How Real Estate Investors Can Build Freedom, Systems, and a Business That Doesn’t Own Their Life

Steve Rozenberg (00:00)
What I do is I give people the ability to live their lives unencumbered. And what I mean by that is many entrepreneurs, whether you’re doing real estate, it doesn’t matter. We start off with a dream and motivation. And eventually that motivation and that dream becomes the jail and the thing that we hate the most because it’s a job and we never build systems, processes, procedures.

We don’t even know how to build a business.

Quentin (02:00)
welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest and I want you to really pay attention because I really believe you’re going to get a lot out of this. I know I say that, but I know I mean it. People bring so much value to this podcast and today’s going to be no different. Listen, this person is the one.

to help you ask the right question about becoming the best person you can be within your business. And you’ve heard me say, if you follow me, you heard me say this before, the one constant in your business is you. You are the one constant in your business. Contractors may come and go, people you may hire and fire, but it’s you that’s standing in the middle. And so you becoming the best person that you can be makes your business go so much further. So in this place called Real Estate,

You are the constant and you know that. And so this person is really going to help you focus on you. And so I’m super excited today to have here Mr. Steve Rozenberg. Mr. Steve, how are you doing today,

Steve Rozenberg (03:10)
I’m doing good. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

Quentin (03:12)
man,

thank you for being here, man. I’m excited about this. And listen, I want to dive in, sir. ⁓ I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. ⁓ Mr. Steve, you can give us the origin story, man, of kind of how you got into the space where you are now. We love the hero’s journey. And then tell them where you are in the world. People seem to want to know where people are geographically. So we don’t mind telling people where you are. So what you’re doing, the origin story, and where you are. Mr. Steve, sir, you have the floor.

Steve Rozenberg (03:39)
Thanks.

I do is I give people the ability to live their lives unencumbered. And what I mean by that is many entrepreneurs, whether you’re doing real estate, it doesn’t matter. We start off with a dream and motivation. And eventually that motivation and that dream becomes the jail and the thing that we hate the most because it’s a job and we never build systems, processes, procedures.

We don’t even know how to build a

and we’re running away from a life that we don’t want. We don’t even know where we’re going. And so what I do is I slow it down and I show people how to become the leader, the person that could actually build the business to give you the life that you thought you wanted and that you thought you were going to have. ⁓ businesses is made up of processes, procedures, structure. My background, ⁓ going back to your question is, ⁓ I’m an airline pilot. So I’ve been,

I am to this day, I still do it. fly a Boeing 777 for an international airline all over the world. And we are experts at processes, systems, checklists, and dealing with emergencies. Kind of like a business, kind of like real estate. That’s what we deal with every day, right? Life. And so I have learned, ⁓ I started investing in real estate back after 9-11 when I got furloughed from the

Quentin (04:50)
Kind of like life. Yeah, right. Yeah, right.

Steve Rozenberg (05:49)
I didn’t know what I was going to do. So I started investing in real estate assets and I made a ton of mistakes. lot of arrows in my backs and scars and empty wallets we’ll say, but, ⁓ I started a property management company and I scaled along with the business partner. we scaled that to becoming the fastest growing property management company in the state of Texas. And we had over a thousand single family properties.

We ended up selling it to a venture capital backed fund company. And the reason we were able to do this is we ran it like an airline. We basically injected an airline into our business. Once I sold to that company, we now had 10,000 properties under control. And I started doing stuff with bigger pockets and other big organizations. And a lot of people started asking me, could you show me how to

put an airline into my real estate portfolio? And I said, you can put it in anything you want as long as you’re the right person that should be doing it. That’s the bigger question. ⁓ So what I do now is I show people how to systematize and run their real estate or their business. doesn’t matter like a business and not a job by having processes, procedures, structure, and more importantly, making sure they are the right person that should even be the one in charge.

Just because you start a business, just because you sign a piece of paper that says you own a property doesn’t mean you own a business. You may be the operator, but you’re not the business owner. And your actions tell you that if you’re doing a $10 an hour work, are you making $10,000 decisions? There’s a difference. So that that’s in a nutshell, very quickly. That’s what I do.

Quentin (07:38)
Whew, as you was talking, I was just writing so much. You just gave it so much and I was just writing things down like, wow. So listen, this is one of my favorite books, Atomic Habits. I’m not sure, have you heard of that before? All right, so if you know it, there’s analogy that he used about, know, us like self mastery becoming better, becoming 1 % better every single day. One the analogies he used is an airplane. This is the perfect analogy to throw at you.

Steve Rozenberg (07:49)
Yep, I have.

Quentin (08:06)
He says, you know, if you set your coordinates and if you, don’t know if it’s knots or degrees, I’m not sure the exact term, but if you’re one little one knot off, you’re going to wind up somewhere where you did not want to go. And so I love how you are asking the questions. Are you the right person to be in charge? Like asking people to ask themselves these questions. I absolutely love it. So I want to say this to you because I heard you and I was writing things now, started investing in 9-11.

You know, airline pilot had a property management business. You sold that business. You had 10 K properties under control. So you have been navigating so many different spaces. Mr. Steve, I have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning no matter what we go through in life, these things prepare us for the person that we are now. And we pull from those moments and pull from those skills. And it makes us the people that we are today. So I want to know from you.

What has moments in your life taught you about you? What has it revealed to you about you? Has it revealed discipline? Has it revealed humility, resilience? What are these moments throughout your life revealed to you?

Steve Rozenberg (09:20)
That’s all those in every day, right? Every single day. it depends on what time of day, ⁓ to be honest. ⁓ I look, I think what it’s revealed to me and about humans in general is that we, when you look at fear and doubt, right? When I talk to people and let’s say somebody says they want to go into real estate or they’re afraid, they’re afraid of all the things, fear and doubt. You can’t see it.

You can’t touch it. You can’t taste it, but yet we let it drive our decisions and it drives our decisions back to who we were. What, what if, what if the thing you fear the most is actually the best thing you should do

and to make you have a life you’ve never had? Of course you’re fearful because you want to go back to where you’re comfortable. So the biggest, the biggest thing I’ve learned about myself is whenever I’m doubtful and whenever I’m fearful, I push chips all in on that.

Cause that is a sign I’m about to do something that I’ve never done before. If I want to build a business to $50 million and I’ve never done it, I can’t feel comfortable. have to have that pit of the stomach feeling. The, the, that’s the one thing. The next thing is, is having the destination of where you’re going. I get so many, I coach thousands of entrepreneurs, right? All over the world. I I’ve been doing this for years. I speak all over the world.

People always tell me like, Steve, what should I do? And I’m like, well, where are you going? Like when I get on an airplane, we don’t just get up and start flying around and go like you want to go to Hawaii, LA. Like, what do you want? We pretty much know the destination before we’ve ever taken off. We know the fuel. We know the route. We know the weather. We know emergency contingency plans. We know everything. As a matter of fact, you reference planes. Did you know that when you’re on a plane, you are off course 95 % of the time?

You’re off. All we’re doing is small one degree course corrections. Isn’t that kind of the same in business and in your lives? You have a plan. Nothing ever goes to plan. Something as simple as Google. If I if I want to go somewhere, I go into Google Maps and I’ve got to give it two things. I have to give it where I’m at and I have to give it an address of where I’m going. If I don’t give Google Maps an address, I’m not going to go. It’s not going to go. Where are you going?

It seems so simple that you could not get to a destination if you don’t have an address, a clear destination. How is that any different from being an entrepreneur? I talk to people all the time. They want to buy real estate. like, why are you doing this? I want to make money. Well, fuck, you can go get a job and make money. That’s not why you’re doing this. They don’t know. So if you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know you’ve ever what you say? You don’t recognize success and success doesn’t recognize you. You guys don’t even know each other.

So how do you ever know you got the life you want if you can’t even tell me what it is? So the biggest thing I’ve learned is you’ve got to start with the end in mind and reverse engineer everything. And it has to be very, very hyper specific. It’s not, I want to make 5 million in five or 10 years. No, no, it’s I want a $10 million portfolio making, um, 30 % profit margin with a, uh, 5 % annualized return.

I am working three hours a week and this happens June 1st, 2030. That is where you land your plane. That is your destination. If you don’t have that, how do you reverse engineer your life? You can’t. So that’s why so many people fail because they have no idea. It’s like if you just got in your car and just started driving, eventually you would run out of gas. That’s what happens entrepreneurs.

Quentin (13:29)
Okay.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Listen, listen. I grew up, hopefully this not offensive, but I grew up in black churches, right? So when somebody talking good, I kind of talked back to them like, woo! That was great, man. ⁓ you said so many great things. I’m glad you said it, because I did not know that 95 % of the time, the airplane is off course and it’s these one…

course corrections. And you said also, I don’t know if you said it, but I wrote it down. This is what I heard when you said, you may not say it like this, but I wrote down moving past our comfort zone. Like everybody has a default setting, right? A default setting that we go through, go to, but when you intentionally change your mindset, you can change your default setting. So when you change the way you think, you can change the way, okay,

Now I’m going to fall back to this because now I’ve retrained my mindset. Now this is my default. And so now I can course correct as I keep going. Cause now I know using your analogy, I’m constantly making course corrections. So now I’ll constantly have to kind of reset my default so that I go back to a default that I’ve trained myself to be at. Dr. Caroline Leaf, says it like this. She has a book called Switch On Your Brain.

And she talks about how the brain has these protein branches.

And they grow based on the information that you feed it. it grows. That’s your mind. Your mind never forgets, but you got to retrain. You got to override what you have been telling your mind. If you’ve been telling it negative, you got to override it and tell it positive. And you grow these protein branches that now is the natural default. This is where I think this is the way I think now. And so I love it because I see the course correction is changing the way you think intentionally that way you fall back.

to where you want the norm to be. So you can stay on the course or at least end up in the destination that you’re trying to go. And you talked about how you got to know what the destination is first though. In order to course correct, you got to know, you have to train yourself that this is where we’re going.

Steve Rozenberg (16:34)
You know, to your point of what the author said, ⁓ look, every day we wake up, we have what’s called the zero moment. When we open our eyes, we are the same. I don’t care if you’re fat, skinny, old, rich, broke. I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. But in that moment that you open your eyes, you have a choice to make. And the choice is very, very simple. I’m going to be a better version or a worse version than yesterday.

And if you don’t make a decision, you have decided indecision is a decision. And I tell people all the time, I choose to be better. I get up every day at three 45 in the morning and go to the gym. I fucking hate getting up at three 45 in the morning. And people say like, well, why do you do it? And I say, because you don’t, because you choose to quit. I’m not quitting and I’m going to be a better version. And you know what? I’m the one that’s stepping on your throat when it comes time to win, to see who’s stronger and who’s going to win.

because I have built up that mental toughness in my mind not to quit. And I tell people, it’s just a choice. It is just a choice. I choose to be better. And listen, I’m not saying everybody has to get up in the morning. I don’t care about that. I do it because that is my uncomfortable zone, which is why I do it. And buying real estate, buying real estate is just a, it’s a, it’s a vehicle. You know, one of the things I’ve learned about, and again, I work with all types of business owners, high level coaching,

Um, all kinds, it

matter. And obviously I still speak at a lot of real estate events. Um, good friends with, I’m sure people that on the show know. Um, and I, and I tell people all the time, real estate is four walls and a roof. It’s just a mechanism. I could be using real estate. You could be using roofing. Someone else could be using plumbing. That is just the strategy. My question is, is where’s that taking you to? Like, what is the goal of doing this? They don’t know. And I’m like, well, why the fuck you doing it?

You know, like four walls and a roof. means nothing to me. But the problem is, is real estate investors. We identify with what we do. I’m a flipper. I’m a wholesaler. Well, no, you are a business owner. The subsection of that business is real estate. The subsection of that is the tactic and tactics change over time. A burr was something that worked at one point. It doesn’t work right now. It’s like saying, I’m going to take snow skis and I’m going to try to use those in the, in the summertime.

That tactic doesn’t work. so don’t, the thing is, if you identify as I’m this kind of person, you’re pigeonholing yourself. So if I am a business owner and I went to you and said, you know what? He’s not a business owner. I’m going to walk right past you because you’re like sitting there looking for something to flip. And I’m like, not my guy. But if I said, I’m a business owner, I look at all opportunities to do what? To get me to my goal. And when I asked you your goal,

Like, let me ask you this. What’s your last name? What city were you born in? Where do you live now? Okay. Those things that I just asked you are what’s in your subconscious. You know it like that. I don’t, you don’t have to think about it. Now, if I ask you, what’s the goal of your business and you can’t answer that quickly, you don’t know it. And what happens is, is these opportunities pass you by.

Quentin (19:32)
admins.

Baltimore.

Mm-hmm.

Steve Rozenberg (19:59)
It’s not to own real estate. It’s the lifestyle that real estate gives you. And that lifestyle gives you what the ability to create one thing. And we’re doing this for one thing. Memories. We’re doing this to create. It has nothing to do with money. I don’t give a shit what anyone tells you. It has nothing to do with the amount of zeros in the bank. It doesn’t have to do with the time off. You can’t do anything. It’s the memories you’re creating with your family and loved ones with the time off. People miss that part. They get so caught up. I’m like,

I coach people, come to me like, Steve, I got a, I got a shit show going on. have no idea. What do I do? And I’m like, well, why’d you start this? Well, I wanted to have my autonomy, this and that, whatever. I’m like, how’s that working for you? They’re like, it’s not like, cause you don’t know what that is. You can’t clearly identify it. And if you can’t identify it, guess what happens? We will always revert back to the life that we had, which is the one you’re running away from. Sorry. I went on tangent. ⁓

Quentin (20:52)
Man,

okay, all right Steve, you wanna win that next? Hey, but listen, listen to me. I can proudly and honestly say to you, I was in the gym, 3.38 this morning, brother. I was in that game, I was in that game this morning. So yeah, so this is all resonating with me, Hey listen, I wanna talk about the Rozenberg group for a second. What is the next goal?

Steve Rozenberg (21:05)
Nice!

Good.

Quentin (21:19)
Or it’s standard because some people don’t have goals, some people have standards. So either one, next goal, next standard. What are you looking to solve or scale next, Steve?

Steve Rozenberg (21:27)
My goal is to help entrepreneurs break free from the standard issues they have in life. And they, they, get so caught up and to, to understand that a business is just a tool. It’s not there to consume them. It’s not there to ruin their life. It’s not there to ruin their marriage. It is there as a tool. That is it. And they’ve got to learn that the only way this works is leverage, leveraging people, money, time, knowledge, and experience.

The problem is, is they are the only ones leveraged. Most of the people in their business, entrepreneurs, real estate investors, everything they don’t understand. They, yeah, you can go fast alone, but you go much further as a team. And so I’m, I build a community. have a community of entrepreneurs. They’re there. They were all walks of life. And that’s the great thing, because why would I nothing against just real estate investors. But if everyone is like, everyone is, if you’re, if you’re a nail, everybody has to be a hammer, but

There’s other ways to do it. One could be a paintbrush. One could be a rake. One could be there’s different ways to do this, but most people just surround themselves with other people in that industry and they’re encapsulated like a bubble. And I just, I don’t agree with that. I go to different events. I speak to different people and they love the fact that I have hundreds of entrepreneurs at the end of the day. What are we trying to do? We’re just trying to have a better life. And that’s what I showed them how to do. How do you have that better life and how do you become the person?

that people want to come work for, work with, align with. So good times are bad. You’re the leader. You’re inspiring them. You are getting them to walk through walls for you. Whether they’re a subcontractor, a tenant, doesn’t matter. It’s all what? Towards your vision. And if you don’t know that vision, they’re there for a paycheck. And guess what they will leave for? Another paycheck.

Quentin (23:22)
Steve, you are actually saying a lot of things that I say on the show. Of course, majority of the time I am saying it within the world of real estate, but I always tell people we all have different tools and we’re all proficient at different tools. Some of us, and I just use as analogy, is proficient with a drill or proficient with a screwdriver.

Somebody may be a proficient with a spatula or with spices. We all have different skillsets that we bring to any opportunity that we have. And so I tell people, one of my mentors told me, when you know who you are, you know what to do. When you are sure about who you are, when you’re sure about your destination, drop anybody, anywhere in the world, you know what you’re supposed to do to get to that destination. And I tell people, know, my passion, my purpose is to unite and my passion is to do storytelling.

My purpose is to unite people and the passion that I use is storytelling. You can take me from this podcast, put me in anything else. I’m clear about what it is that I’m supposed to do and how I’ma go about doing it. And I’ma use that skillset to my advantage because my end goal is to make sure people are heard, that I make a space for people to unite with other people. That’s part of what I do. That’s what I feel like I’m fit on this earth to do. And I try to master that. And so everything you saying to me,

It just, it clicks. And I’m so glad that they’re hearing it from somebody as accomplished as you, because I say it over and over and I think they may think I’m like a broken record, but I’m telling them like, yes, like I don’t care what we do. There are some common denominators and these are some of the common denominators that we talk about in real estate and in business.

Steve Rozenberg (25:01)
And let me just say something and very very thank you so much for saying what you said and you’re right and if you look at success and successful people There is a common recipe It’s not magic. We follow like you me other we follow a recipe We may be at different stages in the recipe, but we’re following a plan That’s all it is. It’s not magic and I tell people time. There is a recipe to fail and There’s a recipe to succeed

your choice, which way you want to go. And every morning you get to pick that recipe and you get 86,400 seconds to run that recipe every day. And at the next day, that recipe is thrown away and you start over again. You don’t get, you don’t get credit for it. And the thing is, is every day you make that choice. And if you look at like-minded people, what one thing I’ve learned, and I know we’re on time, so I want to be respectful. One thing I’ve learned, if you look at anyone successful, whether it’s Steve Jobs, Elon Musk,

You, me, and anyway, look, do you know the one thing that we all have in common? A belief. We have a belief and our belief is unshakable. And listen, we may have bad days, we may have days that we question it. But we have how many times do think Steve Jobs, when he came up with the idea saying, I’m going to make a phone that has no buttons and is just a screen. And they’re like, that is fucking stupid. That is never going to. I’m doing it anyways.

Elon Musk, I’m going to make a car that’s all batteries. That’s not going to work or it will crush you. Watch me. They had a belief no matter what. So my point is, is to the people that are watching this, you all have a belief. Do not let other people decide your fate and deviate your belief. Your belief is yours alone. No one can take that from you. And you really, really have to understand that you are in so much control. Do not let exterior factors

deviate your belief or your recipe. And that is the key to success.

Quentin (27:06)
was going to say something after that, but we’re going to drop the mic there. That was a mic drop. I had something in the chamber, but that’s the mic drop. Listen, Mr. Steve, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, Mr. Steve?

Steve Rozenberg (27:26)
Yeah, I am very accessible. They can go to my website, first of all, SteveRozenberg.com, r-o-z-e-n-b-e-r-g.com. ⁓ Or you can find me on all the social media channels, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram. ⁓ I do answer the DMs myself. I will answer them. I make it a point to segment that time ⁓ because again, I don’t think it’s as productive as we all know it could be. ⁓ So I am very selective with what I say no to. ⁓

And I just want to make sure that, that I, I want to be respectful. If someone reaches out to me, I will get back to you. Best way is probably go to my website, send me a message through there, through the proper channels and it’ll get to me sooner. ⁓ but listen, I think everybody needs, ⁓ to have a conversation with someone. You may not even know what the conversation is supposed to be. The only dumb question is the one that you never ask and you go to your grave with, because that’s, that’s the one that will kill you. You know, and I, I I’ll leave you with this. ⁓

The 85 year old person on their deathbed never regrets the life they lived. They will regret the life they never lived. So do not let other people live your life. You all have your own life. have your dick. You have all the stuff you want. Don’t let other people dictate your life to you. Stick with your beliefs. Be the person you’re supposed to be and follow a recipe.

Quentin (28:47)
Mr. Steve, so listen, allow me to say three things to you. And I say this, I say a version of this to every person that comes on. To yours, I’m gonna augment it a little bit. So three things. First, thank you for your time, because you could have been anywhere in the world and you are a speaker, so you know you can put a premium on your time. So thank you for your time. I never quite thought about it like this, you know.

We always tell people, you know, want to be in the room with people where you’re trying to go. And it just hit me that this is my opportunity to be in a room with somebody like you for where I’m trying to go. So when I think about what you’re doing, I’m thinking about where I’m projecting where I want to go. I think about my end, but this is an opportunity for me to be in a room with people where I want to go. So I hold you a high regard and I thank you for your time. I thank you for…

not just your deposit in the show, but your deposit in me. Like this is me living that life of being in a room with people I’m trying to go. So I thank you for that. Thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story. I put a premium on stories. I think stories are so powerful. I think stories have a way of planting seeds in people. We may never see the growth of that seed, but you planted that seed and that seed starts to germinate.

And it starts to really course correct people. So thank you for your story. Lastly, man, thank you for your perspective. Thank you for the way you think, your mindset. I mean, you had to go through things to experience, maybe even pay some money to get the mindset that you have. And you bought that mindset to this platform. So Mrs. Steve, I truly appreciate you being here,

Steve Rozenberg (30:31)
Thank you. And, uh, and again, I think you have a, you’re spot on with your perspective. This is how you get in the right room with the right people doing these kinds of things. It listen, life is all about relationships. Um, I’ve had a lot of deals and friendships, um, transpire as a result of these kinds of conversations. And you, you know, you, you just have to be that open book and, and, you know, to me, it’s like, what if, what, what, what if could get this guy on my show? What if I just asked him, Hey man, can we ever do something together?

What if I, you know, and again, never assume what someone else will or will not do. That’s your own inhibitions when you go, that guy would never be on my show. I guarantee if you never ask, he probably never will. And I, and I’ve been on stages with, I’m very good friends with some very, very successful people. And you know what? They’re just like you and I, they are normal people. ⁓ they’re, they’re not superhuman. They don’t, they don’t fly around on, you know, with capes. They are regular humans. They just, you know what they do? They think differently.

Quentin (31:25)
Yeah.

Steve Rozenberg (31:30)
That’s it. That is it.

Quentin (31:34)
Mrs. Steve, I appreciate you, man. You have reinforced so many different things that I talk about. And normally I let that be the last thing, but I just want to say this because I tell people all the time at the beginning, they are the expert for today. We want to learn about you. And I tell the audience, like, it’s a privilege. It’s my privilege to be able to look through things through other people’s eyes. So I want you to know, audience, talking to you.

that your story is powerful. Your narrative is powerful. And as Mr. Steve said, yes, we are at the very ends of our success and journey, but I need you to know what you’re doing is important. So get in contact with Mr. Steve, let him get those questions. Are you the right person to be in charge? Help you find out, hey, am I asking myself the right questions? Get in contact with him because I want you to grow to the success

that you deem is beyond your wildest dreams. Not me, nobody else, but what you deem is beyond your wildest dreams. So, Mr. Steve, I say thank you again, sir, for being here. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day. And definitely make sure you’re subscribed here. So let me just say that too. Y’all have a great day.