, listen, if you wanna talk, then just let me know and I’m happy to talk to you. I said, I’ll give you any advice you want short of money. They won’t do that.

Stephen Schmidt (17:27.361)
Mm.

Stephen Schmidt (17:39.18)
Hmm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (17:45.632)
So I try to be a mentor to the younger generation, but from my own fuel tank, I try to read, I love to read biographies of people who have struggled to their way to success and how their perseverance wins. You know, I’ve read the biography of Ronnie James Dio, who was the lead singer of Black Sabbath for a while and it was Dio, this guy, he invented this.

Stephen Schmidt (18:12.192)
Yeah.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (18:12.526)
And you know, he lost his best friend, at a gig and was 38 years old and broke when he finally became Dio. And I’m like, that’s a guy with perseverance. And I always want to emulate people with perseverance. You know, I love Winston Churchill, not because he was drunk every day during the war, but because he persevered, you know, perseverance is that’s, you know, when it’s funny, when you ask about the superpower, it’s, it’s, think resiliency. I got good bounce. It’s like, you can knock me.

Stephen Schmidt (18:24.428)
Mm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (18:42.32)
You knock me down, I will get up again and I’ll come back harder than when I went down. So yeah, that’s my power. The other stuff is just sort of window dressing that puts that to work, but it’s perseverance.

Stephen Schmidt (18:55.414)
Where does the resilience and the perseverance come from? Where does that stem from?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (18:59.436)
You know, that’s a good one. I don’t know. When I was a kid, I was the youngest of six. It was 1100 square foot apartment with three bedrooms, one bathroom, six kids, two parents and a dog. know, so there was a lot of traffic in the house.

So I had to negotiate my way through my family. Um, and then my, my mom passed away when I was a kid. And so I had to fend for myself. And so those saving graces that I was good in school and I learned, you know, bad things can happen to you. Losing your mom when you’re a teenager is really difficult and you can, some people just never get out of it. They never recover. But I looked at it like, okay, now what am I going to do? And now how do I.

Stephen Schmidt (19:20.918)
Mmm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (19:47.424)
you know, make things better. And so when I went to college, I wasn’t the best student when I first started and I got put on academic notice after my freshman year and I ended up graduating with honors. It’s like because you just keep, the thing, I learned early, bad things happen to you. So what? So what? What you gonna do about it?

And if you’re not going to do anything about it, but complain, then you get what you get. But if you take that and use it as fuel, then you can get a lot more than if you just sit there and don’t do anything. So I would say it’s from my childhood probably and just genetics is probably the other part.

Stephen Schmidt (20:29.933)
So have you pretty much always had to be a problem solver?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (20:35.21)
yeah, yeah. I had to be a negotiator. As the youngest of six, and with sick mom and dad who liked the sauce a little bit too much, I always had to be aware of what was going on at all times because you never knew when that volatility was gonna come. So you get very good in a crisis.

But you figure out eventually that crises aren’t necessarily the best things in the world for you. So I’ve always had to be a negotiator and I like it. It’s fun. I’m a funny, I’m pretty funny guy. I’d at least, according to some people, some people might not think so. And I like to laugh and I like for people to be successful because I’ve seen what happens when people fall into the darkness. I don’t want people falling into the darkness if I can help it.

Stephen Schmidt (21:24.716)
If you had to go back to, let’s just call it the beginning of your career, maybe even the beginning of your consultancy, because that was like your first real step, right? But if you went back and you had to start it all over, but you could take everything that you’ve learned since when you started to now, what would you do different and what would you do the same?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (21:38.915)
Yep.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (21:52.596)
I would say, you know, it’s hard to say that you do anything differently because I’ve ended up in a spot that I’m pretty happy with. So if you change something at the beginning, maybe you not so happy at this point, but assuming I’d be as happy as I am now, I would say I would have believed in myself much more than I did when I was younger. You know, when I was younger, it was always talk about imposter syndrome. I was always sort of like.

I’m not good enough or I can’t do that. Why am I doing this until finally I did have a friend of mine who said, you’re an entrepreneur, you know, just go be an entrepreneur. Just screw everybody. Just go do it. And finally heeded that advice and found out that I’m really good at it. really like it and it suits me well.

And now I, I feel like I can go in and run almost any business and, bring some level of success to it. Now, whether I can or not, who knows? And maybe that’s just ego talking. but when I was younger, I would have pulled the plug much earlier in the process than I would now because I’m so much more comfortable with who I am as a person. And I believe in myself so much more than I ever did when I was younger.

Stephen Schmidt (23:07.382)
When did that change for you?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (23:13.313)
Hmm. I think it’s when I was working at Live Nation. So I was older when this happened and people told me, mean, I made a career out of doing what people told me I couldn’t do. A little hate fuel goes a long way. But at that point, I kind of figured every time people tell me I can’t do something and then I do it.

You know, the first time you think it’s an accident, the second time maybe you got lucky. The third time was at live nation. And I’m like, yeah, I know what I’m talking about. And the problem is that it turned me into a little bit of a dickhead because I got a little too confident. I overshot the runway a little bit and then had to bring it back and, and, and, and settle it down.

Stephen Schmidt (23:50.87)
Sure.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (23:54.7)
But yeah, I would say I didn’t really learn that lesson until I was in my forties and set the tone for the next generation of, of yourself. It’s like people think of themselves as the same person their whole life. And you’re not, you know, you have a lot of consistencies. You look a lot of like, but you know, you’re different people at different stages and you have the opportunity at any time in your life to change that stage.

through will and there’s always reasons why you can’t there’s always excuses why you can’t but i always looked at it like okay well that didn’t work let’s try something new and you know resiliency gets you through

Stephen Schmidt (24:35.692)
love that let me ask you one more technical thing about for property lens before we kind of wrap up because we went on a totally different direction than I expected some of these shows go that way so let me move back a little bit

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (24:49.39)
I feel like I owe you $250 for therapy sessions.

You

Stephen Schmidt (25:02.432)
So how, because a lot of our listeners are investors, We’ve got a lot about business and life and all that here today, but with property loans specifically, what are some use cases for investors that are looking at properties? I would say, you know, maybe you’re fix and flip or you’re wholesale or you’re buy and hold guy, like that kind of niche.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (25:06.339)
Yep.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (25:22.446)
Sure. are really two. The first is if you’re looking to buy a property. You know, the way we think about it is sellers know this, buyers know this. We’re just trying to shrink that gap. And a lot of times as the buyer, you only know what the seller’s agent or what the buyer’s agent tells you.

So we’re the third party that says, we’ve done the work of pulling all this stuff together that they’re not necessarily gonna give you. Here it is. So you walk in the door with a complete pregame analysis of the property, which gives you some level of advantage in deciding how much you wanna pay for it or whether you wanna buy it at all. Now you still do your inspection, you still do all that stuff on the backend, but at least you walk in knowing.

Here’s the potential landmines in this place and is it worth the money that they’re asking for it? Now if it’s a competitive market that might be a different story but at least you go in and get that peace of mind knowing hey someone’s taking a look at this here’s all the data that can be found on this property and here’s the story of the history of this property.

So from the buyer’s standpoint, it’s about pricing advantage and peace of mind. From a seller’s standpoint, if you’re selling a property, you want to make sure that you get the report to know what people are going to be looking for. And one of the things that we do is, especially in residential real estate, we mine the description.

Stephen Schmidt (26:34.86)
Hmm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (26:54.028)
that you supply. So if you’ve updated the HVA system in 2022 and you put it in the listing, we’ll show it is updated in the system, even if there’s no permit for it, because while a permit is generally required, not every municipality requires permits. So we’ll use both of those sources to show off the property. One of the things when we talk about interaction is we want the ability for people to go in and upload receipts that they’ve done on the house to show off

Stephen Schmidt (27:10.73)
Hmm.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (27:23.952)
the house because we think the best cared for houses are going to be the ones that get the best price in the marketplace. So it’s more tool. It’s more tuned currently towards the buyer. Uh, but we also know that the seller is of, is a little bit more of a future near, near term future market for us. It’s like, it’s like, bought it like I, I bought a car in 1996, my first fancy job.

Stephen Schmidt (27:43.786)
You bet.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (27:51.648)
Saw this BMW. I’m like, this is awesome. And so I ran this brand new thing called the car facts report and there was nothing on it. And I was like, great, you know, peace of talk about peace of mind. I bought the car is awesome. And now you go into a car dealership and if there’s a used car, it automatically comes with the property lens. Excuse me. Car facts button on it to say, Hey, here’s the car facts report. They give it to you as part of it.

Stephen Schmidt (28:16.598)
Right.

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (28:16.726)
We’d like to see that same progression in our business, but for right now, we’re focused on the people actually executing the transaction.

Stephen Schmidt (28:22.732)
You bet. Love it. We’ll go look him up y’all and Bob if anybody was that excuse me if anybody does want to do that wants to connect with you for more or just see what you’re working on where should they go for that?

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (28:35.566)
You can see us on the socials I’m at Bob Friday at LinkedIn and then all of the company stuff is called my property lens so on

Facebook on the meta all those channels You’ll see my property lens if you want to reach me personally, it’s just Bob at property lens comm I’m always happy to chat about what we’re doing and and talk to other entrepreneurs about Maybe some of the journeys that they’ve had because you just learned like I said a lot of people don’t have Mentors and that’s not like I’m volunteering, but I’m always happy to talk to people about the journey

Stephen Schmidt (29:06.912)
You’ve well everyone. I hope you enjoyed today’s show if you got as much value out of it as I did I know you’ll be off to the races

Bob Frady – PropertyLens (29:11.8)
I’m going to go cry after this show. think I’m going to need to lie down, shed a couple of tears. Same time next week. It’s my pleasure, Steven. All right. Take care.

Stephen Schmidt (29:16.672)
man, no, hopefully not. man, I’ll see you next week for your session at the same time. All right, thanks so much for being here, Bob, we appreciate it. See y’all in the next one, y’all.