His Losing Everything Educated & Inspired John Humphrey

Episode 133: His Losing Everything Educated & Inspired John Humphrey

The Profit First REI Podcast

November 28, 2022

David Richter

Summary:

Are you the type of business owner who doesn’t know their numbers and feels guilty because of it? It’s time to fix that.

Our guest, John Humphrey, used to be the same—until that mindset led to his finances spiraling into ruin. Now he runs his business with a new perspective: not only is he dedicated to knowing his numbers, he also works with people with complementary skills and uses a financial management system.

Join us as we talk about John’s career, short-term rental business, money struggles, and how he changed his life by applying a better money mindset!  

Key Takeaways:

[00:59] Introducing John Humphrey

[02:50] John’s Career History

[05:55] John’s Epiphanies Around Money Struggles

[09:06] Why You Should Hire Help and Use a Financial Management System

[14:49] Why Do Investors Often Live Deal to Deal?

[18:36] How Losing Everything Inspired John to Educate Himself on Finances

[25:00] How Knowing Your Numbers Makes You a Better Business Owner

[26:41] John’s Current Projects in the Short-Term Rental Vacation Space

[32:10] Connect With John Humphrey

Quotes:

[06:51] “I saw people having really the same struggles, like, it’s all about making money, but then when you had the money, they didn’t know what to do with it.”

[08:13] “I felt guilty that I didn’t have the financial expertise with my money.” 

[07:34] “[After using a financial management system] It wasn’t just looking at a number—there was a purpose.”

[23:28] “I used to run my businesses pretty much by emotion and going for things…Now [we] have a CFO…we brought in professionals on our team that we never did before.”

Connect with John: 

Website: https://www.linxstr.com

Tired of living deal to deal? 

If you are a real estate investor or business owner who is tired of living deal to deal, and want to double your profits, head over here to book your no-obligation discovery call with me. Either myself or someone from my team will hop on a short call with you to get clear on your business goals, remove any obstacles holding you back, and map out a game plan to help you finally start keeping more of the money you work so hard to make. – David 

Transcription 

David Richter:

It’s a different world now, right? But I think to your point, I think that’s what we’re taught. And then being an entrepreneur, you’re just taught to make money and leave the financial things in your life to somebody who’s a qualified professional. Hmm. Like, you’ll never be smart enough. I mean, when you really think about it, I, I mean, I never consider myself smart enough to be my own financial person for myself because it just seemed too complicated. It seems, you know, I’ve been taught to put money in the bank.

Outro:

If you’re a real estate investor who’s sick and tired of living deal to deal, then welcome home. Hear from everyday real estate investors just like you, and discover how they’ve completely transformed their business by taking a profit First approach. This is the Profit first for REI podcast, where we believe revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. It’s time to start making profit a habit in your business. So here’s your host, David Richter.

David Richter:

Hey everyone, this is David Richter of the Prophet First 1st podcast. Have a special guest, John Humphrey today, which I did not know him before this call, but this call, you’ll want to know him after it. He talks about his short term rental business and how he has literally made six figures in a month from this business. He’s talked about how he’s also lost that because of some of the platforms like Airbnb. So you’ll wanna listen to this if you, especially like short term rentals or if you’re just a real estate investor. He also gives how he used to look at numbers as just dry, boring, never wanted to touch them. And then how that literally led to the demise of his business and his financial ruin 15 years ago. And now has someone on his team helping him. And you’ll see he felt guilty about not knowing his numbers.

He felt that shame. It, t here was a whole lot of emotions that went on during that time. And I wanna make sure that you can learn from his story so you don’t have to be in that position. Can’t wait for you to listen to this one. It’s a one that I believe that can truly help you as an entrepreneur and especially a real estate investor. So, let’s get started. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Profit First REI podcast. We have John Humphrey here today. I’m excited to get to know him and what he’s doing. It sounds like there’s a lot of interesting things that he does in just a lot of different areas. He’s been a part of the real estate investing world with the luxury short term rentals. He’s done infinite banking. He’s also into the IOT Helium Network, which we’re gonna need to get some info on, like what that is cuz I’m behind the curve ball, the, you know, the eight ball there because I, I definitely, I’ve heard of it and I’ve heard some people talk about, but maybe we could get John to actually talk more about it.

But he’s also a profit first fan and he knows that people should not be living deal to deal and what they should do with the money once they get it. But John, thanks for being on the show today.

John Humphrey:

Oh, great. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, David. Yeah.

David Richter:

So you’ve done a lot of things, it sounds like in your career. You’ve built companies, you’ve sold companies, you’ve done some very cool things. So in your experience, what are some of the funnest things you’ve done as an entrepreneur?

John Humphrey:

Well, yeah, listen, I grew up in New York and I’ve been out here in California for 22 years now. You know, I went to school originally. I went to Boston University, and I actually wanted to be a dentist, believe it or not. And I get halfway through college, I don’t know if anybody has this epiphany, <laugh>, which you get through college thinking that you’re there for one reason. And you, I basically, halfway through my, my junior year, I said, you know, I don’t know about this whole medical thing. I said, I hate being in class. I hate studying for exams. I hate memorizing things. I don’t even like science. I <laugh>, I’m just think I’m gonna do another six years of this. This is crazy. So I basically graduated with biology degree, but I went into business right outta right outta school. And my dad who’s been, who was a huge influence in my life, basically said, Hey, you know what, you’ve got the gift of talking. You’ve got a medical back in background with biology. Why don’t you go into medical device sales? And that’s what I did outta college. And I was in sales straight away. I was, I was making money straight away. I was making more money than most of my friends in my first year because sales salespeople are the highest paid people in any company.

And so I got that really early on. And so did that for a number of years. And then about seven or eight years later, I’ve, I ventured out to California with my wife. We just got married in 2002. We actually just celebrated last week, 20 years. Awesome. Congratulations, marriage. Thank you. But I’ll tell you, one of the biggest adventures we had was like, one of the coolest, funniest things that I did coming right out of that coming out here was we actually went into business with a guy who had a book. He was a spiritual leader. And I you know, basically wrote all his seminars, wrote some products, and we were in the seminar, personal development business for probably about six, seven years. It was really fun and hey, that was my first, you know, this was my first kind of just into really making some bigger money, right?

For the first time being an entrepreneur. I was only 30 years old at the time. And here we are, you know, doing hundreds of thousands of dollars at events and things like that. And to your point, didn’t know what to do with that money. So of course, what did we do? We bought a house and we bought cars and we traveled and we did whole stuff. And we spent a whole lot of money and lost a whole lot of money. I mean, that was just, that was the first, you know, wakeup call from me going, you know, how can people make all this money? But yet at the end of the year, not have any money. I used to think about that all the time. I used to hear my friends in New York who were in Wall Streeters. Oh yeah, I made six, $700,000 this year.

But at the end of the year, they’re broke. They had no money. And they’re like, where, where did all that money go? I get where it goes. It can go pretty fast. It’s actually very easy to spend <laugh>. It’s very easy to spend money.

David Richter:

Yes, it is. And that’s exactly what we wanna make sure people know. Like, okay, it’s not just about making it. Well, it sounds like John, you’ve made the money and then you had that epiphany. So was that kind of your, cuz I always ask people like, what money struggles have you faced, like in your business or your personal life was like, that was one of the wake up calls of like, we don’t have anything to show for all that we’ve done, you know, like here or, you know, like, have you ever had that in your other businesses or the thing, cuz you’ve done a lot of different things it sounds like, with, you know, the short term rentals and the luxury there. Or like, you know, what you’re into now. Like just gimme a couple of those of, have you ever had any other epiphany moments around money struggles?

John Humphrey:

I have one, one of the you know, once we had gotten outta that business, we had that business for seven years, and then we sold it. And then I went into, actually, I had a franchise development company for many years. And so and that was throughout all of North America. And I was really excited about putting people in business. Like I really loved putting people in business and I saw people having really the same struggles. Like it’s all about making money, but then when you had the money, they didn’t know what to do with it. And, to be honest with you, I didn’t know what to do with it. You know, I’d have all this money sitting there and I gotta be honest with you, I’ve had some epiphanies where I just had this money sitting there going like, I should be doing something with this money.

Like, it’s sitting there or you feel unsafe having that money. Like, some’s gonna happen. You’re gonna, there’s gonna be a lawsuit. There’s gonna be like some unexpected and like the money’s gonna get sucked away. I mean I’ve, I’ve had those thoughts run through my head where I hear people like they have all, all these things going with their money and I didn’t really have anything. I didn’t buy stocks and bonds. I, I wasn’t buying real estate at the time. Like my money was just sitting there in the business. And, I think that’s one thing I think entrepreneurs really should learn to do. And this is one thing I share with people that get involved with us in our short term vacation rental business and other things is it’s not enough to just make the money anymore.

You know, you, the money will evaporate if you don’t have a plan for it. When you make it, it’ll just, you don’t think things will come up. You’ll attract things to spend your money on. There’s no doubt about that. But that’s what I had found is that I can make money. I had an unsafe feeling at times of having money. Or I felt guilty that I didn’t have the financial expertise with my money. And so I’ll also tell you, I was that probably that person that never wanted to reach out for help cuz I felt like an idiot with money. I felt like, oh man, I’m really good at making money. But you know, every time I went and I sat in the, in an office of a financial planner, I gotta tell you, I didn’t feel great about my myself. I felt like an idiot sitting there, they’re talking all these things at me.

You gotta do this and put this in the high risk and the money. Like, and I’m just sitting here like, I don’t even what you’re, you’re talking about, but they’re like, oh, and you know, pay us all this money to manage your money. And that was an unsafe feeling for me as well because I felt like, I didn’t have the power of my money. I’m like, I now have to have other people manage my money. That was even more of an unsafe feeling. So I’m sure you probably get that what a lot of clients should deal with. Yeah, we do. That’s, that is definitely something where people come in. Because John, it sounds like you <laugh> that your dad figured this out for you as well too, that you’re more on the sales side. Like you like the, deal hunting, you like helping people, you like that side and you never really got the financial education.

David Richter:

Like that’s not appealing to you, like the numbers. Yeah. Right. Like you went to college for the medical side and it’s like no, you know, like I don’t wanna send the class, I wanna go out there and help people and do these types of things. Would you say that’s correct? Like that’s kind of your makeup of who you are.

John Humphrey:

Correct. You know, to be honest with you, money never seemed very creative to me.

David Richter:

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

John Humphrey:

Right? It’s very digital and you can tell I’m an animated guy, you know? Yeah. I’m a very visual guy. I’m the visionary of the company at times. I love to create stuff. I’ve always been great at sales and marketing advertising, telling stories. When it came to money it was like, man, that’s a dry subject.

David Richter:

Right. You know,

John Humphrey:

It’s interesting. But I think it’s also overwhelming to me David, because it’s a lot of detail to me. It’s the, you know, it’s the detail of it all. And I’m not a detail person. You know, don’t give me something to proofread my, I I tell my staff all the time, don’t gimme anything to proofread. You’re crazy. I’m the worst person to proofread cuz I’m the skimmer. I’ll miss it all. <Laugh>. So money seems very detailed to me, which could get me to kind of glaze over when there’s all these different concepts. And the other thing I would say, David, is there’s so many, it’s so confusing. I will tell you, that’s the thing that I feel overwhelmed. I’ll tell you this, this is a perfect analogy. When I go shopping for Christmas for my wife and she wants me to buy her clothes, I can only really buy her outfits if I see the whole outfit on a mannequin. So when I walk into one of her stores, like white House, black Market is one of her favorite stores.

David Richter:

Yeah.

John Humphrey:

I’ll go in and they’ll assemble the outfits for me because I can’t go on a rack and take something without it being in, it’s like it’s full thing.

David Richter:

Yeah.

John Humphrey:

And kinda see how it’s gonna be. So I’m that guy that like, I have to buy the whole outfit. That’s me. If, I have to go shopping and I gotta pick things out, I am completely overwhelmed because there are so many choices that it seems overwhelming and I kind of just kind of don’t do anything. And I think that’s kind of how I’ve been, that’s kinda how my brain operates. So when I’m looking, what do I do with my money? It’s like, oh man, I mean, look at how many things you could do with your money these days. And no matter who you talk to l sounds good. And then you are afraid of making the wrong decision.

David Richter:

Yeah. That is really good. Because so many people are just like you in the entrepreneurial space. They’re just like, I know, I like to see things. That’s why I believe the pro first system, you know, like deals with bank accounts so that the entrepreneur can see visually, here’s how much I have for this thing. So that way I don’t have to just worry about where my money’s going. So from that system, when you read that book and when you’ve heard of that system, did that appeal to you? The visionary component of, I at least know now where my money is and where it’s sitting and I can name, you know, like the different places where I could put my money?

John Humphrey:

Absolutely. That I thought was really cool because it wasn’t just looking at a number. There was a purpose, at least looking at the number there was something more than a glance. Cuz this was like, I was the guy who just glanced at the bank account once in a while.

David Richter:

Right.

John Humphrey:

That’s it. You know, if I got, I set my alerts for, if I got below alert a certain number, that was like the panic mode for me. If the bank account got below a certain number, other than that I was like, keep adding to it. It was always keep adding to it. It was never, and unfortunately, it was never, it, which is I think is unfortunate and stupid on my part, but I think it’s a probably a common trait is that as an entrepreneur, you’re never thinking about growing your money. You’re thinking about making more money with your business. Like your business is generating the more money. This is one of the the funniest things that I say when I, when I’m on stage, I’ll ask people, you know, how many people are really set up for retirement as entrepreneurs and how many, you know, where they allocate their money, where does how much is allocated for retirement? And most people, it’s almost none. And I understand now being an entrepreneur for 22 years later, I go, because we think that we don’t need retirement. We’re like, we’re just always gonna make money. Like forever. Like our company’s just gonna make us millions of dollars planning for retirement or for idiots. That’s for the person who works at a job that’s never gonna get anywhere that like, you know, before, you know what 20 years can go by and you got nothing.

David Richter:

Right?

John Humphrey:

Yes. You know that’s, and that, that was kind of like our story with our businesses years ago was like, we used to say, boy, this would’ve been easier to just get a job all these years <laugh>,

David Richter:

Like <laugh>, then we wouldn’t have to feel bad about saving for retirement. Cause then we would’ve been one of those normal people with a job.

John Humphrey:

So Yeah. And that’s, but I had a pension <laugh>, you know. Oh man. I could have been in a, you know, and, then you look at things that happened, you know, in the pandemic. You know, we lost a couple of big projects during the pandemic. I know a lot of people did, but I think that’s even a bigger wake up call now. A couple, you know, getting a couple years past the pandemic. I’m starting to see this with a lot of my entrepreneurial friends and myself. It’s like, we’re kind of rebuilding. You know, you’re rebuilding and, and you’re realizing, boy, how little amount of time has to go by without revenue from your company that could really gobble up a lot of your cash.

David Richter:

Yeah. Now that’s really good because that’s one of the questions I ask regularly on this podcast is why do you think investors live deal to deal you being in the short term rental market, like you see some real estate investing and you see that portion of it, and it sounds like to you it’s just like people don’t think about it. That’s at least what I’m hearing. Would you say there’s anything else that contributes to them living deal to deal like, okay, I just have to get that next short term rental and it’ll I’ll be okay. Or like, as long as I collect this money, like why do you think, and I love, okay. I have to point out too, I love what you say that most people think about making the money and not growing the money. What a great statement. So why do you think people live in their rat race? Like they get stuck in that almost W2 mindset of retirement is in the future. Like, they’re already thinking that way. Why do you think they, get caught in that rat trap in their own mind?

John Humphrey:

It’s a great question and I think it just has to be what society is just basically taught everybody. I mean, I look at how I grew up. I mean, I grew up, you know, upper middle class didn’t want for anything. I grew up on Long Island. I went to private school and so, you know, all the way from fifth grade all the way through high school, I went to a private school. I mean, my parents sacrificed to pay big money for me to go to a private school. But even the whole private school thing, and even going a private Catholic high school, it was just all with one goal in mind. It was never about educating about money, not teaching people to be entrepreneurial. It was all about just getting into college.

David Richter:

Right.

John Humphrey:

That was it. There was no other anything. And college was all about getting a degree so you could get a job.

David Richter:

Yeah.

John Humphrey:

That was it. I mean, I didn’t have any financial literacy until I was probably about 35 years old.

David Richter:

Hmm.

John Humphrey:

Like, so I, I’m in the workforce for probably 15 years, just in the money making that was it, finding myself, what am I gonna do? But oh, I so could have used financial literacy. Like I have an 11 year old, like I told you, we talk about money all the time with them. I mean, he, we talk about being an entrepreneurial about how to make your own money how to start a business creating passive income. Like I, we, you know, my wife and I are very big into educating him. So when he grows up and we’re setting all these things up for him. So when he is like 20, 30 years old, he has tons of money, has options, but he knows the whole game of money. And he also knows that the whole game, the whole point of life isn’t going, is just to go to college to get a job.

Right. He, and he may not even go to college. He may start a business when he gets outta high school. We’re totally, you know, it’s a different world now. Right. But I think to your point, I think that’s what we’re taught. And then being an entrepreneur, you’re just taught to make money and leave the financial things in your life to somebody who’s a qualified professional. Like you’ll never be smart enough. I mean, when you really think about it, I mean I never consider myself smart enough to be my own financial person for myself because it just seemed too complicated. It seems, you know, I’ve been taught to put money in the bank. You know, my grandparents, they had CDs. I mean my grandparents, you know, immigrants from Sicily worked. He worked until he was like 86 years old and, never had one car in his whole life, lived in Queens and put all his money in CDs . That was it. That’s all you ever learned about was putting your money like that, was it. You stack your money away and you buy a house.

David Richter:

Yeah.

John Humphrey:

That was it.

David Richter:

Okay. Yeah, I think that’s so right, that society just permeates this with us and it’s baked into us from a young age. Especially in that middle class mindset of just like, okay, go to school, get the job, get out. I am curious at 35, what was the catalyst for you to get into financial education and like educate yourself? Was it a book, seminar, webinar, tape, you know, whatever it might have been. Like what do you, what was it for you that pushed you over that edge?

John Humphrey:

It was losing everything. Okay. I had lost everything back at that time. It was right around when like 2007 hit. You know, my wife and I, we had our, we bought our dream home in southern California here, you know, driving BMWs like everything was going great. Financial housing crisis happened in 2007. Our business dried up. I was out of cash, lost everything. We short sold our house. And the worst part of it was the dream car that I had wanted my whole life. That I was able to get through the, our first business, which was a BMW M three convertible white with gray leather interior. It was like, I had it on my dream board. I had it as a screen saver on my computer. I couldn’t have been any happier when I got that car. And I had about four payments left on my lease. Didn’t have the money anymore. The car payment was about 1200 a month. And it got repossessed right out of my driveway on Thanksgiving. I’ll never forget it. And I remember just like crying what my wife and just feeling like holy macro, like, wow, what a couple years could, could change. Like, oh man, it was like, so we lost everything, went bankrupt lost our house, lost our cars. Like it was a total financial wake up call that being an entrepreneur is not just about making money because there are gonna be times where you’re not making money as an entrepreneur.

David Richter:

Yeah.

John Humphrey:

What do you do when you’re not making money? You’ve gotta have something that’s making you money outside of your business and it can’t just be your business. So that was really kind of like the that was the wake up call for us. And I’m, you know, I don’t mind telling people that story cuz I, I’m very big on being transparent and and that’s a lot of the entrepreneur story. You know, I’ve heard entrepreneurs have made money and they’ve lost everything. But the cool thing about on entrepreneurs, you could do it again. Right? At least you know how to get up and do it again. At least you have the courage to do it. But that was the wake up call for us. Like, cuz then I felt all the shame and the guilt then, you know, like, oh my God, how did it even let this happen? But it was kind of like what was going on with the pandemic now? There was nowhere to go at that time. Everything was collapsing in 2007. It was like nobody was doing great. I mean, some people were, but our business wasn’t. And you couldn’t turn anywhere. It was like kind of everywhere. And it was, I was thinking, boy, it wouldn’t have been great if we had a fund, an emergency fund. We had money making over here. We had safe investments, risk it. Like what if we had taken all that money and we just didn’t wasted on some stupid stuff? Cuz I think that’s also a, the early stage of an entrepreneur is that you’ve been also taught that vision of making money and going on vacations, having your dream car, buying your house, and you like, you’re so in the rewarding of yourself and you’re, when you’re young, now that I’m 52, it’s like I’ve done all that stuff. I don’t really, you know, it’s not important to me. I just want cash. I want security for my future, my family. I’m not into all the glitz and glam anymore. I wanna, you know, I want to just be so diversified where my future is really secure. I also feel like I’m a little older that I see the other side of entrepreneurship. It’s like when you’re, I think when you’re young right? And your 30 or in your twenties you’re like, man, I’m gonna be an entrepreneur freaking forever. It seems forever. And then you get in your fifties like, whoa, hey, I’m getting like, I could see 70, I can see 80 down the road. I’m like, I’m not gonna be in business for the next 40 years. So you, I think you, you change your mindset a little bit and you get a little bit more I think you have some more wisdom because of you feel the time is running out.

David Richter:

Okay, man, that’s really good info. I really appreciate you being open and transparent. I think that connects with people the most. I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening to this that went through a lot of the same in those time periods as well too. It also sounds like, cuz I, that original question was like, what put you on the financial education path? It sounds like maybe for the last 15 years it’s been that education and would you say today with the businesses that you run and with what you’ve done, you’ve put yourself on a better path after going through that, you know, those dark times back then.

John Humphrey:

Yeah, I have, and I’ll tell you the big thing that this was the biggest thing is I used to run my businesses pretty much by emotion and going for things. Yeah. I never brought in the, let’s look at the numbers, let’s run a business by numbers. And that was a big growth for me because being the entrepreneur visionary, I hate all that stuff. So, you know, my partner and I, Jerry, you know, we have our business langster but we also now have a CFO. And we have somebody who is not us that is constantly looking at the numbers constant like, Hey guys, this is what’s really going on. It’s not just, you know, Jerry and I in the Wild West show, like, let’s just make money and spend money and pay ourselves. And before you know it, we’ve got all this money, but the business has no money. So there’s, you know, we brought in professionals on our team that we never did before. You know, we’ve done that for the last probably 10 years or so where we’ve actually really bring people in that complement what we’re just not good at. And that’s one of them is, but actually looking at the numbers specifically in your business and looking at the numbers I’ve gotten to know has actually been fun. I’ve actually enjoyed it.

John Humphrey:

It’s not that difficult. It just, I had the perception of it being difficult and dry and boring and uncreative and all that other stuff. But it’s kind of nice when you can get into it and understand the numbers like you’re talking about, look at the numbers with purpose. That actually becomes a real fun activity even for somebody who’s just visionary.

David Richter:

That’s awesome. I love hearing that, especially on this podcast. So then let me ask you, yeah, looking at the numbers has become fun to you, you know, and like, sounds like it’s because you have the right people in place and you have those people that can help, you know, those purposes and those plans. But then the numbers probably haven’t always been fun to you. Like we’ve talked about like you ran on emotion and all that different stuff before. Do you feel like a business owner now, like back then when you ran on a motion versus now running off the numbers, is there a different feeling of entrepreneurship and how you feel about when you look at the numbers and you know where your business stands?

John Humphrey:

Yeah, great question. I feel like I’m more engaged. I think I’m more of a well-rounded business owner now than before. I think I was more of small business solo practitioner mentality, more like an independent contractor. Cause it was just, you know, I felt it was more like that. There was only a handful of us on the, in our company now, we have, you know, 15, 20 people on payroll here where, you know, we’re running more of an enterprise business and so everything has to be run that way. Yeah. there’s different departments where we empower people. It doesn’t just come from the top down. I mean, there’s a whole nother dynamic now. It’s like, now I feel like we’re really running an enterprise business and that has to be done a specific way, but it feels better because I feel like it’s more solid. I feel like we’re on top of things as opposed to just kind of doing what, what’s happening because there’s only a few of us. There’s nobody else to be responsible for. We’re responsible for other people’s livelihoods now.

David Richter:

Right.

John Humphrey:

So there’s more of that responsibility.

David Richter:

Awesome. Yeah, I totally understand that sentiment. So why don’t you tell us, we’ve just got a couple last few minutes here. Why don’t you tell us about what you’re doing now? Like what is that company that you have now and a helium and like, just why don’t you g can you give us a high level overview in just a couple minutes?

John Humphrey:

I’ll give you just a 30,000-foot view of what it is. It’s actually pretty wild. So my partner and Jerry, we we’re in the short-term vacation rental space where real estate investors, we teach people, you know, we’ve been teaching people how to buy big homes, like big luxury homes, convert them into ultra luxury VRBO or Airbnb properties. And we teach people to do that because we love the cash flow of it. You know. But while we were doing that, back in April of 2020 when the pandemic was like really hit and they shut down travel, well, we had 20, we had 24 properties in Arizona and we got a notification from an Airbnb saying, Hey, just wanna let everybody know that we have a full cancellation override policy going on right now. So if anybody wants to stay at your property, no matter what the cancellation policy says, we’ll allow your travelers to completely cancel for full refund. Huh. So they overrode all of the things they had in place. They didn’t consult with us, the hosts. So when that one month Jerry and I lost $600,000 in bookings, just wow. Boom. Gone like that. And that scared us big time because we said, wow, we’re anything can happen with one of these tech platforms, right? Your business could just be completely annihilated. And so we had started a company called Boomer. And Boomer was all about empowering vacation travelers and, and a host to actually do direct bookings, have your own website, do this whole thing. And over the course of the time of doing this company, we always were attracting technology solutions to all of our homes. And then somebody introduced us to this thing called the helium hotspot, which is like, basically it’s like a size of a toaster. It’s a little box that gets installed at your property and this box networks with other boxes in the area. And they’re creating this thing called the Internet of things, this IOT network, it’s called the Internet of Things. They’re creating this person and peer to peer network. So Helium, which is a, a cryptocurrency, decided to create a worldwide network where it was gonna be decentralized. So David, like you could have a piece of it, I could have a piece of it. And then we put this box here and put antenna on the roof. And what it does is it just sends a signal, it sends a signal out and it receives signals from other boxes. And this signal is actually for the billions of new devices coming out that need to be on the internet to monitor their activities. Such as, for a home, for example, it would be like temperature monitor in your home or maybe a water density monitor for your lawn or cameras, your, your smart, like any smart device that needs to be on the internet but is not necessarily gonna be in your house on the wifi. How do all those things outside in the world get on the internet? Well, they’re on these things called the IOT network, just like the little motor scooters downtown. The little electric scooters. Yeah. How do the scooters know where they are? They’re on an outside network called the IOT network. So that just sets up what it is. So we looked at this and said, okay, well we put this device on here and as it networks with other devices, we’re gonna get rewarded. Cryptocurrency in the form of helium tokens, which is HNT, that’s their token, said, wow, that’s really cool. So we went into this only to find out that the helium hotspots out there weren’t really good. So we actually hired a guy who is an ex-employee from Motorola. We deconstructed the box, we created our own custom box and then we actually created a technology company called Langster, which is all we do is we help people find locations to put helium hotspots so they can earn passive cryptocurrencies.

So every day your box is at networks with other boxes you’re rewarded in crypto tokens. And this is a long-term data play that’s helping people create passive income. So we did that with our homes and now we’re doing this with the public and that’s how we started Langster and that’s what we’re crazy with right now.

David Richter:

That’s very interesting. So crazy. Yeah, man. Okay. Well that, it sounds like your journey’s been quite the journey you’ve gone from, you know, like where you were back in 2007, losing everything now to 15 years later of in the real estate investing, helping people with the IOT, the internet of things, which is I love that. Just hold that whole concept and that whole yeah. Phrasing, but it, you know, just helping people in that way and absolutely have loved this show today. Like I had no idea what to expect here because I honestly, John, I didn’t even know John until he reached out and said, yeah like I’ve read Profit First. I just like people who have that mindset, I don’t wanna just make it, I want to grow the money as well too. I love that what you said there in the middle. So this was, this was awesome. You went into just the raw portion of your life and where you came from and where you’ve come, you know, from and out to now and in telling about where you are now. And it’s just been, it’s been really refreshing cuz a lot of people, you know, they just wanna hear, they wanna hear the real story, the real you. So this has been really great. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that. And so on the last question here, since you provided a lot of value, how can they provide value back to you? Like what are you, obviously, we know what you’re working on right now, but how do they connect with you or what’s the best website to go to? Or if they’re interested in getting those boxes, they’re like, I don’t know, whatever you wanna say here. How do they get ahold of you?

John Humphrey:

Yeah, it’s really, really simple. What we’re looking for is we’re looking for places we can put our IOT boxes that people can actually earn. If we actually look at your house, we do an analysis on it, it’s free and we decide to put a box there, you’ll earn crypto rewards for the next 47 years there. I mean, it’s just like, it’s a cool passive play. And if you all, any of your listeners and watchers would like to get a free analysis of their property or multiple properties, whatever, we’ll do it. It’s really simple. You could go to langster.com, it’s linxstr.com and you could go on there and click get started. You could submit your information and I’d be happy to put you on my calendar. And that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking to help people box by box.

David Richter:

Awesome. Well this has been incredible, John, thanks for being on today and giving that information and being a great guest on the Pro First REI podcast. Really appreciate having you on here.

John Humphrey:

Thanks David.

David Richter:

So John did say he has a CFO. So if you are wanting to go from that visual learner to actually thinking that the numbers are fun and that you like feeling like the business owner like John does and getting the power over that and getting control of your business and your life, head over to simplecfosolutions.com. That’s where you can find us. You can book a call with us. We do fractional CFO work, so you might not need a full-time CFO. That’s all that means. Just someone to help you and guide you and help you know exactly where your money’s going. So you can not only make it like John said but grow it as well too. I absolutely love that statement he said, but I wanna make sure that you have that outlet. And even if we’re not the right fit, we’ve got a lot of people in our network to make sure that you get help on the financial side so you’re not running around like a chicken with their head cut off. But here you go. Here’s how I wanna make sure I end this podcast. Like I do. Always make sure that you’re making profit a habit in your business. Thank you so much.

Outro:

This episode of the Profit First for REI podcast is over, but there are plenty more where that came from. Are you ready to learn how David and his team can help implement the Profit First system in your business? Schedule a discovery call at simplecfo.com right now. We’ll see you next time on The Profit First for REI podcast with David Richter.