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Syndication Series #1: How To Evaluate A Syndication Deal With Dr. Sam Giordano

 

Everything starts with learning. You can excel really great in one thing if you are determined to know how it works. In real estate, it’s the same case. You have to strive for your goals. Moneeka Sawyer sits down for a conversation with Dr. Sam Giordano on evaluating syndication deals. Where should you be investing? How do you find the right process that works for you? How do you evaluate a syndication opportunity? Dr. Giordano answers these questions and more! Plus, he offers a spreadsheet that could just be the one to help you up your syndication game. So listen to this episode and enjoy the process of learning and growing.

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Syndication Series #1: How To Evaluate A Syndication Deal With Dr. Sam Giordano

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited because we are going to do something a little bit different. One of the things that I’ve been thinking is that as we’ve gone through the years of this show, every single time I do a show, we record something new. There’s a new idea, a new strategy or a new opportunity, and I love that. It’s very exciting to me. I know many of you love that too. What concerns me a little bit is that I feel like I might be confusing you.

Instead of giving you an opportunity to go deep and to learn strategies so that you can make a decision whether that strategy is right for you or not, I just keep presenting new opportunities, which is confusing for me hearing them like I think, “That’s a good idea,” and I know that if I wasn’t already well implanted into some strategies that I’m already using, it could be confusing for me.

In order to support you, ladies, to actually start taking action and grow your portfolio and become super-wealthy and blissful, I’ve decided that I’m going to start doing some different series. Each series is going to be focused on a strategy that I’ve heard a lot about from you. You’ve asked many questions and you want more information. I’ve brought on several guests onto the show already about that topic because of your interest in it.

What I’m going to do is create some of the series that will be a deep dive into that particular topic. Sometimes, it’s hard to go back and re-listen to episodes that are hard to find on iTunes and a lot of the podcasting formats, and even on my website. There might be so many that you don’t know what to listen to.

What I’m going to do is go back and compile the best episodes into a series. If there are any missing parts or holes, then I’ll record a new episode or two to fill those holes. Either it’ll be a new person, maybe I’ll do something, but my strategy is it won’t always be a series and it won’t always be replays. This is to support you as we move forward from here to help you to start taking action and feel like you’re getting what you need to create success.

I’m not just here talking about real estate. I’m here to help you build the blissful life that you dream about. That’s my goal and that’s why I’m creating this series. I’m now starting the first series and I’m excited about it. We are going to be having some reruns and that may irritate some of you. If you don’t like this series idea, please email me and let me know. If you love this series idea, please email me and let me know because I’m here to serve you. I want to make sure you’re taken care of and that I’m providing what you want. I’ve got all my great ideas, but they don’t mean anything if you don’t love them. This is the time for you to tell me what you need so that I can be of service to you.

Here is the first series that we’re doing. Welcome to the Syndication Series. We’ve had many people on this show talking about syndication. Some of you are still a little bit confused about what syndication means. What it means is someone has a big project and they need to get money for that project. What they do is they go out there and find investors to invest in their project. That’s called syndication.

If it’s actual syndication that is legal, they have to file with the SEC. There are some definite legal things that they have to do, but the basic idea is they’re taking money to help invest in a project, either to buy the property, build the property or refurb the property. That is what that very complicated-sounding word is. Syndication means people are collecting money from lots of different individuals to fund a project.

In this series, we’re going to be talking to several syndicators. I’m also going to be starting this series with an education piece about how to evaluate projects. This is so exciting because it’s new in the market. I feel extremely excited that I met this person. It’s as if the universe sent him to us, so I can’t wait to share him with you. He’s going to be talking about how to evaluate syndication projects. We’ll start the series with that, and then we’ll move in so you can get to know some of the syndicators that I want you to hear more from. Maybe they’ve already been on the show and we’re doing a replay, or I’m re-recording something. We’ll see how it goes. I want to make sure that as we go, I’m providing the best value.

Welcome to the Syndication Series. I am excited to welcome to the show, Dr. Samuel Giordano. He is a practicing gastroenterologist, author, real estate investor, and Cofounder of PassiveAdvantage.com, a website designed to help physicians and other high-income professionals with passive real estate syndication deals. He and his partner, Terry Kipp, have designed tools specifically geared towards passive and limited partner investors to help objectify and bring to light the risk points of various real estate syndication deals before choosing to invest.

The tool also has built-in functionality for tracking investment performance versus proforma, as well as a separate tool for tracking your progress on the path to financial independence. He has been investing in passive syndication deals as a limited partner since 2017 and initially developed this tool for himself. Now, he is focused on helping other physicians and investors and bringing it to the masses. His ultimate goal for himself and others is financial freedom, and to be able to live a life of your choosing on your own terms. How are you, Sam?

It’s great to see you. Thank you so much for having me.

Did I do okay with your specialty?

You did outstanding. Perfect.

My mom’s a physician. I have a level of integrity around this. I want to be able to say it right.

It must be in the genes.

I am excited to have you on the show. I want to tell you a little bit about how I met Sam. I was on another show. Do you remember whose show it was? I want to mention it because it was so good.

It may have been Taylor Loht, The Passive Wealth Principles.

I was on that show and then Sam called me because I offered an opportunity for people to talk like I do with you ladies and see what happens if you call me. He set up an appointment and we started chatting about syndications. He’s like, “I want to figure out my next step. I’m not sure what I’m doing,” and he was so humble. I got on the phone with him and he is miles ahead of me in the syndication world. This is such an interesting thing that I want you to know. Many people can be successful. I’m successful in what I do and Sam’s successful in what he does.

Many are interested in the passive growth opportunities of syndication, but sometimes, it's hard to kind of figure it out. Share on X

You’ve heard many amazing people on this show that are successful, but we’re successful at what we do and there are other people that are so much more successful at what they do. This is one of those amazing synergistic things where he was like, “I wanted to find out about what you’re doing,” and I’m like, “I want to find out what you’re doing.” Once we started talking, I realized what a value he could be for you so I asked him to be on the show. This is his very first ever. Is that true?

It’s one of my first ones, so forgive me if I make any rookie mistakes.

We love rookie mistakes. We like the true, authentic deal. This is going to be fun. I’m excited for him to talk to you about this tool because many of you are interested in the passive growth opportunities of syndication. We’ve had several people on the show talk about syndication, but sometimes it’s hard to figure it out. Where should you be investing? What projects, what people, how do you find a facilitator? Is it called a facilitator?

Yeah. There’s a liaison. There are certain liaisons that put you in touch with syndicators. There are a lot of questions.

I’ll get all that information. When Sam presented this tool, I thought, “This would make it so much easier even for me,” so I wanted to share him with you. That is why Sam is on the show.

Thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure.

Tell us a little bit about your story. How did you get into this? I know you’re a doctor. Tell me a little bit about what happened.

 

I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. It’s great to talk with you again. I’m born and bred in New Jersey. I came from humble beginnings. My father only graduated 8th grade, and my mom only graduated 10th grade. I was the first person in my family to go to college. After college, I went on to work in the pharmaceutical industry research for a few years, and then not feeling fulfilled, I decided to go to medical school. I met my wife in between medical school and residency. She’s a California girl. I somehow convinced her to stay in New Jersey, although I fight that fight every day.

I finished my fellowship as a gastroenterologist back in 2012. I was doing all the traditional things you think about from a personal finance standpoint. I was maxing out my retirement accounts, paying off my student loans, investing in my children’s 529, all the classic personal finance things that are preached to us. Eventually, as loans got paid off, I was able to invest in post-tax accounts. There came a time where I wanted to look into more alternative investments.

That was around 2017, the same time when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enacted. We lost the ability to deduct state and local income tax. In high taxes states like New Jersey and California, that can be a big hit on your taxes. Synergistically at that time, I started looking into alternative investments, and then I also started looking for ways to diversify some of my taxable income. That brought me into the real estate realm a little bit.

Why did you choose syndications?

Initially, I had dabbled in thinking about owning my own rental properties, single-family rentals, and looking into possible turnkey opportunities in most cases, out of state since New Jersey doesn’t have the best real estate investment opportunities for those types of things. I started to hear horror stories about people who bought these turnkey properties and that the property managers that were managing them out of state weren’t always truthful. It started to steer me off a little bit.

I talked to a few friends that had done some of these real estate syndication deals to where they invest in the deal passively. You give them a certain amount of money and you have fractional ownership in the deal. After you do the upfront vetting and due diligence of that deal to decide whether you want to invest, once you make the commitment financially, then you start receiving distributions either monthly or quarterly, depending on the structure of that deal. You don’t have to do anything anymore.

The great thing is you get a lot of the tax benefits, which is some of the stuff that I was looking into, where at least it doesn’t increase your taxable income. In some cases, you can use that depreciation from those deals to offset some of your other passive income or active income in somebody who’s a real estate professional.

Once I saw these deals and I saw that it was more hands-off because I still have my day job as a physician and I’m not looking to give that up. This looked like the perfect fit in terms of what I wanted to accomplish. It was like opening Pandora’s box when I learned about it, and then it just set off this year-long education process of learning more.

You talked a little bit about turnkey. We are probably going to be doing a series on turnkey also because it’s a strategy that I love. What is interesting is you’re talking about all these horror stories of the scam artists out there that create a dodgy products. The properties aren’t right and the management company that they put in isn’t right. There’s a lot out there that doesn’t work, but there is also a lot out there that does work. One of the values that I provide in this show is vetting and getting to know these different people and operators. My ladies go and invest with them and I hear feedback.

We’re able to put together a network of operators in the turnkey area that my ladies can invest in. The syndication area is not that much different. It’s interesting that you said they were opposites because in the syndication area also, there are a lot of scam artists and operators. There are people that are taking people’s money. In anything in real estate, if the market goes down, you lose money. Not to scare you off, it’s significantly more secure than other investments but it is an investment. There are a lot of operators, even in the syndication world, that are scamming people, unfortunately.

I wish that wasn’t the case but you’re right.

The big difference with the syndicators is that they have to file with the SEC. These guys are being tracked by the government. There are ways to find out about their reputation. If they start to scam people, they’ll be shut down. There’s a little bit more security as far as finding operators this way, but it still doesn’t mean that they’re perfect. If they say you have a ROR of 34%, and then they give you 9%, at least you didn’t lose money. It’s very important to find syndicators that have a good reputation, which is why I’m doing this series because I personally have invested with several people.

Interestingly, Sam has invested with some of the same people, and I’ve developed relationships with some of these syndicators. That’s why we’re doing this series. We want to educate you on how to evaluate projects so that as we go through talking about syndication, you can look at each one of those operators.

If you like what you hear, you like what kinds of projects they’re in, you can get information from them, and then when they start sending you projects or opportunities, then you can go through those opportunities with this tool that Sam’s going to be talking about. There is meaning to my madness. There’s a reason I’m doing it this way. I wanted to point out that it is true that out there in every industry, whether it’s education, real estate, turnkey, REITS, syndication, whatever it is, there are risks. The operator is going to be the key. Wouldn’t you say?

Start looking at alternative investments and ways to diversify some of your taxable income. Share on X

I do. The service that you provide to your readers is huge because you have a go-between where if somebody is not performing adequately, then you can not recommend them any longer. That’s a cost to them so they then would have to treat your readers and the people that you referred to them well. As far as if you don’t have those associations available to you, the only way that you can combat that uncertainty or to differentiate which syndicators are good and which are not is through your own education.

The first year that I started to learn about these syndications was in 2016 or 2017 because of the fact that some of these syndications require a pretty significant upfront financial commitment, I’ve made a promise to myself to spend an entire year just to educate myself. That was in the form of podcasts like your own, reading as many books as I could get my hands on, looking at different real estate forums. Anywhere I could get the information in regards to the real estate syndications, I was taking that all in.

As I was going through that year-long timeframe, I used a note sheet to take notes on some key points, or if I heard something interesting on a podcast, I’d put it on that note sheet. Eventually, that note sheet morphed into an Excel sheet where it had parameters that I was looking for in these syndicators. That first year, in addition to the education, if I heard of a syndicator or there was a recommendation of a syndicator through a friend, I would reach out to them, try to have a discussion, and see if it was a fit. What you tend to do if it’s a fit is to get on their investor list.

At that point is when you start receiving these deals through what they call an investment summary or a pitch deck. When you first see those, it’s overwhelming. Some of them are 40 or 50 pages and you don’t know what you’re looking at but over time, when you combine some of the education components into what metrics you need to look at and after looking at some of those investment summaries multiple times, you start to pretty quickly pick out what the metrics are that you’re looking for and what’s in the investment summary.

Over that year, I formed this sheet and it’s what I still use now. It’s gone through many iterations but it gives me the confidence that there’s not one clear risk point or red flag in the deal. If there is, then I’m aware of it and I can then decide if I want to invest in that deal, or I want to move on and invest in another deal. Getting back to the question, the one way to combat that uncertainty and not knowing whether someone you’re dealing with is scrupulous or truthful is to educate yourself as best as you can. The whole process of forming the sheet is to try to truncate or shorten that education process that I had to do so that people can more quickly be pointed out to certain areas that they need to look at.

That’s the education process that you went through. What is it that you actually go through when you are evaluating a syndication opportunity? We’re going to do an awesome deep dive in EXTRA. Give us a high level and then we can go much deeper. We’re going to have more time in EXTRA to do that.

When you look at a deal, the three main components would be the sponsor, the market and the deal, and in that order. Meaning that the sponsor is clearly the most important component of the evaluation, but that’s the trickiest because there are a few objective things that we look at, but it’s not as many clear quantitative objective parameters that you can look at when you’re evaluating the sponsor.

A big thing is when you do have that phone conversation with them, what’s the feel you get? Do they seem like nice people that you’d want to go have a beer with or hang out with? Do you feel like as soon as you get off the phone, you’re like, “I don’t want to talk to that person again?” You got to trust your gut. Even though that’s not quantitative, that’s one of the more important things that you can have when you’re evaluating these sponsors.

The market looks at parameters where people are generally moving like the Sun Belt area, Southeastern Florida, Atlanta, Texas, Arizona, and moving out of states like our state, New Jersey, California, New York, and moving to places where the weather is good and taxes are better. Most of the investments I look at have what they call population migration into those areas. You look at job growth and education in those areas. You look at the average salary in the particular community that the apartment is going into.

 

The third part is the deal itself. You can get granular in the deal metrics because those get quantitative, but the three main breakdowns of the deal itself would be property metrics, the debt structure, which is extremely important what kind of debt is on the deal. That’s one of the higher risk points of the deal, and then the rent growth projections. That’s a high-level overview of the main things that you look at in a deal.

As the limited partner investor, one of the best things you can do is think about what your end game is like what you’re doing this for, and where you see yourself in whatever time horizon you set out if it’s 5, 10, 15 years. I did that early on and that has made all the difference because then I can see where the goalpost is and how close I am to getting it. If you don’t know where that goalpost is, it makes it a little harder to see what you need to do to get there.

That was one of the very first things that we talked about, you and I in our first conversation. This is one of those things that I bring up for everybody. You need to know where you’re headed. There are a few things that we need to know, where am I headed, why and what my resources are. That sounds easy but it’s so much deeper than that. Once you know those things, picking a strategy, whether it’s syndication or anything else, becomes easier. Setting the goals and the path of that strategy is so much easier.

You want to pick a strategy that is aligned with who you are, all of it. I was talking to somebody about what your resources are and his wife wasn’t on board, but she’s one of his resources. If she’s not on board, that’s going to be a hard journey for you. Your relationships are a part of your resources, personal, as well as network. I go off on these tangents but I love what you were talking about.

My wife wasn’t on board initially either. It took her a little bit of time. I started to show her the numbers, she started to learn a bit more, and now she’s more involved. It takes some time to take a little transition.

Maybe we can talk in EXTRA too about how you helped her to make that transition because I’m getting a lot of those questions lately. Having a goalpost to know where you’re going is going to make a huge difference for you. The cold bolt is your first goalpost. Once you get to that goalpost, there will be another. Don’t worry about limiting or whatever it is. That goalpost will eventually change once you reach it too.

The biggest thing with these investments and when it’s something new like there’s some complicated variable to it where it’s not super intuitive to understand, I found that the hardest part is taking that first step. At least for me and I’m sure it is for others. Sometimes I feel like education conquers the fear, whether it’s a miss or in other things, when you feel like you’re fully prepared and you’ve done all you can, then it brings you closer to taking that first step.

Knowing the things to look for and having a tool as we have discussed helps take the first step. Once that happens, then it becomes easier. The next thing you know, three years later, I’ve done over ten syndication deals. I can still remember my first deal a couple of years ago. It’s amazing how quickly it can happen.

I also believe that education helps to mitigate fear, but there is such a thing as analysis paralysis. Don’t overeducate. There is a point where you have to actually take that step. Talk to us a little bit about how you took those first steps to invest in your first deal.

Believe it or not, the criteria I look for now are different from the criteria that I used on that first deal. That’s the nature of the economy as your education evolves. That first deal, I was primarily focused 80% on the sponsor because even though I had done all the research and my analysis on what to look for in deals, I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t missing anything. That’s that same thing, paralysis by analysis. I was at the point where I was like, “Do I know enough? Do I not know enough?” The way for me to mitigate that is to put even more of a weight on that sponsor.

The sponsor I invested in that first deal, my interactions with them and their organization, I’m like, “These guys are first-class. They seem like they’re doing things the right way. I have confidence in what they’re doing. I’m going to take a leap and go with them,” and I did. Thankfully, it worked out. They had what’s called a fund structure, where it involves multiple investments in one vehicle. Nowadays, I look for more of the single asset deals as opposed to the fund deals, just because some of the times with the fund deals, it’s a little harder.

There are nuances between the funds and the single asset deals, but the single asset deals allow me, now that I’m more comfortable with the vetting, to actually vet more of the deal. Whereas when it’s a fund, they may not have even bought the properties before you’ve invested, so you are 100% looking at the sponsor. At that point, I was comfortable to work with. Whereas now, since I’m more comfortable in what I’m looking at, I’m more interested in the single syndication deals, but that’s what allowed me to take that first leap. I had the most confidence in the sponsor. That’s where I was comfortable with at that point.

What is it that’s changed? You said that you don’t look at the same things. Back then, it was all about the sponsor. Tell me a little bit more about now.

The sponsor is still the most important. At the stage I’m at now, my overall goal was to try within 10 to 12 years to get to a point where I could create enough income to cover my expenses. I had an idea of how much I would have to invest in these real estate syndication deals looking at average or conservative returns to where I would get there in 10 to 12 years. In order to do that, a portion of me is focused on what’s called the velocity of money. I’m looking for deals that may not have a ten-year hold time to where it’s taken time to get my money back.

Some of these syndications require a pretty significant upfront financial commitment. Share on X

I’m looking for deals where they may have a five-year hold time. Hold time is just the amount of time that the deal is projected before they sell the property and do any business plan or value add to sell it. I’m looking for deals that may say that it’s a five-year hold but in reality, they’re looking to fix it up and sell it in three or refinance it in three. You then get all your money back during those refinances, then I can deploy it in other deals.

Back then, I was more focused on security, whereas now, I’m more focused on trying to not take extra risks. Just do deals where there’s more of a chance to get in and get out in a quicker time period, so then I can redeploy it because then you could capitalize those gains quicker and then that 10 or 12-year horizon, I could potentially achieve in 7 to 8 years if things work outright. One of the things is that the deals I look for have a shorter hold time. I’m less interested in the fund structure at this point.

Ten, twelve years from now, I may then switch back and want the security, and not want to have to continue to redeploy deals. The markets I’ve looked at have changed a little bit in that period of time. As well as the economic exchange, rent control states, and different things like that affect what you can do in terms of increasing the rents after you do renovations on some of these investments. All those things have changed, believe it or not, in the short years since I started investing. It’s a constant thing you have to keep up with a little bit.

Most of my ladies know what syndication is. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times. What we’re talking about is an operator who has a big project who is looking for money. He’s registered with the SEC, and you have an opportunity to invest in that project. That’s the real simple way of saying it. However, Sam just mentioned a bunch of little things that I don’t think we’ve mentioned on this show. I’d like to break it down just a little bit.

What happens is when you find an operator, you’ll get a project, and then you evaluate that project. You then have an opportunity to either be a preferred investor. Sometimes, they have two different levels of investors and sometimes they don’t. They’ve got preferred and standard. The preferred is usually the people that get in first and they get a higher rate of return that’s paid to them. They’re basically borrowing money from you to start this project. You might get 10% if you’re preferred and 8% if you’re not preferred. Those are just examples.

What happens is the syndicator takes all that money. They either buy the property and start the refurb, or they already have the property and it’s just being used for refurb. They’ll tell you what it’s for. They’ll do a forced value add. A forced value add is they’re fixing it up. They’re doing a remodel. Their goal is to be able to raise rents because when you get a loan on a property like a multiunit, your loan is based on the income of the property. It’s not based on your personal finances but it’s based on the income of the property.

The property is getting a certain amount of income. They refurb it with your money, and then they raise rents. They’ll clear everybody out and put in a bunch of new people. Most of the time, they’ll do it piecemeal. As people leave, they’ll put in people at higher rents. As leases come due, they’ll raise the rents. There are a couple of things that they can do. They can sell the property and do it again or now they’ve got cashflow and they want to keep it.

 

Often what they’ll do is they’ll refinance it. They’ll take some cash out, and that cash out is now paid to all of the investors. This is tax-free income because it’s out of a refinance, so you get this income. A few years down the line, they might sell the property. At that point, you get a portion of the equity in that sale. Before that, you’re getting a portion of the rent every single month.

Not every syndicator will pay on every one of those pieces. Not every syndicator has the same plan or way that they run a project or pay their people. In general, those are the different opportunities. There are a few more opportunities but that’s a base level of what you can get. You’ll hear things like ROR. People will say, “I got a rate of return of 34%.” What does that mean over five years?

What happened was, they got 10% every year. During the refinance, they got another percentage, then they got all this rent, and then at the end, they got another percentage. Some of it’s taxable and some of it’s not. That’s when you hear the ROR. They’re taking all of those ways of being paid and they’re adding that into, “Over five years, this is what it averaged out to.” That’s when you hear that term. That’s what you’re looking at. Did I miss anything, Sam?

No, I think that’s great. You’ve explains it perfectly. With these multifamilies that are more than four units, the value, instead of it being a single-family home where the values are based on comps, or if somebody wants the house down the street and sold it for X amount, so my house is worth X amount. The multifamily, when it’s four units or more based on that net operating income, if it’s a 200-unit property and you increase the rent in each of those units $100 a month, that all of a sudden kicks up the value of that property a significant amount.

The difference between what they paid and what it’s now worth is based on the operating income, they could get some of that cash back, sell it and get some. The nice thing about multifamily units is that there are clear numbers based on what you can collect and what the value is. It’s not like, “I’ll pay you $600,000 for your house.”

When they can increase those rents, then it’s clear data as to what the value of that property is, and then they can use the benefit. It can benefit the investors and the syndicators. Even though it doesn’t seem like $100 a month rent is a lot in increase, when you add in all the months and you add in all the units, it becomes a pretty significant amount of money. You explained it perfectly.

Thank you for that additional input. You’re not doing this on smaller properties. You’re doing this on larger ones. I’ve done a few syndications. I’ve done one in a 252-unit property, I did one in a 550-unit property, I did one in a storage development ground up, and I did another one in a mobile home park that was being refurbed. That’s how I’ve invested in a lot of different areas that I know nothing about, but I want to get in on the action or on the opportunities there. It’s a way for me to go to an expert. Just like we’re talking to a doctor, you wouldn’t do what he does at home. You’re going to go to him. I believe in going to the pros.

If someone’s doing this and doing it well, I want to invest with that person. A lot of these things, I want the advantages that those markets give us without having to learn about them myself. I’m so busy myself. I don’t have the bandwidth to learn all that stuff, so it’s given me an opportunity to invest in places that I can’t learn enough about, but I can learn about the operator. I don’t want to be responsible for myself for a multi-million dollar project, in something that I don’t know, so it’s better to have a team.

That’s one of the examples that you used in relation to the unit size. One of the criteria we have in the sheet is we look for properties that are at least 100 units or more. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that you can have economies of scale. You can afford to hire an onsite property manager as opposed to if you have a 40-unit or 50-unit. In addition, at the time of sale, if you want to sell to an institutional buyer or private equity, they generally don’t want to look at complexes or apartment complexes that are less than 100 units, so it just gives you more opportunities. One of the criteria we look at in the sheet in terms of the deal-specific criteria, is it 100 units or more? Is it 150 or more? They get assigned scores based on that. That’s good that you said that because that does affect the growth opportunity and the risk profile of the deal. That’s a good example.

Thank you. Talk to us about the kind of people that should be investing in syndications. Who is this for?

It depends at what level you want to get into it. There are crowdfunding websites like CrowdStreet, RealCrowd, and Yieldstreet. A lot of what they do is they aggregate earlier syndicators that have a hard time getting investors, and they then have deal minimums that are smaller. If you go to those main sites, you can see some of the deals that have smaller minimum investments. It’s not always the case but sometimes the deals, they’re newer syndicators so there may be a slightly higher risk profile to some of those deals versus what they call private placements.

In private placement deals, there are two criteria. One looks specifically at accredited investors where you have to meet certain financial criteria in terms of your net worth and your income, and then there are some that don’t require you to be an accredited investor. In some of those deals, the minimums could be as much as $10,000, $20,000. In some cases, even $50,000. The way I look at it is people who have some disposable income and they want to get into real estate but they don’t necessarily want to earn things on their own. That’s one category of people.

The second category of people are those who start with active investing or active rental. They may start with a few single-family, then they have maybe a quadplex or an eight-unit, but they want to get out of the active involvement. There are some syndications that take what’s called a 1031, where they could take that portfolio of eight units investment and then transfer it into these limited partner syndication deals. You see people that either haven’t invested a while or were a little more mature in their career, or have a little more disposable income that gets right in, and go around that active stage.

There are some who start in the active stage that eventually work up to having more units and having more disposable income and cashflow from those units, and then get in syndications that way. One of the barriers to entry in these private placements is that some of the minimum investment sometimes can be a little higher. Once you meet that criteria, syndications are good for everybody.

When you look at a deal, the three main components would be the sponsor, the market, and the deal, and in that order. Share on X

Everyone should have a key component of real estate in their portfolio. You can do it through REIT investing and equities investing. If you’ve seen the market back in March of 2020, when the market goes down, the REITs go down. There’s not a lot of diversity in that case, but in times like now where the market’s very high and inflation is a concern, you’d want to hold onto the hard assets. Real estate is a great investment. That’s why we’re seeing things become more and more competitive. It’s a long-winded way to say it. It’s right for most people, the syndication investing. It’s just a matter of where you’re coming from and what angle you want to take.

My understanding is that for most of the syndications that I’ve looked at, the minimum I’ve ever seen is $25,000 but usually, each unit is about $100,000. Did you say that you can get in for less? Talk to me a little bit more about that.

In the crowdfunding platforms like the CrowdStreet and those kinds of platforms that have similar investments to syndications, some of those minimums may be as little as $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, anywhere in that lower range. You don’t have as much control over the vetting process of the syndicator because that’s done by that particular website.

In some cases, not always, it’s newer syndicators. A lot of the more mature syndicators don’t always go through those websites if they can raise the capital on their own. Whereas if a newer indicator doesn’t have a track record and is looking for some help from aggregating some of these investors on these websites, then the cost of that is the websites may take a fee, but they also decrease the investment minimum.

Those are the examples where you would be able to get in at a lower minimum. In the private placements like some of the stuff that we’re talking about, you’re right. Most of those are in the $25,000, $10,000, $50,000. Believe it or not, if you ask syndicators, even if the minimum is $50,000, especially if it’s your first investment and you say, “I like what you have to offer. I’m comfortable with you but with my first investment, can I maybe go half of that? After that, we’ll go to the minimum.” If the minimum’s $50,000 and you offer $25,000, most syndicators, especially if it’s your first investment, won’t say no to you.

You just have to ask. Sometimes it can be a little weird to ask, but it’s a lot of money, so you want to be comfortable with that, and they realize that too. If it works out, then going forward, you can then stick to the minimum. There is a little bit of a negotiation within reason that you can negotiate that minimum down a little bit to make yourself more comfortable.

We are running out of time but I want you to talk a little bit about how to use syndications to achieve financial freedom.

The way I look at it is you often see two different mindsets. Some people are either entirely based on investing in the stock market and going that route, especially if you’re not aware of syndication investing. Some people that have had their eyes opened to real estate are completely taking all their money out of their 401(k) and outside the stock market. You find people that are strongly on either side. I find myself right in the middle. I still do my traditional pretax retirement accounts. I am an employee as a physician so I max out those.

If you take syndication out of it and you think about the classic personal finance education, people use a 4% rule in that. The first thing you do is calculate your annual expenses, for example, $100,000 a year. If you want to have an idea of how much of a nest egg you need to save in order to retire, you would then times that by 25, which gives you a 4% withdrawal rate of your money. Let’s say your annual expenses is $100,000, then you would have to save $2.5 million in order to cover that $100,000. That may take a decent amount of time. That’s based on the 4% withdrawal rate.

When you add in syndication investing, where a lot of these investments are somewhere in the 8% to 10% cash on cash, if you’re doubling or in some cases even tripling the return, then that may be a twenty-year time horizon. If you just invested in the stock market, that can be truncated down to somewhere in the 8 to 10-year range, if assuming typical investment returns using syndications.

I wanted to invest somewhere in the $50,000 to $100,000 a year into syndications. Over a ten-year period of time, taking all the returns from those deals and then reinvesting it back into new deals, that would give me somewhere in that $1.2 million to $1.5 million range. If you then take 10% annually from using that cashflow as a rough estimate, even 8%, if my expenses were $120,000 a year, that’s what I wanted to cover. That’s how I came at that number

The beauty is that that would cover my entire expenses without taking into consideration any of my stock market investing. I realized that seems like a lot of money and not everyone can do that, but further along in my career, I wanted to invest. That’s what I allowed myself to allocate to that and what I wanted to achieve in the period of time that I had. That’s the way that I looked at it. I wanted to invest a set amount, assuming a specific return and to cover my expenses within a ten-year period.

That was a good breakdown. How he set his goals, how he decided to achieve them, and set his timeframe on when he wanted to achieve that. He set his goalpost and then set a path to get there. It’s a good example of that. Some of what Sam is doing is helping other people to achieve goals in a very similar way, so he’s created this spreadsheet which is I’m having him on the show. It’s more than a spreadsheet, this tool that helps people to evaluate syndications. Could you tell us a little bit about the spreadsheet specifically?

It started as what I created for myself back in that 2017 timeframe. As I was going through creating the spreadsheet, I started to speak with other real estate investors and other people in the space that are doing similar limited partner investing like myself. They’re like, “Can I get a copy of that? I would pay you for it.” At the time, I’m using it for myself and I don’t feel comfortable giving it to somebody else. I shared it with many friends in the beginning to take that first step and I’m like, “This can break that barrier to entry and break that fear hurdle that people have to get them to take that first step.”

We created a spreadsheet. There are three components to it. One looks at the deal itself to where you are analyzing the deal, going through more specifics in relation to the sponsor, the market and the deal. The other components are a deal tracker, which looks at when you have made the investments. It allows you to track the investments based on the distributions that you’re getting from it versus what they said they were going to pay you, and gives you a side-by-side comparison for all the investments you have. The third component is tracking your path to financial independence. For some of the numbers we just talked about, you could plug in your own numbers.

If the annual amount you can do is not $100,000 but $50,000, then it shows you how long it would take you to reach your desired expenses that people can plug in there. We try to make it like a one-stop-shop for people who are interested in passive investing. For most of the tools, you would need to both vet the deal and monitor your progress, both on the path to financial independence and then the deal performance so that people would take that step.

For some people, that can change your life, having the liberating ability to cover a lot of your expenses with your investments. You may choose to continue to work every day just like you do. I love my job. I’m not looking to quit, but there’s a liberating feeling when you have the ability to cover some of your expenses and not have to worry about what’s going on in your job life.

Someone asked me, “Why are you looking at retiring in two years? Are you unhappy, or is David unhappy?” We’re not, but our priorities are changing, our parents are more elderly, there are things that we want to be able to do, and it’s nice to be able to say, “I don’t have to worry about money so much that I have to be so committed to any particular job.” If Dave and I wanted to take six months around the world and his company said, “You can’t do that.” He can say, “That’s okay.” He comes back and finds another position but he’s not freaked out about, “How are we going to pay the bills?” You’re living in choice rather than in need. It’s a different way to live life.

It changes your whole mentality. I’m not quite at the point yet, but even just getting the passive income that I get in now, then I’m like, “I only need to bring in X amount for my job if I did want to change things.” It goes to, “I want to work,” from where it was, “I have to work.” You feel more control. In this COVID environment where people are getting more stress at jobs and physician burnout, many more people are looking into these things because of that reason. They want flexibility. If there are environmental changes, if there are job changes that they still can feel like they can cover the bills and it’s not as if you’re worried about that. That’s part of the reason we did this. It’s to try to get more people to that place because it’s a different place to be versus the typical.

 

The other thing is that it’s not that you have to get there to feel that liberation and the comfort. When I started investing in real estate, I was making very little. I was putting away $100 a month type of thing, but the thing is that once you start taking that action, you suddenly feel like, “I’m going to be able to take care of myself.” There’s something that happens when you realize that you’re on a path to a better life and that you’re going to be able to take care of yourself. You’ve figured this piece out. You can figure stuff out. You don’t have to be at the goal to feel that feeling of liberation. It’s getting on that path that opens you up.

There’s something about seeing the checks come in the account that I use for syndications and I’m not doing anything. Even as a physician, if I stop choosing to go to work, I’m not going to get paid. My income as a physician or as anyone who does labor that requires themselves requires me to go to work to do that. I don’t make money while I sleep as a physician, whereas with this kind of investment, it’s unlimited in terms of it doesn’t have any limit to my time.

I only have the same amount of hours in a week that you have and everyone else has, whereas, with this kind of investment, the limit is basically for your financial means to do it. From there, it makes money without you having to do anything, which is a different place to be. It’s the classic passive income as opposed to the active income of your day job.

Here’s the cool news. He’s offering this to the public for the very first time. You get this price and he’s going to quote, but just understand that the price will go up, so if you’re reading this 1 or 5 years from now, the price is going to be a little bit different. They want to know how much it is for this tool.

What we have offered is I wrote a free eBook that goes over in more detail. It’s in a book format and an 80-page eBook on How to Passively Invest and Vet a Real Estate Deals. That’s free and there’s no price. You can just download that at PassiveAdvantage.com. There, you can also find the tool that we’re talking about that goes through all of the different metrics to look at, to track the deals you have invested in, as well as your path to financial independence tracker.

You can purchase the tool. The price of the tool is $199 but we’re giving your audience a 10% coupon discount. At purchase, you put in the words BLISS10, and that will give you 10% off. It’s the least we can do. Hopefully, you guys find the value of it and it’ll help with your education or help to see what’s important when looking at these deals, as well as see where you are on the path to financial independence.

Ladies, I do have a special web URL for you to go get the product or the tool and then put in the coupon code. That URL is BlissfulInvestor.com/syndicationws. When you go in there and you select the product, then you can put in the BLISS10. That’s how you get your 10% discount. This pricing is already incredible, but it’s nice to get an extra discount, so go check that out. The other thing that I’m super excited about is Sam has agreed to do a webinar for us where he actually goes through the worksheet. For those of you that want it, you know how to get it.

To me, it seems like a little bit of a no–brainer. If you’re interested in syndication, this is a no-brainer price so go do it. I don’t want you to stall, but if you want to know more or you’re more interested now in syndication and you want to know what the numbers look like, Sam and I are going to be doing a webinar together. He’s going to do a breakdown of a deal.

That is going to be on Thursday, November 18th, 2021, at 5:00 PM Pacific time and 8:00 PM, Eastern time. If you want to sign up for that, go to BlissfulInvestor.com/samwebinar. Definitely come. You get to ask questions. He’s going to go through a presentation and he’ll answer as many questions as we got time for. Please put that on your calendars and you’ll get some reminders too. Do you have anything else that you wanted to share with us before we sign off?

I think we’ve covered a lot. I truly appreciate you taking the time. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. It always is. I feel like we have a lot of synergy in terms of what we look for and what we’re looking for in terms of what we use real estate for. I want to bring it to more people to get to where we are, to make their first investment, and I’m hoping that this tool allows people to do that. I’m happy to answer any additional questions that they may have and happy to answer more questions at the webinars as well.

Thank you so much. This has been such a good show. Thank you for all you’ve offered in this portion of the show.

It’s my pleasure. Anytime.

Ladies, stay tuned. We’ve got more in EXTRA. We’re going to be talking about going through a whole deal. We’re going to do a run-through on a deal. I’m going to talk to Sam a little bit about that transition that happened for his wife and how they made that happen because I know this is a big topic for you, ladies. I am going to also ask him about the 1031 DST. He threw that in just a tiny little bit, and it’s a topic I’m interested in. I’m going to ask him about that in EXTRA.

If you are interested in those topics, stay tuned. If you are interested but are not subscribed yet, just go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get the first seven days for free, so you could get this one for free and as much as you can listen to in the first seven days, then you can stay subscribed if you’d like. For those of you that are leaving Sam and me, thank you so much for joining us. Have a great day and always remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

 

Important Links

• PassiveAdvantage.com
• tool – Deal Analyzer
• BlissfulInvestor.com/syndicationws
• BlissfulInvestor.com/samwebinar
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Dr. Sam Giordano

Dr. Giordano has been a practicing physician at an academic medical center for ten plus years and has had consecutive designations as a “Top Doctor” in his geographic region. He has also published multiple manuscripts in peer reviewed journals. He has an avid interest in personal finance and financial education, and has formed a personal finance teaching curriculum for residents and fellows at his hospital. He is also an assistant professor at the associated medical school for his hospital. He began exploring real estate investing in 2017 and has now invested in multiple passive syndication deals during that time as a limited partner. He realized there was an unmet need and formed his own tool to better and more efficiently vet passive real estate syndication deals. He has personally experienced the benefit of passive real estate investments as a busy professional, but also realized how few of his colleagues were aware they exist. He is now committed to changing that, and feels a passion and calling to bring an exposure to passive real estate investments to more professionals to ultimately diversify from the stock market and forge their own path to financial freedom.

 

He is a proud husband and father of three children, and during his spare time enjoys hiking, exercising and traveling to explore our beautiful world.

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Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs And Unlock Your True Potential With Joe Evangelisti – Real Estate For Women

 

You will always have adversities blocking your path. The key is pivoting to unlock your true potential. Moneeka Sawyer presents Joe Evangelisti, a high-performance coach with over 5,000 hours of coaching experience under his belt and the host of the Legacy Blueprint Podcast. Joe shares with Moneeka that you need to follow your heart and gut when making decisions. However difficult the situation, you have to take action in some direction and know that it’s safe to fail. You need to be fearless. Do you know what keeps you back from being fearless 99% of the time? Limiting beliefs. Tune in to discover how to overcome limiting beliefs, pivot, and unlock your potential!

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs And Unlock Your True Potential With Joe Evangelisti – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome to the show Joe Evangelisti. He is the host of The Legacy Blueprint podcast and a high-performance coach with over 5,000 hours of coaching experience under his belt. His mission is to assist real estate investors, entrepreneurs, and business professionals in exercising their true power in finding their hidden potential to achieve more success, wealth and freedom than they have ever thought possible. Joe creates life-changing transformations by providing clients with the tools and strategies needed to create unstoppable momentum and breakthrough obstacles. He has helped hundreds of business owners to build better teams and cross the 7, 8 and even 9-figure mark. Joe, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

I want to jump in and start with, how did you even get into coaching? Could you share that with us?

Redesign your business to serve your lifestyle. Share on X

Most people ask how you get into business. Coaching is all different angles. Coaching started from many years of messing around in business and making a lot of mistakes, failures, trials and tribulations. I always tell people it’s hard to coach theory. You have to coach practice. You have to coach being in the trenches. I built my coaching practice the same way I’ve built my businesses, which is through trial and error, through doing it, through failing and pivoting. The coaching business was a byproduct of me going through many iterations of my business world, building different types of teams. I have a real estate background, a construction background. I built a pretty large fix and flip company.

Through the course of the process of building up these different teams, that brokerage, flip, rehab, and construction team, mentoring and coaching those teams along the way, you reach a certain level when people start to say, “How did you do it? Tell me how. Break it down.” We started doing events and we started doing meetups and masterminds. I went into this group coaching structure and then eventually morphed into one-on-one coaching. I get more passionate about working one-on-one directly with people because you get better results that way.

People hide in the crowd. Mastermind groups are awesome. I still attend them. I love being in certain groups and atmospheres, but it’s easy to go to a group like that and not get a lot out of it if you don’t put a lot into it. You can’t hide one-on-one. When you’re working with me, one-on-one, there’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to hide. I enjoy that much more. That’s how we transitioned into it.

 

Do you spend more time now in your business in real estate or in coaching? What would you say?

I would say it’s about 50/50 now. The way that I’ve designed my teams and my real estate development teams is to get me out of it. One of the big a-ha moments that I learned probably 5, 6, 7 years into business is when I started to have those almost stress-induced meltdown moments that a lot of people have where I’m chasing and constantly working.

I remember being at that point in time where I had two young little girls at that time, new marriage, a new house and all that type of thing. Chasing after the next deal, the next flip, the next commission check, the next salesperson and working 80, 90 hours a week to stay busy, productive and pretend that I was getting somewhere.

I felt I couldn’t chase fast enough. I couldn’t run fast enough. There weren’t enough hours in the day to catch up and I know a lot of people feel that way. I had this moment where I said to myself, “I don’t know how long I can do this.” In my young 30s, at this point and I’m like, “I’m going to die of a heart attack. This is crazy. I’m not taking care of my body. I’m not taking care of myself. I’m eating like crap. I’m missing dinner.

I’m even calling in late and tell my wife I can’t come home. I’m not putting my daughters to bed. Something’s not right. This isn’t the way I designed it.” I made a big switch at that point in time and said, “I got to redesign my business to serve my lifestyle.” This is not why we get into business, to begin with. Isn’t that the whole concept is to create a business that serves our life.

Most of us give up our lives and the business owns us. It’s exactly what you’re talking about. I’m excited to hear about how you moved through that. I personally have moved through that several times, myself. Every single time you build a business, you get passionate about it. You have given everything at some point. You’re like, “I need to transfer out of that.” I’ve been through that transition myself several times.

Talk to us a little bit. We’re hopefully on the other side of the pandemic. A lot of us have been talking about the whole idea of a pivot. Changing our lives to be maybe economically resilient. Taking a brick and mortar and turning it into an online business. There’s a lot of pivoting that’s happening. Could you talk to us about your perspective on pivoting?

I heard this great saying at a podcast. At the beginning of COVID, sometimes these natural adversities that happen to us, like a COVID, a pandemic, or a thing like that, create these adversities in our life and our business that sometimes force us into uncomfortable situations, make us do certain things. The reality of it is maybe we should have been doing those things all along. Look at this vast dichotomy of different industries and businesses. During COVID, there was a subset of businesses, restaurants and hotels that there’s no pivot. You can’t stop people or create a business when your business is having people come in to eat.

You then see these other businesses that took off. That had 10 X the revenue and blew up and were hiring people. I believe it blew up because of the adversity. They made changes that they probably ought to have made several years ago. They downsized their offices. They went virtual. They created an opportunity for people. For me, one of my sales teams went virtual overnight.

We had thirteen people coming into the office to make phone calls. We said, “March 13th, 2020, it’s Sunday night. Monday morning, everyone on the Zoom.” Within a couple of months, that sales team, which is constantly recruiting in sales teams, went from all local salespeople to people working for me in Panama, California, Canada and New Mexico.

All of a sudden, I have this diverse pool of amazingly talented human beings from all over North America working for me, not just in my local area. I don’t know that I would’ve made that pivot had COVID not created that diversity for me. Sometimes pivots happen naturally. Sometimes pivots are things that we’re forced into but also, in business, we have to know in our gut when it’s time to make a pivot and not hold on and ride that ship into the ground too.

Talk to me a little bit more about that. Knowing when it’s appropriate and how to create that pivot?

At this level, it’s about deciding good business from bad business. Understanding how to take your mind out of it, going closer down to your heart and your guy. Making decisions down here instead of up here because here’s the thing, your mind a lot of times is going to create false images, emotions and things that maybe don’t exist. You tend to convince yourself or rationalize things that might not be the right move.

You might say to yourself, “I know this business isn’t doing well. It’s not making the revenue it should,” then we rationalize and tell ourselves, “There are good people that work there. It’s been around for a long time. What else are you going to do when you’ve been in this position for a long time?” If you break that rationalized word down into two parts, what we’re doing there is we’re telling ourselves rational lies about why the gut decision that you’ve already made was right all along. Now you’re convincing yourself, “Why not go with your gut?”

You have to take action in some direction and know that it's safe to fail. Share on X

We’ve all done this as business owners. How many times have you done this? You said to yourself, “I love that business opportunity, but I’m not ready for it. It’s too risky. That investment’s a little bit scary. I don’t know if I’m going to find the people to go along with me.” You know your guts telling you, “Do it.” You then rationalize, “I don’t know if that’s the right move for me,” if more business owners were learned to trust their instincts.

You don’t generally regret even the bad moves you made when you made them with your gut. If you look back on it, you’ll justify a gut mistake. When you make a mistake and you look back on you’re like, “I made a mistake, but I learned.” You regret the decisions that you made with your head that were bad mistakes. You look back on it and you’re like, “I didn’t analyze that enough. I didn’t count those figures. I wasn’t sure about that move. I should’ve thought more about that.” You’d regret the head mistakes. You don’t regret the gut mistakes.

In real estate, we see this all the time. You talked about one area that feels a little bit too risky. Even after we make the decision to take that risk, whether you’re flipping, you’re in construction. You’re looking for a renter or whatever it is that you’re doing, there’s a whole series of gut decisions that we have to make. Of course, you need to use your mind. We can’t use our gut.

We need to use our minds. We need to know the numbers. Businesses don’t work unless the numbers work. That’s the truth. All along the way, learning to trust your gut, it’s not in that one piece. It’s in the entire business. Who are you hiring? Who are you bringing on as part of your team? Who are you renting your places to? All of those pieces require getting in touch with who you are. That’s hard.

As business people, we’re trained, especially in this society, to be heady. It’s hard to get in touch with our guts. Do you have techniques or strategies? You have a lot of experience with it. For you, it’s now a natural thing. For me, that’s true too. I’ve been in business for many years. When your coaching clients come to you and say, “You haven’t had I get in touch with that.” What do you say?

 

It comes from practice, but it also comes from taking action. You have to take action in some direction and know that it’s safe to fail. It’s safe to fall. It’s going to happen. One of the biggest misnomers and it started becoming more into light because people are starting to talk about it. Several years ago, I felt everybody on Facebook was wealthy, perfect, every picture you took was amazing, they never did anything wrong and now, all of a sudden, the gurus are talking about how they fail all the time. The gurus are talking about how difficult things are and that’s the truth.

The truth in business is I get punched in the face every single day. The more successful I get, the harder I get hit. The more successful I get, the bigger the problems are that I have to solve. In fact, it’s the flip side of that. The more successful that you get, the more that you want to chase bigger obstacles to overcome. The more that you want to find bigger problems to tackle, the bigger your dreams get.

Jim Rohn has this amazing video and he was talking about the bigger, my dreams and my purpose are, the bigger, the things are that I want to chase. They become magnets. When I am magnetized towards my dreams and I’m being pulled through the trenches, mud, bad days, challenges, I have a bigger purpose dragging me through that. For people who are starting out, you have to decide, and this doesn’t happen far off enough. Why are you doing it? Are you doing it because you saw it on HGTV? Are you doing it because you want to build wealth? Are you doing it because you want to take care of your kids?

Fill in the blanks. Every one of us has a reason or has a why, but I don’t like it to be that, “What’s your why?” I like it to be, “What’s the purpose behind it?” People say I want to make $100,000 a month. Great. Why? What are you going to do with it? Nobody knows why. They always say I want to make $100,000 a month, but you don’t know why. You start to dial it in. You’re like, “I would give $10,000 a month in my church.” Let’s write that down. I would do this, I would do that and then you find out that $50,000 a month is a ton of money for certain people. It’s all relative.

The reason I say that is we’re always chasing someone else’s dreams. If you’re chasing someone else’s dreams, there’s no magnet in that because all I’m doing is looking across the table and saying, “I want to be like you.” There’s no why to that. There’s no purpose. There are no results. There’s no passion behind me wanting to be you. There’s passion in me chasing my dreams and being magnetized toward a bigger goal.

There were many little nuggets that I would love. That was unbelievable. Thank you for that. I agree with it and I’m not going to ruin it with my own commentary on that. What I did want to say for my ladies, to add my perspective on one piece of this, is that we talk on this show a lot about bliss. The way that I define it is this deep sense of joy and contentment. The confidence he can handle anything that comes your way. It’s about emotional mastery and emotional resilience. What I want to point out about this is that bliss does not mean that light is easy.

Bliss does not mean that we don’t have a full range of emotions. It means we live in a particular emotional place and that emotional predisposition allows us to have filters that help us to see the world in a certain way. I’m calling it bliss because, for me, it is a true joy to live like that. Does that mean that I’m not constantly chasing a bigger challenge?

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal. Share on X

No. My life is not fulfilled unless there are challenges in it. Those challenges are what make me feel alive. Ladies, when you hear bliss, don’t hear easy. Don’t hear, “I’m always happy all the time.” Don’t hear there are no challenges because none of that is true. What is true is that it allows you to have a predisposition to succeed. That was the only thing I wanted to add to that.

That was perfect.

Talk to me about this idea of having the right aces in their places. I know we’re going to talk a deep dive on that in EXTRA, but could you give us a high-level view on that?

Aces in their places mean one thing. I wrote a book called Multiplicity and it talks about the five freedoms. One of those freedoms, we always talk about financial freedom. That’s all you ever here. I will say this you can’t have financial freedom without the other four. One of those four is what we call relationship freedom. It is the ability to work with, to be with, to engage with, to have friends who are people who you want to be in your tribe.

When I talk about aces in their places, I’m talking about creating a culture and an opportunity around you inside of your business and your life. What that looks like is if it’s a side hustle, if you’re starting as an investor and you want to go build a team. You still need to have aces in their places. You need to have a great realtor. You have a great insurance person. You need to have great subcontractors, potentially. You need to have great electricians and plumbers and material suppliers.

Creating aces in their places for me, it’s finding out who are the people who are going to help me create the opportunity to succeed. That I can also help them along the path, it’s never a one for one, or it’s an I take and I don’t give. It’s how do I create alignment with your unique ability, something that you are passionate about that I know that you’re going to be successful there and I know that I can help you gain. How do I take that superpower? We all have a superpower.

I say this all the time, you might be the most amazing ice skater, house builder or cake baker, but if I find out that you’re the most amazing person and I could somehow put you in a seat or a place where we get paid together to do that and I can create an opportunity for you, that makes me a good visionary. That makes me a good leader because now we both benefit.

I’ve created an opportunity for you to be passionate about what you do and go exercise that passion because, let’s face it, not everybody is an entrepreneur. You might not be an entrepreneur. You might’ve been stuck in a 9:00 to 5:00, which you were afraid to leave. Now I’ve created an opportunity for you to make way more money and opportunity doing what you love to do in an environment that you love to do it.

That’s creating aces in their places. It’s trying to find the right passion, the right unique ability and create an opportunity where these people can work in harmony and team up to be great at what they do. Ultimately replace me and replace each other. Even if I’m the CEO, I tell everybody on my team, “I want you to replace me. I don’t want to be the CEO. I want to be on the board somewhere.” That’s the idea. The idea is that you work your way out, right or work me out of a job. This idea of creating aces in their places is understanding your people’s true passion and abilities. Making sure that they’re performing at their best based on what they’re great at.

 

My next question is, how do you do that? We’re going to talk about that in EXTRA. We’ll do a deep dive on that because it’s what Joe’s magic is. It’s what he does best. I want to get a deep dive into that. You talk a lot about culture. For me, in my real estate business, I outsource everything. My realtor, my finance people, my insurance, all of that. That’s an all-in outsourced thing in my business. Is building a culture important? How do you do that?

Think about it. Why do people go to work for a guy like Elon Musk? The guy’s certified a bit crazy. He says, “We’re going to Mars.” What happens? The top engineers on the planet quit their jobs to go work for him for little to no money. They will take a pay cut to move to some desert in Texas, to live out of a sea container, to work for him because of his vision and the culture that he’s created. That’s how important culture is.

People want to be part of a greater good, a greater contribution. They want to be part of something bigger. As the visionary, you have two jobs. Your job is to create the vision. What is the story? Where are we going? Be crystal clear about that, that people could believe you. You can’t change your mind every fifteen minutes or people are going to be like, “I don’t know who’s driving the bus. I’m terrified.” Create that story and then back it up with opportunity.

I’ve created a story. The story might be bigger and scarier. Trust me. I’m sure there are times where Elon lays his head down at night and says to themselves, “How the heck are we going to get to Mars? I don’t even know how we’re going to do this. I don’t know if all the top engineers in my company know how we’re going to do this.” I’m sure he second-guesses himself but as a visionary, you have to constantly be driven towards that mission and creating opportunity.

Now you have to fill the aces in their places. I got to figure out who’s going to get me to that vision? How does my team going to build around this vision? Where am I missing links? I call them my TBDs, my to-be-determined seats. How am I going to fill this bus with the right people to get me to that vision because my vision is way greater than the people who are surrounding me or it should be? If you want bigger dreams, you need bigger visions.

As a visionary, it’s not visionary if it’s comfortable. If it’s not keeping you up at night, if you don’t have self-doubt, if you don’t have the, “I have no idea how this is going to happen,” then it’s not visionary. It’s been done. Just because people are visionary, confident and successful does not mean that they don’t have self-doubt, that they don’t frequently stay up at night going, “What am I thinking?” Yet, they can’t let go. You don’t have to be a visionary to be successful. That’s the other thing that I would do want to tell you, ladies, because I know a lot of you want to buy a couple of houses. You want to put your kids through school.

You don’t want to have this huge vision that is awesome too. It takes all of us to make the world go round. Understanding all the way from the bottom, all the way to the top, we all have self-doubt that should not be something that stands in your way. It’s a mandatory requirement in order to expand your life. You’re not going to expand if you sit in the same place where there’s no self-doubt.

The definition of success, people have all these different measuring tools of comparing themselves to others. Earl Nightingale essentially said that success is creating a worthy goal and working towards it. That’s it. Whatever your worthy goal is. If your worthy goal is to create five rental properties and have some passive income for your family, that’s your goal.

There’s nobody who’s going to sit back and say to you, “That’s not good enough.” The reality of it is if you have 1 or 2 rental properties, you’re in the top 5% of Americans and that’s amazing. Nobody should be standing there saying to you, “The guy down the street has fifteen.” Who cares? The reality of it is you’re doing what success is for you.

I want to emphasize that, Joe. Do what success is for you. Not for me, Joe, your dad, your colleagues, or your kids. It’s important when you’re setting your goals and getting connected with your culture. What is it that you’re trying to put out there? What is it that you’re trying to achieve? Your big why. All of those have to do with you, not anybody else. Can you talk to me about the best investment you made and why?

I’ve invested millions of dollars in real estate. I always still say this to this day, that the best investment that I’ve ever made is in myself. I have for several years now had masterminds and one-on-one coaching. I’ve hired coaches for everything, mentors, personal trainers, well over six figures a year for several years, sometimes probably in the double six-figures. Everybody’s different and it’s not a measuring contest. One of the biggest challenges that people have is they want to get better, but they’re chasing away from investing in themselves. When you invest in yourself, you have skin in the game.

I’ll never forget one of my first coaches. This is probably going back many years now that I think about it. I was a real estate agent and my first coach was $500 a month or something like that, which is not a ton of money, but it’s not pennies. At that time, she was twice as much as my car payment. I was leasing an Acura back then. I was thinking to myself, “I got to close an extra deal or two a month to justify having a coach.” She was incredible. She helped me to be accountable. I was petrified to get on the phone with her every week. Thinking to myself, “If I don’t show up prepared and ready to go with my numbers,” Carol’s going to hang up on me.

“She’s not going to let me go. She is not light on me.” If I would answer that phone and be lazy, she would hang up. That was it. There was no callback. We had 45 minutes every Tuesday. She made me a better salesperson because she made me accountable and committed to my numbers. I remember immediately getting results. By month two, I had doubled my sales. By month six, I was the top salesperson in my entire office and I was 24 years old. I remember thinking back, “This coaching thing’s wild.” You got to take a gamble on yourself. You got to put some money out, but it’s wild having somebody who’s what I call a co-creator.

A great coach shouldn’t be telling you what to do or how to do it. They should be co-creating with you. They should be working you through it because the reality of it is you probably have had most of the world experience you need to get the results. A lot of times, simplicity is the path to mastery. A lot of times, it’s right in front of us and we’re looking for all these shiny objects. We’re all over the place trying to figure it out.

The reality of it is, for the most part, with a notepad, a pen and a cell phone, we can be successful. We’re chasing all these other shiny objects and inevitably, we end up in our way. Sometimes dialing it down, hiring the right person, having the right conversation and focusing on what I call high-gain and high-income activities it’s all you need to do to get what you want out of life and business.

A great coach shouldn't be telling you what to do or how to do it. They should be co-creating with you. Share on X

I love that because much of the time, I talk about the best way to set up your business and the streamline it is to start with a spreadsheet. What are the activities that you’re doing? My advice has to do with having a Word doc that you can access from anywhere to take certain notes or do a spreadsheet. People are all about the high-tech solutions, all the cool stuff, the CRMs and where do you get your leads and all of this stuff, the call centers.

Sometimes do with simple, intuitive and start there. Don’t get into all the shiny objects as far as strategies and opportunities, but there are also shiny objects on how we are running our business. I love it when another super successful person says, “A piece of paper and a pen.” That’s where we start. It can be as simple as that.

I have the saying that experts don’t know how to add. They know how to subtract. Always trying to add more, add more, “What else can I put on my plate?” The reality of it is not on your calendar, plate, personal life or your home life. I know we’re talking to a lot of ladies who are reading. I coach a lot of dads. I’m coaching more on personal life than I am on business.

The reality of it is people come to me because they want their businesses to scale. What do we do? We turn around, I go, “Tell me about your home life? How are you taking care of your body, mind, kids and your wife? What does it look like at home?” We start working on that stuff and immediately start making more money.

It’s like, “When I become a better dad, I start making more money.” I never thought about that. When I started dating my wife again, all of a sudden, my life became happier. No kidding. This is the reality of things. We look past the seemingly simple stuff, which is the basics. You ask somebody, “Why do you do what you do?” “I do it for my kids. I do it for my family.”

“Why do you miss every soccer game? Why do you not have family dinners? Why haven’t you taken your wife on a date in nine months? Why haven’t you bought her flowers in many years?” They go, “I never thought about that.” You’re not doing anything for your family. It’s a ruse. You’re making it up. What I want to do is dial back to let’s become a better person at home, in my life, and now, all of a sudden, the money is easy.

We have time and money. That’s our two resources. That’s it. I’m sure you’ve been in real estate and you’ve lost money. I’m positive about it. I’ve lost millions of dollars in the process of making millions of dollars. I’ve lost time. I’ve never gotten time back. You can’t get five minutes back. You can’t get 30 seconds back. You can get your money back.

You can lose a lot of money now and get it all back tomorrow. How many successful people do you know have filed for bankruptcy? I know quite a few. I don’t know anybody that’s ever gotten a minute back. Focusing on home life is generally one of the things that increase financial life. We got off topic there for a minute. I don’t know how we ended up going down that rabbit hole.

That’s how I’ve coached. I was an executive coach for many years and that’s exactly what it was, is get your life back in alignment with who you are. My last question before we move towards the three rapid-fire questions is how can my readers become fearless? Do you have tips for that?

Tony Robbins has this great thing. He says there’s the four S’s and I don’t want to jump into all of them, but there’s state story strategy and standards. The story is our identity. It’s who we are. With that, going down this crazy rabbit hole, you get to decide who you are. You could decide tomorrow you’re going to be a more aggressive salesperson. You could decide tomorrow you’re going to become a happier person and treat everyone nicer. You get to decide. That’s the craziest part about who we are as human beings.

We’re the only species who can wake up tomorrow and be someone different. Fearless is an identity. What’s keeping you from being fearless 99% of the time is some limiting belief. It’s something that somebody taught you, some experience that you had, or some past belief that you’ve learned along the way that got you to this point that’s holding you back. We call these paradigm shifts.

We’re all experiencing these paradigm shifts. As we go through life, I call it the model of our world, our MOW. We all have a model of the world that we’re looking through, almost like a lens and we’re changing prescription glasses constantly. We’re upgrading our site through a different lens. I say, “If you’re looking in the mirror and you’re looking at the person you are now, most likely the person from six months ago couldn’t handle the challenges. If you’re growing as a person, as an entrepreneur or as a leader, six months ago, you couldn’t handle the challenges you’re handling now or maybe several years ago.”

Put things into perspective. What are we being fearless about? What are we trying to overcome? You’ve probably overcome challenges in the last several months that the person of you several years ago wouldn’t even consider stepping into that obstacle or wouldn’t even consider being in that atmosphere. I look at what we’re doing now from a development perspective. To keep it personal a little bit, I’m developing self-storage deals. I used to flip over 100 houses a year. One development deal is worth ten times more than all the houses I’ve flipped in one year and it’s scary. You have to put yourself into a different paradigm. You have to put on a different set of glasses.

What I would say is reflection is one of those ways to determine what my limiting belief is. What is it that I’m afraid to step into? How do I create that big dream that’s going to magnetize me to pull myself through this little obstacle? The reality of it is when you get to the other side, when you get closer and closer to that big dream, you’re going to look back and you’re going to say to yourself, “What was I afraid of?”

I remember when that thing I was doing was scary and now I look back on and go, “I remember when it was scared to flip the house.” I didn’t see the last 400 that we did. I never stepped foot on them. I’m not saying that to brag again because that’s not the point. The point is that you get past a certain point of scary and all of a sudden, it becomes mundane.

In order to become fearless, I think perspective has a big part of it. Remember, all problems are problems of perspective. Some problems for people who are reading now are not problems for you. Some problems for you aren’t problems for me. Maybe my problems aren’t problems for you. It’s all a matter of perspective the way we look at them. I think unlocking those limiting beliefs, trying to figure out what’s holding you back, pushing you to the next level or helping you get to that next level is all-important steps there.

 

I released my first TEDx Talk and it’s been a two-year journey for me from what I decided to do or was asked to do it and finally realized. Once I landed it, I had to write the talk because you don’t write the talk to you, land it because there’s a theme and all this stuff. I had to write the talk and then I had to give the talk. The video gets released and you see if anybody liked it. It’s like heroin.

The thing is that when I made that decision a long time ago to do it, I couldn’t see me on the red dot. I couldn’t see what was going to happen. I didn’t even know what the big message was or that I was good enough. Part of being fearless is saying, “I don’t know what this is going to look like, but I identify myself as being fearless and therefore, I will keep stepping forward.”

When you do that, on the other side, you’re forever changed. It may not be something as dramatic as I did my TED Talk because there was a deadline and something happened that I’m forever changed. I loved what you talked about with how much you’ve accomplished in the last years and understand that you are forever changed if you continue to grow. It could be an event or it could be a time period, but recognize that and recognize that being fearless is simply an identity. It allows you to take the next step.

I’ll add to that. I believe that the TEDx piece that you’re going through had to be a decision from the heart and the gut. That’s what got you there. You know it’s the right thing and that’s why you decided from there and move forward. I think it’s going to be incredible for you.

Before we get into the three rapid-fire questions and EXTRA, could you tell us how we can get in touch with you, Joe?

People can visit me on social media, Facebook or LinkedIn. It’s all Joe Evangelisti or @JoeEvangelisti. They could also go to LegacyBuilder.coach if they’re interested in coaching or one-on-one.

You have a gift that you give there. Could you tell us about that?

If they go to LegacyBuilder.coach, my team will do a fifteen-minute one-on-one session to tell people to unlock time. I find one of the biggest challenges is what we call controlling the clock. We’ll do a fifteen-minute one-on-one session to help you unlock time and create a little bit more timeframe for you.

That’s the only resource we never get back. Thank you so much for that. Joe, are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

Let’s do it.

Tell us one super tip in getting started investing in real estate.

You got to get started. Find a way to get started one way or the other. The joint venture, go take down a property, find it with private money. If you’re going to put 20% down, find a property and take a step towards it. There are many ways and methodologies in getting started nowadays. You can buy a duplex and live in half. You can buy a quad and live in one of the units. I’ve seen many in the last couple of years, friends of mine, who’ve gotten started doing it that way.

If the risk is your concern, do it that way. Live in half of it. Be a landlord and live in half of it. Take action in what we call intelligent and inspired action. Don’t overanalyze. I was interviewing somebody and she called and said to me, “I have a real estate degree. I have an MBA and I went through FortuneBuilders and paid them $75,000.” I go, “That’s amazing. How much real estate do you own?” She says, “I never bought a property.”

You’ve made an investment of $200,000 into your education and you’ve never bought a rental property. I barely graduated high school, folks. I went through a bunch of colleges only because the Navy paid me to go through a bunch of colleges and I still never got my degree anywhere. I built a portfolio worth millions of dollars. I can do it. I’m not smart. I feel like too many people over-analyze and get afraid of the risk instead of taking it. You’re going to screw things up. Go out there and test the waters. That’s the only way it’s going to work.

Tell us one strategy for being successful as a real estate investor.

One strategy is to get involved, get invested. The second piece is to build a great team. You have to be thorough about who’s on your team, who you do business with, or who your joint venture partners are. Protect yourself first. A lot of people I see get involved are worried about doing a deal that they’re not paying attention to how much equity they give out or bringing in their best friend as their partner. Next thing you know, there are four people in on a single-family house. The reality of it is if you’re smart, you’re the one doing the research, you know what you’re doing, you’re capable, you can raise the money or you have the money, go out there and take it, do it, buy that duplex.

You don’t need four partners to do it with. Go out there and take a step forward. Get a mentor, get a coach. A lot of times, you’re better off paying somebody a couple of thousand dollars to mentor you rather than take on a partner and give them 50% of the deal. You’re going to wake up a couple of years from now, and you’re going to put a couple extra $100 thousand in your pocket as a result. That’s a better investment in my mind to help somebody get involved in a deal.

Ladies, recognize that when he’s talking about a team, he did talk about a mentor as part of the team. That’s a different way of looking at that. Your mentor or your coaches are part of the team. They’re part of the business ecosystem. Talk to us about one daily practice that you would say contributes to your personal success.

The daily practice that I can’t live without is my morning routine. I usually get up at 4:00. I go to the gym. I work out from 5:00 to 6:00. I come home. I meditate, I journal, I read and I do all this to get prepared for my girls who are going to start school because I want all my routine done before I wake them up in the morning. My time with my daughters is in the morning. I get them dressed in the morning. I have breakfast with them and I take them to school. For me, it’s early in the morning. The reason I give you that asterisk is I want people to work in what I call their zone of genius.

Find a way to get started one way or the other. Share on X

My zone of genius is getting stuff done early in the morning. I’m most productive when I build that protection mechanism around my head and my mind. I work on my body and my mind first thing in the morning. Some people can’t do that. Some people have practiced that and they’re like, “I’m miserable. I can’t get up at 4:00 AM.” Don’t do it. If you’re amazing from 10:00 AM to 12:00 midnight, then protect that time. Be good at that time. Have a routine and rituals that work for your zone of genius. Figure out when your time is to be amazing. When you can be quiet, alone and alone with your thoughts, that’s going to help you accelerate the growth and get you closer to your dreams.

This has been amazing, Joe. This conversation, I want to read it all over again. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. It was great.

We’ve got more ladies. We’re going to be talking about getting the aces in their places. We’re going to talk about how to do that, which we’ve talked a lot on the show about building teams. I love Joe’s perspective on this. I’m excited for that deep dive. For those of you that are already subscribed to EXTRA, we’ve got more. If you’re not subscribed to EXTRA, this might be the time you want to.

Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. You get the first seven days for free. Check it out and you can stay subscribed or not. For those of you that are leaving, Joe and I, thank you so much for joining us. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires.

 

Important Links

• The Legacy Blueprint – Apple Podcasts
• Multiplicity
• TEDx Talk – Who is the Boss of You?
• Facebook – Joe Evangelisti
• LinkedIn – Joe Evangelisti
• @JoeEvangelisti – Instagram
• LegacyBuilder.coach
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com

 

About Joe Evangelisti

Joe Evangelisti is a high-performance coach with over 5,000 hours of coaching experience under his belt. His mission is to assist real estate investors, entrepreneurs, and business professionals in exercising their true power and finding their hidden potential to achieve more success, wealth, and freedom than they ever thought possible. Joe creates life-changing transformation by providing clients with the tools and strategies needed to create unstoppable momentum and break through obstacles. He’s helped hundreds of business owners to build better teams and cross the 7, 8, and 9 figure mark.

In addition to his private coaching practice, Joe serves as the CEO of three 7 and 8 figure companies, and his real estate portfolio includes single-family, multi-family, self-storage, and cold storage. Prior to building his business and real estate empire, Joe served in the military as a Builder in the US Navy Seabees. He holds Letters of Commendation from the US Navy and The White House, a Letter of Appreciation from President Clinton, and numerous service medals. Joe lives with his wife Ashley and their 2 girls in beautiful Haddonfield, New Jersey.

 

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Kaaren Hall: Why You Should Seriously Consider Investing On Self-Directed IRAs – Real Estate For Women

 

How convenient is it to invest in an asset of your own choosing, write a personal check to that investment, with the bank simply there just to facilitate? That’s exactly how self-directed IRAs work, and it allows you to tap into a massive pool of funds if done correctly. Moneeka Sawyer sits down with Kaaren Hall, CEO at uDirect IRA Services. Together, they dissect the many benefits of self-directed IRAs, as well as the intricacies that come with it. Moneeka and Kaaren explain how to invest 401(k) tax-deferred money properly, why you are still getting taxed by the IRA, what happens when you exceed the expenditures buffer, and a lot more.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Kaaren Hall: Why You Should Seriously Consider Investing On Self-Directed IRAs – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited, ladies, to welcome back to the show Kaaren Hall. For you, ladies, who don’t remember her, she’s amazing. Here’s her bio to remind you. Despite being in the midst of a recession and mortgage market collapse, Kaaren Hall founded and made a resounding success of uDirect IRA Services. She discovered a strategic way to put her twenty-plus years in mortgage banking, real estate and property management to use. The solution was an untapped market for both her skills and for investors, self-directed IRAs. Through uDirect IRA, she has guided tens of thousands of Americans through the process of diversifying their investments using self-directed IRAs. Kaaren, welcome back.

It’s great to see you. It’s been a while.

You look gorgeous, by the way. Kaaren, last time we talked in-depth about the self-directed IRAs. I’d like to give a higher-level version of that conversation to remind people what your company does. There are a lot of different self-directed IRAs. What is it that yours specializes in?

With self-directed IRAs, it’s the traditional, Roth, SEP, SIMPLE, inherited IRA. We also offer the solo 401(k) and that’s for self-employed people who have no full-time employees in any of the companies that they own. We also offer the self-directed HSA or Health Savings Account and that’s a different piece altogether. These are the accounts that we offer. What we do all day besides helping people is we’re customer service. We help people a lot. We talk to people and walk them through the process. We’ll say, “Tell me what you’re looking to invest in. What are you going to do? Who are the people that are investing with you?” We’re screening for prohibited transactions. Those are one of the many things that we do.

Define self-directed again. I know that you’ve done this before but do it again. People have this impression of what self-directed means.

To understand, an IRA is an IRA. It’s a bucket that holds assets. Whether it’s over at Charles Schwab or at some financial management company or it’s self-directed, the rules are the same. The only difference is the asset class that’s held inside that account. The account itself, the rules are all the same. With a self-directed IRA, it holds alternative assets sometimes called non-correlated assets. There are different names for them but it’s like real estate, metals, notes and things like that.

Ladies, I know that many of you have 401(k)s and your 401(k) is if you’re a W-2 employee or maybe you’ve even got your personal ones, your SEP IRA, all of that stuff for your business. Maybe you have what’s called a self-directed 401(k). Take a look at what that means because there are different kinds of self-directed. A lot of times, what a self-directed 401(k) or IRA means by normal terms is you are in an account where you can choose any of the 200 funds run by this particular company that is the custodian of your 401(k).

 

For instance, if you’ve got Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab or one of these guys, they do say that they’re self-directed but they’re self-directed with limits. They say, “You can self-direct into funds. You can do mutual funds, bond funds or REITs.” There are some things that you can do but you’re limited based on the products that they offer. That’s how they’re defining self-directed.

Kaaren is defining this differently. She says, “We’re a custodian.” You can take that and again, it is within a limit. Usually, you can’t do collectibles or paintings. There are still limits about what you can’t do but there’s a much larger range of what you can do. You can do real estate, precious metals, a few different things. Kaaren is going to give us more clarity on some of those asset classes but I wanted to define for you the difference between self-directed according to what a lot of financial institutions are calling and self-directed like how Kaaren is defining it. Did I get that right, Kaaren?

You did. You understand it perfectly. They’re assets that, as our name implies, you direct. We’re not choosing the asset for you. It’s like if you had a checking account and you wanted to invest and so you wrote a personal check from your bank and you sent that check to the investment. The bank is there to facilitate your transaction. uDirect IRA Services is a third-party administrator. We use the services of a trust company custodian we’ve been a partner with or working in alliance with for several years now. It zips on through the same way. It’s administrative and not advisory.

Let’s get into asset classes because this is one of those things that we haven’t discussed on this show. I’d like to get a deeper understanding myself and also for my ladies about what those asset classes are and what investing in them looks like.

The number one asset class is real estate. When I started uDirect IRA Services in 2009, it was in the middle of a recession. You probably still are holding onto some of these assets or maybe you sold them all but you can buy houses on tape. Remember those days? In 2009, self-directed IRAs exploded in the real estate investor market because real estate investors didn’t have access to capital. Banks weren’t lending. When it comes to real estate as an asset class, self-directed IRAs came more to the forefront at that time. Again, you could buy foreclosures. Everyone was a flipper, it seems like. Now, when I’m out speaking, I ask people who’s a flipper, not so many people. They’re different. You always have to be like Sniff and Scurry in Who Moved My Cheese. When you’re in real estate, you have to be able to move with your cheese.

That’s how it was then. Real estate could be brick and mortar. It can even be private placements, which are like syndications. Perhaps you know someone who’s trying to raise capital to build a very large apartment complex. They don’t have all the capital themselves. They have some. They get financing and then they also use self-directed IRAs as part of that whole package to close on that deal. A self-directed IRA can be an equity partner in a deal like that into a private placement, also called a syndication, sometimes crowdfunding. It’s the same name for the same thing, private stock.

All real estate expenses have to be paid for by the IRA. The only difference is how and where you are investing it. Share on X

That’s another way where it’s still correlated to real estate but it’s a different vehicle. Usually, when people invest, it’s debt or equity. When you’re investing, either you’re loaning money or you’re becoming an equity member or shareholder of that situation. Real estate, you can get into other real estate assets like raw land.

Now you have the caveats about raw land. You have to make sure that you own the whole parcel because if you own part of a parcel and there’s one tax ID but two people own that parcel, usually the tax collectors won’t take that tax check unless you have the whole tax amount in the same envelope. Little nuances about every single asset class. Real estate can be straight-up brick and mortar. It could be private placements, raw land, multifamily, anything that is real estate related. That goes onto the next topic, which is still real estate-related and those are notes. Do you know?

You can buy a performing and non-performing debt. People do it all the time. Your IRA can also be the bank and lend money to people in situations. Maybe they know someone who needs a bridge loan because they’re moving and they haven’t sold their house yet. Your IRA can lend money to people. It can be secured and unsecured debt that an IRA can lend. It can be the bank and lend money and then it can also be an investor buying secured and unsecured notes and get them reperforming or enjoy that continued performance.

There’s the precious metals field. A lot of people love precious metals. It’s that tangible, touchable asset. When it’s in a self-directed IRA though, you’re not going to hold onto it. It’s going to be in custody for you. We custody the assets at Delaware Depository and they will hold the actual metal for us and for your account so that you have the metal, the coins. For example, you say, “I want all those coins. I want to hold them.” You would take a taxable distribution and we would send the coins to you if that’s what you wanted to do. Otherwise, it can stay there in your account being held and hopefully growing in value because that’s the game. We want to win that game. Some of the asset classes there though.

Someone said something interesting to me and I’ve never had an opportunity to have this conversation. I know I’m going to put you on the spot a little bit here but I also know you’re up to it. I was talking to another investor and he said, “I would never invest my 401(k) tax-deferred money into another tax-deferred asset like real estate because then you lose the benefit on one side or the other.” What do you have to say to that?

I say your friend is right. That’s true. Here’s why you do want to use a self-directed IRA. If you have a whole pile of cash or a great credit score, you’re going to do this personally with brick and mortar real estate, you get incredible write-offs. You get great tax deals. If you’ve got the money in your IRA and the money personally, “What to do? I have found this great piece of property I want to take down. Which one should I use?”

 

You talk to your tax person and you will probably come to the conclusion that, “Maybe doing it personally is going to give me more tax benefit.” That’s entirely possible but like with any investment you do, you get it down on paper, you’ll look at your deal from beginning to end, acquisition costs, holding costs, liquidation costs. What are you going to net at the end? You always want to write it down on paper.

There could be a different question and this is when the self-directed IRA comes in. Maybe you don’t have a lot of cash on hand. Maybe the bulk of your assets is your 401(k) from where you used to work, for example. You roll that tax-deferred money into a self-directed IRA. That IRA acquires a property and now all the proceeds from that asset like rent or proceeds from a sale are tax-deferred. They can be tax-free in a Roth as well. You can maximize that benefit. You’re not going to get write-offs.

All the expenses of real estate have to be paid for by the IRA. All the expenses of any IRA asset have to be paid for. Similarly, all proceeds have to go back into the IRA. That’s one way to look at it. An IRA can be the way to go with real estate for that reason. You’ve got the money. Where are you going to put it, in the stock market, in Wall Street or Main Street? That’s when it makes sense.

When you have the assets then that’s where you can invest them.

That’s the long way. You summed it up perfectly.

The other question is, normally with real estate, when we do it privately we leverage. We might put 20% down and then we get a loan on the rest of it. Talk to me about that equivalent in doing it in your retirement account.

What you bring up is our number one most misunderstood thing about a self-directed IRA, debt. I’m glad you brought this up because I love to provide some clarity. There’s a lot of confusion. Here’s the thing. I come from the residential mortgage world. I spent a lot of time there. When I found out that a bank or an institution will make a loan to an IRA account and not an individual, I was completely surprised. That’s how it works. When your IRA is acquiring a piece of real estate and you need leverage to do it because you want to have 100%, you can’t go take a loan from a bank.

Your IRA cannot go get a Fannie and Freddie, conventional or conforming FHA loan. The reason is that there’s no recourse against the IRA but your IRA can borrow money. It still can borrow money like a commercial loan called a non-recourse loan. If anybody who’s reading wants a copy of my list of non-recourse lenders, it’s not a list that we necessarily recommend but it’s hard to find everybody so we put them on one piece of paper. I’ll share it. Email me, [email protected] if you want that.

If you are just starting in real estate investing, do due diligence and talk to everybody. Get as much free advice as you can. Share on X

Your IRA takes on this debt. What are the parameters or what does it look like? You can ask the lenders and they’ll tell you their underwriting guidelines. Usually, they want IRA to have a little more skin in the game when they’re doing this. For example, your IRA finds a house that’s $100,000. Your IRA has $70,000 and then you borrow another $30,000 so you have enough. One of the things you want to think about here because you’re acquiring real estate is do you have a pad for expenses?

If you have property, keep a 10% pad for things like property taxes, the water heater broke or something. You’re always going to have expenses with real estate so have a pad for expenses. For example, you take $70,000 of your IRA money, $30,000 of this non-recourse debt and you buy the house. Your 70% is IRA money, 30% is debt.

Here comes your rent check, say it’s $1,000. $700 IRA earned because of saving and $300 your IRA earned because of leverage because you borrowed money. That $300 that your IRA received because of leverage is taxable to the IRA. The IRA can sometimes pay tax. This is called UDFI, Unrelated Debt-Financed Income tax. You can read about it at IRS.gov, Publication 598. Like you and I, we do 1040 when we do our personal taxes and IRA files a 990-T. Your tax person helps figure out if you could take deductions or whatever and then your IRA would pay any tax if any is due. That is how that works.

That’s interesting. When you look at that, 70% was paid because you put 70% in and that’s going to go on for however long you hold the property. The debt piece, if you make a profit or if you bring in money for that debt piece, you get taxed on it. That’s confusing to me. Why are you getting taxed in your IRA? The whole point is to be able to make profits on this and have it grown. That’s why you have it in an IRA.

Sometimes you have so many expenses that there is no tax. You still have to take a look at it and see if there is but it’s called unrelated debt-financed income tax. The debt is not related to savings. Think about when you’ve got an IRA, you’ve got a cap on how much you can put in there. Borrowing a whole bunch of money is like a contribution. The tax-protected money is what you save with your contribution. The debt is something unrelated.

The way I heard it explained originally, it goes back to, for example, the Catholic church. For example, the Catholic church, which is a tax-exempt entity and this is some case going back a while ago. Let’s say they have a bakery, it’s on their land and they’re tax-exempt. They’re selling baked goods. Somebody opens a bakery across the street. They have to pay all kinds of taxes.

The church, being a tax-exempt entity, isn’t going to pay as much. In that sense, it’s not fair competition. That’s the origination of these taxes. It’s not just IRAs but it’s tax-exempt entities. I believe that non-profit organizations file 990-T as well. It’s a way to create parity between the different kinds of entities that are doing the same thing. That’s how it originated but it is still due. Those were a couple of reasons why it exists.

 

That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of that before. Thank you so much for sharing that. Ladies, if you want to get that list of the non-recourse lenders, it’s at [email protected]. That’s how to get that. How big is that list? I heard there were only four lenders that do that.

There are more than four, probably half a dozen. There may be four big ones. I can think of a big one in particular that’s national. They’re not all national. We have a list of several different lenders and you can see what region you’re in, what region they’re in and what makes the most sense for you.

One of the things you talked about is that you want to make sure that you have a buffer for maintenance, for taxes or insurance. There are bills that come up each year. You want to make sure that you have some buffer in your account. Let’s say you’re investing that $70,000. You should have a $100,000. That’s what I would do because I’m super conservative. I know others will do other things but I keep a nice buffer. What happens if the expenses exceed that buffer and you have to now pay expenses outside of the IRA?

There are resolutions. There are ways to solve that problem. The first plan of attack may be to write a check and make a contribution to your IRA or your 401(k), which you can do if you have earned income. Again, it depends upon your age, your account type and your income, how much you can contribute. Probably the first line is to write a check out of your personal account, contribute it to your IRA and have your IRA pay the bill, maybe it’s tax, repairs or something.

The second level may be to say that you probably have a portfolio with assets in different places. A lot of people like to be diversified. Maybe sell some of the stocks, bonds and mutual funds that you have at another institution. Liquidate them, move them over to the self-directed IRA and use that capital to make up the shortfall.

Your IRA could also take on debt in a non-recourse fashion. We talked before about qualified and disqualified people. Disqualified people, your lineal ascendants and descendants, you and your spouse, your parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren are disallowed to the IRA, plus a 50/50 business partner and any fiduciary to the plan.

Those people could not lend to your IRA but other people could like your next-door neighbor or your cousin. They could go ahead and lend to your IRA. That’s how you would make up a shortfall. If all else fails, you’d have to sell the asset. Sometimes we come into assets especially real estate with expenses, something has a big issue and you have to liquidate. That is another option as well.

Real estate is a moving target. Stay on top of it at all times if you want to find success. Share on X

The next piece is let’s say I’m 59 1/2. I’ve got this piece of property that’s not liquid. What do we do because, according to law, we’ve got to start taking money out?

Good news. 59 1/2 is a good age because when you turn 59 1/2 and thereafter, you can take money out of your pre-tax IRAs, the kind where you’ve got a tax reduction, like the traditional, the SEP, the SIMPLE IRA, the 401(k) without a penalty. That’s the 59 1/2 buffer right there. Now you can take your money out penalty-free, still being taxed.

What you’re talking about and correct me if I’m wrong, is when you reach 70 1/2. It used to be 70 1/2, now it’s 72. After 2021, it could be 75. We might see that when Congress meets at the end of the year and they discuss all these changes they have proposed to the retirement system, most of which are awesome. It’s called the RMD, Required Minimum Distribution. We have articles about this on the uDirect website. If you like to read about them, you can go to our search bar, type RMD and there are articles. When you reach, it’s 72 1/2 then you begin to take your RMD. You take your age and then you go on the IRS website, they have a table. You multiply your savings times this factor and that’s the minimum you have to borrow.

A couple of things, I was researching RMDs. If you don’t take your RMD now, there is a 50% penalty for not taking it. In other words, 50% of what your RMD should have been will be the penalty. That’s how it is. With the new laws that are looking to come out, they may rescind that penalty altogether. They may reduce that penalty to 25%. That’s what might happen. What is true now is that if there’s some good reason why you didn’t take your RMD, if you’re hospitalized or something that was beyond you, some act of God or something then you can tell the IRS.

They didn’t used to have this leniency. There is a method to communicate with them like, “I didn’t take my RMD. Here’s a really good reason why,” and then you get a get out of jail free card. Those are good things to know about these required minimum distributions because the IRS gives you a tax break upfront for making your contributions but later on you have to pay the piper, usually when you’re older. That’s how it works.

That makes a lot of sense when you have liquid assets but you’ve got this big property in there. It’s not liquid. How do you take those distributions?

In theory, you could get an evaluation every year and disburse a fraction, a percentage of the assets to yourself but that isn’t practical. The reason is because your IRA has to pay for that annual evaluation, which is probably about $600 if it’s an appraisal. It ends up not being cost-effective to do that yearly. Typically, when people are reaching that RMD age, they will either liquidate the property, just sell it or you can disburse the entire house to yourself as an asset and then you’ll get 1099 on the value of that asset.

You provide evaluation, you complete a non-cash withdrawal, which we will help you with and then the title and the ownership of that property can be reverted to you as a person and then your 1099 for the value of the transfer. That’s two ways, liquidate or take it as an asset. Either way it involves tax so it’s a good idea to have that planned ahead of time.

 

The other plan is to have so many other IRA accounts or money in different IRAs, where you’ve got a lot of cash or liquidity that you have enough liquid assets in your retirement qualified funds and in your retirement accounts to take those RMDs and retain the property. That’s another way to go. Three different views.

When you sell it or liquidate it within the IRA, you don’t have to go through the whole 1031?

No, they are different universes. The qualified funds are this little universe over here, 1031 is over here. They’re different bubbles so you don’t 1031.

You don’t pay your capital gains on that. You don’t have the recapture of depreciation. You don’t have all of those pieces. Is that true?

It is true. You can also ask your tax advisor since, technically, we don’t give tax advice but it is true. If you have recapture of depreciation, that’s not fun.

That’s a reason to invest in a tax-deferred asset in a 401(k) because then you can get out of it without having to be all of those capital gains that you would normally, “1031. How do we get away from paying all of these taxes?”

By the way, I’ll be doing a brunch with the Norris Group and with a 1031 exchange commentator. We’ll talk about the times and the technicalities of some terms on the IRA and 1031 can merge. If you want, go to our website and sign up for our newsletter and then you’ll get an email. We send our weekly emails talking about the events that we participate in. I will send you an email telling you about that event coming up on October 30, 2021.

That is a perfect segue. Why don’t you tell how they can find out more information?

We’re all over social media. If you want to network with other self-directed IRA people, do it out there. It’s great. All the classics, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and all these different social media outlets, you can find us there. At our website, UDirectIRA.com. We have years of blog articles that can provide some clarity to your self-directed IRA investing questions. We’ve got links to the IRS and where they go deep on different issues so you can learn more that way. Also, you can find our contact information. Pick up the phone and call us. Talk to us and tell us what your questions are and we’ll work with you.

I love that. The email address is [email protected]. Ladies, you can get that list of non-disclosure lenders from there also. Thank you, Kaaren. Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

I don’t know. Let’s go.

 

Give us a super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

Do due diligence and talk to everybody. Ask them and get advice. If you’re getting started, you can do it for free. People will give you free advice. Real estate investors are the nicest people I’ve ever met for the most part. They want to help you. Listen to people. Before you invest, do all your homework.

I love that. What is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

Stay on top of it because it’s a moving target. There are so many different moving pieces when it comes to real estate, like your value, your tenants. I don’t advise about real estate investing but what I see when it’s in a self-directed IRA, what you want to do is stay on top of that by looking at your self-directed IRA accounts. Make sure that you see that monthly check going in every month, that rent if you’ve got a rental property or if IRA has lent money, that note payment is coming back in every month. Go into your account. We give you a PDF, you can download the PDF of your monthly statement every month. Save it in your files because we don’t keep them forever. Save all that and be good about your bookkeeping. That would be great.

What is one daily practice that you do that you would say contributes to your personal success?

Two things. One thing I don’t do every day but most days is I exercise. I have to go to the gym. That’s energy and vitality. You got to get the blood moving and the body likes it when blood circulates. I like that, it keeps me awake. That’s great. Also, meditation and prayer are good to put me in a thoughtful space before I start my day. To start my day with intention is helpful.

This has been so informative. I’ve never gotten to ask those particular questions about self-directed IRAs. Thank you.

I’m glad.

Ladies, thank you for joining Kaaren and I for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams so get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

 

Important Links

• uDirect IRA Services
• [email protected]
• Who Moved My Cheese
• IRS.gov
• Facebook – uDirect IRA Services
• Instagram – uDirect IRA Services
• LinkedIn – uDirect IRA Services

 

About Kaaren Hall

uDirect IRA Services has helped thousands of Americans invest their IRA outside of the stock market into real estate, land, private notes & more to improve their financial future. Educating individual investors and professionals is the cornerstone of uDirect IRA. We have events right here in Southern California geared toward self-directed investing. We also offer webinars so no matter where you are you can “Learn to Earn”. uDirect IRA is a third-party administrator providing complete and accurate information on self-directed IRAs so you can make the most of your retirement funds. We do not promote any investments. Rather, we provide the knowledge, tools and information you need to make self-direction easy. At uDirect, we help you get started quickly and easily, and stay with you every step of the way.

Despite being in the midst of a recession and mortgage market collapse, Kaaren Hall founded and made a resounding success of uDirect IRA Services. The single mom discovered a strategic way to put her 20+ years in mortgage banking, real estate and property management to use. The solution was an untapped market for both her skills and for investors – self-directed IRAs.

Because self-directed IRAs can have a dramatic impact on retirees’ quality of life, Hall brings her full passion to educating Americans about the little-known investment vehicle. She has educated tens of thousands of investors and professionals on how to build wealth by taking control of self-directed IRAs.

She says, “Financial literacy is not taught in schools, but our future depends on understanding it. Only about 4% of U.S. investors have a self-directed IRA. Why? Because most investors and many advisors simply aren’t aware of it.”

Prior to her years at Bank of America, Indymac Bank and Hall’s own mortgage brokerage experience, she was an on-air news and traffic reporter and radio host. Now Hall broadcasts how to invest IRAs in real estate, land, startups and more. She takes pleasure in demystifying the subject via webinars, YouTube videos, live events, social media and her free weekly newsletter.

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How To Love Life Despite All The Hardships With Lisa Winston

 

Did you know that life starts after 60? Lisa Winston believes that to truly live life, you have to love it. Life will throw as many curveballs and challenges towards you, that you just have to learn from it. Each challenge will only make you stronger, wiser, and more resilient. And, once you reach 60, you’ll be the strongest person you know. Moneeka Sawyer brings Lisa in to tell us more. Lisa is a bestselling author and coach. If there’s one person who has gone through difficult times and succeeded, it’s Lisa Winston. Listen to her story and how she is teaching people how to love life, even beyond 60 years old.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

How To Love Life Despite All The Hardships With Lisa Winston

I am so delighted to welcome back to the show Lisa Winston. She is a gifted vocalist, number one international bestselling author of Your Turning Point, TV host, intuitive mindset strategist and inspirational speaker. A life of extreme challenges, including losing her home to wildfires, breast cancer and Neuro-Lyme Disease made her hungry for a deeper connection to source and determined to find her true calling. She shares the message that life is always happening for you and challenges are sent to refine you, not define you.

Lisa has produced many influential global summits and is also featured on online summits, national radio, podcasts and training. She co-hosts and produces The Mindset Reset TV Show, a weekly series that reaches millions worldwide. She is grateful to be a mom to her beautiful daughter, Sarah, and to live, teach and speak across the globe with her soulmate, life partner and love, Dr. Joe Vitale.

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Lisa, welcome to the show. How are you?

It has been so long since I saw you. I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

When you did your episode on my show, people loved it. I keep thinking I want to bring you back on, but both of us have had stuff. Here we are. I’m so excited. Thank you. As we were emailing back and forth, you’re like, “I want to talk about this thing that’s juicing me.” I was like, “What was it?” What you send me is, “Life begins at 60,” and I’m so in. Let’s talk about that. You’ve been through a lot. Let’s start with your story about how you came to this.

The big story was that I had a lot of extreme life challenges. At 54, I decided I got an intuitive hit to leave a toxic relationship that was after the wildfire, the breast cancer and all that. I was burnt out. I was miserable. I hated my life. I started reading more Eckhart Tolle and stuff like that, doing a lot of qigong and getting into my spirituality. I picked up my daughter and all my stuff left in search of my life’s mission, my journey. I moved forward. For the next eight years, I spent building my coaching business. There were lots of ups and downs there.

With each challenge that you face, you either let it define you or refine you. Share on X

It’s a crazy ride, but I was all in because when you get that open door, you get that hit to go do something. You follow it even when you don’t know where it’s going and it makes no sense. Let’s bring everybody up to speed. I ended up with the love of my life, Dr. Joe Vitale, and that was all through synchrony, intuitive hits and guidance for both of us. I took care of my dying mother before that. I then came to Texas to relocate to be with him. We started traveling.

Back in 2019, I fell ill to Neuro Lyme Disease. That has been a two-year battle. I almost died. I couldn’t see and drive for six months. Joe was my total supporter and he was amazing. It’s one of the hardest challenges of my life. I have to tell you that many things have come from that. I’ve become such a different person.

With each challenge, you either let it refine you or define you. That’s my big deal. Life challenges happen for us, not to us. It’s hard to see that sometimes but I do see it because I finally got to that one thing that I’ve been looking for. I’ve been doing things I enjoy, but that one thing that everybody talks about that nobody can get to. At the age of 62, I’m on fire.

I do love the story about your mom. I know you don’t want to go back but for me, it feels relevant and let me tell you why. You and I are in this sandwich generation where we’ve got our elderly parents and our children going to college. There are a lot of readers to this show that is in that generation and are making tough decisions about what life is going to look like. Is that okay that I ask that to share about this journey with your mom?

Every time somebody brings it up, I get emotional. It’s been years and I miss her a lot still, but I was so blessed. The funny thing is that I was building my coaching business. I was having trouble several years ago. I got to this point where I wasn’t sure I was on the right track. I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. I was living in an arrangement where it was not pleasant. I was ready to get a job as an Uber driver because I didn’t know what to do. I put in the paperwork. I had been back from my 40th-year reunion. I saw my mom then. It was November 2017.

I also had this weird intuitive hit. I got this knowing that I was supposed to pack up and go be with my mom. I was like, “That’s weird. I was with my mom. What’s the deal? I got to leave my roommate. What’s she going to say?” At dinner the next night, I told her and she said, “No, I got that hit for you too.” That was a confirmation that something was going on. I packed up my stuff in San Diego, put it all in storage, drove from California to Pennsylvania, halfway across the country. I got a call from my sister, “Lisa, mom has been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She’s dying.” The universe knew. I didn’t know. This is the importance of following your inner guidance when you get it, even when it doesn’t make any sense.

 

From February 1st, 2017 through August 2017, I took care of my mother until she passed away from breast cancer. I’m caring for her every day, bathing her, cooking for her, taking her to appointments, even the final moments of care and then closing the state. After that is when I relocated to Texas but what a bittersweet time. I didn’t want her to go, but we had so many beautiful moments together. I’d be in bed with her. We’d be singing together, crying together. I was going to lose my mom. It’s funny because no matter how angry you are at your parents, when they’re dying, you realize you’ve been stupid. You’re not going to see them again, at least not here in the physical plane. You need to be grateful for them, treat them with love and respect. It was a pretty amazing journey and I’m grateful that I got the opportunity to take it.

I was at a mastermind. We talked about all of those things that affect our businesses. Everybody in this mastermind is a multimillionaire. I’m a tiny little baby in this group and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to hang out with these people. It was interesting when you get to be wealthy. There are some things that you realize. First of all, your wealth means nothing unless you do good with it. Having fun in buying stuff does not fill us up. Doing good with our money does, but our life affects our business. A lot of the things that come up are these personal things.

One of the guys had to put his dad into a nursing facility. He says, “It feels like there’s nothing I can do that’s right.” He’s so filled with love. He’s got to run a business. He’s got kids in college. He still has to live life. He didn’t get the opportunity to do what you got to do, which is such a gift, but we don’t all get that. What I want the ladies to know is that I get this for you. We know this is hard. It feels like no matter what we do, it’s not right.

The thing that I told him that’s a simple piece of advice because I didn’t have a lot else to offer was, “Focus on what you’re doing, not with what’s going on right like, ‘My dad’s getting good care. My business is going well.’ Don’t focus on that. Focus on, ‘I love my dad enough that I’ve put him in this place where he can get the care that he needs. I visit him every day,’ if that’s what he’s doing. ‘We have a rotation. People bring him food.’ Focus on all the things that you personally are doing right in this situation.” Do you agree with me on that?

Yes. Day by day, you have to be grateful for every moment, every little thing that happens. That’s true for any part of our life, especially with our parents when they’re passing. I remember when my mother passed away and my dad had passed away in 2011. My sister and I were standing in front of the house getting ready to sell it, holding each other in the street. We felt like we were orphans.

We need to embrace each moment, focus on what is going right and good, and focus on love because that is everything. When you feel that love for your parent, sibling or whoever’s going through whatever it is, nothing matters. You’re talking about money, but money fails. It doesn’t matter if you’re not healthy or if you’re in the middle of something devastating like that. The last thing you’re thinking about is money.

I am in 100% agreement with it. Plus, it also helps you to rise above things. I remember at that moment when I was with my mother. I was in this miracle space of pure love. I was there for her and I was feeling the universe. Every day, I’d be in tears. It was bittersweet because we had some family issues, which always happen when you get together with family, especially about death. When you stay immersed in the love, it’s like heaven on earth. There were days I didn’t want to move from this feeling that I had because I had never felt that intense love before. It opens up opportunities to connect with the divine and amp up your love energy. Things come from that by the way down the road. I’m being honest to you. Love is the highest vibration.

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Thank you for telling the story. I know you didn’t want to talk about it, but I appreciate it.

It’s hard, but I love it because when I think about it, it was a beautiful experience. It’s doggone hard when you lose your parents. There’s no getting over it.

Let’s talk a little bit about that resiliency. That was a path that started there.

It started way before that with me. There were challenges after the other. In truth, if we sit around and want to be stronger or courageous and never take action to do anything, we don’t grow. We have to throw ourselves into the fire and say, “I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” That’s that refining process and it’s true. I don’t have any other word about it.

That’s like when I had breast cancer. I didn’t want that to define me. People are like, “Go talk to people about breast cancer or go on the breast cancer walks with the t-shirt.” I’m like, “No, I don’t want to be in the vibration of that, but I want to allow that experience to uplift me and refine me. I’m somebody who had that experience. It doesn’t have to be something that’s mine. I’m not going to own it.”

The thing is that I define bliss as a deep sense of joy, contentment and confidence that you can handle anything that comes your way. For me, bliss is about emotional mastery and emotional resilience. Without that, we can’t live in that place of bliss. That’s why I’m so interested in your perspective on resiliency and how you talk about this whole thing about creativity intuition leads to that resiliency.

I knew it all along, but we’re always in our head when we’re building our businesses and we’re trying to monetize everything. I’m creative, so I don’t have that other side of my brain. It’s always a struggle for me to do that. I’d rather create. We do open up when we are creative in any respect. When I talk about creativity, a lot of people are afraid. They’re like, “I’m not an artist. I don’t know how to do art. I don’t know how to sing.”

Do you remember when you were a child? You were three years old, dancing around and playing in the sandbox with your pants down in the swimming pool, eating popsicles with no top on. You’re having fun. You’re running around. You’re doing all kinds of crazy things. You’re dancing and singing. You’re random because you enjoy life. You’re in love with life.

I know that sounds stupid, but it’s not. We have this inner child that we need to connect to because we’re these stuffy adults. For me, as much as I love to laugh, I’ve become a controlling stuffy adult over the years. When I found the watercolor that I had been doing for years, it wasn’t turning me on anymore. When I had the synchronistic kit with this other medium and I started doing it, I went nuts. I went out and bought a whole lot of supplies, learning everything. I had this knowing that I was in the right direction. I didn’t know where it was going to go or how it was going to happen. I’m just allowing the universe to bring it to me, however.

 

I feel like my resiliency has grown by leaps and bounds because it was almost like we can’t have certain situations happen for us until we’re at a certain point to be able to handle, accept, contain or embrace it, whatever it is that we were looking at. It’s great to say yes to life challenges, whatever they are, no matter how bad they hurt. Just know that your heart can take it. You become very courageous and wise. There’s much that goes on. There’s so much wisdom and insight you get from these challenges. That’s another piece of your life. You move forward and something else happens for you. Things start to open up from there. Being in your flow is in your joy, passion, love and what you love to do. Money, health, relationships, it’s everything you can imagine.

At this mastermind, one of the things that one of the speakers talked about was the square dancing lawyer. She’s got this work that she’s done for so many years. It’s gotten too boring and stale, but she loves it because it’s paying for her kids’ college educations and what it does for her life. It doesn’t juice her anymore. A lot of times, our careers don’t end up juicing us, but we all have something else. What we do is we end up putting in 80 hours a week for our work because we know that’s paying for life and we forget that we’re human. As humans, we have that creative element. No matter how creative you think you’re not, you have that creative element.

Her business and finances stagnated until she started taking two nights off a week to go do square dancing. It’s true. We always have had that side of us. We don’t have to be good. This is the other thing. You don’t have to make it into a profession. You don’t have to make it a year full-time thing. You don’t even have to be good, but you have to express who you are in some way other than what you’re doing in your work. For me, so much of my creative expression is doing these shows. It’s very creative. There’s a lot going on. I love talking to people. Still, I have to dance every day or I’m not myself. I’m not as creative. The conversations are not as good. The people that I attract to the show are not as exciting.

I’ve made decisions because of what I thought I should do rather than what my intuition told me I should be doing would be best for me. If I had been at the time, I would tell you this, “Lisa, nobody knows us.” The time that I made that decision, I went to New Media Summit. Two months before, I had gotten in a serious car accident in a highway pileup. When I went there, I was in so much pain. I couldn’t dance. There was no creative expression. All there was, was me trying to survive.

When you’re in that mode, bad decisions happen. You and I know what happened. As I started to bring dance back into my life, suddenly the show, my life and everything got better. I feel happier. I didn’t mean to steal the show but I feel like creativity is important because it opens us up to the next piece, which is intuition to all of that joy and full experience of life.

The big piece is that we try to control everything. After I lost my house to wildfire, I had this big plaque up on my wall. I still have it. It says, “Let go.” How many situations have I had since then and I’m still working on letting go? We have trouble letting go. When you let go, you can always let go a lot more. When you think you’re not holding on, you’re still holding on. Even when I started my painting, I was still trying to control it. That’s like with watercolor. You do this. What I’m doing now is do different techniques but allow things to flow. You have no control over the way that it looks, for the most part, which is the outcome.

The biggest thing for adults is to let go, stay out of the way and stay out of control. This is the part of trusting and allowing. That’s what opens us up. If we’re always pushing against it, we can’t get where we want to go. That’s the biggest piece when you’re dancing, especially. You’re all over the place. You’re carefree like a child. A lot of people still don’t get that concept. I dance and feel awkward.

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I’ve done such random things like walking around the house talking to myself or looking in the mirror, making stupid faces and funny sounds, then I think, “There’s something wrong with me.” I thought, “No.” We’re like these childlike spirits. We are meant to experiment, be goofy and play around. We’ve lost that capability somewhere along the line. It looks stupid when you dance but nobody’s watching. I look stupid when I dance. I don’t care.

All of the painting and all of this stuff has opened you up. I want to hear the attracting your house story. Could you share that with us? I’m so excited. I’m waiting. Tell me what happened.

Joe is going through his divorce. He had his house. We spent four months packing up his estate. We were living in a leased house. During COVID, we want to move out of state, but we’re not sure what’s going to happen. We’re going to stay in the leased house for a while so we can let things open up and see what happens. We come back after packing up the estate and the guy who owns the house says, “You’ve got to move in a month and a half because I’m selling the house.”

Monkey wrench, this is life. It throws us bombs and curveballs. That’s what it does. You can get mad all you want. At first, we were incredibly annoyed. I was exhausted from packing up an entire house, 600 boxes of books and all that other stuff. We said, “What can we do next?” We drove to Austin for several days. We thought, “We’ll look in Austin.”

The market there was going crazy, as you know. Eight people lined up to buy $100,000 over the selling price. It would take us seven hours a day to get there and get back to see four houses. After that, we were exhausted. We started looking here in the area we’re in. We looked at one house, put an offer on it, loved it. It was funny because Joe was trying all these different things to make it happen. He was in the middle of a divorce, so it was difficult, but he was trying to make it happen anyway.

You get your hopes up to get something, but you also have to be a little bit open. We went and decided to look at a couple of other houses. Initially, after seeing the one you wanted, the rest looked like dogs. It was funny because when things weren’t working out, I had this hit. I was like, “Let’s go back and look at a couple of these houses again.” We came back and looked at this one. I started seeing possibilities. Out of the blue, I walked in and was like, “When I walked in here the first time, I didn’t even look at it and now I’ve seen possibility. It wasn’t everything that we wanted. It wasn’t exactly perfect but there was a possibility there. It was one of the nicer ones that we saw.”

We left and I’m like, “If this doesn’t go through, we better get it. It’s going to be off the market.” It was strange because the way that it happened was synchronistic. One day, we were looking at other houses and this one popped up. Somebody told us about that. My sister texted me. She goes, “What about that one that you were looking out for?” It was all very random information. It was almost like this giant confirmation from the universe, “Go look at that house.”

Unbeknownst to us, the other one did fall through. Initially, we didn’t know what was happening. It took a while. We came back to this house. Sure enough, it was still in the market. We found that it had been on the market for a year and there was no reason for it to be on the market for a year. The whole thing is that we attracted this house. We believe that this house was sitting here waiting for us. That’s what we believe because the way it happened, it was like this random house sitting in the middle of a grassy lot. It was putting out fillers and information for us. Randomly, we came to it and then we left it, then it kept popping back in. That’s where we ended up moving to it.

It was amazing because if we keep our eyes open, surrender and say, “Where do you want me to go?” Look at the possibilities. Watch for the synchronicities and intuitive hits because that’s how we live our lives. You will get led to the right place. If you’re at the wrong place, you’ll know it. Even if you don’t believe that that place was the wrong place, like the first place, I guarantee you.

As a matter of fact, somebody was telling us about it. It was along the waterway and the lake. There were a lot of trees at the bottom. Somebody told us about water moccasins or some snakes here in Texas. It lives in the trees. They plant their eggs in the mud. If you wrestle the trees, they will fall on you. They’re aggressive. I started thinking about all the things in Texas that could have happened in that other house. I thought something wasn’t right. You’ve got to trust your gut. Trust what you get, play the game and watch for the signs.

More than anything, you have to take action based on what to get.

 

Instead of being in your head and stuck on something else. A lot of times, we think we want something but we have no idea what we want or what’s good for us. It was a pretty cool house hunting experience. We did that in less than six weeks. We found the house after almost a month. We’re going to have to move out and move into another one. It all happened very quickly, but we were divinely guided and it was amazing.

I wanted Lisa to tell this story because it shows you that life can happen so much more in flow if you open up your creativity and intuition. We’re so used to push and make it happen in this masculine hunter industry in the real estate world. There is a place for that. Ladies who are reading, please know. I understand there’s a place for that but we can bring feminine intuition and creativity into that so that when we’re hunting, we’re hunting based on signs that we’ve gotten from our intuition. We don’t need to go out and hunt blind. We don’t have to.

Men have to do that. They don’t have all the advantages we’ve got. We have all these resources that men don’t have access to. They get access to different resources. For us, it’s intuition, getting the messages and knowing where to hunt. Where do you go? Where do you take your action? Opening to take that action, what are the results? It’s taking the messages from those results too.

You want to be where you’re supposed to be. I don’t want to be stuck in a place that is a big gigantic mistake, especially if you’re spending $1 million or something like that. Even if you’re spending less than that, that’s a lot of hard-earned money. I love the creativity piece, even when you’re looking at houses. I don’t know what Joe talked to you about, but it’s so cool to play with possibility when you’re looking at houses or selling a house.

Many people, when they walk in, they show it and walk out. There’s no joy and fun. There are no smells in the house. There’s no anything. I don’t know about you, but I used to do seminars. I would take my energy work and go around the room. There are all kinds of cool things when you are selling a house or when you’re buying a house that you can do to get aligned.

When you’re in that creative and intuitive space, you walk in and see something that nobody else will see. Every home has its own personality. You can marry your personality with that personality and what can it create. That’s a different way of looking at it. You have to be coming from the filters of creativity in that case.

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I was playing with the idea of it and Joe and I did it with his estate. When you were saying that houses have their own personality, they are alive. When you think about there are beings in that house, there’s energy from all kinds of people in that house and things that happen in that house, good, bad, whatever. If you go into a house, it’s great to talk to the house to bless the house. If you’re leaving a house, it’s great to pray over the house and thank the house for being an incredible place of learning and love. I’m getting chills when I say it. If somebody is reading, this is for you out there. It’s part of the creative piece where the feminine is allowing these things to come through because otherwise, we miss all the beautiful possibilities and experiences. You don’t know what’s going to happen.

I have to tell you one more story. When I lost my house to wildfire, we rebuilt in California. There were people that were living next to us. They were monsters. Every day, I wanted them gone because they were horrible. They moved into the brand new house next to us. I took a mirror every day and faced it in the direction of the house. I sent positive vibrations to that people. I would see those people getting into the U-Haul, leaving and then I would see new people driving up, cool amazing people doing that. I told a few people I was doing it in a week.

They left, put the house up for sale and somebody else that was amazing, which I ended up working for a while, moved into the house. Nobody in the neighborhood believed that. They thought I was a voodoo queen or something. This is the power of intention, intuition, energy and creativity. It’s not something negative. It’s not voodoo. Houses are energy, breathing and being. You can intend what you want and change anything. I had to show you that. All these things came through for your audience.

This conversation has been amazing as they always are with you, Lisa. Thank you so much. We’ll do more. Lisa, could you tell people how they can reach you?

You can check out my website, LisaAWinston.com. You can also check out The Mindset Reset Show, that’s MindsetResetTV.com. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, all over the place. You can find me.

Lisa, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Ladies, thank you so much for joining Lisa and me for this portion of the show. You know how much I love having you here. I look forward seeing you next time. Until then, remember goals without action are dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

 

Important Links

• Lisa Winston
• Your Turning Point
• The Mindset Reset TV Show
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Why Money Loves Speed With Dr. Joe Vitale – Real Estate For Women

 

Ideas pass by us every day. But only the best ones grab those ideas, write it down, and put them into action. If you’re one of those that let ideas pass you by, then you need to know that money loves speed. Bestselling author and one of the world’s top motivational speakers, Dr. Joe Vitale, greatly believes this. In this episode, he joins Moneeka Sawyer to dive deep into this concept with his book of the same name, Money Loves Speed From Stress to Success: Revealing the 8 Laws of Attracting Money Fast. Dr. Joe also emphasizes the power of our mindset as a strategy to achieve our goals. You don’t have to lose hope in achieving big dreams because that big thinking is what we need for a high dose of energy and enthusiasm! Find out how to make your ideas count because the sooner you act on them, the sooner you can see the results.

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Watch the episode here

 

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Why Money Loves Speed With Dr. Joe Vitale – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am delighted to welcome back to the show Dr. Joe Vitale. He is a prolific author of many bestselling books, including The Attractor Factor, Zero Limits and the book we will be highlighting, Money Loves Speed. He’s one of the world’s top motivational speakers, a popular star of the movie, The Secret and an internationally famous expert on the law of attraction and clearing beliefs. He created the Miracles Coaching program to help people achieve their dreams. He’s once homeless. He is a model of prosperity who believes in miracles and has spent the last decades learning to master the skills of channeling the pure creative energy of life without resistance. Dr. Joe, welcome to the show. How are you?

I’m here with you, so I’m great. It’s good to see you and be with you again. I love your spirit, laugh, charm, smile and eyes. I’m great. Look where I’m at.

I don’t even know what to say to that. I’m blushing.

Just say thank you and move on.

Thank you. Dr. Joe, the book of yours that I’ve read was Money Loves Speed. I was so attracted to it because I love the title. Could you tell us a little bit about why you chose that title and a little background on that?

I’ve written several other books since that book. Sometimes the book of the month guy, they’re used to be the month club. I’m the book of the month of authors. There’ve been a lot of books but that one is a very popular one among people. I’m glad that you brought it up. Money Loves Speed is something that I’ve wanted to talk and write about for a long time.

The very title is one of the laws that I talk about in the book. I say there are eight laws of money and these are not banking laws. These are mindset laws. These are on how you use your mind and think about the world. It’s more of the psychology and maybe the metaphysics of money. Money Loves Speed is one of those principles.

I so like it that I’ve talked about it over the years. People have quoted me. They keep saying things like, “Joe says money loves speed. Remember, Dr. Joe, says money loves speed.” I thought I should explain it because not everybody understands it. The title is one of the principles. Would you like me to explain it and jump right in there?

I would love that. I’ve got plenty of places I want to go to but this is the most intriguing to me so I want to start with this.

Money Loves Speed, in short, means that when you have an idea for a product, service or something to implement in your business, you need to do it as quickly as the idea comes to you to be the first to profit from. To expand on this, what it means is most people do get ideas. They get ideas, whether they’re in the real estate business, a small business operator and an entrepreneur.

They get an idea of a way to market. Maybe that hasn’t been done before. A new product or service but what do most people do with that idea? They sit on it and dismiss it. They might say, “That’s a good idea.” If they’re smart, they’ll write it down but most people won’t act on it. They’ll think it’s a good idea. They’ll sit on it and then what happens is it falls away. It disappears.

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It was Tony Robbins who said, “How many of you ever had an idea for a product or service?” People raised their hands. He said, “How many of you six months later was driving down the road and you saw your product or service being sold?” They all were like, “That was me.” This is the principle of the universe. I believe the universe feeds us ideas. When we take the idea and run with it, the universe knows it, notices it and gives us more ideas.

The whole principle of Money Loves Speed means if you got an idea, segment, product or service marketing maneuver, do it and do it now. I have written 80 some books. I’m pausing for you to catch your breath because even I am impressed. I didn’t count the books. Somebody else said, “Joe, did you realize you’ve written 80 books?” I’m like, “No. I’m busy writing the books. I’m not counting them.” The reason I do is that when I have an idea for a product or a new book, I generally start writing it right then and there. I don’t let the self-talk get in my way and that’s the thing people want to be aware of.

When they have an idea, they talk themselves out. They say, “Not me. Not now. I don’t have the skills, experience, education and funds. I’m too old, young, fat and too thin.” As you and I both know, those are excuses that will keep them from their own good. Money Loves Speed is a chant, mantra, reminder and law. That is something I’m putting out there in the universe to remind people. “When you get that idea, act on it.” The sooner you act on it, the sooner you can see what the results are and most likely, they’re going to be great. If you don’t act on it, as Tony Robbins pointed out, somebody else will and you will miss out.

What comes to me when you talk about this is that people are always like, “I don’t know enough. I need to learn more.” The thing is that taking action is better than taking perfect action. You need to get in the game in order to even play. Certainly, you need to know enough rules to get in the game but you don’t need to know all the rules. You can learn as you go along.

What I love about the Money Loves Speeds concept is that people, so much in the real estate world, my investing ladies, they’ll be like, “I need to wait until I have money, whatever it is.” The thing is that if you don’t start, you’re going to lose the motivation of the moment. It doesn’t necessarily mean that things that could, mean that things happen fast for you but even if they don’t happen super-fast, nothing will happen unless you take those first set of actions.

I want to elaborate on a couple of bits of information. One is the action part of it. I’m in the movie The Secret, which people criticized for saying it was magical thinking. It didn’t talk about taking action. I’m the guy in the movie saying, take action. I literally say that in the movie, yet a lot of people fudge, go into self-sabotage and don’t take any action.

Why don’t they take any action? Some of it believes that magic is going to take place. I believe in magic and miracles but I also know that besides 87 books, I have fifteen music albums I’ve recorded. If I sit and think, visualize and meditate about the music albums, they don’t get recorded. I have to take action, book a studio, get my musicians and my guitar, go in the studio and do something.

 

That’s the first level. It’s a reminder that nothing happens without action. We live in a universe that requires co-creation. You have a part to do. You may not have to do all of it but you no doubt have to do some aspect of it. When you do your part, the universe comes into play and will fulfill its part. There’s a little bit of dance of energy but if you don’t do something or don’t take action, then nothing happens. You end up complaining about things.

The other aspect of what you’ve pointed out and this is important, is people wait for everything to fall into place. They want to know how, the map and the whole strategy from here to whatever the end zone is. What I’ve discovered is that there is no map. There isn’t a map when you first start taking action. You create it by your action.

It was Steve Jobs who said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward but you can connect them looking backward.” What that means is when you’re sitting here and you want a great big real estate deal, you’re inspired to do something and starting to imagine how the end result will be, as you sit at this moment, you don’t know all the steps to get there. Once you get there, you can piece it all together, turn around and go on an interview with you and tell the story. Now, there’s a story. I remind people of Teddy Roosevelt’s quote. He said, “Do what you can with what you have right where you are.” That’s brilliance right there.

By doing that, the next step becomes apparent then repeat. You do that enough times and you’ll get to whatever the end zone is for you, your goal, outcome and intention. Then you can look back and go, “The story unfolded. I know how that piece connected to this piece,” but you don’t know at this moment. All you’ve got is a goal and a desire. You have to get up and start moving towards it.

In the real estate market, we get a lot of the, “I’m waiting for the market to correct.” They’re trying to time how things are going to go. I remembered years ago, I was on TV in San Diego. The producer came to me and said, “I love your show. I wish I had bought real estate years ago.” I said, “Years from now, you’re going to say the same thing.” It’s important as you say, “Don’t miss the bus, because the bus is driving by with or without you.”

Those are great points. What I have found with my experience with realtors is that too many of them give their power away. What I’m referring to here is much like you were talking about. They’re looking at the market and what the market is doing. They’re overlooking something that I don’t see realtors thinking about. That is the idea that the realtors influenced the market. Part of that is with their mindset.

If a realtor is thinking, “I can’t do such and such because the market is doing such and such,” they have played the role of a victim. They have given their power away to a market that they feel they have no control over and influence. I can certainly understand where they’re coming from. When I felt like a victim as I was going through these stages of consciousness, you keep giving your power away and the rest of the world pretty much agrees with you because they all feel like victims anyway.

If you go to a realtor meeting and go, “The market is bad this month or this week,” most of them are going to agree with you, which is going to confirm your victimhood status, confirm it to them and they’re not going to get much done. As you know, I went through an ugly divorce. It was more of persecution but at the end of it, I came out on top. When I had my house back, I built it up into an empire and an estate. I had it for years, so I put a lot into it. I was ready to sell it.

I got a realtor who had become a friend of ours. This realtor was gung-ho, energetic, positive, charming and said she was got to get it out there to sell it. We started with a listing price below $1 million. As there were very few nibbles for it, she started to give all the power away to the market. She’s saying, “Clearly the market doesn’t want this, not at this price.” On one level, I understand that.

On one level, realtors who are reading this understand that but I want to push a little bit here. I want to be helpful to the people that pay attention to you, your audience and everything and empower them with a different kind of thinking. If there are any group of people that need what’s called a disruption, it’s realtors because realtors are thinking in an old-school way. Almost all of them are still giving their power away, much like this realtor was.

She was saying, “We should lower the price.” I’ve never been a realtor. I pretty much am listening to her and say, “We’ll lower it a little bit.” Over time and months, she wanted to lower it even more. I started to get more frustrated, thinking she was not marketing it. I started to refer to her as a listing agent because, in my mind, that’s different than somebody who goes out and tries to sell or market something. Instead of being a marketing or selling realtor, I started to think in my mind and I told my partner, Lisa. I said that “She’s a listing agent. All she’s doing is listing. If people don’t respond to the listing, she lowers the price. She knows at some point, the lower the price, you’ll find somebody.”

I’m like, “That’s insane because if you said this million-dollar home is worth $50, somebody is going to pay $50 because you lowered the price.” Quit marketing on price. There’s one thing I did and this was me not being a realtor but me being a marketer. I wrote a sales letter about my home and sent it to my database, my mailing list and fan base.

Success is about mindset. It's all about the law of attraction and the power of intention, visualization, and positive thinking. Share on X

I made the letter all about my home. I called it the House of Prosperity. I said the House of Prosperity is where I wrote some of my greatest works. I was filmed for The Secret. During that time, I have filmed 17, 18, 19 other movies in that home. I came up with some of my greatest ideas like hypnotic writing, buying trances and the book The Attractor Factor, which is what got me into the movie The Secret. I wrote all of that in that home. I made the home the star.

Instead of going house for sale, the number of acres, acreage and square foot inch and here’s the price, I wrote something that was more like sales literature. I mail it to my list. We started getting leads for it and ultimately, sold it. My whole point is that a lot of people give in to what they think the circumstances are not realizing that they have more power. I constantly hear realtors who do fantastic, no matter what the market is because that’s not the market. It’s the realtor.

Fifty percent of the women that read this show are realtors and agents and then about 50% are investors. This applies so dramatically. Ladies, I hope you didn’t tune that out because we are investors. Sometimes we think the only way that we can compete to get a property is with price. Dr. Joe gave you a perfect example of price is not the key. There are an awful lot of factors that we have influenced over, that can get us the right properties. If you say, “I can’t go into this market. It’s a hot market.” Make 30 offers. That’s an opportunity or start to meet people who might have properties in their back pocket.

Marketing is everything. Price is a tiny little piece of that marketing package. I love the way you talked about that, Dr. Joe, with the realtors. On the investor side, I hope you caught that because I know so many people are like, “You were right out of COVID. We don’t know what the market’s going to do. I don’t know if I can even get a house.” What a 1 million excuses and 1 million good whys about why things won’t work for you. What you need to do is change that paradigm. Find the million good whys that will work for you and then go after it with your creativity.

I want to tell you another story that’s even more amazing in terms of all the lessons that are within it. This is about a young man, a 36 years old at this point, who is a billionaire realtor in Thailand. This isn’t a millionaire or multimillionaire. This is a billionaire. He’s doing it in real estate during tough times, including COVID.

I want to tell the story because this story has inspired me. I met him years ago. He invited me to speak at a seminar that he was putting on in Bangkok, Thailand. I didn’t want to go. I was like, “This is a long flight. I’ve never been to Thailand. I’m not comfortable doing that much travel.” He was paying me well, taking care of my first class and he promised to put me up on an island by myself for a week for rest and relaxation as a gift to me.

I kept thinking, “Who is this guy?” He also kept saying that he owed his success to me. I have to meet him. I flew all the way to Thailand. He meets me at the airport. There’s this young man at that point, 34 or 35 years old. He tells me this most amazing story. He puts me in the van to drive me to the hotel where we’re going to do his first event ever. He says that fifteen years ago, he was homeless. He was twenty years old, homeless in title. He’s originally from Sweden. He hated the country, darkness and cold.

When he inherited $2,000, he used it to buy a ticket to the warmest place he could think of, which was Thailand. He didn’t know anybody in Thailand. He didn’t speak to the Thai language. He goes there. He parties away the rest of the money. He’s homeless. He calls back home to a friend of his and says he needed help.

The friend says, “I’m not going to send you any money, but I’m going to send you a book.” I thought that was a big bold thing to do for his friend. He sends my contact in Thailand a book and my contact in Thailand is upset. He’s starving, homeless, hungry and needs a roof. He doesn’t have any money. He’s given a book. He says, “Maybe there’s something to the book.” The book was The Secret, which is the book that came out after the movie The Secret.

This movie was first. Then the book came afterwards. It’s all about mindset, the law of attraction, power of intention, visualization and thinking positively. Jack Canfield and Bob Proctor, all of us are in that book. He starts reading it and says, “I’m going to prove this book wrong.” I love that he said that because he’s coming as a homeless man, totally angry and skeptical. He says, “I’m going to prove this book doesn’t work.”

 

He goes out to prove it doesn’t work by visualizing little things like a cup of coffee. Somebody buys him a cup of coffee. That was probably a fluke. Let me visualize it for lunch. Somebody buys him lunch. Over a few days of testing, he says, “Maybe there’s something to it. Let me try doing it on a job.” He gets a job. Then he tries doing it in an apartment. He gets an apartment.

Long story short, fifteen years later, he is the largest real estate developer in Southern Thailand. He has twenty other businesses, including a gym, gas stations, coffee shops, an attorney’s office and more. He’s running virtually all of it from his phone. He is wheeling and dealing on a level that made my jaw drop. He showed me pictures of some of the real estate properties.

He was networking with hotels like Best Western and some of the others that were building in Phuket and Bangkok. They were working with this 35-year-old kid who was homeless fifteen years ago. He used and is still using all the principles that I talk about. That’s why he said he owed his success to me, Jack Canfield and Bob Proctor.

I looked at him and said, “You went down the road a lot further than most other people with what you learned.” I helped him write a book called Homeless to Billionaire, which are his wealth principles. I often tell this story because I’m thinking, especially for people who are into real estate or into investing, this man has used the very principles that some people dismiss as metaphysical or woo-woo. He has used them to build his own empire. I’m in regular contact with him. He remarried. He’s building another house. He’s still doing business in COVID.

This story sends tingles down my spine. What I get from that are two big things. The first is our mindset is everything. There are a lot of mindsets that we talk about on this show. People are always like, “Why aren’t you talking more about strategy?” Nothing is going to happen in real estate unless the real estate between your ears is handled.

Seriously, it’s so important because everything that you see is through the filters of your mindset. If the filters are, “I can’t do it,” everything you’re going to see is I can’t do it. If the filters are, “I can do anything,” it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks or says. You will be able to do so much more than most people could even imagine. That’s so amazing.

The other piece is my parents came to this country newlyweds from an arranged marriage. They didn’t know each other. They knew each other for three weeks. They had $200 in their pocket. They are self-retired with multimillion dollars. They took their whole family to my dad’s 90th birthday in Tahoe for a week. They’re doing great. How do they do that? Not because people told them they couldn’t. How many ladies are listening with all of these, “I can’t. I don’t have enough money. I don’t know how to get started?” At least you have a bed you’re sleeping on, which this guy didn’t.

I also wanted to point out that mindset is a strategy because if we don’t have our mind correct, meaning that it’s aligned for the positive, it will cause us to fail. We will self-sabotage ourselves. We’ll blame everybody else, the market, economy and other realtors but it’s not about that. What’s going on is between our ears.

This is the most important thing. I mentioned my marketing background. Way back in the ’90s, I was learning marketing and coming out as a marketing consultant, marketing copywriter and this, that, and the other. What I realized when I tried to help people with their marketing and I would write ads for them and sales letters is if they didn’t believe in themselves, their product or service, they would find a way to make my ad not work.

They would change something and then rationalize why they changed it. Not realizing that if you change it, it would fail. I realized that before I could teach anybody marketing or I could do marketing for them, I had to help them with their mindset. For me, mindset is the very first strategy. I tell people, “We live in an optical illusion.” Life is an optical illusion. You get whatever it is you believe.

If you believe that there’s a lack and limitations and the marketing is bad, you will go out into the world. You’ll do your Google researching and everything. You will find evidence. You’ll pull it all over and go, “Look at the study right here. Look what the recent paper and the real estate news are saying right here.” By the same token, if you believe, it doesn’t matter what the market is. You’ll find examples like my friend, Andres Pira in Thailand. Doing well despite COVID or anything else, you will find evidence.

You will go on Google and get all kinds of documents and research to prove. “The market is going great. Everything is on the upswing. Realtors come in. This is where you got to cash in.” What’s true? Both are. The lack and limitation world and the abundant mindset world are both there. It’s a matter of which one do you choose. The one you choose is the one you’re going to see.

When I was homeless, I looked out into the world and it was the world against me. I felt alone. I’m the same guy in the same world. I don’t think that way because I changed my thinking. To back up, all of this is a mindset. This is why I wrote books like Money Loves Speed, The Awakened Millionaire, Attract Money Now, The Attractor Factor and all of these other books that are mindset-oriented. When you take care of the mindset, then the real estate sales, the money, then all the other things you were longing for will finally start coming. They’ll come easier and faster.

Mindset is a strategy. I love this thing when you said, “Is it true?” This is a question that I ask myself all the time. Is this true? Is that true? Is it true? Who is it true according to? What do I want to be true? Is it true for me? Is it really true? How do I know it’s true? This is Byron Katie’s work. I ask this all the time. Is it true?

Some realtors do fantastic no matter what the market is because it is not the market that matters but the realtor. Share on X

One of the things that you talk about in your book that made me giggle out loud was your zombie billionaire thing. I want you to explain the strategy that you gave in that. My ladies are going to love this. Part of how I relate it to this strategy or technique was with the start of the question of, “Is this true? Is this playing out in a way that I believe is true?” Do you want to talk about this? It’s so much fun.

I don’t even remember that chapter. It’s a problem of writing as many books as I do.

You talk about the whole zombie billionaire was its own thing but the piece I love that you talked about is if you go to a party and tell people about your dream and they don’t think you’re crazy, you’re not thinking big enough. That was the very big first piece about that. Another chapter was the Twilight zone mind control. “I need to be crazy, which I love because I am. Is it the fact that I’m crazy true? If life isn’t playing out the way I think it should, how can I change that?” That’s where we go into the Twilight zone mind control.

The Money Loves Speed has so many different chapters in it that I love. I put them in there because I so love them but at this point, I’ve forgotten a lot of them. Thank you for reminding me of the zombie millionaires one. I had seen a documentary about billionaires. One of the questions that came up there is, “How a billionaire thinks?” One of the billionaires said that, “If you go to a party and you tell people what your big dream is like you’re a realtor and you want to do something gigantic, if they don’t laugh, you haven’t thought big enough.” They should look at you like, “That’s impossible.”

It should be an uncomfortable laugh.

It should be one of those where they don’t believe it. Then you know you’re on to something. It’s a little bit like Richard Branson. If he goes to a party, he might’ve said years ago, “I’m going to go into space. I’m going to go on my rocket ship.” Elon Musk says, “I’m going to shoot one of my cars to Mars.” Most of us are like, “What in the world are you drinking?”

That big thinking is where we want to go because it activates our energy and enthusiasm that juices within us to think big and do big. That excites me. I’m already getting even more excited thinking about those ideas of what’s possible. Part of me is like, “Anything is possible. There aren’t any limits.” All the limits are mental constructs, which leads to what you were talking about is questioning.

I’m going to use an example that comes to mind. We look at the moon every night. I don’t see any real estate up there. I’m thinking, “Why not? Why isn’t there a building, hotel and Starbucks up there?” Why isn’t there a realtor that is saying, “I am selling acreage on the moon.” We have to do some adapting to make sure that our vegetables don’t float off into space or whatever happens to be adjusted. That’s the big thinking that we should be entertaining because first of all, I think it’s true. Why isn’t there any real estate on the moon? Why isn’t there a billboard up there that says, “Shop Amazon daily. Go to Joe Vitale’s website,” something along those lines.

The next part because part of us is going to doubt ourselves or the possibilities, we want to ask those questions you’re talking about. “Is it true? Is it impossible to sell acreage on the moon?” I don’t think it’s impossible. It might be a challenge. I don’t know that anybody’s trying it. Hopefully somebody is. Examples like that where we can go and ask ourselves, “Is it true that we can’t do that?”

That leads us to questioning our own beliefs, which is important. We believe in a belief-driven universe. We don’t like what we’re getting. It’s because of some beliefs about what we’re getting. We want to question those beliefs, so one of the great ones is, “Is it true? Where’s the evidence that it’s true? How do we know that it’s true?”

Let’s question it like a good detective and dismantle it in the Twilight zone thing. I’m a big fan of Twilight Zone. In fact, Rod Serling, who wrote almost all the episodes and introduced them, I got to meet him when I was a kid. I was shy and insecure in high school but he was cool. I realized he was a short, chain-smoking and insecure little man.

I realized, “If he can do what he’s doing, I can do it too. I can be an author too.” There was one Twilight Zone episode that I never forgot. They were all unique and psychological but there was one where this man was working in an office and he’s giving orders. He’s about to go on a trip, this, that and the other. All of a sudden you hear this great, big booming voice that yells, “Cut.” Then there’s dead silence.

 

His walls start to be pulled apart by people who are working around it. He realizes he’s on a movie set. He didn’t know he was on a movie set. He was playing the role of a businessman in an office going about his daily duties but after somebody yelled cut, he stopped. The set starts to be dismantled. He has this abrupt mind-disorienting moment where he realizes none of it was real.

I use that technique as a self-help technique. When we get caught up in our negativity, we started hearing all of the excuses in ourselves. “I can’t go to the moon. I don’t know anybody going to the moon.” There are people going to the moon. You can meet them if you reached out and tried. We start going into, “I don’t have the education and experience.” “Stop. Cut.”

I paused to let the silence reinvigorate a little bit. We do that in our brains. When we do that in our minds, we seize control again. We realized, “Wait a minute. Cut. Let’s reverse and reengineer our thinking.” Let’s take two. It’s all we want to do. That scene got screwed up. Somebody didn’t read the script right. Cut, redo, start the scene again and let’s be positive.

Dr. Joe, you’ve been on movies and television. I’ve been on a lot of TV shows. Here’s one thing I know, you can do a cut and a retake as many times as you like. Take 1, take 2, take 4. Keep doing it until you get it right. It’s okay and it can be fun because you learn so much along the way.

In fact, this is worth looking at for a moment. A lot of people stopped going for their dreams and start putting themselves down because they get sucked into the illusion of social media. They see photos of realtors who are saying, “I sold this property. I made this much money.” They forget that whoever’s posting that is cherry-picking their photos, moments and successes.

They don’t dare tell you where they screwed up, where the deal fell through or where they struggled for quite a while because they want the illusion of success to be out there. If you buy into that, you can be self-reflective and self-destructive because you’ll think, “I’m not good enough. I’m not a success like that.” They aren’t either.

They are doing what you talked about. They’re taking take 1, take 2, take 3. “Take three was the one we’re going to use. Let’s use that and get rid of the other two because we don’t want that out there.” They do the same thing with photos and their results. Don’t fall into the illusion of social media. It is tap dancing around our brains, making us feel like everybody else is partying, successful and happy. We’re not. We don’t see the entire scope of things.

I’ll give a personal example here. I mentioned that I went through a two-year divorce, which ended up being a persecution of my life in business. Most days during those two years were not happy. They were not pleasant. They were agonizing. My father and my best friend died during that period. COVID came during that period. Family members attempted suicide during that period. Most of this is not happy.

However, every day I posted 1 or 2 videos on Instagram and Facebook that were positive messages. You never once saw a glimpse that I was going through hell. I was doing that in part to make sure I was doing my mission and helping other people but if people looked at that and thought, “Joe’s happy all the time. Look at him. He’s always a success. He’s got another book deal and a movie,” you overlook the reality of life itself. We all have bumps in the road, challenges and disappointments. When you go through it, you realize you’re not alone. Other people are promoting, like me, the good stuff. We’re putting that face out there.

It’s not just that you’re promoting it. You’re focusing on it. Every time you do one of those videos, you’ll need to focus on what you’re talking about, which is a mind shift for you. You’re in that space where you get to talk about that authentically. It’s going to change who you are in that moment and on that day.

That’s a great reminder because I’m doing it in part for me too. I’m saying that I’m sending out a message because I have quite a few followers and I want them to stay up during trying times because they’re all going through something of their own. When I do it, I’m also going up a little. It’s making me feel better. I get a reward from doing it. It’s not just them. It’s also me. It’s a win-win.

Before we finish, I would like to talk a little bit about the website about the book because this book is amazing. Ladies, this is so much fun. If you get the audio, which you should, you’ll even get to hear some of his songs. It’s such a fun book. I love this and I love the way you read it, Joe. I love that it’s your voice. That’s great. Tell everybody how they can get the book.

I’ve got a website and a $2 offer. You can have the eBook version and the audio version read by me for $2. Just go to MoneyLovesSpeedBook.com. For some reason you want the actual physical book, you have to go to Amazon. I don’t know what it costs, $20, something like that. You’re going to have the printed copy that way but if you want a $2 investment to have a little skin in the game, you’re going to have the eBook and the audio version but go to MoneyLovesSpeedBook.com.

Every time I talk to you, I feel lifted up. You have this amazing energy. I want to thank you so much for spending this time with me.

Anything is possible. There aren't any limits. The limits are mental constructs, which leads to questioning. Share on X

Thank you. I am honored. I love seeing you. I love being in your energy. You’re doing great work for great people so thank you.

Thank you. Ladies, thank you for joining Joe and me for this show. You know how much I appreciate you. I look forward seeing you next time and until then. Remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

 

Important Links

• The Attractor Factor
• Zero Limits
• Money Loves Speed
• Miracles Coaching
• The Secret
• Homeless to Billionaire
• The Awakened Millionaire
• Attract Money Now

 

About Dr. Joe Vitale

Dr. Joe Vitale is the author of far too many books to mention here. Here are just a few of them:

He wrote the bestseller, The Attractor Factor: 5 Easy Steps for Creating Wealth (or anything else) from the inside out. It became a #1 bestseller twice, even beating the latest Harry Potter book.

He also wrote Life’s Missing Instruction Manual: The Guidebook You Should Have Been Given at Birth. It, too, became a #1 bestseller and was picked up by WalMart.

One of his most popular titles, Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More reflects an ancient Hawaiian practice, known as Ho’oponopono. A fan favorite, Joe has hosted multiple live events on the subject, nation-wide, and he has created quite a following on this title alone.

 

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