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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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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.

If you want to be stronger, start taking action in anything that you do. Throw yourself into the fire because that's the refining process. Share on X

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

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

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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How To Maximize The 6 Elements Of Wealth With Agatha Johnson – Real Estate Women

 

We are full beings. And to experience the fullness of life, we have to acknowledge each aspect that affects the way we are and who we are—no matter how far they may seem. Wealth, in particular, is not merely part of our professional lives. It is just as spiritual and personal. Once we acknowledge that, we begin to discover our wealth maximized. Agatha Johnson, the founder and owner of WillKate, knows this to be true. In this episode, she joins Moneeka Sawyer to discuss how you could maximize the six elements of wealth to have a fulfilling life. These six elements cover every part of your life, which are essential, especially in times of uncertainty and confusion. Join Aggie in this conversation as she dives deep into each of them, helping you recognize your potential along the way. Plus, she also shows how you can be capable of giving back to the world. Tune in to realize your purpose and visions and how to understand them better, so you create lasting wealth beyond the balance sheet.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

How To Maximize The 6 Elements Of Wealth With Agatha Johnson – Real Estate Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show, Agatha Johnson. Aggie Johnson is the Founder and owner of WillKate Family Enterprise Office and WillKate Wealth Management. She focuses on purposeful planning that helps create lasting wealth beyond the balance sheet. Aggie is passionate about helping women understand their relationship with wealth, realize their purpose and visions and define the opportunities they wish to create for themselves, their families, causes and their communities. She places high value on families spending as much time as she can with her four grown sons, their three wonderful daughters-in-law and beautiful grandchildren. You may also find her traveling with her husband, hiking or giving back to the community in her free time. Aggie, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

I feel like we’re such kindred spirits. Could you tell us the two-minute version of your story? How did you get to where you are now?

I initially started out in the medical field and had my oldest son early on and needed to take a part-time job and I did that in a bank. That’s when I began to think more about the finance side of the world and I made my switch to the finance piece. That’s how I got my start and began to love it and dove right into it.

How did you start your business?

I started my business after being in the corporate world for many years. When my youngest son graduated, I wanted to take it outside because I can do a lot more outside and very objectively that isn’t necessarily tied to the corporate policies.

You specialize in wealth. Let’s start by talking from your perspective about the Six Elements of Wealth.

Spiritual Side

The six are interesting because it covers every part of your life. The first one that we’ll talk about is the spiritual side. That’s the heart and soul of everything. It is your values that you see in action. What is your belief system and what is the purpose of your being? That’s what the spiritual side is. Every day, we get up in the morning, we breathe, even when we’re having our cup of coffee. There are certain values that you have there every day. That’s capturing your spiritual side of the world and diving deep into that is important.

The spiritual side is the values that you see in action. It is your belief system and the purpose of your being. Share on X

I love that you start with that. I want to give a little perspective because you haven’t read all of our shows. Although you’ve read a few and I love that. A lot of people come onto the show and talk about the mindset of money. We talk about money blocks. We talk about all of these things, but there is something and I’ve released a couple of shows myself about this spiritual side of money. People think that money is the opposite of spirituality.

From my perspective, we are full beings. As you said, we’re full beings and spirituality is one of those things. How you do one thing is how you do everything. If you’re spiritual, you’re going to have a spiritual approach to money, which means it aligns with your core values, your integrity and your spiritual beliefs. Hopefully, your spiritual beliefs are that you deserve abundance because God is an abundance God or the universe or whatever. I love that you start with that. Thank you.

Human Wealth

You’re welcome. If it’s flipped, you probably will never find true happiness. If you start with the spirituality side of it, you will find that very much so. There’s another one that is important. That’s the human element of wealth. A lot of times, we don’t look at our talents as well. It’s something that we use to maybe create wealth, but your talents, even understanding what those natural talents are and learning more about yourself, will be able to position you for the abundance out there that you want and need for fulfillment of life. It’s what you do every day. It’s what you do to give back. By the very nature of using your talents, you give back.

Our talents are there to share not necessarily keep to ourselves. That’s what the human capital side and the human element side are of wealth. If I look at family, the family also is meaning of wealth. The family itself is, who’s your tribe, what’s your culture, what was your upbringing, what is that heritage that you have? Sometimes we don’t always know about it. The more we learn about our heritage, the more we learn about ourselves center ancestors.

Even knowing how do I have a great relationship with my family? How do I talk to them about my purpose and what’s the family purpose out there? There are so many important pieces when it comes to family, especially in our world now. That’s such a crazy fast-paced world. It’s how do you take time at least on an annual basis with your family to dive deep and have funds. Turn off the phones, turn off the computers, all those social connections and get to know each other.

I think it’s interesting that people, again, we take the money and it’s one of the puzzle pieces, but it’s the puzzle piece that we put on the side. It’s the island, but our families, the people that we love, our pets, our children, our parents, all of those things they’re right in the center of our puzzle. The thing is that every single piece of the puzzle affects each other and with that little piece out as an island, you have a hole in your puzzle. The family relationships are going to the way that that comes together and your puzzle affects the look of the whole puzzle. It looks at the fact, the beauty, the way that it stands out, stands together.

It’s also interesting with family. My parents were born in Pakistan and had to flee during the separation between India and Pakistan. My mom’s dad worked in agriculture in the United Nations. He ran the Agriculture Department around the world. He was very wealthy and had a very big worldview. My dad’s dad was a big Judge in Pakistan. He basically was the big man on campus. They were also very wealthy but then when they had to flee, my mom’s dad saw it coming and got them out. My dad’s family had to flee and they lost everything. They ended up living in a shack with fifteen people in it.

What this brought for me was that I was brought up with the idea that you can be wealthy and lose it all. It’s hard to enjoy your wealth when you’re afraid that it could run away from you. There wasn’t this idea of abundance. It was hard work. Big sacrifice and you could lose it all. There was this feeling of hoarding.

I think some of that ancestral stuff moves down to us unless we have these open conversations like, “Money conversation with my parents is because of this thing. Have compassion for that but I don’t want that in my life. I want my life to look a different way.” Way beyond the puzzle and the beauty of pulling it all together, our ancestral understanding of where our family’s coming from gives us financial compassion. It also allows you to choose something different.

 

My grandfather came from Germany, so the heritage is German-Russian. When they came over, it was about the time where the United States was looking for people to homestead, especially on the agricultural side, so I come from an agricultural world. I’m 3rd generation in the farming operation and the 4th generation is starting to come in. The one thing about family is as siblings. We felt it was our duty to make sure that we continued the wealth.

We came together and it’s even how you communicate because if you have eight siblings, we have age differences. You have all these communication styles. Coming together and talking about that was important. The bigger part to that and the deeper part was our purpose. That came into that conversation, so was a message down to the next generation or the inspiring generation out there.

Family

That in itself was a big one. The human capital and the family capital are tied to how we think about wealth, our belief system is around that if it’s scarcity versus utilizing the talent to inspire and open up the opportunities to create wealth. There is a big difference in how we talk that through. Family is very important because that’s where we get our initial belief systems and our biases.

Societal

The societal side of it is what do we do in the communities that we live in or beyond? The societal element of wealth is all about how do we give back to the very community that we are taking something from? Whether it is worldwide, a small community, a larger community. What are some of those things that are important from a society standpoint? How do we engage in those conversations because that’s also another part of ourselves and how we look at our wealth and our money?

Do we give back by that through the financial channels or do we give back by doing things for others? Seeking those opportunities to give back and learn from others as well. The societal side is very important and if I think about it now, whether we use Facebook for a channel looking out in society or whatever it is. We lose that connection if we don’t get out there and get a connection that human side of it with society and how we engage and interact within the communities.

Giving back is such a big tenet also of choosing bliss, which is what I’m all about. Money is only a tool to amplify our belief systems. If your belief system is to give back to the community, then that tool amplifies your capacity to do that. There’s also the other element of the circular flow of money. As it goes out, it also comes back to us. You also don’t want to hoard because as you spend, you’re benefiting the economics around you. You spend on things for yourself. You also make sure that you’re spending things on the community and people that could use your help. There’s a lot of stuff around the community that we can do to make wealth feel more abundant for ourselves and for the people around us.

I sit on the board of directors for our South Dakota Symphony. It’s one of those that it is a volunteer board. We also raise money for the Symphony. The other part of that was it connected all the dots of things that are important from the elements of wealth. An example would be, we gave to the school systems specifically for those that maybe couldn’t afford an instrument but wanted to be in a musical area. It was creating shelters where bands could come into play. It also was bringing in music as medicine into the hospital systems. All of those pieces flow through of how you give back to the community while you’re raising money to make sure that those areas are supported.

Resources

We also connect with cultures such as the Native American side of it. We engaged them to create music that was bringing their culture into some of the symphonic pieces. It was a very broad view on everything of what elements of welfare. If I jump into now, the very two that are resources, so financial. It’s the resource that helps fulfill some of those other four elements that we talked about because the more that you become a steward of the wealth and the more that you become a steward of your own finances and understand them, the better you will be able to grow and have more of that abundance that can give beyond that.

The financial side to me, I always look at that as the easy part. I’m going to number crunch. I’m going to invest. I’m going to think about all these pieces, but now what am I going to do with them? What’s the purpose of it? The structural part of it is it’s anything such as owning real estate. It’s how I own that asset or structures such as even trust as part of a structure or any of those pieces that are going to help put our dollars in play. That’s the structure. It can even be our mission statement. It could be a family mission statement, your personal mission statement. That’s also considered a structure that helps give guidelines and some guidance of how you’re going to utilize your wealth.

I always talk about money. I’ve said this a few times on shows and people always look at me, but I was like, “I got that mundane thing about money handled a long time ago.” They’re like, “Mundane? What are you talking about?” It’s like, out of all those pieces of the beauty and bliss of life, money is only the tool like it’s the hammer and the shovel. It’s not that exciting. It’s cool and I love it, but it’s not the thing that juices me.

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Stewardship

That’s okay. The important part of that is bringing the stewardship in. The stewardship of the dollar, so your mission statement, your value statements, all of those help you in guiding how you handle your money. That’s the stewardship of that and there’s such a great responsibility that comes with it in order to fulfill those other four areas.

I agree with you on that. I’m highlighting that.

You’re welcome. Those are the Six Elements of Wealth and everything that we do surrounds those areas of wealth when we have conversations.

Talk to me a little bit about what women specifically might overlook with regards to building wealth.

That’s such a great question. The things that I see most are, they don’t monitor their own credit score. That one comes up a lot of times, specifically if they have been married and their husband, for the most part, took care of the money. You will see that even if I reflect back on my own parents. It was my father that took care of a lot of stuff. That was the culture that was how things were handled.

It’s challenging because of either a divorce or a death or something to that effect, sometimes, people, females, will not understand what that means for them later on. Credit score monitoring is important and understanding dollars. Understand financials and be okay to ask the question. Although it’s easy to allow someone else to make a lot of decisions, it also has a big impact on health things can go in the future.

Part of this, like asking questions, there are a couple of things. First, women don’t want to seem stupid financially. We’re often made to feel that way. Not made, but the environment allows us to feel stupid. The other piece is that we want to be pleasers. We don’t want to make someone uncomfortable by asking a question. We don’t want to push anything. The reality is that, unless we do those things, we don’t get the financial wherewithal to take care of ourselves when it’s necessary. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to always be necessary, but when it is necessary, you want to be able to have the wherewithal to take care of yourself. It’s super important.

Research has shown that females make wiser choices, primarily because they’re a lot more cautious about how they approach something. That doesn’t mean that a male will make riskier decisions. Females and males have different approaches. I think that’s okay for us to understand that, which means the questions you ask are for a very specific reason. Also, if you are working with your spouse, it’s a great way to have a good conversation about what you both believe in, which is going to bring you closer together. Money is so personal and people get nervous about money or it can be a conflict area. The more you ask questions, the better your conversations will be and it’ll help you in the long run.

I find that the money conversation can turn into a dream-building conversation. You can talk about, “This is what we want to do, this is how our money works, this is what we’re doing right and wrong,” and both of our participation in both of those things. “What’s the dream that we’re building towards?” My husband and I are always working towards a big goal. Now, it’s retirement but we had the goal of traveling around the world for six months. We had the goal of moving to France for a year. As we were building that goal, the financial conversation had a bigger picture. It’s a much more joyful experience.

Even if things are going wrong and the conversation can be tough, but you’re encouraged maybe to ask those harder questions because you’re both working towards something. You’re both on the same team, as opposed to being on opposite sides of the teams, of the tennis net. Whatever it is, you want to be on the same side on the same team and building goals together make the financial conversation easier.

You’re so spot on because if you add children into the mix, then it can be even more difficult because you both come into the conversation having different views. You were brought up differently. Coming into that conversation is so critical because you are a partner in life. Sometimes people don’t look at it from that perspective. If you don’t have the conversation, you don’t know if you’re going right or left, California or Florida.

 

What direction are we going here? Having those conversations sets the tone even of how your children look at money because if they see the disagreement between the parents, that’s how they’re coming in on their money mindset and how they look at the values of what dollars mean. The parents having a conversation about that is so critical and both being equal of understanding is even more important.

Could we talk a little bit about how real estate fits into the six elements?

Real estate, in my opinion, is an important allocation. Real estate is one that will give stability depending on what type it is, whether it’s land development, apartment buildings or office buildings. Whatever type of real estate it is, it has a spot in your portfolio and should be important. It does weather typically when markets do move. I’m talking about the liquid markets now. If I look at real estate, even understanding what your purpose is.

If I look at agriculture, which is a heavy one for us, agriculture has a central purpose. It not only brings income in. It will grow in value but it also has a purpose of utilizing the land to have food out in the community. There’s a much broader view sometimes of real estate and making sure that you have various different areas in the real estate market. You also want to make sure you’re balancing that piece out.

It’s interesting that you talk about agriculture for you because we’ve never talked about that on the show. We talk a lot about single-family, multifamily and those strategies. What you highlight by talking about agriculture is each family also has a real estate legacy. “What is it that we see as the land for us?” For some people, it’s, “We’ve rented our entire life. We’ve of been at the mercy of a landlord our whole life.” For some people, it’s apartment buildings. “We’ve always lived in the manager’s unit in an apartment.”

For people like me, my parents and I, we’ve always owned many houses. Not vacation homes. We don’t have homes in Hawaii and France and these other places. For us, it’s all investing in single-family homes. We do have a mindset around our real estate legacy. I love that you brought that up because I think it’s something we can change. Only because I’ve always done single-family homes do not mean I can’t invest in other things. This is what is intuitive for me.

For you, there’s farmland but there’s a big reason for that. There’s a whole business legacy and family legacy around that. If you’re a renter, you don’t have to stay a renter. You can start paying yourself and making yourself rich rather than a landlord. You can change that, too. I think it’s interesting to note that we all have these legacies that are passed down for us with regard to land. This has been the truth since the beginning of time. There were the lords and there were the peasants. The lords owned the land and the peasants wanted to. There is a land legacy around that. It’s so interesting that you said it that way because what an interesting conversation about, “What is happening for me?”

That’s important and if you think about the diversification in a portfolio, we work with a family that has landed in multiple countries. The purpose of that is the communities, the countries that they’re in and also the diversification even when it comes to weather, which was interesting in the soil. The diversification of how people look at where things are as far as real estate is important. Real estate is a very important topic in everyone’s allocation.

Thank you so much for that, Aggie. We have so much more to talk about. We’re out of time on this first part of the show. I want to tell you the two big pieces I want to continue on EXTRA are what is purposeful planning for women? That was one of the questions we didn’t get to. The other one is I want to talk about the soul of money and what does that mean? We haven’t had, in my belief, enough conversations of that spiritual side.

Sometimes, the more we learn about our heritage, the more we learn about ourselves. Share on X

I think it’s because people tap dance around it a little bit because it’s loaded. I want to have that conversation and Aggie has offered to have that with me. I’m super excited to share that with you. We’re going to be doing that in EXTRA, so stay tuned for that before we move to our three rapid-fire questions, Aggie. Could you tell people where they can reach you? I know you got a free gift, so talk a little bit about that.

There are two of them. If you have a multi-generational portfolio, you can go to our website at Will-Kate.com. You’ll be able to see that on the resource page if you go down. You can print off that little booklet. It talks about the balance sheet and that goes beyond the finances and how to go another hundred years. The other one is if you’re single or you have your family or something like that, you can give us a call and we’d be happy to chat with you for a while. You can ask us questions. Feel free to do either one.

Thank you for that. Aggie, are you ready for three rapid-fire questions?

I am.

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

The greatest thing about real estate is if you are looking at homes, single homes or if you’re looking at apartment buildings or office buildings, you want to know what the economy is there. That is a big one. Also, understanding, are you building, are you purchasing a building and what was the income from it. How sustainable was it? You want to also know the leverage side of it.

If you are buying that, understand the leverage and how the financial institutions look at real estate. There are different ways of purchasing it. It’s either you can use your own or you can leverage and use somebody else’s dollars, either through banks. You can go to different institutions that offer different ways of even having your dollars leveraged. The more you can learn about real estate in itself, the better.

I love that you talked about there are so many different ways to finance. We think that there’s only one way but there are lots of different ways to finance. Leverage is the magic of real estate. You definitely learn a little bit about that. Don’t feel like you need to know everything. You need to know how to find a pro that was taking care of you. What is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

The one thing about being successful in real estate, you want to know what the equity side of it is. What is the normal growth rate on equity? You also want to know if it’s income-driven more so than anything, always keep up to speed on what is the going rate for the rent. That is a big thing. Know, too, from a triple net standpoint, if you’re going into a building real estate of hard asset, just know, is that building triple net or what is it because you should not have to necessarily pay out of pocket. You’re tripling that setup, which is paying for your taxes and your real estate of the paving of whatever it is your parking lots, whatever your building is. You want to know what that is. If it’s housing, that’s a little different, too, but you want to know what your options are there.

What is one daily practice, Aggie that contributes to your personal success?

Meditation in the morning. I texted my sons in the morning and my daughter-in-law sent a picture and said, “Got done with my workout. Watching the sunrise this morning with my cup of coffee and my protein shake sitting out on the deck.” I would say that meditation grounds you and brings you right back into having a great day.

 

Most successful people do meditate. That shows up a lot, so I’m so very glad. This has been so informative and so much fun. Thanks for all you’ve offered for this portion of the show.

You’re welcome. This was great.

Ladies, we got more coming. We’re going to be talking about the soul of money and building wealth purposefully as a woman and what that means to us. We’re going to be talking about that in EXTRA, so stay tuned if you are subscribed. If you’re not subscribed but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. The first seven days are free, so you can download it as much as you like.

Check it out. If you want to stick with us, of course, it’s a subscription. For those of you that are leaving Aggie and me now, thank you so much for joining us. I look forward to 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. Bye.

 

Important Links

• WillKate Family Enterprise Office
• WillKate Wealth Management
• Six Elements of Wealth
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com

 

About Agatha Johnson

Aggie has years of experience working with clients who desire and value trusted expert wealth advice and advising them on how to be successful in life by finding the financial freedom to accomplish their purpose and dreams. She cares about each client’s personal success and takes the time to get to know the families and organizations she works with on a personal level. Aggie has worked with a wide range of clients, from families in business and high income earners, to medium-to-high net worth clients and ultra-net worth clients.

After decades working with individuals, families, and businesses, Aggie realized that most people focus on two specific areas of wealth planning, financial decisions and estate planning, which causes many to struggle with their choices. Aggie’s approach looks at the bigger picture; her expertise is in helping clients adapt to wealth, understand their relationship with wealth, and realize their purpose and vision. This creates the foundation for experiencing a greater opportunity to achieve dreams and lasting effects for different stages in life and future generations.

Agatha’s multi-disciplined approach provides guidance in six dimensions of wealth: financial, spiritual, human, family, structural (how things are owned and used) and societal. She helps clients define the opportunities they wish to create for themselves, family members, people, causes, and communities for which they care. Aggie has used this approach to work through many scenarios of opposing dynamics which can often times create complexities and complications. She believes having a strong path will provide the opportunity for lasting legacies.

Agatha is married to Craig, has four grown sons, three wonderful daughter-in-law’s and seven beautiful grandchildren. When not working with her family of clients she can be found enjoying time with her family, traveling with her husband, hiking and giving back to the community.

 

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To listen to the EXTRA portion of this show go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

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Virtual Investing Vs. Investing In Your Home Market With Lauren Hardy – Real Estate For Women

 

Everyone dreams of having time with their family while achieving financial freedom and it’s something that virtual investing can make possible. As a single mom, Lauren Hardy doesn’t want to have a corporate job either. Instead, she wants to control her time and freedom while still providing for her kids. Having her career evolved in many different ways, she dives deep into how you could earn income in real estate investing by closing deals at home. In this episode, she joins Moneeka Sawyer to discuss flipping houses, virtual investing, and investing in your home market. What do you base your decisions on regarding which markets to enter into? Listen to Lauren Hardy as she shares a lot of valuable insights on business growth and practices that would help you reach success!

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Virtual Investing Vs. Investing In Your Home Market With Lauren Hardy – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show, Lauren Hardy. Lauren is a real estate investor with a people-first approach to business. Investing in hundreds of properties in her career, Lauren has the unique reputation of being a successful virtual investor, having not lived in many of the states that she’s invested in. Lauren has been able to persevere in extremely competitive markets by constantly following the market changes and being flexible and willing to move market territories when needed. She currently lives in Southern California with her two daughters but invests in properties all over the country.

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Lauren, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

I’m so delighted. Lauren has been so kind and patient. We’ve been trying to get her scheduled for over a year. I’m so excited. It’s finally happened. Lauren, could you tell us a little bit about your story like the two-minute high-level version of why you are doing what you are doing?

I’m a single mom of two girls. My big why is I did not want a corporate job. I did not want to have to go in and clock in and clock out and have my time controlled by someone else. I learned very early on when my daughter was first born that this whole parenting thing is pretty tough. It is very hard when you have two parents that have corporate jobs. What do you do when your kid is sick? It so happened that I had one of those babies that got sick every 2 or 3 weeks. It seemed like the universe was telling me that one of us needed to have a more flexible career to take care of this child, then fast forward, I had another baby.

Chase lifestyle design and freedom to have an enriched life. Share on X

If you want to go even more, fast forward, I’m now a single mom. I knew early on there was something telling me you need to be able to work from home and have a flexible schedule. I was willing to do anything. I didn’t care what the job was and what the business was. I would do it as long as I could work from home. It so happened that my brother started flipping houses and he was having some success in it. I’ll take you guys back. It was 2012, and he said, “You should look into this because you only have to flip a couple of homes. You’ll make your salary that you’re making now and you can stay home with the kids.” I thought it sounds good. That was my start and that is my why that I’ve always chased time, freedom, lifestyle, design.

I’m obsessed with lifestyle, design, and living a very good enriched life. I don’t necessarily need a rich life and aspire to make tons of money, although that’s great. For me, it was time and freedom. That was my number one why. My career has evolved in many different ways. It started out as house flipping. I got into some ground-up development projects and then I got into wholesaling. Right now, my investment company is more based on volume wholesaling. I wholesale properties outside of my market territory, so not in California. I do it out-of-state and my career has evolved. I coach virtual wholesaling. That’s what I’m known for. That is a high level of what my business is all about.

Lauren, that was unbelievable. You said many magical things. I want to highlight a couple of things for you that Lauren said so eloquently but you may not have caught. First of all, she talked about having an enriched life rather than a rich life. Did you catch that? That is how I live, too. There’s so much of the time people are like, “I got to be rich.” If you’re only got to be rich, there’s no way to know when enough is enough or when your life has reached that place where now you get to relax.

Now you get to reap the benefits and you get to go out there and focus more on what you are going to do out there in the world or what you are going to do from your family rather than chasing the dollar. Something that’s key for us women is we get caught up in this male-competitive like it’s never enough. What’s next? You never want to stop striving to be the best version of yourself, but the best version of you doesn’t necessarily mean the richest you could possibly be.

I love the way that Lauren has talked about, “I don’t need to be super-rich,” but she needs to make sure she can take care of her kids and herself and, obviously, put her kids through college and retire. She’s got this plan. She didn’t talk about it, but we can all make that those assumption, I’m sure. It’s all about the enriched life. It’s not about, “How much money can I make?” The second thing is, normally, when I ask people to give me their high-level story, they start from the very beginning and move to now.

What Lauren did, and I want you to capture this in your heart, is she started with her why because our why is the secret to our life. It’s a secret here business and to your success. Without even thinking about it, she led with that because that’s what drives her and it’s an amazing driver. If we understand our why, we will never stop doing the things that will help us to achieve ours why no matter how bad we feel in the morning, no matter what challenges we come up against, because that’s how business is.

 

Nothing in life is a cakewalk. Things happen, but that why is going to be the thing that draws your heart forward and keeps you moving even when they’re in challenges. Lauren, first of all, I want to say thank you so much for that incredibly eloquent story and the way that you led us through so much learning by being who you are.

You’re welcome.

Now, let’s talk about how do you know which markets to enter into. What do you base these decisions on?

I have a lot of experience jumping in and out of markets. The markets change depending on what’s going on in the economy and your particular market. I have been in different types of markets. I live in Southern California. The average house price here is around $850,000, so not cheap. It’s very expensive. I’m in a very high price market where I live. However, this market was amazing during the recession. During the recession, you could get amazing deals on real estate here and it wasn’t that difficult. Anybody who wanted to be a house flipper could be one. Here around 2012, 2011 and before, but things changed.

The real estate market got very hot throughout the country, especially in these high prices, major metros. It became difficult to do this business here in Southern California. Your market could be amazing for the time being then you might have some situation that makes it change and you need to be flexible. I don’t know if you’ve read the Who Moved My Cheese? book, but I like to make that reference if anybody has read the book. My cheese moved around 2016. The real estate market got hot and it became very hard to find a flip project here. I had to find another market or I had to get a full-time job. It was one or the other.

How do you know where a good market is? If you’re asking me, the major metros are pretty tough. A lot of people are crying in the major metro saying, “There are no deals,” but do you know where I hear there are still deals? It’s 30 minutes out from the major metro where people are commuting. Maybe they have jobs in the major metro, but they have to commute. That will change with time, like if there is some distress and if the bubble bursts, who knows what’s going to happen in the future? If the real estate market starts to go down again, the major metros might be hot again or it might be easy to do real estate.

You need to follow market trends and you need to stay relevant and on top of it. One of my favorite ways to stay relevant is networking with people in the market you’re in and asking them, “Are you picking up good deals? Is it getting harder? What’s your marketing cost to get your deals? Has it increased? Have your wholesale fees gone up or down?” Those are good questions to ask. Hopefully, I answered that question. Probably I think I answered a lot of questions in that.

You did. Are you doing wholesale in these markets? Tell me specifically why 30 minutes out of the main metros? Let me clarify why I’m asking that question. What we’ve seen is that there are a lot of people that have moved out of the metros because of the pandemic. They feel like, “I want a bigger home and more space.” I’m noticing that’s happening. I’m also noticing that a lot of them are assuming that they can work at home still and we don’t know how that’s going to change.

In my area, we’re not seeing 30 minutes. Thirty minutes out from the metro is still the same price as San Jose. You might see a $50,000 drop. I’m in the San Jose area. Our median price is $1.2 million, just so you know. Lauren and I are in tough markets but in my market, you don’t see price drops until about an hour out. Is that a loose guideline? Talk to me a little bit more about that.

It’s a very loose guideline. I did not realize you lived in Northern California. I have a lot of Northern California students that come to me and they completely leave the state. It’s insane. It depends on what kind of investing strategy. I know there are buy and hold audiences on this show, probably, or people that are interested in wholesaling and flipping. It depends on your investment strategy but if you are in an area that is very high priced, you might want to consider going completely out-of-state. I have a price point sweet spot that I like right now. Again, all of this stuff changes. This is in 2021, but I’m saying a year from now, who knows?

Anybody who wanted to be a house flipper could be one. Share on X

What I’ve noticed, in my experience with being in different markets, trying different markets out, being successful in some of them, not as much in others and also having a lot of students and hearing their feedback is, when the average price point is above $200,000, you are dealing with a different type of seller. There are so many places. This is probably hard for you to realize and me at one point because we’re from California worth $200,000, “What? Is there an area of California where there are prices under 200,000?” No, probably not. It would be difficult to find, but there are plenty of areas in the United States where the average house price is under $200,000. What I’ve noticed is when prices get above $200,000, you’re dealing with a different type of seller. There’s less seller distress in the price point of above $200,000.

Sellers are usually savvier. They have more options and don’t get themselves in as much trouble. They don’t have as many problems for us to solve. As real estate investors, we are problem solvers. We’re looking for homes that we can add value. Usually, these houses are deferred in their maintenance. There’s a type of seller that gets themselves in that situation. The first baseline I want to get you started with is looking at price points in the area. Hands down, anybody I’ve spoken with that their average price point is above $200,000. I start hearing cries of, “There are no deals in this area.” If you’re in an area like San Jose, where you’re even 30 minutes out, you’re still talking $800,000. That’s completely different.

I’m saying find an area that’s even further out until you start seeing that price point. Now, we’re talking. Even so, say an area in a major metro like Oklahoma City or Indianapolis, for example. Atlanta, Georgia, is a beautiful example as well. Your average house price point is around $200,000 or lower. They meet that price point but because of market saturation within the metro from other investors doing the same types of marketing techniques, they are competing after the same homes. That’s what I mean by going 30 minutes out of Atlanta. You’ll notice there are a lot less investors willing to go 30 minutes out.

They’re still very hung up on the major metro, so you might have better luck out there for now. If the market cools down and there’s more distressed inventory, think back to 2011 when you could even go probably to San Jose. I know in Orange County, you could go to the Trustee Sales. They are auctioning houses out to whoever will take them. We’ll be back in those major metros because there’s more inventory, but right now, inventory is low in those major metros. You need to start thinking about going outside of them.

The price point that you’re looking for is under $200,000. Is that true?

Yes.

Talk to us a little bit about how you market to these people that you’ve never met and you’re probably never going to meet them.

Direct to seller marketing is my specialty. I’ve never purchased an investment property off the MLS to date, and it’s been many years. I learned direct to seller marketing. That’s all I know. I don’t know how to work with realtors. I started the business out when direct mail was the thing to do. I’ve done direct mail for many years, but I do other stuff. We do cold calling and mass text messaging.

I got into TV ads, and that’s been exciting. I’m doing all direct to seller stuff. I’ve done some online like Google Ad Words and Facebook Ads as well. I wouldn’t say it’s my specialty. I’m not a big fan of that marketing method and I’ve got a bunch of reasons why. I don’t focus on that as much, but I still find that cold calling, mass texting and the TV Ads are working well and direct mail as well.

Do you need boots on the ground, people and how do you find them?

You definitely need people in your corner in the market that you’re in. I have my team, I call them a runner, a very crucial person that you can hire there. It’s not that hard to find and basically, that means an errand-runner. I made up that term. What that person does is they run all the errands that I would have run if I was at that local market. If you need to buy a property and take photos, that’s your runner’s job. I pay them around $20 an hour. I find that type of person on Craigslist. It’s a super easy position to fill.

 

It’s usually someone who’s looking to make some extra money on the side. They present themselves well and they’re professional-looking. You want to make sure because this person is representing your company. You want to make sure you interview. You can do a Zoom interview and make sure that they present themselves well. That’s a very important boots-on-ground person that you need. What I recommend is when you start in a virtual market, to team up with another investor that is doing what you’re trying to do and do a few deals with them at first.

Maybe do your first 5 to 10 deals with that partner. I called this partner a JV partner, which means Joint Venture partner. I’m big on teaming up, partnering, and collaborating at first because you’re going to cut your learning curve. Every market has nuances that you don’t understand until you’re in it for six months. A good way to cut those six months in half or more is having that JV partner who can explain those nuances to you right then and there, and you learn them quicker. If it was just you figuring out those nuances on your own, it could take quite a long time, so I do recommend JV partnering as well as. It’s like a crucial boot on the ground you need to have.

How do you find a JV partner in that market?

I love Facebook and REIAs, the Real Estate Investment Associations that are local in the area. You can ask, “I’m looking to partner on a deal who is actively wholesaling in this area.” Tag a friend or somebody that you know. I’ve gotten all of my JVs mainly from Facebook and then word of mouth. You maybe talk to someone and ask them like, “Do you know anyone? Do you know a wholesaler who’s active?” It’s wholesaling specifically, getting on other wholesaler’s buyer’s lists, and see who’s producing a lot of deals every month, then get on the phone and talk to them about being a partner.

I’m sure you interview them to make sure that you’re aligned and they’ve got a good reputation and all of that stuff. Is that true?

One hundred percent. Alignment is important because you can get a bad JV partner for sure. Ask if they know what they’re doing, but they don’t. That’s a common one. They aren’t doing that many deals in the area, but they are excited so they say they are. I always say do Goldilocks and the three bears like, “Do you know if this one is too hot, too cold, or if this one is right.” I tell my students personally, “Take a week to find that. Maybe it’s not one person or there are three people that you want to work with and try out.”

Sometimes, a JV partner may be good at one niche like they can sell one type of house and have these types of buyers, but they don’t have others. They don’t have a variety of buyers on their list. That’s why you might want to have maybe 2 or 3 that you work with and spend time trying to find that 2 or 3. Call twenty-plus of them, have a lot of conversations and you’ll have that feeling of, “This one is just right.” After you talked to enough of them, you’ll know who stood out to you.

Do you go into several different markets? For instance, if you’re wholesaling, do you go into one market and hang out there? How many deals in that market before you move to another market? How does that work for you?

Bouncing in and out of markets is a very hard thing to pull off. Every market has nuances. I always say it takes six months to figure a market out. I don’t bounce around. Where I have moved is when a market got too competitive. If my marketing cost to get one deal was starting to get way too high, I might move markets but knowing that I’m going to stay in that market for a while. I have had moments where I’ve tried markets out and it didn’t feel like the ones I’ve been successful in, I’ve moved out of them maybe after a month.

I’ve done that before, but it’s not something I recommend. I don’t recommend jumping in and out and trying to be in five markets at once. Every market is its own baby. You need to think of it as a baby, nourish it and spend time with it. If you’re going to open up a new market, plan on not making any money for six months and focusing on it. You don’t want to take away from your market that’s producing well. You want to make sure that if you are in one market and you’re doing well but maybe you want to expand, you want to make sure that the market that you’re doing well in is still churning and burning and you’ve got someone managing it so you can take your focus onto building out the new one.

Try to test different markets in your real estate business. Share on X

I love that and I love this focus. Again, this are little gems by Lauren. She says there’s one market that’s performing, but she knows it’s time to move, so she’s got someone managing one and she’s focusing on the other one. This is true on so many levels in life. If you got a W-2 job and you want to become a real estate investor, you don’t quit your W-2 job and become an investor because there’s lag time. There’s a learning curve and lead times. It’s not just this strategy is every strategy. Many of what Lauren is saying is so valuable in so many different strategies. You want to make sure you’re not freaked out and making bad decisions because you don’t have cashflow coming in.

Some people are like, “Burn your bridges and you’ll be highly motivated,” and you’ll be freaked out and you could make bad decisions. It’s better if you can do a transition, have a transition time and plan it rationally so that you’ve got some time to create success. That’s cool. Thank you, Lauren. Lauren and I are going to talk to you about the four key performance indicators that you should be tracking that she tracks.

However, we’re out of time on this portion of the show. We are going to bump that to EXTRA. She says that she can do a nice deep dive on what are the key performance indicators that she tracks and you should be tracking. As we’re going to close out this show, there’s a couple of questions I have for you. First, are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

I am.

Lauren, tell us one super tip on getting started in real estate investing.

I think I already dropped the super tip. I’m sorry if I spoiled it, but I do recommend aligning yourself with a partner. Go into this saying, “I am going to partner with somebody for my first 5 to 10 deals.” That’s a big mistake I made. If I were to put some time, I wish that I didn’t have such an ego and I would have partnered for my first two years. When I first got started, it was 2012, it was an amazing time to be a house flipper but I didn’t know it because I didn’t have experience and hindsight. I didn’t know much about real estate in general. Had I known what I know now, I wish I would have partnered with someone that was doing a very high volume of flips in my area. I would have 50/50 gone in with them and done way more flips and made way more money because I would’ve had them with me.

Part of it is the courage aspect. I don’t want to generalize, but I do feel what I’ve noticed with myself being a female and even some of my female students is we have a fear. We have a little bit more sometimes of a heightened fear response. Flipping is scary. Real estate investing can be scary. It can be intimidating. If I would have had a partner that was maybe ten years ahead of me and would have been like trailblazing with me, I would have been like, “They’re my safety blanket. They know what they’re doing and they say it’s a good deal. Let’s do it.” I didn’t have that person. It was all me and I was doing a lot less than I was capable of, honestly. That’s my big tip. Get a partner.

I’ve got a partner, too, but one thing that I want to say is mentorship is key. Getting a partner is unbelievably important. However, do your due diligence on each of those projects. In your case, maybe someone would have brought you a lot of good stuff. They had ten years of experience, but that’s still no guarantee of success in the next project on the one that you’re going to be involved in.

You do your due diligence on the project, you find out why they think it’s a good deal, and you can take a look at it and see why you think it’s a good deal or not because that tightens your learning curve even more. Now you’re fully engaged, you have this trust factor, got some person to bounce some stuff off of, and somebody mentoring you, you’re also learning how to do your due diligence, which was helpful, too. I love that tip. What is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

Something that I’ve done and I do well is make friends. Having friends in my back pocket in every niche of real estate investing has been so rewarding. It’s been nice. Anytime I’m struggling with an aspect of my business, I know whom to call. They say your network is your net worth. I thought that quote was cheesy, but it is a little bit true. I literally can pick up my phone if there’s ever a problem. I have somebody in my phone that I can call and figure it out, so make friends.

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

I discovered this little hack and it’s made a big difference in my life. I don’t do it every day, but I do it as often as I can think to do it. I would say this is more of a mindfulness strategy. I like to write down a list of what’s going well and what is not working. What’s working? What’s not working? I’ll then write on a piece of paper. I get my yellow pad out. I never leave it anywhere, by the way. This yellow pad is here next to me. First, I want to express gratitude and I want to say what’s going well because I think it’s important to acknowledge what you’ve accomplished that’s going well like, “Good job. You solve that problem.” It was a problem. You solved it. Now, it’s going well.

 

Sometimes, this has a lot to do with lifestyle design. A lot of it is my kids. Maybe their schools are not working out or are working out if we’re talking going well. I love their school. Their days there are great. Their campus has been amazing. The routine is going well. You want to list everything that is going well in your life. It’s important to express some gratitude, but then I turn it over and I write, “What needs work?”

I brain-dump the stuff that I’m feeling the weight. If I’m feeling something is broken, what are the things that are broken that we can fix? Every time you look at that list, you might start noticing correlations. Sometimes you’ve got five things, but they’re all related to your commuting too much. You’re driving too much in the car. Maybe you’re feeling tired. You have a lot of brain fog. You’re having a hard time staying focused or your diet. You start realizing like, “How can I fix this? What tools do I need to fix these problems?”

From there, I start writing out possible solutions. Sometimes those possible solutions are things that I can immediately do now. Sometimes, it’s letting go of a bad employee that’s draining everybody on the team or the possible solution is hiring a coach of some kind. You need mentorship and coaching. Maybe it’s getting a new doctor, whatever it is. This is a pretty big step, but it made such a big difference. Because of COVID, my kids’ school got distance learning.

I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t handle the responsibilities of being a business owner and being a home mom. One day, all my problems are all my things that were going wrong were related to that. I picked up the phone that day and called every private school that I knew was open and got them into private school the next week and stress lifted. I love that daily practice. I think everybody would benefit from doing it.

I have a million things I want to say but this is your spot, so I’m not going to say anything, but that was amazing. I’ve enjoyed talking to Lauren. I hope you’ve enjoyed, too. We talked a little bit about what’s going on and there have been some transitions in her company. Lauren, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of this show. This has been amazing.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s nice to be on a show that’s also female-focused. It’s hard because I feel like we are in a very male-dominated industry, so it’s always fun to collaborate with other working women. It’s exciting, honestly. I love what you’re doing.

My pleasure, Lauren. Ladies, Lauren has got more for us. We’re going to be talking about the four KPIs that she focuses on in her markets and that you should too when you’re looking at markets outside of your home area. Stay tuned for that. That is going to be on EXTRA. If you are not subscribed to EXTRA but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. The first seven days are free so check it out.

Of course, if you love it, and I hope you will, you will stick with us. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining Lauren and me for this portion of the show. Has it been wonderful? I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are dreams so get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

 

Important Links

• Lauren Hardy
• Who Moved My Cheese?
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com

 

About Lauren Hardy

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