Real Estate Investors Glenn and Amber Schworm

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Saint Louis, Missouri. It’s time for Saint Louis Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Phillip Hearn: [00:00:18] Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Docs Discussions. My name is Dr. Phillip Hearn here on Saint Louis Business RadioX. I always enjoy all the conversations that I get a chance to have here, but there is some that, I’ll be honest are a little more special. And so this one today is a little more special just because of the breadth of knowledge, the depth. I’ve got a chance to not only be a guest on their podcast, but I’ve gotten a chance to experience their podcast as a viewer. There’s too many acronyms and titles and stuff, so I’m not even going to do that. But I am going to introduce Glenn and Amber Schworm to the show today. Welcome, guys. How are you all?

Amber Schworm: [00:00:58] Hey, we’re good.

Amber Schworm: [00:00:58] Great. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.Looking forward to it.

Amber Schworm: [00:01:00] Great intro there.

Phillip Hearn: [00:01:01] I know we try to make sure the guests feel loved right away, you know what I mean? So it’s a lot of pressure.

Amber Schworm: [00:01:07] I feel very loved.

Amber Schworm: [00:01:08] A lot of pressure. We’ll try and perform.

Phillip Hearn: [00:01:10] Here’s the pressure that I’m feeling. I got Glen when I was on you guys’s podcast. Amber was like, Yeah, I don’t really want to be on this one. I’m gonna sit this episode out. I’m teasing, I’m teasing. She was probably handling all the business that we should have been handling, so you know the truth. So yeah. Yes, Yes. So I’m glad. Actually, we got both of you on the show. Thank you guys so much for spending some time with me today. Yeah. So want to jump in and want to start. I always like to understand how do we get to this particular point? So tell me more about your background upbringing. What led you to doing all the things that you guys are working on right now?

Amber Schworm: [00:01:44] That’s a long journey, so we can have that conversation. So yeah,

Amber Schworm: [00:01:49] The short version of it.

Amber Schworm: [00:01:50] The short version. All right, that’s fair.

Amber Schworm: [00:01:53] Neither one of us grew up with any money we didn’t know weren’t born with a silver spoon in our mouth. Neither one of us went to college. So we were we really started our journey out of desperation. I would say you probably have a little more history with with your business background. Yeah.

Amber Schworm: [00:02:09] You want to go into that?

Amber Schworm: [00:02:09] Sure, Yeah. Am I allowed to talk now? She gave me permission, so that’s good. So I’ll have permission. I’m good to go.

Phillip Hearn: [00:02:14] You better hurry up. I was going to say she just looked at you with that look. I saw that look. I’m scared of that look on the other side of the screen.

Amber Schworm: [00:02:21] I’m right next to her. I’m terrified. Okay, So anyway, so. So, yeah, I’ve been. I started my my business journey when I was about 19 years old, so I was out of school work for my work for a company for a year. And my brother had to fire me, which interesting story because I started my own business alongside this company we work for. And they caught wind of it and told him he had to fire me. So on that same day I’d asked him to be my best man in my first wedding. So it was a very interesting conversation that day. So that was kind of how that started. But so I started that business in 19, struggled, scrimped, ended up going through a few bankruptcies back when I was in the 20 seconds, early 20 seconds, lost some cars to repossession, a couple houses lost to foreclosure. I bought some rental property so I did not start off on an easy path by any stretch. Imagination, man. It was brutal. That was 30 years ago, but it was brutal and then, you know, got into some other home based business things for about ten years. And when Amber and I met back in 2003, we bought our first rental property together as just business partners. We were another another company. We’re both married to other people and we were and she literally was in Dallas and I was in New York and we had worked together for several years and became good friends. We decided we wanted to do real estate investing. So as as couples, we decided to buy our first rental property, which I ended up managing, which was really not a good experience for me.

Amber Schworm: [00:03:36] I worked for a family business for 17 years and I always thought I wanted to take that business over when my dad retired. But then as I started to get in my 20 seconds, I would say I started to realize that that was just a business that owned him, you know, while he was an entrepreneur and a business owner, it wasn’t like something you could really scale it. It required him to be there every day from 9 to 5. So I started looking for something else. And that’s actually how we met through an online originally.

Amber Schworm: [00:04:01] Yeah, through before, before we bought that property. We did that and worked together for a couple of years. We were we were good at building teams together and we were strictly just friends, you know, we lived it wasn’t this was back in the early 2000, right? So we really didn’t have FaceTime and Zoom. It wasn’t really a thing. Didn’t even know what she looked like, really. So it was it was I think I saw a picture one time that was we met at some at some conventions and whatnot, and it was all good. And then as time went on, we bought that property and the other businesses weren’t doing good. And my marriage sort of fell apart. And around the same time in Dallas, hers does, she ends up moving to Florida. And, you know, we kind of lost lost track for a little bit there. And then all of a sudden we we kind of got back together talking. And one thing I said, you know, we have a property up here. Why don’t you move up here? And we end up connecting. And, um, got her to move to New York from a warm climate in Florida. Got her to. Let me tell you something, man. I’m. I’m. I’m a closer. I got her up there. You know what I mean? So.

Phillip Hearn: [00:04:53] Look, you don’t have to convince me. If you were able to get her to move from Florida to New York. Sir, you win. I’ll tell you.

Amber Schworm: [00:04:58] What. You know, I got game, so I got. I got her to get there. So? So. And then we go ahead.

Amber Schworm: [00:05:04] And nobody can ever say I married him for his money because he was $80,000 in credit card debt when we got together.

Glenn Schworm: [00:05:11] Yeah, I got back on my feet from my early days, but I was through the divorce. I went back through some debt. And it was it was a tough time for you were going through divorce, too, and it was really tough time. And so we decided we both need to make some money. So we decided we flip a house and we’re like, Well, let’s go flip a house. We go to a we go to a workshop with eight people and we are two of the eight people in the room. Kind of an awkward, awkward amount of people at a workshop, you know? Right. And all these empty chairs and we’re in the front row. We want to learn. And the guy said, you know, to be successful in real estate, you have to go in houses that she’ll never go in. He points at Amber and I’m thinking, Buddy, you have no idea who you’re pointing at, but good for you. I didn’t say anything. We hadn’t done one house yet. We hadn’t done one house. And fast forwarding, we did a house that year, three the next ten, the next. And we we our company has done over a thousand real estate deals, investment deals. Um, we live in Florida. It still operates in upstate New York. We do about 100 deals a year up there. We say about 1000 deals is done, which is sound. It sounds insane when I hear that, but it did start with our very first. Yes, you always bring us back to reality. So came back to that first. Yeah, Yeah. So the way of doing that, you know,

Phillip Hearn: [00:06:17] So keeping everybody level set. That’s a that’s a big skill. Oh yeah.

Amber Schworm: [00:06:22] Another podcast will be out of two type-A people like work together and live together.

Glenn Schworm: [00:06:27] And not kill each other.

Glenn Schworm: [00:06:28] Each other? Yeah. I sleep in a lot. I sleep in a locked bedroom. Philip, I don’t want to be. I don’t. I don’t want to be. I don’t eat poisoned or stabbed middle of the night. So I sleep alone. I want to make sure I’m safe. So, yeah, you know, you got to be careful with that kind of stuff. But no, I we started flipping houses and we’ve we’ve built that business now. We have a huge education arm. We teach people how to do what we do. We have a huge rental portfolio with a lot of properties in it. So we do that. We have a short term rental portfolio as well. So we, we do a lot of things and we’re a lot of hats now. We’ve gotten really good at business management, I would say, and learning how to.

Amber Schworm: [00:07:04] Be owners and operators.

Glenn Schworm: [00:07:06] Yeah, yeah. And you know, I’d be happy to talk on that because it’s, it’s we manage a business from Florida. We live on the coast. We’re on the beach in Florida. So yeah, I wanted to throw that in because you’re aware. No, I’m sorry.

Phillip Hearn: [00:07:18] Yeah. So here we talked about this before we even got on air and my feelings are now definitely hurt because I was like, I’m too far north. I’m here in Saint Louis, so you know, now, but now I know somebody that’s got properties in Florida. So that’s true there. That’s true. You’re always welcome. Tell me where I’m going.

Amber Schworm: [00:07:35] He is trying to paint me out as the bad guy.

Glenn Schworm: [00:07:37] Well, yeah. You know, you’re just a silent killer.

Phillip Hearn: [00:07:40] Amber. We know where the bodies are buried. I understand. I know where. Yeah, we’re good.

Glenn Schworm: [00:07:44] Yeah, the. Yeah, she’s the. The Black widow. Right? So that’s the. That’s the slow poison. Middle of the night. I don’t know. I don’t know. But I’m in deep trouble tonight. I know that now. If I didn’t sleep in a locker room, I’m going to. So just to be safe tonight,

Phillip Hearn: [00:07:58] If not outside, just to feel safer, right?

Glenn Schworm: [00:08:00] Yeah, I think so.

Amber Schworm: [00:08:02] One of the keys is keeping a sense of humor.

Glenn Schworm: [00:08:04] Yeah, you have to. So anyway, so we we’ve gotten really good, though, at being able to run like we have, you know, 50 ish houses in upstate New York that all runs without us. We’ve got 14 short term rentals or Airbnbs. Amber runs that business with our son. We are in Florida. I say that because the 100 deals a year we do, we are not involved in any of those transactions now. Okay? I am involved in the level that I do still sit in the seat of CEO and I still oversee and I’m still at the meetings and whatnot, but I have great people on our team and my job is to be there for them, provide support for them, guidance the big relationships in the in the company and keep it going. But I don’t have to be there all the time. I think that’s important. You know, I think as business owners, we should all strive to get to that level. I think that’s what you want to do. If you want to work the rest of your life, that’s fine. But I’d like to build a business that actually has, you know, open market value because I’m building something that is not involved with just my personality. 24 seven So yeah, so that’s where that’s where we are now. We’re business. We’re business owners. We are we’re heavily in the real estate space, but we are business owners and always looking for more businesses, that kind of stuff. So yeah, there you go.

Phillip Hearn: [00:09:14] I love it. So, so and I actually did have this on my list of questions to ask. What is it like to work with a spouse? And I’m going to start with Amber because I want her I want her Oxford reaction. I don’t want you to sugarcoat it and make it smooth now. But I do think it’s interesting because. Yeah, I know you won’t. We’ve met. I now know that. But what’s interesting about it is people have their opinions on that topic, right? They always say don’t work with family, don’t work with spouse, etcetera. But you guys have done it over 20 plus years, it sounds like now and done it successfully. And I’m not saying sunshine and rainbows all the time, but at the end analysis from where you were to where you are now, over 1000 properties now with the coaching academy, the whole nine yards, there’s got to be some method to the madness and probably simplistic methods to make it work. So how do you work with your spouse?

Glenn Schworm: [00:10:03] Vodka. If I could summarize in one word no.

Amber Schworm: [00:10:08] He said for me to go first and you still went first.

Glenn Schworm: [00:10:10] I just started to throw it out there, so.

Phillip Hearn: [00:10:11] Yeah, Yeah. Amber, please open the floor to you.

Amber Schworm: [00:10:15] That has definitely been an evolution and it’s been a really big growing process because when we first started out, you know, not only we were both very emotionally charged because we were both going through divorces, there was a lot of other stuff going on. And and we kind of joke that after we got together, like the only, the only sex we had was hallway sex, you know, because we were both so mad at each other, it was you walking down the hallway and, and and so we we went through like four years of therapy.

Glenn Schworm: [00:10:44] Well, let’s back up, though, because we we worked together every day. So we’re we’re we’re fighting. We’re stuck in the same car. We were doing the work at the first two flips ourselves. So we were nonstop, like, together. No, no space, which that’s not healthy.

Amber Schworm: [00:10:59] Well, he’s okay with no space. I need my space. Like.

Phillip Hearn: [00:11:04] That’s fair, right?

Glenn Schworm: [00:11:05] I don’t know if I’m okay with no space. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s exactly true.

Amber Schworm: [00:11:11] But, yeah, we fought a lot. And the the biggest piece of advice I give people now, whether they’re a spouse, whether they’re, you know, a mother son, whether they’re a cousin’s that are going into business together, is define your roles. And that letter literally changed the dynamic of our business and our relationship because in the beginning we were trying to wear all the hats of every position in our business, and it is really easy to start playing the blame game when something slips through the cracks. You know, I thought you were going to do that. No, I thought you were going to do it. And then that starts a whole other whole other fight. So when we said, okay, you’re responsible for ABC and I’m responsible for X, Y, Z, that changed a lot. But then also supporting each other within those roles. So we had very different roles that that were then traditional, then were typical. Glenn did all the buying and selling and negotiating and all that, and I did the project management, so I did the hiring and firing of contractors and paid them when they needed it and all that stuff. So it never failed, though we would walk on a jobsite together. The contractor would always look at Glenn because I’m just a dumb blond girl from Texas, you know? Right. That that guy at the first workshop said, We’ll go into houses that she’ll never go to.

Glenn Schworm: [00:12:18] It’s a common yeah, that’s early days that people would think that a lot. Yeah.

Amber Schworm: [00:12:22] So so he always supported me in that role though instead of instead of, you know, saying, you know, answering the question, he’d be like, I don’t know why you’re talking to me. You need to talk to her. She’s the boss. And that was before I had the confidence really to do that myself. So I always appreciated that he did that and we always supported each other or helped each other within our roles. But that was a game changer when we when we defined our roles. And then the other thing, you know, therapy definitely helped. I don’t think there’s many people in in this in our society that grow up healthy, totally emotionally healthy or with a high emotional IQ. So I think most of us need a little help. And I think it takes a lot of strength to go to therapy and to work on the ugly parts of yourself and try to become a better version of yourself and get armed with the tools that you need in your tool belt to learn how to fight fair and to communicate better. And so. So therapy was a really big yeah.

Glenn Schworm: [00:13:16] I grew up in a house where where therapy wasn’t, you know, we didn’t no one talked about going to get help for yourself. You just. You sucked it up, man. That’s just how you did it. Old school, right? That’s how you did it. And I thought. I thought it was for weak people, But it turns out it’s for strong people. And the fact that you went and got yourself fixed, I think is fantastic. Am I in deep trouble? I’m in deep trouble, aren’t I?

Phillip Hearn: [00:13:36] And notice I didn’t say anything. I just want to make sure this is a friendly face, right? Yeah. But I think that’s important what you mentioned, too, because the amount of adversity that you even talked about, you know, Glenn, during your 30 years of kind of growing through the business, Amber working through being in different locations, kind of being dropped in these spots, now you’re working together with a spouse. And again, anybody that you close you’re close to and you love being able to take that time for yourself. It’s something that most entrepreneurs don’t do and not allowing your past scenarios and situations to crowd into today. I commend both of you because I can empathize with that. And Glenn, we talked about it when I got a chance to be on your show of just all the craziness and people go, How’d you do it? And like you said early on, it was just suck it up and get it done. That’s what you knew. That’s how you responded to that. So kudos to both of you for for taking that time out, because that’s extremely important. That’s huge.

Amber Schworm: [00:14:33] Working together with your spouse, though, also can be very harmful to your relationship if you don’t prioritize what’s important, though, because it can become all about work, right, instead of your relationship. So it’s also really important to set aside time and make sure that you have outside of work time. So one thing that we implemented was date night, you know, so we we make sure that, you know, we’re away from business, we’re away from the kids. We just spend time with each other. And, you know, it’s definitely been a growth process through through all of it. And, I mean, we’re still growing through that. A sense of humor definitely helps, not taking yourself too seriously, right? You know, all those things are helpful.

Glenn Schworm: [00:15:12] Yeah, for sure.

Phillip Hearn: [00:15:13] No, that’s awesome. I love it. I love it. So you guys have a ton of stuff going on. Of course, you’re still working and buying properties. You’ve got the coaching academy, you’ve got the podcast. Tell us a little bit more about what’s going on with you guys.

Glenn Schworm: [00:15:27] Oh, gosh. We’re all. We’re always. We’re always we’re always. I think we were just interviewing somebody else actually. We’re on another podcast and we were talking about and I said, I think that, you know, as entrepreneurs, we have to always be growing. And I think that the first thing I would say that we’re doing is working on ourselves. We’re always working on ourselves. Right now, we’re we we’ve joined multiple masterminds where we’re around people that think at a different level than we are. I read constantly listen to YouTube stuff. I’m right now we are really big into building our team. So if I could talk about this at a little higher level than just businesses reopening, I am you know, we are looking at you know, we have we’ve learned in the past few years more than ever that having the right people in the right seats, right butts in the right seats, will will. It’s just a game changer. Just a game changer. You know, we had a situation last year where we had an accountant that was here for eight years and kind of slipped into sort of a CFO position overseeing five companies, you know, 10 million bucks or 8 to 10 million bucks worth of worth of revenue. So a lot going on, a lot of moving parts and wouldn’t ask for help, even though I told her to ask for help, wouldn’t ask for help. Long story short, we moved away and things went south really quick and things weren’t right. Finally, I called my team up there and said, Go in that office and sit down on her and see what in the hell is happening up there. Because I’m not getting reports for eight months. There’s a problem, something’s going on.

Glenn Schworm: [00:16:44] And turns out she’d be alcoholic. And she was out in the car drinking 11:00 on a Tuesday morning and passed out. And, you know, just we so we realized that we allowed somebody to stay in the wrong seat because we had history with them. And history doesn’t mean that they’re good. And so we didn’t want to we didn’t want to endure the pain of finding somebody new and learning that. But let me tell you, those people, they’re going to you’re going to endure the pain one way or the other. You’re just delaying it. So we had to bring in a whole new accounting team, and that’s just one thing. But now we’re looking. We had leaders that were running some of our companies and they weren’t doing well. They weren’t doing the CEO or the COO role well. So we’re back to relooking for those positions, not aggressively, but we’re looking for those. And even in all of our departments, we’re looking for the right people to run things because we know that when we have the right people, they think differently, they’re committed differently, they take different actions. And, you know, together we can accomplish just a ton. So I know Amber has got the business, so she runs all she and our son Dakota run our Airbnb business. You know, it’s significant 14 different Airbnbs that are in that business. They fired me about a year ago. They just I was I came in, I was throwing some ideas around. They go, yeah. So we decided that we’re done with you. Like, uh, okay. So, you know, I step out, we’re like, we get to reap the reward of having the income, so it’s all good. So. Yeah.

Phillip Hearn: [00:18:06] Yeah. Well, that’s nice of you to share the income, Amber. That’s very kind of you. Even though you tossed them out of there, you might have needed to.

Glenn Schworm: [00:18:12] Yeah, you know, it goes right in and right back to Amazon. Whatever she said, the Amazon guy just yeah, they just, they’re going to build a camp right next door to us. They’re just going to have a they’re going to put a direct chute right from right, from the warehouse, right to our house.

Phillip Hearn: [00:18:22] So I mean that that would be the real prime service, right? Just to have it pushed straight into the house, it’ll be even easier.

Glenn Schworm: [00:18:28] Yeah, they they already. They already have. The other night I ordered a mouse for my computer or whatever it was. It was something like that. I ordered it at night, like 11:00 at night, laying in bed. I pull up my iPad, I go, I better order that. I order it. 7:00 next morning, it’s on my doorstep. I go, Yeah, So you really can’t beat that kind of service?

Phillip Hearn: [00:18:47] No. No matter what you do, you.

Glenn Schworm: [00:18:50] Could barely even drive to get it. I actually couldn’t drive to Apple to get it faster than that, so it was crazy. But yeah, yeah.

Phillip Hearn: [00:18:55] Anyway, it’s a beautiful place to be.

Amber Schworm: [00:18:57] That brings up an interesting point though, of, you know, even like the convenience of ordering stuff on Amazon and having it show up within a day or two. We’re at the point in our business, in our lives right now where we’re trying to simplify. And it’s it’s funny because it really is also the evolution of being a successful entrepreneur and not just an entrepreneur, but, you know, where where is the highest and best use of your time. And sometimes we even feel guilty about handing things off that we have, that we’re capable of doing ourselves or we’re used to doing ourselves. We’re in the in the in the process right now of hiring a personal assistant, like a combination of a housekeeper and somebody that maybe handles some emails or scheduling or whatever for us. And I told Glenn, it’s going to be weird for me to, you know, be on my computer doing work and somebody else is doing my laundry, but I can wrap my arms around it or.

Glenn Schworm: [00:19:53] Relaxing by the pool and having someone else do work around the house. It’ll be weird. It will be weird. We interviewed someone last night, said and she that’s what she does for a living. And we’re like, So it’s going to be odd for us for a while. She goes, she goes, It usually is when it’s your first time. She goes, After about two weeks, you’ll get used to it and you’ll like it. I said, Just going to be weird to look up and know that, okay, someone’s doing this, someone’s organizing this for me. I’m not doing it myself because I grew up in that. I grew up poor, so we did everything ourselves. We just we had to fix everything ourselves or have friends to do it for you or whatever, but is.

Amber Schworm: [00:20:20] The highest and best use of your time mowing the lawn or cleaning your house or, you know, cleaning the pool. Like those sorts of things. Or if you if your mind is freed up, there’s that good book. Who not how. Yeah, it’s a great book about that. When you find when you find the who to do your. How am I saying that, right? Yes. When you’re finding the who to do your how you’re helping yourself and you’re helping them because you’re also giving them them a purpose, too. So it’s not like you’re using people which which is, is a mindset thing.

Glenn Schworm: [00:20:51] Yeah. Like how I read the book and you get the credit for the quote. That’s nice. Oh, you did okay.

Phillip Hearn: [00:20:56] She delivered it very well. I was going to say she delivered it very well. No, she did. And that was because I think.

Glenn Schworm: [00:21:01] She hears it from me. I talk about it. So I didn’t realize you read the book, honey. So sorry about that.

Phillip Hearn: [00:21:07] So to get Glenn a little bit out of trouble, I’m going to ask this particular question. So with everything that you’re now building in terms of and I love that concept of the team building and getting the right people in the right spots because that’s a skill all to itself, right? Like that. That breaks a lot of habits for most entrepreneurs. They’re trying to figure out, like you said, how to do everything themselves. So when they start to properly delegate, that can be a game changer. So when you add those pieces to mean even looking at you and you’ve seen different markets, real estate and business in general, right? So you talk about the first time you two worked together back in 2003, it was only, what, 4 or 5, 6 or 7 years ahead of the crazy crash in 0809. Right. So you’ve lived through that. You’ve lived through now a pandemic. So you’ve seen a lot of different cycles and markets. What’s going to be what’s your opinion on ways to attack that? Right. Because there’s no unless you guys have a crystal ball in Florida that we don’t know about. And if so, we need to have a discussion offline. You’re not going to know everything, but how do you make sure to attack that market and be as well versed as you can be for whatever may be coming down the pipe as you’re building your teams and as you’re growing your business structures?

Glenn Schworm: [00:22:19] I don’t think you know, I mean, not think I know that none of us know what’s going to happen. We don’t know what’s going to happen with a recession. Is it here? Is it already you know, people say it’s already come and gone. It’s already here. Oh, it’s coming. It’s going to be the worst thing ever. You don’t know everybody, all these experts, you know, whenever and I went through the recession and back in, we really just got started flipping. We had one rental in 2003. We got serious about flipping in 2007. And literally we sold the first house in the market tanked and we’re like, Uh oh. So we didn’t know what we were doing. We just pushed forward. And I think that’s probably the best example for anybody, is that you can survive any. Thing that comes your way. Pandemic, whatever. If you just develop the skill of being resourceful and just decide that you’re not going to quit and you and I’m not saying like just, oh, just lay down and think about it. No work like digging and work, you know? It’s almost like when you invest in the stock market, you’ve probably heard of dollar cost averaging, right? When you invest in, you’re always putting a little bit in. You’re always doing that.

Glenn Schworm: [00:23:13] Eventually, over time, it all evens out to be a good return. Same with your business. You’ve got to keep putting it in. Sometimes it’s going to require a lot more than others. During the pandemic. Look that we were in New York, that was like Nazi Germany. That was a terrible spot to be when this happened. You know, I called him Lord Cuomo. That was the that was the governor. It was terrible. You know, he ends up getting fired like an idiot. But but we were you know, I hated him, but I was like, this is terrible. He shut us down. The business practices and all of our tenants didn’t have to pay rent. Legally, they’re stealing. I mean, just don’t even get me going. Just infuriated me. And so he made it very difficult to even do business. But we had to dig in inside of ourselves and say, what can we control? What can we control? How do we navigate this? And I think that sometimes, like dollar cost averaging, you’re doing that with your time, sometimes you’re coasting, sometimes things are going well. But I would always remember that it’s going to change. When things are going well, it’s going to get tough again. When things are tough, it’s going to get well again.

Glenn Schworm: [00:24:10] You’re going to have those ups and downs in business. Absolutely. And you have to learn how to emotionally navigate those waters and stay consistent throughout. Does that mean you’ll be consistently happy? No. We consistently scared. No, But be consistent with knowing that there’s going to be a solution that you’re going to find, even though you don’t know when the pandemic hit us, man, we were our education business. We were $80,000 into a marketing campaign for one event. Yeah. And they pulled the plug and we’d already spent the money. You don’t get that money back. It’s all TV advertising. We had infomercials running. We don’t get it back. Right. And I remember looking at Amber and saying, this is this company’s been my dream. This is. Is it over? You know. And that was in the pandemic time when everything was shut down. It was like, well, we’ll be open in two months. And then that turned to three, turned to four, turned to, you know, nine years. We’re going to shut us down for I’m like, this is insane. And I remember two months in saying, all right, I licked my wounds long enough, let’s figure this out. And we did our first virtual three day event, and now we’re the leaders think in the country of doing that.

Glenn Schworm: [00:25:16] And so we have perfected that model. And and what I thought was our worst day was actually our best day. I just didn’t know it yet because now I can do these workshops. We can help people all over the country and and I don’t have to leave my home. Right? Literally, I’m doing my workshops and I’ll let you know. I’m wearing a suit on the top and I got a pair of shorts and flip flops in the bottom. That’s what I’m doing because I’m in Zoom and I’m in Florida. So I’m doing, you know, during the breaks, during the breaks, I drive five minutes from my studio home, which we live on the water. So I’m I’m watching dolphins in the backyard. I’m eating a sandwich. I’m like, yeah. And I’m like, this is wonderful. So but if I hadn’t pushed through so many people shut their doors down during the pandemic, they just couldn’t handle it. And I get it. But I think that during difficult times, whatever comes our way, you as a leader have to innovate in your business. If you don’t innovate, forget it. You’re done. You have to innovate because what you what you did before may not get you through the next economic downturn that we have.

Amber Schworm: [00:26:15] The interesting you mentioned, you know, we went through the recession back in 070809 Yeah. And you know, how do you how do you change your strategies specifically regarding real estate? And I think that’s one of the things that concerns us the most with people that are getting started in real estate is there’s so many gurus online that have popped up in the last few years that have never been through a recession. Yeah, right there. You could have done real estate in the last 3 or 4 years and been an idiot and still made money because because the market just covered that many sins. I mean, you could have made every mistake in the book and because there was so much equity that happened during that time, you could have still made money. So those people are now self-proclaimed gurus that are saying, you know, I’m successful, I know how to do this, but they’ve never been through that cycle. And that is one thing we love about real estate is no matter what cycle that it’s in, there are strategies and ways to make money. You know, it might be taking a different approach on the deal or how you buy it or create a financing or whatever, but so that there are those those things. But I would just encourage anybody that’s interested in that to make sure that you find somebody that has stood the test of time, that has been through a few recessions that that knows the different strategies. So, so don’t, don’t get somebody that’s brand new that’s just only been doing it for a few years. That that’s very scary to us. And I think a lot of people are going to lose money by by following those kind of people. So I would just say find somebody that you resonate with that has experience.

Glenn Schworm: [00:27:43] Same with any business coaches too. If any of your listeners are just looking for general business, be careful that you don’t have people that just started in the last few years where it was crazy. People were making lots of money because you got to know you got to know how to navigate. Just like just like you asked me. You have to know how to navigate what’s coming ahead. And you don’t always know how to navigate. But if you have people that have navigated rough waters before, anybody can captain a ship in calm waters, that’s a piece of cake. We’ve we’ve taken our boat out out in the Gulf here. And, you know, there’s been times where it’s just calm. It’s like nothing. Not even a wave like this is wonderful. And I’ve had moments where we’ve taken it out and got started through the past and went, yeah, not going to happen because all of a sudden the waves are crashing. I’m like, This is way out of my level of comfort zone. Now. If I had a captain on with me that knew how to do that, I would be much more confident to do that. But me, I go out there and go, No thanks, I’ll come back in because that’s life or death, right? So I don’t mess around with that. But I would say that you should look at your business that way too. That can be life or death for your business, because really it’s just the it’s the dream and the goal that you want to achieve. And there’s going to be you’re going to have to have someone that knows how to get there to help you get. That’s my personal opinion.

Phillip Hearn: [00:28:42] No. And love both opinions because so, you know, we’ve got a real estate brokerage here in Missouri. Right. And people go, well, what do you think of the market and what happened a couple of years ago? And I was like, I’m just going to call that a silly season where things didn’t quite make sense. You had people that were mad about rates that they knew in their heart of hearts they couldn’t get right. So you got the person screaming about, well, these rates are going to last forever. You can’t get 3.5% the way you’re structured right now. So it was a silly season. But and I agree, too, because, you know, we’re all old enough on this call to remember, oh seven, oh eight, oh nine and some very vivid details, right? Yeah. You’ve been through other recessions. You’ve been through great times. You can kind of see when you’re like, okay, it’s going to get choppy or these things take place. So I totally agree. Maximizing the knowledge and the gems like of people like you, it’s invaluable if you’ve got the right group of folks around you, kind of within your network and on your team. Right? So back to your team concept. I love it. Absolutely love it. Yeah. So to keep you guys on pace, I want to talk a quick second about the podcast Real Estate of Mine. Right. So it sounds like you took a Billy Joel title and made it your own. How about that? Yes. How about that? You.

Glenn Schworm: [00:29:54] You saw that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Phillip Hearn: [00:29:56] As soon as I reread it, I was like, I know where he got that from. Upper Upper New York. I was like, Yeah, I knew what that is. Yeah, but what was the genesis of the podcast? I mean, so you guys have a ton of great knowledge to share how to get started. How did it come about? Tell us a little bit more about the workings of creating that podcast from scratch.

Glenn Schworm: [00:30:15] So I think we started because our company, our company, that’s our tagline, our company, our the coaching company, investor, pro or real estate of mind. And we we realized early on that anybody can buy houses low sell finance. It’s not that complicated. Look, people make it out to be this complicated. It’s not complicated. We make it complicated because it’s scary. We’re dealing in hundreds of thousands of dollars, typically, or ten or high tens of thousands of dollars on a deal. And so once we add money to an equation, what’s our brain? Do we all get weirded out by it? So once we do that, so we realized early on that you’re going to have to put out fires on a regular basis and you’re going to have to be a solution driven person. You’re going to have to be resourceful. You’re going to have to solve problems day in, day out, morning till noon till night. You are solving problems. That requires a certain mindset. And if you panic, if you freak. You can’t do that. You’ve got to be strong and you’ve got to have your mindset. So we are big believers in. If we can help people understand their mindset, they can have a strong business. We we open our workshop, we do this thing called the Home Flipping Workshop, and we’ve been doing it for seven years now. And we do about, I don’t know, eight, nine, ten of them a year depending on the year.

Glenn Schworm: [00:31:29] And one thing I open the word. When I opened the workshop was, Hey, what’s the most important part of a house? And people eventually get around to saying the foundation. I said, Okay, what’s the most important part of your business? And they finally get around to saying, Well, I guess I am. I’m like, Right. Like you are the most important part of your business. I said, So let’s work on you. Because if I when you get knocked down and dragged around and the fear sets in and the contractor doesn’t show up and the somebody the supplies don’t show up and the the seller cuts you out of the deal because they’re just a nasty person and the lawyers are yelling at that is all part of the game. And if I can help you be mentally strong through that, you’ll win this game every day of the week. But if you don’t have that mental mindset, when you get knocked down, you’ll stay down and we don’t want you to stay down. We want you to stay up. And that’s the only way to get to the wealth lifestyle that we’re talking about. The life where you have income coming in more than you spend every single month from residual income. The only way to get there is to beat those demons in your mind to get there. If you can do that, we can get you. We can get you the number you need. Yeah.

Phillip Hearn: [00:32:32] I love it. I love it. Yeah. Now, mindset piece. I mean, think about it. And I grew up playing sports, right? So that right coach that could say the right thing to you goes a long way. You kind of forget about the other coaches. You know, they were a pain in the ass. They were all these things. But that right, coach that said, Hey, if you look at it this way, we can get you over this hump, run this route correctly, see this coverage. It’s the same thing in business and sales. So I absolutely love it for sure. So because I know we have a harder stop on this. Number one, you guys are coming back for round two. We’ll figure this out. Love to get you all on the schedule and go from there. But before we let you go, how do our listeners find you, reach out to you? What does that look like?

Amber Schworm: [00:33:11] Yeah, we do have a lot going on, so we decided to put it all in one place to make it easy so they can go. Glenn and amber.com. Glenn and amber.com and that has a link to our show that came out It has links to our book. It has a link to our podcast all of our social media platforms, all that good stuff, the workshop, if people want to attend that, it’s got all that good stuff.

Phillip Hearn: [00:33:31] So amber.com awesome awesome guys I really appreciate the time today. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. Um, just wealth of knowledge and again we’re doing a part two. I’m just I’m not even asking. I’m telling you we’re doing a part two, so this will be a lot of fun, provided.

Glenn Schworm: [00:33:47] I’m not poisoning my sleep. Well, yeah.

Phillip Hearn: [00:33:50] I’m not. I’m not accessory for that.

Glenn Schworm: [00:33:51] If I’m not here, you know, just remember this conversation. It’s recorded. So remember.

Phillip Hearn: [00:33:57] Think that’s where my my editors are going to chop it off right about there. And so, again, special thanks to Glenn and Amber Swarm today. Had a ton of fun with them. You guys have been listening to Doc’s discussions here on Saint Louis Business RadioX. I’m Dr. Philip Hearn, and we’ll see you next time. Take care.