Three Airbnbs Later with Caytie and Shane

In this episode of 'Not Made To Be Subtle,' host Caytie Langford and her husband Shane discuss their decision to leave their comfortable life in Dallas to embrace adventure and uncertainty. They share insights on stepping out of their comfort zones, manifesting their desires, and the importance of flexibility and resilience in both life and entrepreneurship. Their story highlights the journey from having a stationary business in Dallas to becoming nomadic entrepreneurs, exploring new cities, and aiming for personal growth and business expansion. They delve into the mindset shift required for such a radical change, discussing the challenges of downsizing their possessions, encountering unexpected situations like living next to a noisy nightclub, and the importance of staying positive and focused on their goals. Through candid conversations and unfiltered stories, this episode offers actionable advice for anyone looking to break away from the conventional to chase after more fulfilling experiences in life and business.

00:00 Embracing Change and Stepping Out of Comfort Zones
00:44 Introducing 'Not Made To Be Subtle' Podcast
01:53 Special Guest: A Candid Conversation with Shane Langford
02:28 The Unconventional Journey: Living Out of Suitcases
10:46 Entrepreneurial Insights: Flexibility, Resilience, and Growth
19:27 Adventures in Austin: Embracing the Nomadic Lifestyle
26:40 Mindset Shifts and the Power of Manifestation
28:11 The Power of Positive Thinking in Business
29:00 Navigating Business Challenges with a Positive Mindset
31:00 Manifesting Success: The Journey of Finding the Right Team
33:21 Embracing Change and New Opportunities
33:55 The Impact of Physical Relocation on Business Growth
39:47 Real Estate Ventures: From First Purchase to Investor Mindset
42:27 Dealing with Doubters When Pursuing Unconventional Goals
44:46 The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Embracing Flexibility and Boldness
48:52 Reflections on a Non-Traditional Path and Future Aspirations

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Transcript

_1_04-10-2024_133240: 0:00

every step looks different for everybody. but for us, I think this was absolutely something we needed to go through. We needed to remove ourselves from what was comfortable. Could we just stay in our townhouse in Dallas and, and go do the same things over and over and hang out with the same people and. Yes, we absolutely could. And it would have been fantastic and we would have loved it. And we would have had fun because we love our people back home. We love our friends. We love our family. But this is also about just proving a to ourselves that we can, we can go outside of our comfort zone. And that we can do hard things and be, manifesting what we want.

Caytie: 0:46

Welcome to Not Made To Be Subtle where we celebrate the art of embracing fear, pushing boundaries and making a statement in a world that often expects us to be subtle. I'm your host, Caytie Langford. I'm a full time real estate investor, but along the way I was a nonprofit fundraiser turned executive coach. I once stood at the intersection of This is everything that I've ever wanted. And is this really it? I've learned so much along the way. And now this podcast will be your go to destination for candid discussions with me and with other bad ass women who dared to ask the same, is this it? And decided to chase after more. Stay tuned for riveting stories. unfiltered conversations and actionable advice that will move you from where you are to where you want to go. Welcome to not made to be subtle because you, my dear, you were never made to be subtle.

_1_04-10-2024_133240: 1:53

I have a very special guest. It's my husband. Hey. Hey, Shane Langford. Hi. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being on. Okay, so it's funny that I just called you Shane Langford. I always call you Shane Langford. I rarely ever call you Shane and people find that to be humorous. Do you find it to be humorous? No, I find it adorable. You do? Yeah. Oh, okay. I love that. So we are sitting across from each other. Tell everyone that is listening. Where actually are we right now? We are in downtown Austin, Texas. on like Airbnb number three in our get out of Dallas adventure, that took an unbelievable left turn at the end of February. We're in downtown, we're on the sixth floor of what I would call like a loft, basically. It's kind of loftish, but like in a high rise, so like a secure building. And so that's where we are. We're working from here, playing from here, doing all the things. So there are a lot of people in our life, in our world. They think we are absolutely banoodles crazy. Well, we are, we are, we are. Cause we packed up all of our stuff. We have two suitcases each. You of course have your golf clubs, although you haven't even played around or hit any balls. That's cause I'm extremely busy these days. Yeah. Extremely busy. And then we also have a tub of our kitchen stuff. I just want to address though the elephant in the room that people think we're crazy. Do you think we're crazy? And like, when you think of this whole thing that we are doing, how do you describe it? It's definitely not traditional by any means to be like, you know, Oh, we don't have a quote unquote residence at the moment. But at the same time, like getting out of our bubble, getting out of our hometown and going somewhere else, even though it is just three hours South for now, who knows, maybe we'll go somewhere else after we're done in Austin getting whatever we need out of this city. But yeah, it's crazy. It's, it's crazy. I don't think there's a lot of people out there, that can say, Oh my gosh, we're going to just put everything in storage, sell everything else, make 16 trips to Salvation Army, and give away a bunch of crap that we probably didn't need to be holding on to anyways. and say, let's pack up a suitcase and hit the road and, and go stay somewhere for an extended period of time. It is very much out of the ordinary and norm. Is it crazy? Yeah, probably. But, you know, we're also in a very different position than a lot of other people having not had kids that we have kind of this, flexibility. And then I think for the longest time, Because I owned a business that was stationary in the Dallas market that kept us very nailed down to Dallas, kept us nailed down to that city. and I think there's a part of both of us that have like this. itch that needs to be scratched to kind of spread our wings and travel and try life in just a few different places. Does that mean we're not going back? Maybe, maybe not. But at the same time, it's like, we only get to do this life once. Why not try this? Even though, yeah, it's a little crazy. I love that. I love that you just put it into perspective because so many of our friends back home are not from Dallas. They got to Dallas coming after college or a job move. Now, of course, we also have friends that we either have been our childhood friends or people that we've met along the way who are from Dallas. but yeah, it's, I think it's really interesting the way that you say that. And I will also say. Some people have come at me. I don't think anybody was trying to be rude or malicious, but like I had a comment on Facebook that was like, Oh, tell me you don't have kids, without telling me you don't have kids. Another person was like, wow, that must be really nice. And I think that From the outside, it's really easy to look at us and be like, Oh, wow, that's really nice that the Langfords could pack up all their belongings. But for 20 years, we couldn't, and we really sacrificed a lot for your glass business. Because, like you said, it was in Dallas, it was not something that you could easily move. And even in the beginning, I would say the first 10 years of you owning it, I mean, taking vacations, all of that was really tough. You didn't have a normal job where you had four weeks of vacation and insurance and benefits. Yeah, no, that was definitely a big, thing with me. For the second iteration of my career post selling the company. I wanted flexibility in my next career. That's what gravitated me towards what I'm doing now with real estate and now, you know, possibly moving into some other things. But as I build on, what we're doing next together and what I'm building on as a, as a second phase of my career, I definitely want some sort of flexibility because you're absolutely right. I didn't take vacations the first 10 years I was in that business. Like, and if we did, it was like, Hey, let's hop a plane Thursday night, but we need to be back by Monday. Cause I need to be back at work by Tuesday. Like the missing the minimum amount of work days. And to avoid any kind of problems arising at work. Now, it wasn't always like that out of 20 years, I would say the first 10 to 12 years were like that. And then I started learning more about building a team and practices and standard operating procedures and putting a lot of things in place in order to build and scale my business to ultimately get to where I sold it. But as far as like being able to kind of. Spread our wings, travel, get out of Dallas, get out of town. It took a very long time to get to the point where I was comfortable just taking a week off and taking a week away from work. And even then I would wake up early on vacation and be on my computer for a couple of hours. so this is. It's definitely something that has been a longterm goal is to be able to get away, pack a car, move. I do realize this looks, I think you've shared with the audience before the kind of what happened with the bus and you can build on that. And so like we were going to actually do an RV and do like an 18 city tour. So this is very different from that prospectus that we, I kind of thought we would be moving every one to two weeks. Instead, we're like. We're in a very different city that you and I have never spent a lot of time in. so that's, it's been fun, but it looks very different, I think, from the first concept of idea that it was. Yeah. The first concept, when you said, Hey, do you want to live in a van? And I was like, no, we're not living in a van. And then we went to the RV show and then we wound up having an RV custom made. And six days before we were supposed to take possession, we actually walked away from that deal, which if you want to learn more about that, you can go to the lessons and power of the pivot, which is an episode, a couple of episodes back. But I want to jump into one of the things that you were talking about was You know, we were supposed to leave and, and go to more cities. And we had an itinerary, like this was actually planned out. And yet when we decided that we would come down to Austin, not really planned out, like when we say that we have been living by. The seat of our pants. It is true. The first Airbnb we got because we know the owners through a mentorship, group that we're in another real estate group. And then even the next place that we went to, which happened to be about 30 minutes outside of Austin, Beautiful place about a 10 minute walk from Lake Travis. It was amazing and awesome. But we booked that like two days before we moved in and then we were supposed to leave and we extended it. And then even to find this place that we're in, I mean we really didn't sign everything until we moved in here on a Saturday and we signed everything on a Thursday. Yeah. So it has not been. It's been crazy. I mean, I don't want to keep going back to that word crazy, but one of the things I want to get into is this idea of putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations because we both are entrepreneurs. We both are building new businesses. you know, you've talked about buying businesses, helping other people buy businesses, but the truth is, is that as entrepreneurs, And as business owners, there is so much unknown. Things change from day to day. I mean, you owned a business for 20 years. And I remember the day that you came home, I had started my business. And y'all, I mean, y'all, I was an executive. It's not like I wasn't in leadership rooms. It's not like I wasn't super involved in the business aspect of running a nonprofit. But I remember you came home one day and I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Because I really had no idea what it was like to run a business. So talk to me a little bit about. As we're doing this, how do you kind of see the parallels between packing up all of your stuff and not knowing exactly where you're going to live to really giving you more resilience muscles when it comes to being a business owner and entrepreneur? Oh, that's a fantastic analogy. I love that. yeah, because Especially small business owners. You definitely have to be able to kind of roll with the punches, pivot, be able to, change your, you know, I just remember like a typical day in my old life. When I would have maybe like a plan or two for my day and then I'd get to the office at seven 30, eight o'clock in the morning. And by eight 15, my plan is blown up because something else happened that I have to pivot and kind of take care of. You have to be. Somewhat flexible, in order to run a business. You just do, there's going to be things that arise opportunities that arise, even with what we're doing now in real estate. Like I might wake up with a plan on what I want to focus on, what I want to work on that day, but there might be an opportunity or an investment opportunity, a partnership opportunity that arises that day. And I'm like, Ooh, I need to focus on this instead. And you gotta be able to pivot. You gotta be able to be flexible. So yeah, I actually kind of. I love how you just compared What we're doing with our lifestyle to kind of how you have to be in business. That's very, that's, that's a very astute, comparison, I think. Well, and it's funny because also when you run a business, there is going to be stuff that comes up that you don't like, that is really obnoxious and annoying. things that are completely out of your control. You know, we got to this place here in downtown, which we haven't said, but, one of the ways that we were able to get this is that we actually had to stay, or we are going to stay longer than we thought. I mean, we kind of thought we would stay in Austin until maybe mid May. So we're looking for something around 30 days, but we found this place and we were like, wow, it's really cool. It seems like a good fit. It's where we want to be, but we had to sign a 90 day short term or midterm lease. And we're going to be here until the beginning of July. So we get here and the first night is a Saturday night and we're like, yeah, this place is cool. Although our neighbor smokes a lot of pot and it kind of stinks. So we had to deal with some of that. And then we realized that we are down the street from a night club. Austin's number one Latin night club. Austin's number one Latin night club. And it is oontz, oontz until two in the morning. And at one point on Sunday, we looked at each other and we're like, we can't do this. You just can't do this. And listen, I'm still up in the air on whether or not we're going to make it until July 7th. But one of the things that I have observed is we have had to find ways to tamper that down, to not allow that to become this stressor. Now it's not every night, thank goodness, but there are nights and you can hear it in our whole place. Yeah, it's crazy. And so, I would love to understand from your thoughts. Just like stressful things happen when you are changing a lifestyle, when you're on the road, when you're a nomad. I don't know really what we're calling it. We say we're nomads. Some, my cousin said I was a gypsy. I don't even think that's like a proper term anymore. I, so please don't at me if I mess that up. but what is it like to have those stresses? Especially for anyone who's like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to start a business who has worked in a W2 where, yeah, they come across stress, but it's different. Yeah, I will say this. It will be virtually impossible to build a business if you're doing something you don't like to do. You must enjoy the work first. I think that's one of the reasons I, I loved construction. I love the construction process. So being a subcontractor was enjoyable to me. You know, me, I like to be on the go. I like to go, go, go. I like to wake up in the morning and have somewhere to go. That's, what's been the biggest change in my lifestyle from going from what I used to do to working from home. Now, as I kind of feel like this, Oh, I got, you know, there's, there's 15 different things I can work on. But you've got to enjoy the work first. If you don't enjoy the work, you won't put in the time. You won't want to put in the time or the effort because even when you do enjoy the work, trying to build your own business is So difficult when you're building from scratch, it is going to be one of the hardest things to do. There's this kind of running joke and I've seen different entrepreneurs like on Instagram and gurus and all these people say stuff like, Oh, I used to work a nine to five, started my own business and now I work 24 seven. It's the absolute truth. When you own a business, when the buck stops with you, You will think about it in the shower. It will be the last thing you think about when you go to sleep at night. The first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning. So if you're trying to do something you don't enjoy, it's not going to work. It's just not going to work because there are going to be times when you have to focus on your business and you're like, Oh, it's seven o'clock at night. I really just want to watch Ozark on Netflix and just kind of forget about life right now, but I got 15 other things that I need to. handle in my business. And if I don't do it today, I'm going to have 45 things to do tomorrow. And so you're going to have to push yourself to work nights, to work weekends in the beginning. It's not an all time, all time, every time thing. You know, like I said, in my journey, I used to work, you'll be the biggest one. I used to work Saturdays, Sunday mornings. I used to leave the house sometimes at five 36 in the morning. There were days I left around four or five in the morning. And we had commercial projects. And I had to be involved early. So there are things I didn't enjoy doing that stuff. I didn't love doing that stuff. There were times that you and I would have dinner at seven, eight o'clock at night, and then I would go into my office at nine, 10 o'clock at night and work for another two hours. So getting uncomfortable and being able to push yourself, is going to be an absolute requirement to scale your business. You'll eventually get past it. You'll grow. You know, hire the right people, put the right team around you, partner with the right people. It won't be forever. You're gonna have to enjoy the work in order to be able to push yourself through that, through those pain points. And I think that's the biggest thing. So going back to the nightclub. So getting uncomfortable is just part of the process. you know, if we don't like our situation, then we need to push ourselves to do something different. Like your famous line, we're not a tree. We don't have roots. We can move. Like, see, I'm listening to you. I love that. But we're not a tree. Like we can move. you have to put in the work to be able to achieve those rewards. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the crazy things that I found when I launched my very first business back in 2016, it was my first coaching business was I really thought things would happen way faster than they did. And it's crazy because as I tell my story, I realized that I'm now nine years removed from leaving my W2. I thought I would be a lot further along. I really did. And it's taken multiple pivots in my entrepreneurial journey to really land on what I think is going to be the thing, you know, in the next few weeks, I'm embarking on a new journey. I've been planning it and still kind of keeping that under wraps, but it's something that when I'm looking back and connecting dots. Oh my gosh, there's so many things with this new venture that it's like, yes, I was thinking about this three years ago and six years ago and 10 years ago and 12 years ago. I just didn't realize it. I didn't see it. I couldn't, you know, forecast it forward, but, that's, what's crazy about the entrepreneurial journey. And you obviously are in a new space in the entrepreneur journey. And listen. I know not every woman who is listening is going to be like, yeah, I'm an entrepreneur, but I think that there are a lot of things that you can learn from entrepreneurs, about who you can become about the life that you can build. And it doesn't matter if it happens within a corporate America career. It doesn't matter if you're also an entrepreneur, maybe you have a side hustle, but talk to us a little bit, Shane, just about. The crazy journey that you've been on since September, 2022. Oh yeah. It's, it's been, look, I mean, life is a learning process, right? I think that's one of the things we've talked about with this adventure is that we don't want to look back on our lives and say, well, you know, we just didn't make it. grew up in Dallas, went to college, came back to Dallas, lived there for 75 years or 50 years, whatever, you know, and then, here we are, we left a nice memory. so I think that the motivation to the adventure was kind of that, right? Like we want to get out. but since I closed on the business September of 2022, It's been a whirlwind and I didn't kind of think that I would have gone through as many iterations of my post career that I have, you know, you touched on like, man, I started out doing this and then I pivoted to this and that. And, and it's been nine years of work to get to where I think it's all culminating and coming together. And I know what your vision is for the future. And I 100 percent agree. So for me, it's like when I sold the business, I've had an interest in real estate investing. We have done a few fix and flips. We had bought rental properties over the last 10, 12 years leading up to that point. So when I sold the business and I said, I'm going to be a real estate investor, I really just thought that meant flipping houses. I didn't really know what it meant. And that was my goal was to just go flip four or five houses a year. and kind of enjoy post glass career. Since I've gotten in the room with people, I've learned what people do in this real estate space. It's opened my eyes to so many other opportunities. But not only that, it's come full circle for me, I'm starting to see, discovering that I would like to be more of a helper as much as I am an investor. And so, you know, that's where I get to, pivoting into, partnering with people who own small businesses, helping people, helping the guy that I was 10 years ago, who was working 90, 80, 90 hours a week, wasn't sleeping at night. Cause I was worried about how we were going to get all the work done or how we were going to pay the bills, you know, it's, it's ebb and flow. It's just been a whirlwind. I think I'm on, step like four of like 500 when it comes to pivoting and changing, and that's part of it. That's just part of growing as a human, but it's also part of growing as a business owner, growing as an investor as well, growing as a business manager. You're going to change, you're going to pivot. And if you're not, then, you know, you're going to have some harder times ahead of you for sure. Yeah, well, I loved what you said just a minute ago about using the word adventure, and that was something that I think we should also talk about. We talk a lot in our marriage about being intentional and about creating the life that we want. And so it'll be funny because you will say something like, Oh, we can't afford that. And what do I always say when you say, Oh, we can't afford that yet. That's right. Yet. I always say we can't afford that yet. And, you know, part of this being in the, I would say this that we're in, like, is it the mid rise that I found online? Then I was like, Oh my gosh, this is where we want to be. No, it is not. There was a beautiful one that overlooks, Lady Bird Lake that I'm like, this is where we want to be, but the cost was prohibitive for us. And so we are like, okay, we're going to be here. We're going to be uncomfortable for three months and we're going to work. And push ourselves in new ways to get things done that we need to do so that we can go and afford the thing that we actually want. But I also think the idea of using the word adventure was something that we talked a lot about. of course at the beginning it was going to be this RV trip. So we were like, Oh, this is so fun. But even when we changed from it being an RV trip to, okay, now we're going to travel in our car. We're still going to put all of our stuff in storage. We honestly do not know where this is taking us like we cannot tell you on July 10th Where we're gonna be we have no idea. We don't yeah, it could be Austin It could be like we could pack of our stuff and go to I don't know somewhere else. But Choosing the word adventure choosing to look at this Not as something that we have to do, not as a negative thing, but like, Oh my gosh, we get to do this. We get to spend our time. Like this is the middle of the work day and we're recording a podcast and we're talking about things that we've been talking about for six months and really not even six months, 20 plus years. Talk to me a little bit about like mindset. And listen, everyone knows I'm a little woo woo. Everyone knows I am a mindset junkie. Everybody knows I love personal development, but like you're an average guy. Like talk to me about that. Cause you definitely look to me like I'm a weirdo. 127, 000 times there. Well, yes, there are. I was probably your biggest critic for a long time. When it came to mindset and let me pause for a second. You weren't a critic of me, you weren't critical of what I was doing. You just weren't a believer that any of it. Yeah. Okay. So I just want to make sure if people don't think like you were criticizing me, you weren't criticizing me. You would just roll your eyes when I would be like, you should get out your journal and write, and you'd be like, yeah. Okay. I'll do that. Yeah. Then I would walk off. Yeah. Mindset was something that I just, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't brought up right. Oh, if you want something, put it into the universe, this type of thing. Right. And look, I 100 percent believe like just wishing for something to happen or saying out loud, like, I want this to happen does not manifest it. Like that is not how it works. You have to put the work behind manifestation, but also,, I have come around to believe that you do have to quote unquote manifest or put, or say out loud to the universe. You have to tell the universe what you want. I spent six years trying to sell my business seven years. Trying to pivot out of that company. it was a wonderful experience. I wouldn't change anything because every transaction that I went through, everything that didn't happen, I'm taking that experience into what I'm doing now. I have. Experience negotiating and dealing with private equity companies because I had negotiated a sell of my own business with a private equity firm. I have experience negotiating a merger and an acquisition because I went through that with my company. I have the experience and negotiation of selling to an individual investor, a seller finance, type structure, because I went through that. And I've even dealt with brokers before that. I think that there was a times when I was like, Oh, this is never going to happen, this is never going to happen. And if I look back the times that I was telling myself, this is never going to happen, I'm never going to get out of this place is I'm never going to be able to fix this. I'm never going to be able to get out of this business. When I started having those conversations with myself and getting down on myself. That's when it got tougher. That's when my life got tougher. My work life. That's when my business suffered a little bit because I was focused negatively on the wrong things. But when I started having positive output, And started saying, okay, we're having, I mean, you know, it was in business for 20 years. We had really good, successful, profitable years and we had not so profitable years. I'm very open about that, about sharing my successes and my failures. It happens. If you've been staying in business long enough, you're going to lose money. It happens. so the years that we were down or the economy was down and the business was down, you know, when I would get down on myself, I would see the negative impact. I'm focused on the negative. So negative is happening. When I learned to fight through the negative and focus on the positive. Okay, we're having a rough year. What can I do? Well, I can reach out for help. I can hire a CFO. I can reach out to an advisor. I could hire a coach. Start looking for positive things to do, positive places to put work. And then things started turning around. And it's unbelievable. And you think, oh, that's just, you know, some, some naysayers will be like, well, that's, that's not manifestation. You just put the work into it. Yeah, but the mindset has to be right. You have to be telling yourself mentally. You have not just telling yourself, you have to know, you have to believe mentally that yeah, it sucks right now. This situation we're in this, you know, the, I, for years I could not hire a number two, a key person for probably the first 13 years. I did not really have a key person in that business. and Caytie actually, I mean, she would, I would come home, I'd be in a bad mood and you would say, what's wrong? Oh, I just need help. I need real good help. I need positive help. And you were journaling, like get Shane help, get Shane, somebody he can believe help and train and work and work with. And then January of 2016, I hired a guy who stuck with me through the end. And even for a while worked for the new owners. And I truly believe that she manifested, you manifested that, that helped for me, like putting it out in the universe. This is what we need. Now we were taking active steps to go find that person. but you know, getting the mindset right about all of that and staying positive, putting the work into it. It's very crucial. Yeah, I did. I prayed for Adam for so long. I, I wrote it down in my prayer journal. I manifested it with the universe. I prayed to God. I literally every day would journal and write my prayer requests. Please bring Shane someone. But I think the other thing for manifestation is that you got to be really clear on what you want. And I think some of the times when we weren't able, like when you weren't able to find the right person, it was because you didn't really know what you were looking for. And when you realize, like, this is the kind of human that I need in my life. This is the kind of A person, you know, it was pretty quickly, but you had to take some very big steps, including moving your business, which cost tens of thousands of dollars, probably in the six figures over the long run of it or more. just so that you could align with finding the right people, not just Adam, but all the people who eventually would come to work for you. Yeah. And to me, that is also like kind of coming back to this trip. Dallas is great. Like I'm not complaining about the city that I was born and raised in. It's a huge metropolitan area. There is a ton of money and opportunity, great people, great humans. And we obviously have built spheres of influence and networks there, but part of it was also to say, okay, I know what that is. What if I move and in this one it literally was like physically like take my body and and move it somewhere else But I think sometimes like we have to put ourselves into action so that other People not just other people god universe, whatever whatever we want to call it Senses that were serious Like the truth is if you had not moved your shop 35 miles closer to dallas You would not have attracted the people that came to work for you. What I love about that going back to the shop is when we moved into that building, that building was, 10, 000 square feet. We had six offices, seven. If you count the conference room, we turned one office into a conference room. We had seven offices. And, when we moved in there, it was me and two employees. We, we literally needed one office by the end of moving in there from 2016 to 2022, we had people sharing offices. Like we, we really manifested the team that we wanted. And I remember when we first moved into that building, I thought, Oh my God, this is crazy, insane. Like it's so empty in here. Like, We don't even have office furniture to look at it from where it went from January, 2016 to, to September of 2022. when I exited the company. And say, and like see people sharing an office. And I thought, wow, this is incredible. Now it would have never happened if we had not, you're right. Gotten uncomfortable, spent the money, made the move, into that space and gave the business the space to grow into what we wanted it to become. What we had the vision, the plan. that we had for it moving forward. and I think that's kind of what this trip is about in our personal life, personal slash professional, they kind of bleed together these days. but yeah, just. Trying to say, okay, look, we have big goals. We want, and we can talk about all the goals in our real estate business. And then in my, my business entrepreneurship program moving forward on another time, but opening the doors for this new business. And so that's what this kind of trip is about saying we want to have partnerships and relationships with people, not just in Dallas, but all over the United States, maybe even in Puerto Rico, like other countries where there is a lot of opportunity available right now. So, yeah, let's start here. Let's show the universe. We're serious about growing and expanding our horizon. So yeah, let's be nomads for three to six months. Let's hit the road. Now again, it looks very different. I thought we would be in an RV at this point, like in a trailer park right now, or RV park. And so I, I believe according to our itinerary, we would be somewhere in Florida. Right? Florida sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. Like on the beach I think is where we were supposed to be, but, but you know, every step looks different for everybody. but for us, I think this was absolutely something we needed to go through. We needed to remove ourselves from what was comfortable. Could we just stay in our townhouse in Dallas and, and go do the same things over and over and hang out with the same people and. Yes, we absolutely could. And it would have been fantastic and we would have loved it. And we would have had fun because we love our people back home. We love our friends. We love our family. But this is also about just proving a to ourselves that we can, we can go outside of our comfort zone. And that we can do hard things and be, manifesting what we want. We have both been very honest that the second phase of our career, we want to be able to very much work from wherever we go, you know, we were so stationary for 20 years. I love Cabo. Like that is my happy place. I could live on the beach in Cabo and be extremely happy for the rest of my life. So to me, like a big goal that I'm trying to manifest is I would love to have a beach house in Cabo. Own it and be able to go live a month, two months at a time and work from Cabo. So we've talked about things like that. And so getting uncomfortable, being able to move around, being remote, that's just what a big part of this is all about. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to end on something. A lot of people who have big, bold goals. women, men, like, I don't think it matters. I think it's universal that when you have big, bold goals and when you start to share them, you will have people in your life. And we started the whole thing with, are we crazy? But you will have people in your life, not just are you thinking you're crazy, but other people will tell you that. And one of the things that I think is really cool about your journey, and I've obviously been with you for so long that I've gotten to, to see it, is that you have done things so differently than most of your friends, and You have had people think, it's funny, like they look at your life and they think one thing. Like I remember when we were in our twenties and early thirties, like our friends thought you played golf all the time because you owned your own business. Could travel whenever I wanted. Yeah. Okay. Like also I have to say this before it would, I would be remiss. The whole reason that we bought our first rental Shane Langford came home and he said, Hey, I found this house. I want to buy it as a rental. It was also coming up on our fifth anniversary. We had not been on a vacation since our honeymoon, maybe a two, three, four day trip, but nothing like nothing big, nothing nice. And so I looked at you and I said, you can buy whatever you want. If you take me. On a fifth anniversary trip. And it wasn't like, Hey, you have to pay for it. That kind of thing. It was literally like, I had so much vacation by then that I would take half of the month of Christmas off, you know, half a month of December off and just hang out and I was like, no, we are going to go somewhere on our anniversary. And we shook on it and that is how we became real estate investors. You bought this house y'all. I will never forget. I'm so sad that we don't have video coverage of it. We walked into this house on Christmas Eve. Shane just told us that we bought it. Like we'd closed on it, the whole thing. I had not seen it. I'm pretty certain that I thought I was going to step on a dead body. It was insane. It was trashed out. It was totally trashed out. It was an estate situation and it had been sitting empty for about seven years. The roof had a leak. So like part of the sheet rock ceiling had caved in, mold. Yeah, it was, it was awful. We spent more money getting the house ready. Getting it livable and for a renter, making it nice. Then we actually did purchasing the property. Yeah. We go back to 2010 and buy all of our properties. Y'all we spent 28, 000 on this house. It was so funny. We had bought a new car. We had bought a Lexus. It was our first luxury car just a couple of months before that. We spent more on the car than we did the house, which I just found to be, we spent 28, 000 buying the house. And I think we put 30 plus renovating it. Yeah, it, we should have just torn it down and built a new house, For real. Yeah. We own that for quite a while. We had great renters. Yeah. And we sold it. And then they sold it. And now And now it is torn down. Yeah. It's commercial lot. Yeah. But it made us multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. Multiple six figures. So, you know, it was pretty good. But that's how we became real estate investors. I just think that's funny. Again, it all went back to. Can Caytie Langford get a vacation out of Shane Langford? But I want to talk, I just want to hear like, what are your thoughts when you have people in your life, whether you're starting a business, whether you're growing a business, whether you pack up all your stuff and put it in your sedan and try and leave, the city that you're born and raised in? Like, What do you say? You and I probably say it very differently. I'm like, F off. It'll be fine. Get over yourself. to other people when they say I'm crazy. But what do you say? Cause you're a lot more diplomatic and probably kind about it than me. You know, it's funny. I started my business when I was 25. And I have a college degree. I think most people know that about me if they know me, but I do a business degree, but I quit my corporate America job two years into it right out. I started a job post college in corporate sales and started my business and went out and was doing manual labor. And because I was the business, like, and I say the business, I didn't have a business. I just created a job for myself. I had clients. and I did their work, but people, my friend circle thought I was insane. They're like, what do you mean? You're working past seven o'clock on a Friday. What do you mean? You're working on Saturday. Like, why are you doing this? You have a college degree. I always wanted to work for myself. I think growing up in an entrepreneur family, my dad was an entrepreneur, my grandfather was an entrepreneur, seeing that lifestyle growing up, it wasn't weird to me. That's just what you did. That's what we did. We work hard to get what we want. but people thought I was insane. They're like, oh my god, I can't believe you're doing this. Like, you sweat in the winter, you freeze in the summer, you could have a cushy desk job sitting at a computer, probably making more money at that point than I was at that time, you know. You freeze in the winter, you sweat in the summer. Did I say it backwards? Yes, I said it backwards. Okay. So people were just like, go, go back to corporate America. Use your degree, get a desk job. I wanted to work for myself and going back to that analogy that Entrepreneurs are crazy. They're the only people that will quit a nine to five to work 24 seven. We are, we're like a little insane. So you gotta be insane to do it. so when it, to me, when it comes down to, we started talking about this, could we hit the road and pack up our car? And can you get your entire household down to two suitcases and a plastic bin? You know? And I was like, I think we can do it. And then like the Saturday we moved out of our townhouse and I'm like almost in tears. Cause I'm like, I want to take all this and I can't, you know, so I'm throwing stuff in a box, for the movers to put in storage, you know, it's crazy, but you kind of have to be a little crazy to kind of, to go out and do and start a business and start doing your own thing. You're going to have to be flexible. And so, just going back to that, that's kind of what this is all about. and not necessarily for the person who's going to start a business, but because you have done so many things that other people find out of the status quo, what would you say to people who are doing something? They have some goals, some dream that is not conventional. What do they say? You're going to make a lot of people uncomfortable when you do, things. It's not about you and what you're doing. It's about them. What you're doing would be uncomfortable to them. So they may lash out by saying, Oh, you're crazy. Or you can't do that. Or what are you doing? Are you stupid? Like, just know that's not about you. That's about them. Honestly, like, I think the best advice you ever gave me is they don't pay my bills. So why do I care what they think? If this is what I got to do to grow in my career, to grow as a person, to get to the next level of life or business that I want to get to is this, this is what I see as the path for us, for me. cool. I appreciate your input, but you don't pay my bills. So I don't really value your opinion. You know, the other thing too, is we talk a lot about in growth and mindset and doing things. you know, we always talk about like not taking advice from people who haven't been where we have been. Like you've worked at W 2 for 30 years and look, I'm not bashing people to stay in W 2s like there have been plenty of times. I wish I just stayed in corporate America. It'd have been a lot easier sometimes. Sometimes it's, you know, not all it's cracked to be whatever people choose for themselves. That's their own path. I am, I pass zero judgment on anybody. And anybody who knows me knows that we need bad ass bold women in corporate America. Like we need you to be in the spots where decisions are made. Not every decision is made in small business America. A lot of it is made in corporate America. So not everybody can be an entrepreneur. Not everybody should be. So yeah, absolutely. And there are a ton of people in our life where it's like, no, dude, you're absolutely in the right space. When I seek out advice, when I seek out mentors, I want to seek out people that have either done what I'm doing or trying to do and have grown beyond that. Or I want to seek out people that are just so far above me. And I'm like, man, someday I would like to be in the position there. They look like they, you know, from a, and we can be business or life perspective, like they seem like they have a great life. That's where I want to get to someday in my life. They have a great business. That's where I want my business to get to. I'm not trying to look at people that are not walking the same path that we are. I'm not trying to take advice. From the guy that, you know, God bless you, but I'm not trying to take advice from the guy that's going to work at W2 for 40 years and then retire with this 401k and go fishing and hunting every weekend, like we're just on different paths, you can't understand what I'm working towards and I can't understand what you're working towards. So we probably should not give each other advice. Yeah, absolutely. We can still be friends and love each other and family and all that thing. well, I feel like, first of all, I feel like we could talk forever, which is hysterical because we've been talking to each other for like six weeks straight. Without really, never see each other. I mean, never, we should hang out more. We should, we should hopefully this recorded. If not, we can have it all over again. I know if not cool conversation. Thanks. Yeah. I will also say this. The life that we're living right now is pretty fucking cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's something I never thought. Not that I ever never thought I wouldn't do it. It's never in a thought. That ever crossed my mind about doing like, what do you mean you would just pack up your stuff and hit the road and stay random places for months at a time? Like, Yeah, maybe when you're 20 and you're like backpacking across Europe or something and staying in hostels, which we never did. So maybe this is just our, our version of backpacking through Europe. You know, we're just slightly older and we're not 21. We're like 27. Right, right. 27 slightly older. Yeah. You could not pay me to be 27 again. That just would not happen. But I think no matter where we're going, I'm pretty excited for the ride and it's been fun and it's been different. And I appreciate all that you, all the advice, one. Final question. Sure. What is it like to be married to a woman who literally says she was not made to be subtle? brace yourself. We'll save that for another episode. Yeah, there we go. All right. It's never boring. Never boring. I love you, babe. Love you.

Caytie: 50:38

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