Fred Lewis and Real Investor Roundtable measure their success by yours. When Fred Lewis founded Dominion Group in 2002, he was mainly interested in lending money to real estate investors and acquiring properties. “Our company focused mainly on providing acquisition and construction funds to investors acquiring rentals and doing fix-and-flip transactions, but I quickly also got into buying my own investment properties as well. That was a very opportunistic time to be investing in real estate,” he said. The time may have been nearly ideal for getting started in real estate, but Lewis quickly discovered that even in the most idyllic of conditions, there are lessons to be learned. In his case, because he was lending and acquiring investment properties at the same time, he learned those lessons from both sides of the equation. “I learned the hard way, as most investors do, that investing is not as easy as it sounds. You build up an expertise by actually learning how to acquire, renovate, stabilize and rent, and finance properties,” he said. “Nevertheless, I was able to grow my business as a result of my dual role as a lender and an investor buying and selling on my own. I also ended up creating a property management company once I got to around 50 rental units. I realized that I had to learn to efficiently manage rental units and create best practices as no one would ever manage my rentals the way I would as the owner.” The businesses that would form The Dominion Group thrived as the country approached the housing crash, but unlike most real estate businesses, Dominion did not falter when the bottom fell out of the market. The reason, Lewis said, lay in the synergy between the lending and the real estate businesses and experience as “Main Street” investors. “Everyone’s business models were tested during that time,” Lewis said. “The fact that we were ‘real estate guys’ and could help and guide clients through that time and, when necessary, take inventory back and reposition it as a rental was very important to our successful navigation of that time in the market’s history.” At the end of the downturn, Dominion Group emerged stronger than ever, something that has led Lewis, his business partner Jack BeVier, and several other colleagues in the industry to place an extremely high value on continuing education among successful, active investors in the industry. “A lot of smart investors who just did not have the best systems and operations in place went under very quickly when the market crashed,” Lewis said. “On the other hand, we were able to weather the storm and, in 2009, when everyone else was just trying to stay afloat in a very harsh environment, we looked at our business models, professionalized our lending platforms and ultimately experienced significant growth during that period.” Today, Dominion has become a premier national lender that is able to provide loans in 49 states. “We are proud to be a Main Street lender for Main Street investors,” Lewis said. “We understand their goals, their pain and what they need to do to be successful because we have the same goals, the same pain and understand that our business is only successful when we understand our clients and put their needs first.” Dedication to Education As the country emerged from the recession and the Dominion Group companies continued their expansion, Lewis and BeVier realized their experience leading up to, during and in the wake of the housing and financial crises and the subsequent Great Recession had even more value than they had previously realized. “Our focus on acquisitions, construction, leasing, property management and financing really helped us work with others in the industry,” Lewis said. “That is why in 2015, when Jack [BeVier] asked me to join an industry mastermind, I decided to take it on full force.” After very little time in the mastermind world, however, Lewis realized the industry needed a new type of mastermind for the next era in real estate. “I soon realized there was a need in our industry for a mastermind that did not glorify selling information, coaching or the next get-rich-quick scheme,” he said bluntly. “I wanted to be involved in a mastermind built on the principles of creating value for all that would only involve people focused on building long-term value in the real estate business.” Lewis ultimately created Real Investor Roundtable (RIR) to meet that need. “In our industry, you have traders and you have investors, with investors buying houses that they are going to either hold or sell to homeowners for a profit (ideally) and creating an infrastructure to enable that process and with traders providing information, usually to new or would-be investors, about how they might also create that sort of platform and enact that process,” Lewis said. “The problem is that the failure rate of people learning from those traders is extremely high, because they usually are primarily trading in information rather than having a primary focus in real estate.” The solution, Lewis determined, was to create RIR, a group that would enable active, successful real estate investors to exchange ideas and strategies in a way that would help grow, sustain and protect their real estate businesses for the long haul. “Real estate investors should be interacting with others in the industry,” he said. He said that they should be concerned about the right technologies, best practices, software and apps, personnel practices, tax strategies, and so on, rather than about whether they will be sold information or products that do not fit their business. “We do not promote the ‘guru culture’ that sells information, classes and products to individuals likely to fail and without the funds to lose even though that model is prevalent in the mastermind community,” Lewis said. “The goal is to have high-level, transparent conversation and sharing that is both impactful and real. That is where the name, Real Investor Roundtable, came from.” Because he firmly believes mastermind
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