Beyond the Deal

From Layoffs to Leadership: Randy Smith’s Path to Impactful Real Estate Investing

• Michael Wagman

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Facing a layoff? Wondering how to pivot into real estate success? Watch this inspiring conversation with Randy Smith, founder and CEO of Impact Equity Group, as he shares his journey from corporate setbacks to becoming a capital raiser and fund manager.

Want to learn how to raise capital and gain financial freedom? Book a free discovery call:
🔗 https://calendly.com/mwagman/capital-coaching-exploration  

Randy reveals how personal challenges shaped his entrepreneurial mindset, the power of masterminds, and how he’s helping others build wealth through real estate investing. Whether you're new to investing or a seasoned entrepreneur, this episode is packed with insights!


Key Takeaways:

✅ The mindset shift needed to transition from corporate America to real estate
✅ How networking and masterminds create new opportunities
✅ The essential first steps for real estate investing


📌 Timestamps:
00:00:00 Interview with Randy Smith: Journey and Insights

00:01:23 Growing Up in Northern Michigan

00:02:54 Transitioning to Real Estate Investment

00:04:12 Transition from Active to Passive Income  

00:05:42 Starting a Career in Capital Raising

00:07:03 Discovering the Power of Mastermind Communities

00:08:35 The Power of Investing in Personal Growth and Masterminds

00:10:19 The Impact of Masterminds and Communities

00:11:22 Embracing Authenticity and Community Building

00:12:42 Building Networks for Entrepreneurial Growth

00:14:09 Balancing Work and Passion in Entrepreneurship

00:15:52 Overcoming Entrepreneurial Setbacks

00:16:48 Lessons from Real Estate Communities

00:18:09 Future Plans and Business Strategy

00:19:28 Essential First Steps for Real Estate Investment

00:20:48 The Importance of Taking Action and Decision Making

00:22:24 Discover Randy Smith and Impact Equity: Website and Resources


🔗 Follow the Host & Guest:
👤 Michael Wagmann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelwagman/
👤 Randy Smith:https://www.linkedin.com/in/randallmsmith/


📩 Stay Connected & Get Updates: https://www.nimblecapitalgroup.com/

📲 Follow us on social media: https://www.instagram.com/nimble_capital_group/




Welcome to Beyond the Deal podcast where I interview very successful people and we talk about all the things that are not the deal that help them get to where they are today. Today my guest is Randy Smith. He's the founder and CEO of Impact Equity Group. He's a fund manager and a capital raiser. And today we're going to talk about a lot of things. We're going to talk about him getting fired twice. We're going to talk about mindset. We're going to talk about the importance of masterminds in education. So stick around and I hope you enjoy the episode. What I know today is it really doesn't even matter what you do, just make a decision and do something. And if you love what you do, it doesn't feel like work. You cannot move a ship unless it's moving. So like get moving, make decisions, and you can always adjust afterwards. Right. Randy Smith, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah. Thanks so much, Michael, for having me on the show. Excited to be here with you. Absolutely. So we've actually known each other peripherally for a couple of years now, both being in Phoenix and being in the multifamily capital raising scene. So I'm very glad to have you on here and in the last year or two, you've joined Gobundance as well, which has been really awesome to see. So I'd like you to just start off by telling us, how did you get to where you are and what are you doing today? That's how much time do we have so we'll we'll do the condensed version so I'm a Midwest guy I grew up in northern Michigan really really small town in northern Michigan I think we had 4,000 people in our entire County so very very small my parents owned a restaurant and I watched them kind of put their blood sweat and tears into a restaurant for like 20 years and they ultimately ended up selling that restaurant for a loss when they finally sold it and on the other side of the coin my dad actually lived out in California yeah which is where I was born initially and he worked for the LA County Sheriff's Department but he started buying apartment complexes back in the 80s like literally in Compton really really difficult challenging areas and as you know working for LA County Sheriff's Department he he made decent money but he didn't make amazing money but by the time he retired he was in a very different situation than my mom and stepdad were and I kind of think like it was my kind of kind of my my rich dad poor dad type of type of example where I got to see two very different lifestyles and the ultimate impact that real estate had on my dad's life. So I ended up going off to college and got into sales and spent 25 years in corporate America at about oh 10 years or 12 years before I ended up leaving the W2 I ended up getting laid off after spending 10 years with the company. And I remember at that time I had not been involved in real estate at all other than my own primary residence and although I had I had a severance, it got very, very scary as I was getting to the end of that severance grade because I didn't really have any idea what the hell I was going to do at that point. As luck would have it, I found another job kind of in the nick of time and ended up spending another 10 or 11 years with another large Fortune 100 company and this time I went a little bit different route and then about five years into that career, I started making very, very good money, started maxing out the 401ks and the IRAs and I had additional capital. So So now was my time when I decided to start investing in real estate. So started buying single family out of state. That seemed easy. It seemed like I knew it like a lot of people do. And you know fast forward a few years we had a few units and figured out really really quickly that this was not going to be scalable. There's no way I was going to replace 3, 4,$500,000 a year in income with that and I decided to go the passive investing route. At that point a couple years passed from there I ended up getting laid off once again but this time it was a very different world because Very large portion of my monthly expenses were covered from my passive income and the dollars I had coming in the door through my other real estate investments. So I decided to go all in in the real estate space. That's what I've been doing ever since. That's awesome. I think, you know, we share that coming from the sales background, I think, and and how that kind of translates to ending up in in real estate. That seems to be a common thread of everyone I speak to as well as, you know, at some point they saw the light of replacing their active income with passive income. And that's really kind of what I preach all day. It's not an instantaneous journey. It's something that takes time. But if you, you know, put your money in the right place, invest and be patient with it, it always pays off. So that is just, you know, I love to hear stories like this and I love to hear that it all works. works, right? What we do is, you know, it works. So tell us a little bit about what you have going on right now, because I know you are a capital raising coach as well. Yeah, so when I left the W-2, I ended up connecting with an operator that I had personally invested with quite a bit. and decided to see if I could raise capital and had quite a bit of success right out of the gates and raised you know I raised 800 grand eight something on my first deal 900 on the next one another 800 you know impact equity was born essentially. So I very quickly kind of shifted into this full-time capital raising role. The goal was to partner with institutional quality operators continue to improve upon my due diligence practices and ultimately try to find four to six operators that I was putting all of my capital with and then just share those deals with my investors as well. So fast forward what two and a half years we've brought about 13 million to projects. We've done 18 projects now. So we're bringing anywhere between 500 and a million and a half to a deal and found that a lot of people wanted to get on my calendar because I was having some success with capital raising and the thought entered my mind that maybe I could actually make a few Few dollars doing that and help teach people how to do it right instead of all of the other shenanigans I see people doing out there. So I started coaching and consulting both new. capital raisers that are just getting started and then also kind of focusing on kind of these up and coming GPs that have big aspirations, but they don't have the tools and the systems and the processes in place to really scale the capital raise. So I'm coping two different types there. And it all ties back really nicely back in corporate America. I I would move from role to role and I would get very good at whatever it was I was doing and then I would teach everybody else how to do a new role, teach everybody else how to do it and I've essentially done the same thing in the entrepreneur space now. so I mean you you actually kind of essentially answered my next question but I wanted to ask you you know in losing your last job and deciding to go into real estate full time why was capital raising the avenue that you chose to do that? Why didn't you want to be an operator or you know an asset manager? Why Why did you choose capital raise? Yeah it's interesting when I knew I wanted to do something in real estate. I wasn't quite sure what that would be so I I just when I got laid off it was a scary time again like we had some money coming the door. So it wasn't, we knew we were going to be okay, but I didn't know what that next chapter was going to look like. So fortunately I was involved with a mindset community and I had a one-on-one kind of mindset coach at the time. I'd already started to really see the benefit of the mastermind and being involved with a small group of people. So I I just reached out to my network and got on everybody's calendar that I possibly could and just kind of just tried to figure out what is it that I should be doing. And the theme that I heard over and over and over again was everybody was struggling for capital. It seemed to align very well with my my superpower of relationship developing and sales and negotiation skills. And you know I'm kind of a ready firing guy. So I decided let's give this a shot. The opportunity presented itself where there wasn't a lot of downside if things didn't go well. So I jumped in and had some other success and, and it's just been, been growing since then. Amazing. So you, you touched on something there that I'd love to dive into a little deeper, which is that you were already in a mastermind community before you got fired. Is that correct? I, so I was, and you know, it's, it's interesting. I have always read like the professional development books and kind of the self-help books. I've been a Tony Robbins guy since, you know, since literally like 23, 24 years ago, I started buying Tony Robin stuff. While I was driving around going from meeting to meeting as a sales guy, I was listening to Jim Rohn became like literally just there was like a 10 CD set that I just like listened to for probably five years. So now I was spending a little bit of money on buying books and tape and CD programs, but I never actually paid money for coaching. I always relied on corporate America to train me up on whatever I needed to be trained on, but I never spent money on myself outside of books and CD programs. So in January, before the year I got laid off, I ended up committing and I think it was only a few hundred dollars a month to join this community. And I went to an in-person event. Like I was just on fire. I remember that January we went in and we like, I had a hundred million dollar goal at work and I had just been through this mastermind goal-setting session and it was something about just setting outrageous goals so we walked in and the VP asked me so what's your personal goal for this year and I I literally looked at him I said my goal is to hit a hundred billion dollars in revenue and he literally like laughed me out of the room I'm not kidding like I'm gonna hit a billion dollars this year And well, six months later I got laid off and that was the end of that. But I was I was confident I was going to bring a billion dollars because I just, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to crush it because that's what I've done. Yeah. So, you know, we are both two people who people pay us for coaching and mentorship and guidance and community, but we are also actively members paying other people for mentorship and guidance community. I think one of the things that is interesting as you climb the ladder success. Something that happens often actually is a bit of isolation. People don't expect this very often. They, you know, everybody always wants to cheer for you until you start doing better than right. And then, you know, it becomes harder and harder to relate to other people around you. So both you and I joined GoBundance and Fully Funded. And can you talk a little bit about sort of the impact that these sort of ongoing masterminds have in your life and community? If it wasn't for those types of communities, I would be back working in W2 job, no doubt mind. I remember back in my W2 days, I used to always share with folks like the easiest guy to shoot an arrow at is the guy that's on the top of the mountain. Nobody cares what's happening to the people that are in the valleys that are the bottom 80% of the producers, but the people that are up on the top of the mountain, like everybody's got it. Like you said, people that are achieving at a high level generally want to be talking to people about different types of things other than news, weather and sports. And I I remember just being, it just bores the hell out of me. To talk about the news, weather and sports with people, I want to dig into hard topics. I want to share what I'm struggling with and I want to share where I'm seeing success. And you know, one of the things that I struggled with was that I feel that I was always having to present like this vanilla version of Randy to the world because I was afraid of making them feel uncomfortable or making them feel small. And some of the coaching I received early on was. very much like Randy you need to be 100% you no matter where you are and what you're doing. And if the people around you don't like Randy I used to call Randy 2.0 then they're gonna be they're basically gonna be repelled from. But the type of community that you want and seek and desire that will start to attract you. And that's what I found in these communities where you know people that are willing to spend 10, 15, $20,000 a year to get into a room. It's a different type of person that shows up there. They're less worried about People think they're more worried about performance and growing and they're always rooting on and excited to see people succeed. Like, you know, this idea of abundance where there is so much opportunity in the world that if. People are like cutting hairs about chasing individual prospects or staying in their own lanes and worried about offending people from you know taking investors and things like that. It's the wrong business for you because there's so much opportunity. There's like 10x of what I could ever possibly handle in my business out there and available to me. And those are the type of people I want to Absolutely, I could not agree more. And you know technically you and I do the same thing, right? Yeah But we do exactly the same thing. Here we are at the top you have collaboration, at the bottom you have competition. And we've even talked about hosting meetups together and things like that, right? Well you know that's the thing, it's like I'm an open book with everybody. Like literally I will say take anything that I'm doing and copy and paste it and use it any way you want. The reality is is you and I have different networks and there might be three to five crossover in our networks and you know what you can have that Michael but let's go out there and build something freaking amazing where we're like our our worlds just going to get 10x the size that it is. So there's no sense in splitting hairs over just a few distractors between us. 100% agree. This is all mindset thing. If you go into this thinking he's got my investor or whatever whatever however that applies to whatever business you're in you're just setting yourself up you're pushing yourself back. So I wanted to ask you in this new world as an entrepreneur or how are you balancing sort of life and work? You no longer have to get up and go to the nine to five. What do you do to separate when does work end and when when are you working? It's a good question. I'm I'm at a different season. Certainly, I'm at a different season in my entrepreneur journey than even you are. I, you know, transparently, I am probably working more hours today than I ever did in corporate America. But the difference is I used to dread Sunday nights because I hated Monday mornings more than anything in the world. And today it's more of a negotiation with my wife like about like how much time can I work right. So you know we have those discussions about we need to still have our one-on-one time. We need to stay connected because we're both my wife is early stage entrepreneur as well. So it's it's less about this idea of work-life balance. To me I know I've got to put a season in where I'm going to bust ass for three, six, nine months, couple of years, five years, but the payoffs going to be huge on the back end. And quite frankly, I don't have a desire to do this four hour work week thing that I hear people talk about. Like I really enjoy working. I enjoy what I do. It's less important to me to have like a clearly defined eight to five schedule. I'm more so want to get the job done that needs to get done so I could be there available for my investors and for my coaching and consulting clients as well. And if you love what you do, it doesn't feel like working. I can have relate to that as many of our listeners will know, I just got back from traveling the world for a year and I was doing the you know only work as much as I absolutely had to, but I was also traveling the world and since I've gotten back, I go to bed, I'm thinking about work. I wake up, I'm thinking about work, but it's fun because I'm building something and I love building it. I wake up and it's just all I want to do. You got to make time for yourself and your wife and your family, but if if you enjoy it, it's a bad thing. I think just like yourself, You probably came back from that trip just completely re-energized and excited about this business, and you're going to hit it hard for six months or something, and then you're going to go on some crazy adventure again. So yeah, yeah well, maybe not, but. Certainly that's my goal. My wife and I have really big travel aspirations, some big desires to to help a lot of people around us. So that's kind of our goals. All right. Do you think that in this entrepreneurial journey, is there a sort of major setback that changed your approach to everything that you've experienced? Yeah, I mean, I will tell you that it is a roller coaster. It's an emotional roller coaster being in the entrepreneur space. God, you know, with my one-on-one coach, I can tell you like the first, well, as recent as like or four months ago we were having a discussion about is all this worth it and should I go back and get a W-2 and just live the easy life of working the 40 hours and make the 200 or 300 grand a year. So you know that kind of ties back to this idea of being in communities with people that are having the same type of struggles that can help you see beyond the challenges that are right in your face and see the broader picture. But yeah, there's been a lot of setbacks, there's been challenges, there's been deals that have gone bad, there have been deals that we have investors in that haven't honest plan. We've had to have hard conversations there. You know Probably the biggest thing is the humility that I've had to have in that like I came into this space thinking that I knew quite a bit about it in the passive investment space. And what I found out since joining some of these communities is that I'm really just at the beginning of my education phase here. Yes, I've learned a ton over the last five to seven years doing this, but there's still so much more to learn and I need to continue to refine my game, sharpen the saw, become as skilled as possible because I'm I'm taking investor capital. I need to be a good steward of those dollars. Yeah. And you know, when we, both of us really got into this industry of multifamily, we've witnessed the pandemonium of COVID. What happened? You know, people were buying deals left and right and overpaying for everything and you couldn't even get a loan. And it was just wild, you know, bridge debt on everything because there was no Fannie and Freddie and all this kind of stuff. And then boom, overnight, you know, July, 2022, everything. Total stop, right? Yeah Right when I got laid off and started my business was June of '22. Exactly. You've seen it from the passive side and then got into it at the active side right when everything died out. It's been a wild ride just even in these last few years alone in the world of real estate, in the world of raising funds, in the world of whole family, but being in these communities, like Go Pundits for example, you get to talk to guys, be around guys who've been like, ohh I remember 2008 and I got crushed. And here I am and it's fine. In 2008, I was just graduating high school. So that wasn't for me. I wish I was buying real estate then. So anyway, I'd like to ask you, moving forward, what do you plan on doing with this? If you're not going to give up, if you're not going to go back and go to a W2, what does the future look like for Randy? Yeah. So for me, kind of the plan is very similar to what it was when I first launched this. I landed in the space of capital raising and I think I'm going to stay in this space and continue to refine the business. The goal is to be able to provide diversification to my investors and ultimately have. five or six operators that I work with to provide diversification and folks that I watch very, very closely. Now, what's been exciting is this new emergence of this coaching and consulting. And honestly, it's a marketing agency that's in development. And it was just my chance that I fell into the space. But when I look back and I went to college, I went to college for marketing. I love marketing. I love advertising. I love all of those things. So I'm feeling the flow and I'm feeling the juice when I'm getting to work with my clients and consultants in the space. And I think I'm going to see that become a bigger and bigger part of what I'm doing. But the capital raising will always be like that's the long term play. That's the long term wealth generator and the marketing agency will certainly keep me busy and bring some dollars in the door. And I think I'll be able to provide good value to the clients in doing so. let's say somebody wants to leave their W-2 and they want to get into the world of capital. Obviously you're a coach. I can look you up and hire you. But what's the first thing you would tell someone? I mean the very first thing is you need to invest in deals. You need to have credibility. You need to be able to have experience. You need to be able to talk to what is it like when you've got a wire 50 or $100,000 at the bank and the lady behind the counter is telling you that Susie just got fraudulently stolen. You need to know all of that stuff before you can walk your investors down. Once you get to that point, then I think education is extremely important. I'm not one that thinks you need to go spend 10 or 15 or $20,000 to join some coaching group to get started in the space because I didn't do that early on. But I think mindset is extremely important. So get some investing experience and jump in and find whatever that superpower is and then double down on that and double down on that and double down on that and just keep refining your skillset. Yeah yeah I I didn't do that either right for the first probably two years I didn't even know about BiggerPockets which that one changed my life big time when I found that podcast right? Absolutely, yeah. But then ultimately I was certainly paying for education and that got me to where I am today so I am a proponent of that ultimately. Well, I think to your point, like bigger pockets is an amazing place to start. You're going to hear 100 different strategies and you know you're going to have the squirrel situation where you go down a bunch of different wormholes, but you'll find something. And what I know today is really doesn't even matter what you do, just make a decision and do something. And you can, what's the analogy? Like you cannot move a ship unless it's moving. So like get moving, make decisions and you can always adjust afterwards. All right. Are there any books, podcasts, tools that have profoundly impacted you that feel you'd love to recommend to our listeners? Looking back at the last year, a book that really changed my whole perspective on investing savings, wealth generation, relationship is Die with Zero. It's a book that completely challenged my belief system about what I do with my finances. So Die with Zero is this idea that if the goals are to plan and help your friends, family, siblings, organization, whatever that is in the future, Do it today. Like Spend the money on the experiences because there's a return on experience as well. And there's nothing better than being able to look back and talk about amazing vacations with your family and your spouse and your kids. Like those are the type of gifts that I want to give my family. They don't want to have to wait until I die to give them that. So let's let's spend our money. I think this idea of creating stacks of cash and sitting on it hoping to die with millions of dollars, that's a scarcity mindset. The abundance mindset would say, and go out there and spend the money and enjoy the money that you have and help the people you want to help and create the experiences you want to create. And we have all the opportunity in the world. Absolutely love that. Last question, where can our listeners go to find you, find out more about you? Yeah, so the website's impactequity.net. I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn under Randy Smith. And of course, I've done a free giveaway for due diligence on my website and I'm doing a lot more on the coaching capital raising, so you'll see me on those channels as well. Perfect. Thanks so much, Randy. Thank you for being here. Thank you.