Ep 176 - Expanding Freedom from Basketball to Fractional COO and RE Investor with Andrew Stimson

Today, we're excited to introduce you to Mr. Andrew Stimson, a former farm kid from Southwest Iowa who embarked on an unconventional journey - from playing professional basketball overseas to becoming a fractional COO, integrator, and real estate investor.

After finding success in helping to run fitness businesses, Andrew founded "Elevating Talents", a platform that empowers others to multiply their time, talents, and freedom through commercial real estate. With unique expertise in build-to-rent investments, Andrew is also a sought-after fractional COO, leveraging his ability to help implement leaders' visions into reality through system building, project management, and team leadership skills honed on the court.

In this episode, Andrew shares more about his transition from basketball abroad into business, advising how to turn experience into skills and overcome obstacles with an athlete's resilient mindset. We discuss his passion for fractional COO work and abilities as a top-notch integrator, as well as his latest build-to-rent project that is constructing an abundance of new opportunity. Andrew leaves us with actionable advice on gaining financial independence by surrounding yourself with mentors and getting started now.

Connect with Andrew thru the social links below and learn more about his business:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elevatingtalents/
Website: www.elevatingtalents.com 

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

• on our website for blogs & other podcast interviews! elevateequity.org
• our YouTube channel! youtube.com/channel/derekclifford
• our book/audiobook! amazon.com/dp/ebook

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the three degrees of freedom podcast, where we explore lifestyle engineering with our expert guests to bring you in alignment with your own three degrees of freedom, location, time, and financial independence.

Derek: 0:14

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show today. We're excited to introduce to you. Mr. Andrew Simpson. He's a former farm kid from Southwest Iowa who started his journey playing professional basketball overseas before shifting gears into entrepreneurship and now real estate investing. and also fractional COO services, which we'll talk about in a little bit. He's the founder of elevating talents, a platform that empowers others to multiply their time and talents through commercial real estate, his superpower from what he's told me so far in his form. And from what I've seen online is that he helps other people. Elevate themselves to become the best version of who they are, whether it's professionally or personally. His focus is on fractional executive work, sales, HR, and system optimizations, all of which highlight the most demanding third degree of our show, which is financial independence, while also aligning quite well with the other themes of location and time independence. Andrew, how you doing today, man?

Andrew: 1:10

I'm doing great, Derek. I really appreciate you having me

Derek: 1:13

on. Yeah, it's, this is a long time coming. We've, been on LinkedIn and been following each other for quite some time. And I think it was just a matter of time that we had this on the book. So I'm glad that we were able to make it happen.

Andrew: 1:24

Yeah, I

Derek: 1:25

appreciate it for sure. So let's jump right in, man. Let's talk first. I basically talk about with all of my guests, which is which of the first of the three degrees of freedom, which is location, time, financial, do you feel that you're the strongest in right now? And which one do you feel like you want to develop a little bit more?

Andrew: 1:42

Well, let's, let's start with the development more side. And that's, that's one that, It's financial freedom. And so that's what I'm really working on. And, one of the things I love about that is, is who I'm working with. That's what I'm helping them do too. And so there's a lot of, synchronicity in that. And, and so financial freedom, definitely what I'm working on developing more. And I guess right now, immediately, I would say, it's not time freedom. I'm married. We've got four kids, five and under. And, and I want more time. I don't have it quite yet. I'm working towards that. So I would say location freedom. We're actually moving back up to the area that I grew up,

Derek: 2:22

southwest Iowa. Awesome. Hey, congratulations, man. That's great. Love that location freedom. And I appreciate the honesty and the transparency as well, because we just need more of that in this world. And, I completely understand you and, in a lot of places I can definitely relate with all of that. So let's start from the beginning. Let's talk about your journey from being someone who grew up in Iowa to then becoming a professional basketball player overseas. And then becoming an entrepreneur back over here, I just want to hear a little bit more about your background so that we can all get a picture of where you're coming from.

Andrew: 2:56

Yeah. Yeah. So , I grew up, on a small farm outside of Clarinda, Iowa, which is the Southwest corner of it. And I've, got three older brothers and parents, and we were in a lot of ways, it was, a typical, farm kid upbringing. We had, you know, we had crop corn and soybeans that planted. And then, we had what you'd call animal husbandry. And so we had animals we took care of hogs for awhile, had goats, about 300 Angora goats, which is they have mohair that people make clothes out of a lot. And then had, of course, you know, we had my folks, had an English bulldog business that they raised. and sold English Bulldogs to folks that wanted to have those little bullies with them. And so, you know, one of the things that I think I'll start there that sort of, was laying some foundation for entrepreneurship was what I experienced as a child growing up. We didn't have a lot of money growing up. But one thing that I did receive The far outweighed, in my opinion, was just time is my folks, they spent a lot of time with us and they lived the kind of life that allowed that farmers, there's always stuff to do. You can craft when you do it as well, as well as the raising English bulldogs. One of the things that an example of that is when I went to college basketball, I, it was a from where I grew up. And let's say I played 133 games, something like that. My folks missed two or three of those. And the home games were five hours away. So, I mean, they were really committed to spending time with us and value that. And that's something that really stuck with me. And so they certainly had the location and time freedom. I mean, they were living where they wanted to and, had enough time. And so I think some of that really was part of the foundation of What I wanted to do when I got older and got married and had kids was I want to have in part significant time for my children, my wife, my children and my community and, and that's what's what's built into a lot of this. And a big reason why I said yes to commercial real estate and fractional COO work, , is I believe in the ability of those things to produce that for others and then for me. bUt when I was growing up, I was what you would call a gym rat. I was seven years old, I remember it, and I was actually visiting my aunt in the Kansas City area, which is where we live now, Kansas City, Missouri, and, I just remember that week, I had just come off of watching a movie called, about Pistol Pete Maravich, and Pistol Pete was a guy that, that, has long since passed away, but it was, he played varsity, high school varsity basketball as an eighth grader, And then he went on to play college basketball, averaged like 40 some points a game and played in the NBA for a while. But that was the first thing that really inspired me. Like, Oh, I want to commit. my life to being as good as I can at basketball. And growing up in a small town, I played all every sport, but I was always working on my basketball craft and, and was certainly a gym rat in the gym playing all the time. I had three older brothers to play with and that was helpful. But if I wasn't playing, I was probably often imagining, playing games in my head of what it might be like. And so a lot of my life, I would tell you that I was, I had a lot of tunnel vision growing up. And it was my faith. It was God and it was basketball. And I was very focused on those things. And, and early on, it was, I want to play in the NBA, right? That's the best of the best. I will tell you probably by about my junior, senior high school. I had played pretty high level AAU basketball, but I began to see that NBA was pretty unlikely. I'm six one. I don't have long arms and so that, so then it kind of shifted. I want to play professional basketball overseas. That became the thing that I felt like, on the smart goal was realistic. And, and so I committed a lot of my life to do. That, played college basketball, had great team success, made a couple of final fours, had not as great individual success. I played the role. I was called to play and, did it to the best of my ability. And then got the opportunity to play in Israel. We lived there for three months and played in a Palestinian professional league. And, that was a tremendous experience and then spent some time in Macedonia, which is just North of Greece. By Bulgaria, the part of the former Yugoslavia. And then the last stint was in England. I coached basketball and helped develop, by playing and helping win, lower level pro basketball team in England. And so those are kind of the three stints, the three spots, but that life is a very. Insecure life in that there's nothing guaranteed, even when you go and play as an American playing on a team, you've got to produce, and if you don't, you might get sent home. And so it was, but I loved it. It was, I was very thankful and felt like, it was a real blessing to get that chance to play overseas and just experience it. And so it was a lot better finish than my college basketball career. Which was a three dribble drive to the free throw line to elevate for my patented, like my best thing, which is a pull up jumper, but a guy was coming out to block the shot and I faded away a little bit and I left it short and we lost it, and that was it. And so, man, that would have been a rough way to go out, but I was real thankful for having those opportunities overseas to play and basketball ended on a little bit higher note because of it.

Derek: 8:46

That's amazing. And , thank you for sharing all those incredible stories and man, talk about location freedom. How did all of this translate to becoming a fractional COO and real estate after you came back? Yeah.

Andrew: 8:58

So it started actually, I came back and those experiences were, they, I didn't make a lot of money doing it. But, they were great experiences. And so when I came back, I may, I majored in exercise science and, I actually came back and was a full time personal trainer at a small business in Kansas city area, and we would go to people's homes to train. And, in time I ended up, you know, becoming the hiring manager, sales manager, and then spent about six years as the director of operations, just running the day to day there, had about 15 people that I managed. And that was, I think all those experiences being in a small business, which is what I've been in my whole life or been around my whole life. I've had brothers that have bought small businesses and ran them for a time is. I got to experience all those different things, which is a blessing and a curse. Small business, you got to wear a lot of hats and you want to build it to the place where you don't, and you can really specialize and grow the business more. But having all those experiences, I think we're real building blocks in, building confidence in both fractional COO work. And helping other businesses, and commercial real estate. And so I attribute a lot of that into the, about 10 years at the fitness company in the day to day of sort of building a lot of the skillset to then

Derek: 10:22

go and do it. Yeah. You know, I can see how a lot of this stuff would translate over, becoming a fractional COO and trying to build a business or helping people build theirs. While, you know, running HR sales and having to have a little bit of a hand in each one of them, that's what makes a great integrator or a COO. Let's talk about what fractional COO means real quick. There's probably a lot of people that are wondering what that is. I've actually been hearing a lot about this recently, and it's funny. I'm actually doing that right now for my wife, because she has her. Her practice going on that I'm kind of working on as an integrator for both hers and my business as well. just because it, it makes sense to, to help cross over there. But, can you talk a little bit about what it is that a fractional COO does and how that works?

Andrew: 11:05

Yeah. Well, you, you nailed it. And I was reading more about you and I saw that word integrator and I was like, yes, Derek gets it. And, and a lot of that for me came from, yeah, Gino Wichman, traction and neural operating system. My focus is. Well, one, you have, you have a visionary and an integrator and, and there's not many visionaries out there, but there's even less integrators. And I think in the small business world, there's so many people that have a vision and a passion and they use and skills and they use that and they start their business and they grow their business and they just grind. And eventually, and often this is one of the first hard things is when you. Move the business beyond yourself. And now all of a sudden you have to start hiring and managing. It changes everything. And so then as you keep growing, whether you like it or not, you, you have to be an integrator and a lot of times it's not the reason why you started the business. You know, some visionaries love managing people and some don't, and all the things that come with that. And so I really got to experience it at. The fitness business front door fitness here in Kansas city, being that integrator, taking the founder's vision and implementing it into the organization, getting buy in, and then, you know, just helping people grow. I met weekly with trainers one on one, and I love that part of it. It wasn't always easy, but it was an opportunity week after week. To focus on the right things, and to just help them grow in their career as well. And so, you know, I think the integrator piece is just really essential for a business. Two ways. One, helping, you know, founder, owner, CEO, whatever title you want to give, helping them focus on working on the business instead of in the business. Yeah. To where they can really focus on the things that are going to grow it more, and maybe that's more time for ideas. And then getting, you know, getting, being the catalyst to get things started and growing. And then really handing those off to someone that can, that can steward it well, that can maintain it, operate it, not let it drop off any, so that the business can continue to grow. So that's one. The second, it just gets back to the three degrees of freedom. And one of those just being time freedom is. There's so many visionaries, founders that, are working a lot of hours and, which is not necessarily anything wrong with that, but eventually something in your life if that's not, if there's not some balance at some point, maybe that's a relationship at home, a spouse, a relationship with children, or friends, but it's just, it's going to happen and you see it over and over again. And I think it also can lead to burnout is small businesses, visionaries, they, they build it, but they're creating it where everything runs through them and eventually that's, that's, gonna burn them out or burn someone out. Near them. And so that's a, that's something I'm real passionate about in helping.

Derek: 14:16

Yeah, that's great. I think, the fractional, COO or fractional integrator is, is going to be an important part of businesses going forward. And I think there's a huge opportunity there to become more, an integrator for different businesses together, because the way that you think. Being able to break down a vision into executable steps and then being able to track them and making sure that you're orchestrating that the whole thing moves forward can take a whole lot of load off of a visionary who is really good at having great ideas and has really great ideas and has the passion to bring them through and maybe even the resources. As far as like money or knowledge, but as far as like the time and energy goes, that may be a different story. And so something that rings to me very true is the book E Myth, right? Just struck me as you were talking right now that in that book, the E Myth, by the way, The listeners hasn't read that book. I highly recommend that you do. E Myth talks about the story of this baker who loves baking. And she decides to open up a business and then the business just doesn't do so well because she thought that a business was all a business is about baking is just baking. And that's not true at all. And you have to be good at a business and at baking. You know, it's like there are probably chefs out there like Gordon Ramsay that are as good as he is. But he is fantastic at business and he either has an integrator or is an integrator a little bit himself. And that's what all these people have in common is if you've got the integrator skill set or the brain, or you're able to bring in someone like Andrew, right. To be able to help you in your business take your vision to become a reality in real execution, you're going to increase the odds that your business will be very successful and, and, and go to a successful exit, whether it's a sale, or an acquisition or whatever, right. Or handing over ownership to a different, different entity. So anyway, I love that about the fractional COO. And I love it, how you're helping leaders. Turn their visions into reality because that's what's so needed. And as things pick up more and more with AI and there's more business ideas out there, it's going to be more and more important. So I want to shift gear a little bit more shift gears, just once more, and talk a little bit about your elevating talents platform. Can you talk a little bit about how that helps others achieve financial independence? Yeah

Andrew: 16:38

yeah. I think with that, I'll start with a little bit of vision and mission. Elevating talents comes from a parable about a, an owner, empowering, we'll call them managers to over, over his affair and in amounts of, uh, talents or bags of gold or, you know, whatever I want to call it. And, and there's talents too. And that guy, he goes out and makes 10 more and to the next. He gives five and, you know, she goes out and makes five more. And ten to another he gave one. And this, this manager, he, instead of going and putting that to work, he digs a hole and puts it in the ground. And then when the owner comes back, he said, as you know, years later, Hey, show me what, what you did. And the one with 10 and five showed that they doubled it. And the one with one said, I know that you're a hard man and you, You reap where you don't sow. And so I took your money and I put it in a hole here. It is taken. This is yours and his rebuttal. His response is you, you know, you, you wicked and lazy manager, you know, that I reap where I don't sow. Why didn't you take it to a bank? At least I'd have a little bit of interest, on my return. And so it's really, it's taking others talents and I see that is money. That is capital. That's resource, but talents. I, I. That's an old word for money, but also talents as in like your own gifts and what you've been given. And that's really a part of my mission is to help elevate that it's elevating people in their life and elevating their resources and it's so that, and it really gets back to, I mean, you're brilliant. You know, three degrees of freedom. It's so that you can spend so more time on what you've been called to do. And, beyond your day job. And so that's the real focus. And it's, commercial real estate's a big picture. I was very attracted to multifamily. And it's kind of been down that path. You know, I started the business in January of this year. So almost a year ago, before that I joined a mastermind called kingdom REI, where I really learned and grew from, for people that have gone before me. And, throughout that year, really wanted to partner P was that, and so partnered on in the built to rent space , with the lead sponsor that's been doing it for a couple decades, Andy McMullin and a whole team that's got a ton of experience. And so I've really been growing and learning about the build to rent space. And, a lot of the things that excite me about it are the same that do about multifamily investing and commercial real estate as a whole.

Derek: 19:25

Thank you, man. That's great. I love that. I was going to ask you what, inspired you to venture into the build to rent space, but I think it was a lot of mentorships and, you know, people that have seen a lot of success in that space through Andy and his team. Did you want to add anything about the build to rent space? Yeah. Yeah. I

Andrew: 19:41

think one of the things that I like the most about it is it is, it is development. But there's just such a huge value add component. I mean, that's, that's the essence of development and then just the exit optionality that comes with it. So you buy raw land, and then you get all the entitlements, the engineering, you get all the okays from local government, and, uh, and you prep the land for stage two, which is horizontal development, getting all the roads and the sewers and everything prepped for vertical development, building the houses. And then you start renting them out. And, building that up and then exit, you know, about typically about a five year plan, but the exit options, they're not just in, you know, selling the whole, let's say we have 241 houses we're building and we could sell the whole thing, you know, that's the goal. The more institutional investors more likely to buy that. But there's optionality beyond that, and it starts with each stage and you get it all prepped for horizontal development. You've injected a ton of value into it, and you do turn that you projected, just in a much shorter time. And so I, that's the. Part when I talk about exit optionality that I love is there's a lot of that built in as you go towards the end product and incites me about it and then you know, it's the same thing that speaks to the validity of multifamily and that's the housing shortage. That's some of the trends of renting over home ownership. That's the gap that all those feedback into built to rent as well. Now that they're kind of some foundational things that make me like it.

Derek: 21:22

Love it. Very cool. I know it's, it's a fascinating space and I'm actually, new to it. I've been looking at alternative ways. To get into the market outside of the traditional multifamily route, because right now, the space is pretty crowded, and build to rent is very attractive in the fact that there's no maintenance, there's very low, like the cap rates are lower, but also there's less, there's more desirable tenants, and less maintenance or less ongoing headaches that happen with that, and that's becoming more and more important to me as time goes on. You know, that's kind of the point I am in my career.

Andrew: 21:55

Yeah for sure, for sure. And one thing, you know, that's helpful with it too is residents tend to stay a lot longer. And so that's, you know, that's certainly an advantage

Derek: 22:04

as well. Big, big, like the biggest expense that people have in operating multifamily, is vacancy. Because not only do you have just the time that they're not paying rent there, but you have the turnaround costs, you have marketing costs, you have your property manager who has to go and do all that. So all that is happening while you're rehabbing or, you know, basically refreshing the unit for the next tenant. So completely makes sense there. Yeah. All right. So last question I have for you today is what advice would you give to people who desire to break the time equals money equation and try to gain more independence in either of the three degrees of freedom? What would you

Andrew: 22:43

say there? One of the first things would be, if you're waiting for the perfect time to start, you're never going to find it. There's not going to be a 100 percent optimal time to go. You can, you can certainly, enter that space. there, there's different. Levels of how much success you might have, depending on how you enter to steal the Nike's slogan is just do it. Just get started. And that could be in a lot of ways. Be simply just learning. I think a lot of gated through just education, you know, and, you know, it's something that you don't understand. It's going to feel riskier. And so I think learning there's so much, so many great content creators and podcasts hosts like yourself that are putting awesome. info out there for people to consume and learn and grow in their knowledge that it, but if it doesn't help catalyze movement, it's just head knowledge that isn't going to be going to change your life in any of the degrees of freedom, namely mostly financial freedom, which, which typically then can lead to time freedom. And so that'd be the first one is just get started. And then the second. Is around it, is surrounding yourself with people that have been there or maybe are a few steps ahead of you or are beside you in their journey where, you know, you have that iron sharpening iron concept. But you're kind of, but you're going on mission together, even if going the same direction, your own businesses, those things I think are so important, in doing it. And then when you're going to. a passive investor, just build a relationship and once that relationship best. And, to do that. And, and so I think that's something that is on you and is on me and many others to continue to spread the message of like, there's options out there and a lot. And I think A big part of it is so many people just don't have that there's a bit of a paradigm shift that goes with, before you take these steps to three degrees of freedom. And you've got to get there

Derek: 24:54

is just huge. I'm going to go ahead. Sorry. So thank you so much for, for providing all of that. That's great stuff. I think, very actionable for people out there who are looking to try to escape their full time jobs., but let's go ahead and head into the last segment of the show, cause we're running out of time here, , which is called the rapid round, which is five questions that we ask every one of our guests and they're meant to be answered about 30 seconds or less. So let's see if we can rapidly ask them to you. So if you're ready, we're going to go ahead and do that. Ready? Let's do it. All right. Number one, name any resource that was or is still essential in your journey to pursuing your freedoms.

Andrew: 25:29

Others that are on that same journey. So relationship accountability, with other could be operators or just people close to me that are on that journey. I

Derek: 25:39

love it, man. Good stuff. Great answer. Number two, if you woke up and your business was gone and you had 500, a laptop, a place to live in some food, what would you do first to rebuild? The first thing I

Andrew: 25:50

would do is a network. I would, just start having conversations with folks and. and find out where, where they need help and see if I can help solve it.

Derek: 26:02

I love that man. Adding value first. so important. All right. Number three, what does your self reflection and goal setting practice look like if you have them?

Andrew: 26:12

So, goal setting. You know, looking out, I think the essential is a year at a time. I think it's powerful to go 10, five, three years, whatever you feel like, you know, can be done. But goal setting year long, break it down into quarters, 90 days, break that down to actual steps. And then we play accountability to reach those. That's the general format that, that I've got to take to increase the chances that I hit my goals.

Derek: 26:42

Awesome. I love that. Thank you for sharing. Number four, what are the core work habits that you attribute to your success or parts of your personality that you attribute to your success?

Andrew: 26:52

One would just be a determination, you know, so setting out on a specific goal and then stay on that course. That's one. The other is, is I think that really builds into it is just doing hard things. And it could be, you know, I've done a lot of hard things in fitness, but it could be in setting good habits that you know are going to lead to success. But building resiliency through doing hard things, I think is, is so empowering to go where you want to go in life. Okay. Awesome.

Derek: 27:29

Last question I have for you is what tool or process has become one of your most important time, money, or energy saving ninja magic tricks that you use every day? Hmm

Andrew: 27:39

well, one that I'm, I've been using basically every day in 2023 is LinkedIn. And it's the idea of the one to many platform and, and like you're, you're doing with podcasting and, and building that, in the beginning, I'll be honest, you kind of feel like, is anyone even listening or am I just speaking to the wind out there? but really trusting the process. And day in and day out consistent doing it for the long haul and setting it up in a way that you can do it for the long haul, is what I've really focused on for 2023. So that's, that's one is, is just creating on LinkedIn.

Derek: 28:17

Love it, man. Yeah. It's a great way to build at scale so people can see it or potentially have a way to see it or see who you are as a person. Cause if you comment on other people who are farther ahead of you have more followers. And eventually they keep seeing your names over and over again, who knows, you may be able to hop on a zoom call with them or have a podcast. That's one of the, the, the main reasons why I'm doing podcasting as well as to be able to network and LinkedIn that on steroids. So very, very lucky. And I'm glad that you mentioned that. So Andrew, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show, before we go, how can people find out more about what you have going on? What do you have for them? Just giving you an open stage right now at this point. Yeah

Andrew: 28:57

I'm going to keep. But really focused. There's a few things I could say, but I think the best way for people to get to know me, in a way where they don't have to jump on a call. I would love to jump on a call cause I, I really enjoy connecting that way, but it's just LinkedIn. Andrew Stimson on LinkedIn. You know, I write about real estate, about fractional CEO work. I write a lot about what I call abundant life, which is a lot of things, just faith wrapped up in there. There's your three degrees of freedom wrapped up in there. There's growth mindset wrapped up in there. But it's, it'll be a great way to start to get to know who I am is just go follow me on LinkedIn and then let's take that, to an offline conversation. Yeah,

Derek: 29:36

that sounds great, Andrew. I want to thank you so much for being on the show and also to the listeners who have listened all the way to this point. Thank you so much for listening and wherever you're watching this, please like subscribe, comment, hit the notification bell, whatever you can do to interact with us will help us bring. Our message out to more people just like you and also attract more incredible guests, just like Andrew to come on the show. So thank you so much for listening. Really, really appreciate your listenership and Andrew, thank you for coming on the show, man. It's been a pleasure.

Andrew: 30:07

Yeah. Thanks a bunch, Derek. Thanks for having me on and keep spreading your message of three degrees. Freedom. If more people work and live towards that, they truly will have a more abundant life.

Derek: 30:16

So keep it up. Absolutely. Thank you so much, man. Really appreciate that. And you guys have an awesome week. We'll see you guys next time. Yeah.