PJ Crescenzo 0:04

Welcome to the High Level People Podcast with your host, PJ Crescenzo. This is the show where every week we go inside the minds of modern market leaders. These are world-class entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and ministry leaders who are making a generational impact on the world today. The question is if you're gonna compete, why not compete at the highest level possible? And that's what the show is designed for, to give you a playbook for your life so that you can continue to climb levels week after week. This is the High Level People Podcast, and welcome to today's episode. Welcome to the High Level People Podcast. Today I have Robert Howell, who is a successful land and mobile home packaged investor across the Southeast. He's also successfully invested in mobile home parks. He's passionate about building wealth through real estate. He also runs a family business, and I'm excited to go deeper on the story of Robert. Robert, welcome to the show, brother.

Robert Howell 1:03

Appreciate you having me, PJ.

PJ Crescenzo 1:04

Looking forward to this conversation. Absolutely. So what inspired Robert Howe to get into real estate investing?

Robert Howell 1:12

That's a great question. And um, you know, if I think back, I think it's probably a little bit in the blood. Uh my grandfather, Jim Wood, was a builder in Memphis, Tennessee, and built lots of houses around Memphis. Um that being said, that that's not what I did starting out in my career. And I was doing event marketing uh for 16, 17 years, starting out uh when I got out of college, or actually during college, um, and was doing event marketing, had some interest in real estate, bought a couple rental properties here and there, but nothing really intentional or really serious. Well, then COVID hit, and I was like, well, I'm not gonna do events anymore, I gotta do something else. Um and told myself I've always been passionate about real estate, and that's when I made the jump and said I'm gonna do this full time and started start at the beginning of COVID and the rest is history.

PJ Crescenzo 2:08

What did you find was the toughest thing about reinventing yourself? Going from a background in event marketing to jumping full-time into real estate investing, part of that requires a new identity, a new focus, a new strategy. What did you find is one of the greater challenges in stepping into that new identity in Robert 2.0 and the professional landscape?

Robert Howell 2:30

Yeah, I'll tell you, probably just the education, right, and the know-how. Um risk, of course, right? And um my perception of risk before I own real estate versus what my perception of risk is today, completely different, right? Um, and so changing that perspective, changing that mindset, um, and educating myself on, hey, what's what's a real risk versus maybe it's really not a risk.

PJ Crescenzo 2:58

Or a perceived risk because it's a new deal. Yeah. All right. So you so you go into real estate 2020, it's 2026. What has the growth of the real estate investing business looked like over the last six years?

Robert Howell 3:09

It's been great. And um have really enjoyed it. Started out when I when I first started, I was just wholesaling. And this is at the very beginning of COVID. There's a lot of unknowns and prices hadn't gone crazy yet. But I would buy a house for $5,000 and sell it for $25. And I live in the upstate of South Carolina near Greenville. And so um I was just doing that, just wholesaling. And that was really just learning, learning the business. Uh part of that, I ran across an older gentleman, LaFoy Ellenberg, great guy. Um, every time I'd do one of these and talk about him, I'd think, man, I need to call him and check in. He's in his 80s. But um he uh I was buying some houses from him and he said, My nephew owns this mobile home park across the street. Would you be interested? I didn't know anything about a mobile home park, but I knew a lot about affordable housing. I had bought buying these houses 5,000, sell them for 25, and uh my rentals were more affordable type housing. And so I said, sure, I don't know anything about it, but I'm interested. Um negotiated that mobile home park for six months and finally uh bought it, fixed it up, sold it a year later, uh, which then enabled me to buy a bunch more mobile home parks, and that was really been my focus. Um through that process in South Carolina, you have to have a mobile home dealer's license to buy mobile homes from direct from the factory and sell them to a consumer's similar to a realtor's license. Um, but you gotta have that license. So I went ahead and got that license and I saw, man, I could buy these manufactured homes, mobile homes direct from the factory for a really affordable price. And why don't I just instead of at the time I was starting to do some house flipping too, said instead of flipping houses, why don't I just buy these homes from the factory, buy raw land and put them in? And so been doing that since. And so really kind of my day-to-day and my growth is active day-to-day is buying land and putting new manufactured houses on it. And then my long-term separate is buying mobile home parks to offset the income and taxes and build long-term wealth and long-term uh you know cash flow.

PJ Crescenzo 5:26

Where do you see the mobile home park asset class in the real estate landscape today, as far as opportunity is concerned? Do you feel like this is one of the most untapped asset classes? Do you think it's one of the riskier but more rewarding if you get it down? Like what's your relationship with mobile home parks as you look at some of the other asset classes that exist in residential and commercial?

Robert Howell 5:49

Yeah. Um, you know, for me, I think it's uh one of the safest bets uh that there is out there. Uh people ask me why I buy mobile home parks. And I'm a very simple guy. I'm not calculating cap rates, I'm not worried about all the different financial ratios. I'm just worried, is it going to cash flow or not? And um when you look at it, and I'm buying mobile home parts for $20,000 to $30,000 per lot, and a lot of times the houses come with it, and you can rent those houses for $7,000, $800 a month. And so I look at it, I'm like, where are you paying twenty thousand dollars for a house and are renting it for seven, eight hundred dollars a month? I mean, the returns, I don't know what the returns are on that, but they're great.

PJ Crescenzo 6:31

Um compared to a single family deal where you're lucky to break even where you know you pocket 200 bucks, but with a way higher cost for entry.

Robert Howell 6:38

Yeah. So I see it as pretty safe and you know, competitive landscape, uh private equity, and bigger institutional um investors have gotten into the mobile home park space, but I'm focused on small and mid-sized parts, which would be you know anywhere from for me, it's anywhere from three lots to 30 lots. And the institutional, they want to buy 50 lots or 100 lots plus. So I don't, I don't, of course, do I see competition? Yes, but it's not at the same level as the 100 lot parks.

PJ Crescenzo 7:08

Do you think simplification, I don't know if this was intentional or organic, do you think that simple approach to analyzing deals and just looking at cash flow has been an asset and built in your portfolio versus overanalyzing and maybe getting processed by analysis?

Robert Howell 7:22

100%. Yeah, it makes you move fast. I'll give you an example. Um, two weeks ago I got a mobile home park under contract. Uh realtor, residential realtor, posted on Facebook in a real estate group and said, Hey, I've got a mobile home park that I'm gonna sell. And she put her number down. Maybe she didn't put her number down, but anyhow, she said, contact me for more information. Um, I sent her a message and said, Hey, where's it located? I text message. Um, she responded right away. I said, Okay, I'll be there in an hour. And I went and looked at it. Um while I was sitting at the mobile home park, I sent her a text back with two options, a cash option, a seller finance option. And um, you know, for me, I just looked and said, I I told her I want to do the seller option, seller finance option, and you know, I calculated up what the payments were and what the rent is and knew that it would cash flow. Um now, you know, that does some of that comes from experience, right? But Napkin Math works all day long uh from a cash flow perspective. And I got the contract, she said hundreds of people were texting her and messaging her about this mobile part, but I moved the quickest and got the deal done. Some of these other people probably were worried about due diligence or worried about you know putting their spreadsheets together.

PJ Crescenzo 8:38

How long did it take you to gain the confidence to move quick, or was that your philosophy and mindset from day one of getting into real estate investing?

Robert Howell 8:46

I think day one, but I think I learned it from event marketing. Um I worked at you can see behind me I've got three Olympic torches here. I worked on um I think seven Olympic Games uh for Coca-Cola. And um the deal with Olympic Games, they don't care. I mean, obviously they need Coca-Cola's money to put the Olympic Games on, but um the Olympic torch is gonna start when they publish that it's gonna start at 8 a.m. on a Monday, regardless of whether Coca-Cola is ready or not, right? And that applied to the Olympics. I've been to the Super Bowl, been to NASCAR races. Those things are starting with or without you. So you learn that sense of urgency that, like, hey, you got to move fast because it's gonna go uh with you or without you. And I think I've been able to transition that over to real estate, just having that sense of urgency in uh real estate deals, but also in how you work with people and communicate with people. Um, and that gives you a bit of an edge.

PJ Crescenzo 9:43

W why do you think there's a lack of urgency today in the marketplace? Do you think that's just from a lack of like your in your scenario, you had a professional career that required urgency? I would say urgency is a inner trait, right? Something that's usually attached to hunger. But what would be your perspective on a lot of people don't move as quickly, you know, as they ought to. What do you think is the cause of that?

Robert Howell 10:08

I think it starts with uh the expectations of the organization, right? And so you think about I work a lot with government, uh, just given what we do with landhold packages and permitting and approvals and such. And you're there's usually not much sense of urgency there. Um, but I think it starts at the top in terms of like, hey, what's the leader doing, right? Um, and so I I think that's where it starts now. You know, if it's me and you talking and we're real estate investors and we don't have a sense of urgency and we work for ourselves, you know, that I think that comes, like you said, from your your inner being of like what drives you, what's your fire? Um, do you really have it in you to and to to go make it happen?

PJ Crescenzo 10:50

What's your fire today? What's the long-term vision for Alensons? What's the north star of what you're building and working towards?

Robert Howell 10:58

Um, you know, for me, from a business perspective, I love affordable housing. And um my goal is to do a hundred thousand uh affordable houses in the next 10 years, and um, which is a lot, and I can't do it all alone. Um and when I say that, you're probably like, there's no way this guy can do a hundred thousand homes. I'm doing a hundred homes a year right now by myself. So you think about 10 years, I'll have only done a thousand, right? And maybe I'll grow, and so maybe I'll do two thousand or three thousand. But um, that's my goal, and that's what drives me. Uh I can't do it all myself, so I have these types of conversations, and my hope is people listening to this podcast or uh people that I teach or talk to on a daily basis um feel that energy, feel that passion, and they say, Hey, I want to learn how to do affordable housing, whether it be mobile home parts or land home packages or you know, something else, right? So the more I talk about it, the more it happens. So that's from a business perspective. Absolutely you know, from a family or long-term perspective. Um I've got the name of my company is Howell and Sons. And I set that up a couple years ago because I was like, you know, my boys are in high school, and um, you know, it would be a great thing if they wanted to pursue real estate, uh, pursue business. And they have, they've shown kind of that initial um desire to do that. I've got a son that's gonna be a senior and one that's gonna be a sophomore. And so from a legacy standpoint, I would love to be able to set something up over the next several years that they could come into. We could work together. Um, we work together today. One they they both own a mobile home in one of my mobile home parts that I sold off. Um, and they're you know, they're they do cold calling for me, uh, they help with some marketing. Um, they've got their own podcast now, so they're busy with that. It's called the Early Birds. Uh they interviewed they interview people that like started young or kids that are are starting to be entrepreneurs early on. I love that.

PJ Crescenzo 12:56

What's the going back to some of your origin story, what's the greatest lesson you learned from your grandfather who was the builder in Memphis?

Robert Howell 13:04

Um you know, I think uh from him was really about like hard work and uh you know having that work ethic to really just head down, grind, make it happen.

PJ Crescenzo 13:16

And I would say work ethic is a very close related sibling of urgency. I think those two things coexist. It's kind of hard to work hard and not be urgent because I think those things exist in the same ecosystem. What do you think is the most difficult thing about executing on a land mobile home package deal today?

Robert Howell 13:37

It's really not that hard, be honest. It's really not that difficult. Um if but if you're starting out, you know, of course the knowledge is is hard. But um the reason I like land home packages, because the same process every time over and over again. We've got about 150 items that when we start a project that need to be completed, and we know that those are the things that need to get done. Um when we get a property under contract, go through due diligence, and then once we own the property, so we know exactly what needs to happen, and so that's why I say it's not that hard. As I think about it, I just expanded recently um and started working in Tennessee. Um and it's been hard like learning the local codes and the local counties. Um every every uh the process to set a mobile home and and develop it is the same, but how you work with the county is very different. And so learning that has has been pretty hard. Okay.

PJ Crescenzo 14:32

And when you say you're looking to expand your audience, build new relationships, transfer some of this knowledge, where do you see the biggest value add being to somebody that says, hey Robert, teach me how to do this? Is it creating that 150-step process? Is it giving them the confidence? Is there a certain part of the process that you find sometimes is the hardest for people to grasp? Where does that transfer of knowledge make the biggest impact as you're starting to educate people on what this process looks like?

Robert Howell 14:58

Yeah, I think um you know, I think the biggest impact is probably just showing them, right? And I could sit here on call with you and I could bring up our spreadsheet and I could show you everything that needs to happen. Um and you know, you're probably gonna be cross-eyed thinking, man, that's a lot of stuff. But when you can see the process um happen, it's very valuable. So typically, you know, if somebody like you came to me and said, Hey, I'd really like to learn more about land home packages, um, I'll say, Hey, let's meet at a job site, right? Or hey, why don't you come to our weekly meeting and you can attend and you can see you know what we talk about and how it happens. And um, learning by doing is is really uh helpful.

PJ Crescenzo 15:42

I love that. So in the goal of scaling to a hundred thousand units, which by the way, I don't think there's anything that really any human whose growth driven, I think back to the parable of the talents, 10 talents, five talents, one talent. I think anybody who's a 10 talent person, somebody who has big capacity, you could say any number, and I think it's possible. I think everything's created first in the mind and second in life. You could tell me I'm gonna do a million units in the next six months, and I'd say, all right, well, we got some work to do, but it's possible. So there's nothing in this ecosystem you could tell me that I'm not gonna say, let's get after it and make it happen. That's my belief system in life. Walt Disney had a crazy dream for a while and almost went bankrupt. And now they're probably one of the most successful organizations in the history of man. And uh actually, this is my second professional podcast when officially rocking the stash, because my soon-to-be four-year-old son is loves it. It's his favorite thing ever when I come when I come home with a stash. So, but thinking back to Walt Disney, maybe that's my uh my way of honoring inner wall. But going back to the question, right? So 100,000 units in the next 10 years, what makes that scale possible? Is it additional capital? Is it students? Like, are you looking to go into the coaching business? Is it you know, co-GPs, co-investors, is it funding? Like, what gives Hal and Sons the ability to facilitate 100,000 units in the next 10 years?

Robert Howell 16:57

It's a combination of everything you said, right? Um, I think first thing is there's no limit on the amount of opportunity. Uh, like you said, like the opportunity is there. Um, we have such a huge need for affordable housing across the US. I mean, housing in general and especially affordable housing, right? And so, in my experience so far, there's really no limit on the opportunity. The limit comes in how many hours in the day you got, right, to make it happen, how much money can you raise? So that that definitely is a limiting factor. Um, and not just money. I mean, there's there's lots of money available, but the way I like to say it is smart money. And so are we managing our monthly commitments in a smart way? So we work with a lot of private lenders like me and you, who have made money in business or made money in their corporate job, and they lend money to real estate investors as a private lender, and we accrue our interest to the payoff when we sell the house. And so that allows us to help us manage our monthly obligations. Um, so that's one way we we do it, and right now it's a limiting factor. Uh, trying to be more active online so people know about what we're doing and are attracted to, hey, I want to help you achieve a goal. Um you mentioned education.

PJ Crescenzo 18:16

Yeah, go ahead. Well, so let's let's break these apart because I think each of these buckets are good buckets to kind of go deep on. So we got the funding and the capital, we got the education, and then we'll talk about co-partnering investing. So as you go into funding, what have you seen be available, right? So you go from event marketing into real estate investing. Funding is one of the key aspects of facilitating that. So, did you start with some institutional debt? Did you start at a depository, a bank, a local lender? Did you just immediately start with raising money and and having you know wealthy guys just put up the money for deals? Like what did your funding journey look like throughout this process?

Robert Howell 18:50

Yeah, that's a good question. Um, so starting out, when when we started doing this like four or five years ago, uh there was still a bit of a stigma on mobile homes or you know, 30 years ago, people call them trailers. And so lenders were very hesitant to lend on uh these land home packages. We've seen that improve over the last four or five years, so much so that people are now calling us asking, hey, what's the next project? But um when we started out, we started with a private individual who lent us enough money to do two or three projects as a as a proving point, right? And then hard money became our primary source. Um, in particular, one company we worked with, and they've been great, good partner of ours. Um they were the only ones that would would really give us a shot. And was that and were they the first partners that offered the deferred interest on the payoff? So you didn't have to be able to do that. No, this at this point we're paying them monthly interest and points. Okay. Um and then more hard monies, you know, came out of the woodwork to say, hey, uh we we believe in this, we see the success. Um and then, you know, as we've gotten better at raising money, uh private individuals. So private individuals that will loan on one project, maybe three projects, maybe five projects, it's depending on their capital available. And then banking. Um we do have local banks that will lend on us. Uh we don't use banks quite as much because of the amount of equity required. You know, a bank is gonna require 20, 30 percent equity. Whereas hard money will lend 100% typically, and a private lender will lend 100%. So um, yeah, we'd use a mixture now. I would say we're probably about 50% hard money, 50% uh private individuals. Okay.

PJ Crescenzo 20:37

And who I guess I'd ask two questions. One, is that something you quarterback of kind of saying, hey, what's the allocation of debt and equity we have right now? And how time consuming is the funding process in scaling the portfolio? Do you find it to be five to ten percent of your time? You find it being 70% of your time. How much time does that occupy in the in the process of scale?

Robert Howell 20:57

Yeah, it's a good question. So um me and my business partner, we'll just kind of split the funding role. Okay. Um, and right now I'd say we're probably spending five to ten percent of our time. To be honest, it could be a 100% of our time, and it really probably should, uh, given that it's the limiting factor. But um, yeah, we're we're able to raise enough for what we have in the pipeline right now, um, you know, usually five to ten percent of our time. Okay.

PJ Crescenzo 21:26

All right, so let's transition into the next bucket. Education. So, what does the vision look like for education? Where do you feel that value being transferred to somebody that wants to get into this business? What are the goals for the education arm of Hal and Sons over the next decade?

Robert Howell 21:41

Yeah, that's great. Um, we have an education program called the Land Home League, and um partnered up with Chris Gabriel and then another gentleman, Brent Bowers. Um, I'm an operator by trade, and really that's that's what I love to do. Uh, and I've been doing these land home packages for a while. While and a couple years ago, Brent, um, who has an education program on land flipping, he approached me and said, Hey, look, you're doing a great job uh being an operator, and I'm sure you're already teaching people how to do this. Why don't you start a formally start an education program? And so after bugging me for six months, he finally said, Hey, if you're not going to do it, why don't we partner up? I'll show you how to do it. And so uh we ended up partnering up. Um, and it's a great program where you get access to his land shark program to learn how to find land and acquire land, which is an important part of this. And then through Land Home League, we teach you how to like operate and project manage and scale it. Um and so we started December of 2024. We have probably about 75 students or so um across the country. And we teach them how to do it. We've seen some great success with these. Of course, you know, there's people that never do anything with it, but then there's the people that that take action and make it happen, and I could tell stories about them for days. But um, the goal is to really continue to grow that. And again, you know, as I try to reach 100,000 homes in 10 years, I can't do it alone. And so imagine if I can educate and teach people how to do it, then we can reach that number a lot faster.

Speaker 2 23:18

Yeah.

PJ Crescenzo 23:19

And is the 100,000 homes, is that a financial legacy component of what the portfolio would become for Howland Sons? Is that more a target impact number?

Robert Howell 23:28

It's an impact number, yeah. So it's more like, hey, man, imagine 100,000 families were impacted by what we did in this world, right? I mean, it's pretty cool, right? And figure, you know, on average a family's four people is 400,000 people, you know. And I think the greater impact, as you think about it, is like, all right, now you have 400,000 people that maybe never thought they could afford a house, can now afford a house, and um and they're living in good, comfortable, quality housing, what's the impact that they can make on the world? Right. So it goes beyond like just hey, we're gonna give 400,000 people a good roof over their head. Now that they got a good roof over their head, like they can achieve great things in this world.

PJ Crescenzo 24:10

Yeah, 10x, 10x the impact because now they're all influencers within their own right because they have stability in their life. What what's a success story from somebody who's came through coaching? Do you have one that comes to mind of somebody who came in and implemented the knowledge and crushed it?

Robert Howell 24:23

Yeah, I've got two, uh, and I'll I'll share these two with you, and there's many more. But um first is uh Bryson Hudson. You can look him up on Instagram. He posts there quite a bit. Um, 20, I think he's 24-year-old when he started. Uh, no money to his name, nothing, uh, from Villa Rica, Georgia, um, which is just outside of Atlanta. Uh, great guy, great kid, very go-getter. I think he just posted on Facebook, like before we had even started our program, and said, hey, he was looking to learn how to do land home package. I said, Well, we could teach you how to do it. So I messaged him and we went back and forth. He didn't even have the money to pay for the program. So we said, we'll help you out. Um, and he joined, and now he is um, he's completed, I think, five projects. I need to call him and see what's latest. And he's got another like 10 in the pipeline, and he hadn't even been in the program for a year. So he started zero dollars. We partnered with him on his first three because he couldn't even afford to get a loan. And then um now he's off doing them on his own, which is great. He's got his own lenders that he attracts on Instagram.

PJ Crescenzo 25:29

And so have a total of 15 projects completed within 24 months, starting with his own.

Robert Howell 25:34

I mean, within 18 months, really. Wow. And you know, each one of those he's making 40k profit, so pretty good deal. Wow. Which is a cool story, you know, but I think an even more powerful story is um there's these two guys, Mike and Bill, um, their business partners. Uh they have uh been friends for 25 years, and for 25 years, uh they prayed for um uh Bill lived in Chicago, Mike lived in South Carolina, and they prayed and said, Hey, we'd we would love to be able to find something that we could do together and be successful and be business partners so they could work together, but more importantly, so that Bill's wife could retire and quit working. She's working 80 hours a week up in Chicago. And um actually just yesterday, uh Bill moved down to South Carolina, sold his house in Chicago, moved, moved to South Carolina, not only moved to South Carolina, moved in the same neighborhood as Mike. Uh so they're across the street neighbors, they're in their 60s, I think. Uh hopefully they don't watch this because maybe they're in their 50s.

PJ Crescenzo 26:41

But yeah, uh 40s, if anybody asks, guys. We got you coming up.

Robert Howell 26:45

Yeah, 40s. But um, but anyhow, so they live across the street from each other, and they're on track to do 24 deals this year and have been for just like a year and a half. But um, you know, really cool because this stress to build well, number one, they wanted to work together, but the stress for Bill was man, his wife has been working and just killing it for however many years, 80 hours a week. And he felt a bit of like, man, I I really would like to be the breadwinner here and and enable her to quit her job and have a less stressful life. And now they've done that, which is awesome. I had breakfast with Mike yesterday. And um, you know, we're I consider him a really close friend now. Uh he's in our area, so you know, some people might consider him a a competitor because we're competing for the same buyer sometimes, but um just a really great team there and really cool to see.

PJ Crescenzo 27:39

How important is an abundant mentality as you start coaching and investing yourself to know that there's enough opportunity for everybody?

Robert Howell 27:47

It's really hard, man. It's uh really important. Uh and you had to remind yourself that daily. Actually, 30 minutes before this call, I had a guy text me. Um and uh he said, Hey, I finally got my mobile home dealer's license, and where should I, what factory should I buy from? And he is like in my town, quite honestly has a lot more money than me. And uh, dang it. And you know, that but that abundant mentality is okay, hey, here's some contacts. And again, you go back to my goal of like, I want to do a hundred thousand houses, it's like, well, this guy has a path to do that, right? And he can go out and kill it. So that's important. Or you I I do another example, another guy. Uh he was buying four houses a month from us. We got because we got our dealer's license, we could sell to other investors. And it was great, you know, and you think about projection, hey, if he keeps buying four houses a month, it's a very profitable business. Um, and he went and got his dealer's license, right? And so, um, but I'm happy for him, and we still talk, and you know, at that point I could have been bad at him. But um anyhow, another example I I could use is uh keeps you going. Yeah, I mean, we've had some like students that have been part of our program that went on to like have their own coaching programs, right? Teaching the same thing. And um again, like you could have uh we could have kicked them out of all the groups and all the calls and everything else, but it's not that way. It's like, man, we want everybody to be successful. So good. And just because these two guys are teaching people, yeah, is it maybe some missed out students um, you know, that we might have otherwise been coaching for sure, but you know, that everybody has the overall impact will be greater, and yeah, the overall impact is more happy.

PJ Crescenzo 29:35

You're gonna reap what you sow. So you're selling seeds of trust and grace and impact, and it's almost inevitable or impossible for that to not come back, you know, when you do it with a righteous spirit, there's gonna be a blessing that follows that. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I love it. All right. So when you say 24 deals, 18 deals, five deals, is the way that you guys are structuring these deals an individual lot and an individual mobile home is almost if it was gonna be a custom home, right? An individual lot. So you so not all of these deals are communities or they all are packaged, you know, three, four, five homes at a piece? Like how are you guys structuring these deals?

Robert Howell 30:07

Mostly scattered lots. Um we might buy three lots in this county and three lots in another county, but you know, some of them might be two lots next to each other, some of them might be a single lot. Okay. Um, that being said, we do do some subdivides where we'll buy a larger parcel and then subdivide it. Um the largest we've done to date is nine lots altogether. Um, but we try to do scattered lots because they're quicker uh as much as we can, and then build in some subdivides on top of it that we know a subdivide in our area typically taking four to six months if it's more than you know a handful of lots. So we know in four to six months that these lots are going to be available, but in the meantime, we're doing these one-off lots to keep the cash flowing. Got it. And are these manufactured homes or mobiles? Same. I mean, manufactured and mobile really are the same in terms of the like the pre-built modular.

PJ Crescenzo 31:05

Like are these the modulars that are being built in a factory, dropped on, or are they true mobiles that could be, you know, they got to get converted to real property once they're placed on the true mobile. Yeah, true mobile.

Robert Howell 31:16

Yeah.

PJ Crescenzo 31:16

Okay, got it. All right, now let's transition to that third bucket. So the first bucket was funding, the second bucket was education. I think the third was co-investing or looking for people to come alongside you and say, hey, we want to partner on deals. Is that something else you're looking for? Is there an appetite there? And what does that bucket look like as you guys grow? And what are you currently offering? If somebody hears this and say, Man, I want to invest in a land package deal with Robert, what what can they expect with that venture?

Robert Howell 31:42

Yeah, there's lots of different ways we can structure it. Um, you know, co-investing could be, hey, you want to be a private lender and make a guaranteed return on your money, then we could do it that way. Um, sometimes we do JV. Uh we we haven't done a lot of joint venture structures um because we don't want to spread ourselves too thin. And you know, obviously there's some risks that come associated with that. But um, you know, lots of different ways that we can partner together, um, whether that be again being a lender or maybe actually being a JV partner on a project or even you know, eventually through a long-term relationship, maybe partnering up on an LLC and doing a bunch of them together. Okay. Um, so lots of different ways. And sometimes uh uh people reach out and maybe it's not a fit for me. I had, for example, I had a guy reach out to me yesterday and he's a land flipper in Florida. Oh, I'm not doing anything in Florida, I don't have any contractors, I don't know any permitting about Florida. I could learn it. I could have said, yeah, I'll I'll fake it and you know we'll figure it out together. But instead, I just refer them to one of our students that's doing stuff down in Florida and said, hey, meet Daniel. Um Daniel's an expert in Florida, has already done a ton of projects, and uh he'd be a good partner for you. I love it.

PJ Crescenzo 32:56

That's awesome. What's some of the principles or lessons you've learned? I'll put it into two buckets. Best principles that you extracted during the time in event marketing, and principles you've learned since you've been a full-time real estate investor for six years. What would kind of be your cheat sheet on a you know, three to five bullet point uh principles that Robert Howe has learned and that have served you well?

Robert Howell 33:17

Man, I need to I need to come up with a list. Uh when I did event marketing, I worked most of those 16 years for one guy, uh Dill Driscoll, and he had a lot of sayings. Um what are the best things you learned from Deal? I I should have written them down. But um, you know, one one is uh uh and my kids hate this, but uh 15 minutes early is late, or or on time is late. 15 minutes early is on time, right? I love that. And um, you know, that can be a good thing.

PJ Crescenzo 33:44

And and I can I can give you a positive character endorsement that you were on this podcast episode before I was. So Robert's standing behind his functionality.

Robert Howell 33:51

Let's go. Um so that that you know, from event marketing, that probably the biggest, and then you know, the urgency and the response time, communication, um, you know, those those early days is what really built me. If you were to I'm pretty busy right now, so I'm not as fast on my emails, but you know, if you were to email me, typically I'm responding. If you asked me like three years ago, I'd be responding like within three minutes. But now I'm responding within the same day. Um but yeah, so so that speed wins. Okay. On um on real estate, uh, in principle on real estate is people ask me like, man, how do you buy on 23 mobile home parts or 24? Um, do last year we did 50 land home deals. This year I'll do a hundred.

PJ Crescenzo 34:37

It's like, man, how do you think two units on 23 mobile homes? Are those individual mobile homes?

Robert Howell 34:41

Yeah, it's 200 and 205 lots. Okay. But um people ask me, man, how do you do all that? And if you think about it, it hasn't really been that long, 2021, really. Um, so five years, that's a that's a lot of growth. And you know, I would tell you the principle learned in that is to really just show up. And if you show up consistently every single day, then success is is gonna happen, right? Um and that's what I've done. I I think about think back to like you know, meetups that we've been part of or like groups that you've been part of. And uh I used to host a local meetup here, and it's like, you know, some people show up, some people wouldn't. I showed up every single week, and eventually, like, you know, success came, right? And you think about you know, all those guys that started with you and you know where they're at, versus and it's not a comparison game by any means, but simply by showing up, I'm not the smartest guy. You know, and it's like just just be there, show up and be consistent about it, and you'll you'll have success.

PJ Crescenzo 35:45

Well, how how important is character in showing up? Because I think character is the ultimate staying power. That is the endurance factor. You know, uh one thing that's been on my mind recently is I I don't know you don't know anything about my story, but it eight years ago, you know, six days ago, I was shot, robbed at gunpoint, two pending felonies, $120,000 in debt, got saved, completely changed my life, met my wife. Now we've done over a billion dollars in loans, and uh every dream that I ever had in my life I've already accomplished at an age that I never even thought was possible. So now it's like, okay, how can I what do I do for the next 70 years or 60 years? It's just finish well, just continue to show up and be a good person and make impact and honor the Lord and do everything that I need to do. Um, but from your perspective, from seeing those guys come in and come out, you know, how much of the inconsistency is maybe a lack of vision, a lack of strategy, um, and then you you know, you've been in business longer than I have, how much of guys falling off has been a character? Like, in other words, what's your ingredients in your recipe for being consistent? What does that look like to be able to just show up every single week and never miss?

Robert Howell 36:49

Yeah, I think character, I mean, it all boils down to that, right? And I mean, there's lots of things that go into what your character is. Um and what you know, with with character, it's like what's your your biggest, bigger reason, right? That drives you. Um and you know, for me, I'm a Christian, and so for me it's like hey, God's God's giving me this talent. And I think about it a lot. It's like, man, I work a lot and I don't work crazy. I mean, I work 40, 50 hours a week. It's not too crazy, but it's busy 40 to 50 hours a week. And uh and it's like, man, I've got all this talent and that God's given me. It's like, what can I do with it, right? And there's days when I think, man, instead of doing a hundred deals and maybe I should just do twenty and I'll make a great living. Uh but at the same time, you got this talent, and it's like, how can you how can you impact other people, right? That through that talent that God's given you. Every interaction that I have, whether it's this interaction or it's my interaction with my grader that I talked to just before this call, and you know, how that interaction went, it's like you can make a huge impact, right?

PJ Crescenzo 37:56

Dude, I love that. I think there's two things. So one, I had a near-death experience, which I honestly think was a gift. And I was even listening to Joby Martin last night, who I love. And he was talking to Steve Weatherford, who was, you know, uh punter for the Giants and got radically saved. And uh Joby was saying it was the kindness of the Lord that allowed you to be broken. It was the kindness of the Lord that allowed you to be sleeping in a garage for $79 a night. Like I think about the kindness of allowing some of that adversity to happen, because on the other side of that, I think of it as a moral responsibility. And I share that with you. I wake up and I say, I feel responsible to maximize everything I've been given because it's been given to me. Like it, I didn't do anything to get capacity. The Lord just gave me capacity. And I've started to realize recently that capacity is a gift from the Lord because not everybody has capacity. I mean, some people may only be able to work hard for four to five hours. And I've when I first got into a leadership role in sales, I thought everybody's able to work 12 hours a day, give it all they got, grow every single day. And then I realized not everybody actually has the DNA and framework to work that long, and they can still have a great career with the capacity they've been given or the priorities and desires and visions they've been given. Maybe they love recreation. Like my wife, I'm sure sometimes you know, I wouldn't say that she wishes this, but she probably does wishes she married somebody that just loves to hunt and fish and hang out, and you know, I'm home every day at 2:30. She married somebody, she calls me an energizer bunny because she married somebody that's just on from the second my eyes open to the second they close. And you know, there's a pro and con to all of that. So I don't even know if there's a question there, it's just some more feedback about I think there's a when you when you do business through a kingdom-driven lens, I think it comes with an additional responsibility where growth is required. I don't know how you're a kingdom-driven entrepreneur and you're not growing and scaling and improving without wasting talent.

Robert Howell 39:49

Like you either grow or you die. Yep. 100%. There's no question about it. It's like you give it you got this responsibility, right? And um not everybody's equipped for it, which is fine. But if you are equipped for it, then what are you gonna do with it?

PJ Crescenzo 40:04

I love it. All right, so total number of deals in five years. So you got the 200 units between the you know, 23 parks, 23 or 200 plus doors, and then you said you're gonna do another hundred land home package deals this year. So out of the total number of deals you've touched from the time you left event marketing to now, how many mobile home deals have you been involved with, coached, led, gave feedback on from the time you went full-time?

Robert Howell 40:31

That's a good question. I mean, probably um I'd have to count them up, but three, four hundred personally involved in, you know, whether that be a bubble home part, a flip, a wholesale, or land home package. Um it'd be accurate to say 300 mobile home deals in five years. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a fair personally involved in. And then, you know, in terms of like how many that you know we've touched through students or whatever, right? Like I mean, hundreds, right? I I don't know what that number is, but it's a lot. I love it.

PJ Crescenzo 41:07

All right. So I'll ask two final questions as we come up on the on the 40-minute mark. Number one, what's one thing you wish you knew when you started your career? If Robert Hal today could go back and give a piece of advice to young Robert before you had your boys, you know, before you had your family, before you work went 16 years working for D's, and then another six years in real estate investing, what's one thing that you would tell yourself if you were talking to young Robert?

Robert Howell 41:33

Start early. I think that's the that's that's the big thing. And I started early, entrepreneurial. I I had a snack business uh selling snacks out of my garage when I was in elementary school, right? But um, you know, from a real estate perspective, uh I learned a lot in my event marketing career and I'm grateful for it. But um I wish I would have started in real estate a lot earlier. I I think um I didn't start until I was 40 and I'm 45 now. Um, but if I would have started in my 20s, uh as some of these people that I'm teaching and working with, my business, one of my business partners, he's 28 um and multimillionaire already. So, you know, I I would say start early, don't be afraid. Um in your early 20s or even in your teens, uh, you've got nothing to lose. Um and if you think you have something to lose, it's really not. But so get get going early. And my boys, they I told you they have a their thing called the early birds. Check it out.

PJ Crescenzo 42:30

If you're a listener and you want to listen to the early birds, early birds.

Robert Howell 42:33

And they uh that's what they talk about. You know, they they started when they're eight years old, rolling trash cans out for people.

PJ Crescenzo 42:39

I love it. All right, so when it's all said and done, you close your last mobile home deal, you're at 2,000 units, we've done 100,000 deals over the decade. I think you probably got more like four decades left, which even thinking about that, you know, one time I hung up at my office, it was stoicism. It's uh it shows 80 years, and you literally cross off one day at a time. It has a dot for every single day on 80 years, and it shows you like that's how many days you actually have in your life. It was pretty powerful.

Robert Howell 43:02

It's crazy. It's crazy you say that, and sorry to interrupt, but I was listening to Steve Steve Weatherford um yesterday or day before, and he was like, you know, I'm 43 years old, I have 33 summers left to statistically, you know, if you look at when Mel is gonna die, it's like, and you put it that way. I told my wife on a walk last night, and I was like, Man, I might only have like 31 summers left. We gotta get going.

PJ Crescenzo 43:26

No, I mean I think urgency is probably one of the greatest principles that's missed, but has the biggest impact out of anything is urgency. I mean, I don't know if there's anything else that'll make more impact. Tony Robbins says it, it says the the true measure of how hungry somebody is is how urgent they are. You can't say you're hungry and want to procrastinate. There's two things don't coexist. All right, so anyway, two thousand two thousand units, a hundred thousand deals, Howell and Sons, you got grandkids now, flipping mobile homes. When it's all said and done, what does Robert Howe want to be known for?

Robert Howell 43:56

Man, I'd I'd love to just be known that's like Robert cared for people. You know, it's more than just affordable housing. It's like, hey, he he cared for people, he took care of people, um made a lot of money along the way, which is great. But did you care for people? And if you can do if you can say that, I think that'd be that'd be cool. I love it. What's the best way for somebody to get connected with Robert Howe today? So you can go to my website, howellandsons.com. That's probably the best way. Shoot me a contact on it, and my phone number is on the website. I'd love to uh reach out. I'd love to have a conversation, 15 minutes, an hour, whatever it is. Um, if you want to talk about life or talk about affordable housing, always open to those discussions. I love it. All right.

PJ Crescenzo 44:39

Well, Robert, thank you so much for the time today. A huge congratulations on what you've built. You know, zero to over 300 deals touched in your first five years of professional real estate investing. I appreciate you taking the time to come on the high level people podcast today. Uh super excited for this episode to come out and just want to thank you again for your time. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the High Level People Podcast. If you learned anything from today's content or if it made a positive impact on your life in any way, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite platform. More importantly, if you think there's somebody in your life who would benefit from today's episode, please shoot them a link. Encourage them to do the same, encourage them to subscribe because every week we're committed to adding value. I look forward to seeing you soon. Hope you guys have a blessed day, blessed week, and let's go.