Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books "Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment" and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
There are a lot of different asset classes available for real estate investors, but there is one asset class that has yet to be tapped fully. That asset is senior living. In this episode, Moneeka Sawyer talks to the founder and CEO of Touzi Capital, Eng Taing and they discuss senior living. Eng also talks about how to keep more of your earnings using the tax code. Listen in and learn more on senior living assets in this episode.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Senior Living As An Real Estate Investment With Eng Taing
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am so excited to welcome to the show, Eng Taing, CEO and Founder of Touzi Capital and highly experienced real estate investor with $100 million in assets under management. He works hard to help people reach their full potential. He’s an economist by training from the Wharton School of Business. He also experienced leading data science and analytics at Apple, Capital One, and AT&T. He applies that experience when identifying and underwriting investment opportunities and markets. He has presented at companies like Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, where he teaches employees how to minimize their tax burden and keep and invest more of their earnings so they can achieve financial freedom.
Touzi Capital is a real estate investment company focused on investing in Kansas City who believe that your money should work for you. Touzi Capital has been investing in commercial real estate for many years and trust that this is one of the best ways to predictably build wealth through passive income. Touzi Capital focuses on high cashflow investments and providing passive income to investors by acquiring and optimizing multifamily, industrial, and senior living assets. In doing this, they want to make a real estate investing accessible for the everyday investor through a technology and data-driven platform along with our dedicated team that puts you first. Eng, welcome to the show.
What a mouthful. I don’t even know who wrote that.
Talk to us a little bit about your real estate journey. You went to Wharton Business School and then you moved into real estate. Tell me how that worked out for you.
I would love to take a little step back to my formative years and highlight why I got into real estate. It’s probably why it’s more important thing for me. I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. My parents were Cambodian and we escaped the Khmer Rouge. I have lots of interesting stories of hiding in jungle and laws and out of hiding and keeping out. Those are some pretty terrible stuff. It’s more of my parents’ story. I did grow up in LA and I grew up poor.
I grew up with not having much, but I grow up lucky of having been growing up in America, being fortunate enough to be good at math and to have a family that put a roof over my head to not see what I didn’t have, and to have enough hunger to drive me. It’s been my biggest why and hopefully, that’s a lot of your audiences’ big why to help provide security, financial freedom in whatever form that means to your family. That’s been my biggest driver.
When I started to get good at math, I gravitated towards invest in banking because that was the thing people did in my age group. Everybody said, “Let’s go do get invest in banking. This makes a bunch of money, being a stock trader, whatever it is.” I did all that. I’m pretty good in math, understanding data patterns. What I found about myself is I did not like the volatility, the up and down, the movement, checking the market. I went to the financial crisis. When you book $4 billion losses in subprime assets, but seeing that side of things and seeing the value of these houses go down, that’s how I first got into my first real estate investment at the young age of 23.
I’m lucky enough to have the capital to deploy at the time. I remember very clearly it was $125,000 investment or purchase price, so $30,000 purchase price of investment to get $1,000 a month in net monthly income. I like that feeling of having predictable monthly income. Obviously, I’m hiding a little bit of like all the things I had to do with painting the house, remodeling it, getting tenants, and tenant issues. In general, that’s how when you come from so little you having a little bit of security gets you a lot of confidence. My story isn’t a story of getting into real estate and doing real estate. I started as someone who have always tried to do a lot of things and had a side passion for real estate and now is about to main passion of my full-time job or my business.
It’s always been a side hustle, and for me, probably like someone else is, you work 9:00 to 5:00 and you buy real estate. For me, having that passive income helped make better decisions. I was able to go to the Peace Corps when everyone in my cohort went to MBA. I met my wife in the Peace Corps. I was able to take bolder career decisions of asking for more, of not having a fear-based life of financial insecurity of saying, “I can’t go for this job or make this offer.”
That helped because I was buying real estate every year and having that little basis of support grow where I know that I didn’t need to have much to survive. Having that on top of everything else I was doing gave me more freedom of choice and urgency. Long story of how all these formative things helped me get into real estate as well as why I’m doing more real estate and why I love preaching the choir of real estate. It’s also very tax advantage. I’ve heard a lot of people invest in real estate and not pay taxes. I love talking about that as well.
I went out to lunch with my mother-in-law and I told her, “I’m not sure what’s going on with me,” but I am getting teary-eyed with everything that’s happening around me. It’s not everything, but things touch me so deeply. I’m not sure what’s going on with that. Hearing your story about being refugee and running to Thailand first and then escaping to the United States. It’s a very similar story of my parents who had to flee from Pakistan during the separation because they were Hindu.
They were being chased with just the clothes on their back. They ran across the border and stayed. They had these big houses in Pakistan and in India, they had 15 or 18 people living in a dirt floor shack. I know the story. I never had to live it. They came to the United States and then had me. When I hear these stories, you realize how insanely lucky we are here in the United States. What I wish is that people understood that luck and that it did not deter from their drive. How old were you when you moved to LA?
Three years old.
You probably don’t remember too much of that struggle. As little people, we still get the subconscious impact of that, but your parents brought you here and they had this drive. They wanted to create safety for you and you got to see that, and then that helped you to build that drive. Sometimes, those of us that come from immigrant families have this huge advantage of understanding what it could be like if we were not here and we didn’t have this opportunity. That touched me and I wanted to say thank you for sharing that story.
That was the purpose of sharing the story. I love to share my story. My story is my parents’ story. My story is a lot of people’s stories, of not just immigrants or refugees, but of people who don’t have much but still, I fully believe it’s a lot of mindsets and having that mindset to be grateful for what you have, for what you can have, for your health, for all the stuff. My son, Aiden, is probably going to grow very spoiled. I’m trying to figure it out. I don’t know how to not spoil him. I want him to have fun, too. I want to buy him a lot of toys, but I have pictures of me at his age chasing chickens in a camp, so different journey.
Senior Living: Having that passive income will really help you actually make better decisions.
You’re right that mindset is everything. You got a mindset from your parents and you’ve inherited and developed your own mindset. That mindset will then hopefully impact us. It will impact your children, and it impacts the world around you. Everything that we do is done through the filters of our own eyes that are affected by our own mind. If you come from a filter of gratitude, everything that you see will be of gratitude and living that life helps our children to understand it and see it. My parents, even all they went through, we’re so grateful to be here, for their children, and for their opportunities. That’s a big reason why I’m so grateful for everything, too. I totally understand what you’re saying. That mindset piece is huge. I’m sure no matter how spoiled your little one is, he will get that from you, too. He might be chasing chickens, but he might be doing it at the park.
That’s what rich people in San Francisco didn’t know, they just buy a chicken coop. It’s a sign of affluence. I got chickens and fresh grown eggs.
It has come full circle. How interesting is that? It’s not just an immigrant mindset. Thank you for emphasizing that. There are a lot of people that come from a place where they are not very privileged or they had very little, or they were in bad circumstances. Through the change of their mindset through drive, through being able to have a vision of what might be possible, they’re able to overcome that and create a life of freedom and choice. I released my TEDx Talk, which is called, Who is the Boss of You? It’s all about economic freedom to give you choice. We’re on the same way of laying about that. Let’s talk about real estate specifically. Talk to me about your favorite asset class.
I’ve gravitated towards senior living as a great asset class. For those who don’t know, senior living has many varieties to it, nursing homes, independent living, adult 55 plus, and assisted living. I was fairly in the middle of assisted living, where folks, elders, residents, and they had the greatest generation and they contribute so much to this country. They’re 85 plus. I love to invest in places where you have strong fundamentals and asset class is coming from those. That means there’ll be a lot more old people in the future. That’s the demographic shift that is known quantity in America, the silver tsunami, the growth of this aging population that will need more care, that would need more better communities and better facilities to take care of them.
Why I love this asset class, and I’ll compare this to multifamily because I do have both. It’s both business as well as real estate. Real estate has so many great intangibles, renting, we have depreciation, you have to leverage, all these things that real estate gives you. You also have a business which essentially for us is an all-inclusive resort where our rents are typically five times the amount that you would pay for a comparable apartment.
You have $500 revenue, but you have three times the costs, and that comes from making sure that you have three meals a day, and all the stuff. It’s by creating community. I love thinking about creating community and how we can give our seniors the best community as these are their retirement years. These are the years that they funded and they will stay for probably their entire lives. What I like to compare to multifamily is that typically, three years is the average length of stay. Once you get somebody in, they’re staying for a while, and because we do private pay, not Medicaid or Medicare, we know that they can afford these things three-ish years, and overall, they are income resistant.
In the pandemic, you can lose job, you might lose your income, you might be on unemployment. Our tenants are, I would like to call, recession resilient. They don’t have an income. They have the money ready. The pipe put that out from the funds. They’re using this for the last remaining years of making sure they’re in a great place. I’ve gotten deep into senior living. The reason why I got into senior living is because I love cashflow. I invest with cashflow and I’ve been investing in California until it didn’t make sense. I’m always a nimble and flexible person. I don’t want to be, “This is what I’m doing. I will only do that. I’m never going to do anything else.”
While you will learn expertise in that thing, but if the market shift, if California gets more expensive, which it had, if it gets more regulated and my control which it has, and if multifamily becomes more expensive, which it has, then I can’t get to think the cashflow that I’m used to. I’m spoiled. I like spoiling myself with double-digit cashflow, and I’ll invest this as well. I will chase after good asset classes that there’s a good moat around.
When I started, I bought something. We’re very approachable to people, because I was like, “I didn’t have any guidance of how to buy real estate.” I said, “Let me look on this site which they didn’t have sites back then, and figure out what to buy, and do the math myself.” I was pretty good at math. I can figure it out. If more people can do what you’re doing, that means the return sounds good. It’s going to be more competitive. What you want to do is get to more uncompetitive areas where you can create a moat of competitive advantage, and senior living is a huge moat. No one’s going to go figure it out like, “I want to invest in senior living nowadays.”
Hopefully after this show, maybe some of your audience will, but it’s a great moat. Lots of people in the space, but not as many as it should be. Lots of communities that are thriving even during COVID. When I think about what I wanted to continue to do from investing overall is I just love investing in cashflow. I say cashflow risk appreciation even though all my LLS is half-appreciated. This is what happens to assets, especially when the government prints a of money.
I like it because I can get that money now and then compound it or invest in many different things. When you invest for appreciation, you’re planting a tree and then it becomes a big tree. That’s very risky if you just have gone through, but when you’re investing for cashflow, I like to think of that you’re planting tree and you got a forest. You can invest all the cashflow into many different things, and having high cashflow, double digit, meaning if you put $100,000, you get $1,000 a month. That gives you freedom to do a lot of different things.
That also gives you a lot of buffers because if you’re just investing for appreciation, I don’t want to say negative, but others have investments because they can do both. That’s money that you got to put into it every month. If you lose your job, you might not have that cashflow from that property to cover the debt. Cashflow investing for me is always a big buffer of safety. I’m always thinking of like, “How conservative, how safe can it be, and how much money can this investment make, so that it pays for itself and pays for all my other investments?”
For senior living, I love the way that you talked about that, and I talk a little bit about California is an appreciation market. Usually, you’re going to have negative cashflow, which is now everybody’s like, “It’s the bad word. Don’t do that.” When you have an appreciation market, you’re usually not going to have any cashflow, sometimes you’ll break even. If you hold for a while maybe, but there are different ways of investing and it is good to consider those different like what are your goals and to pick a strategy accordingly.
I love that you’re so clear on exactly what you were wanting. Talk to me a little bit about with senior living homes, what I have heard, because I’ve looked a little bit into it. I’m very curious about it. I’ve got a lot of elderly family members that have been in homes. I hear a lot about insurance issues, not insurance like medical insurance, but insurance as un insuring the home. It’s its own big thing that none of the other asset classes have. Have you found that to be a particularly big challenge? What do you think about that?
I think of it as an added cost, which baked into the revenue and your NOI and your OPEX expense are baked into it. It has more costs at three times costs. You have licenses you have to get. Oftentimes not medical license, but when you open anything to have a license, make sure that we’re building single-story community where typically, we have 80 to 90 people in the community. We have many different layers of liability protection. Both from having insurance, which can be costly, but speaking to the cost, to also a management company.
Senior Living: Get to more uncompetitive areas where you can create a moat of competitive advantage. Senior living is a huge moat. No one’s going to go figure it out.
We either own or a third party, which would have the liability of all the HR because it’s a people business. It’s having people and taking care of people. You want that liability off your investment. You have three entities when you’re investing in senior living versus when you have multifamily, you might just invest in your own name. You may have a real insurance. You could do an LLC, but in California, it’s $18,000 a year.
It’s a little bit more complicated, but it’s just part of once you get to know that business, you know how to handle those things.
I love complicated things. I love to figure it out and then maybe someone else won’t do it because it’s complicated. If they don’t do it, there’ll be more for me. That’s great.
There are two other questions I wanted to ask you. First of all, I do want to talk about opportunity zones and how that fits into this. I know that we’re going to talk more about that in EXTRA so we will get there. The other question is, do you invest in homes and take other people’s money to invest in them? For instance, if I wanted to invest in senior living but didn’t want to have to learn all that stuff, can I do it through you?
That’s exactly what we do. Thanks for bringing that up because I will say all these complicated things and hopefully you do something. One of the things you could do is at least know that Touzi Capital, I’m here to provide you an option to invest with us and participate in the same cashflow that I’ve been talking about. The same stuff without us having to sign a loan, without having to get an insurance, or having any liability, because you’re not even on any of the paperwork and in the liability business that we take care of everything. That’s all the headaches of hiring people and all that stuff we’re taking care of and we’re doing this at scale so that when you’re doing anything ten times, you get better. It’s something that I appreciate myself. I love to have anyone potentially participate in investing with us and growing with us.
Thank you for that. Ladies, we will be asking him how to get in touch with you with him, that’s one of those things you might want to talk to him about it. If you have an interest in senior living homes instead of learning the whole game, you can have a piece of your investment portfolio with him and make income passively. That’s a possibility, too. Talk to me a little bit about opportunity zones. We’re going to do the deep dive in EXTRA about this, but just give us a little high level, because I know that several of your properties are in opportunity zones. Is that true?
We’re developing two properties in opportunity zones. One is in Jacksonville. We’re breaking ground. I’m going to be flying over soon to the ribbon cutting ceremony, wearing these hard hats, and the state senators and congressmen around finding jobs. I love opportunity zones and what it represents. What it represents is a new law that was passed during the Trump tax cuts, where if you know the letter of the law or the tax code, you can reduce your taxable income.
What that means is you can keep more your earnings. Ladies and gentlemen, you work hard for your money, keep more your money. Use all the things that all the rich, relative people, and investor class use all day. Opportunity zones are great because for my audience, we have a lot of folks who have a lot of stocks. I come from Apple and they make a lot of money from stocks.When you sell stocks, you have to pay capital gains. In fact, we can sell almost any asset for capital gains. That capital gain is taxed, and for opt-ins, it’s the first class of investment that you can essentially say, “I’m not going to pay that, not now.” Pay that later, put that money into an opportunity zone. If you owed $100,000 of taxes on capital gains, don’t pay that, pay that later.
We defer taxes all the time. That’s a great strategy. That’s all real estate. That’s what people mostly do at real estate. You need the 401(k) because you want to defer taxes in the future. You defer taxes for six years, so not too long, and then you reduce it by 10% and then you hold it for ten years. It’s quite a while for any real estate investment.All future capital gains get eliminated. The $130,000 change, you’re not doing all of that. Compare to a non-optimized investment, and I do have both. If given the same number of returns, say 12% of each annual returns, the options I would give you more than 50% more money at the end, because you would have free money going in and free money going out.
Like a rough of 401(k), I can go into detail on that, too, but if you can, don’t pay taxes. We can do that, even if you’re a W-2 employee, if you’re working hard, there are many ways if you’re investing in money, investing in opportunities and in places that the government is saying, “Invest in this place, you would get a great tax benefit,” and these places sometimes are great places to build senior living communities.
You totally piqued my interest. I would like to do a deep dive on that in EXTRA where you can talk a little bit more about how that works, because you do the high level, like I asked. I want to hear more about that exactly how that works. Ladies, we’ll be talking about that and EXTRA, so stay tuned for that. Before we go to our three Rapid-fire questions, tell everybody how they can reach you.
You can reach me at our website, TouziCapital.com and reach me at my email [email protected]. I am always happy to talk about taxes, real estate, or investing about financial freedom. It’s all the things I’m passionate about. I have YouTube videos and TikTok. I got options. I was viral. I don’t know. It’s a million views viral. I love talking about it. What I love about this space compared to everything else I’ve been doing I’ve done a lot is just talking to people. Seeing people in the journey. I’ve learned so much by talking to people. If you’re trying to do anything, this networking and relationship building is key to success.
Get in touch with him. He’s very generously offering some of his time, which not very many people do. Be respectful and kind, and if you’re interested in this topic, give him a call or send him an email. Eng, are you ready for our three Rapid-fire questions?
Yes. Let’s do it.
Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
I hate saying it depends, but what I always say is get started. Do it. I know a lot of people would think and I think too much. I think all the time. I’m a very analytic. Getting started is giving you the best way to learn. It’s like a non-answer, but if you’re short of money, find somebody who has money. If you’re short of time, find someone who has time. Partner with somebody. Those two things, time and money, will allow you to get in real estate. There are so many technologies now in space. Use Redfin, Zillow, all these great applications that I didn’t have when I started. That helps to get into it. Get started. You will fail and learn, it’s all the same. It’s going to be a great training.
Tell us one strategy on being successful in real estate.
Senior Living: Ladies, gentlemen, you work hard for your money, keep more of your money. Use all the things that all the rich and wealthy people and investor class use all day.
The big strategy that I’ve came to is to value your time. At a certain point, your time is worth more than anything. If you don’t value time, then you can create processes or decisions that is going to keep you down in the weeds of Craig Meyer, figuring out how to evict somebody or do this or that. You have to do that in the beginning. If you’re trying to be successful, that means you try and do this a lot.
Not just trying once and get lucky, you try this ten times. Think about what you want to do 5, 10 times over and figure out how to scale. That’s why for me, it’s always been about going up and scaling and knowing that. Multimillion loans are easier than $100,000 loan. I didn’t need to income for it. I need to have tax clearance. Scaling and thinking about how to do things multiple times is always a great strategy to be successful.
Scaling and systems that conserve your time. What is one daily practice you would say contributes to your personal success?
I do fasting. I’m an intimate faster, so that’s a little bit of me not having time and not eating breakfast. I used to eat a lot when I was working at a corporate job and I love having lunches and all that stuff. What I found is there are some great health benefits of fasting for me. Not for everybody. For me, it was giving me a little focus during the day to have a black cup of coffee and then getting my routine, and that helped me focus on the task at hand every day.
Nobody said that on this show. Thank you for that. Eng, this has been fabulous so far. Thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show.
Thanks for having me.
Ladies, we’ve got more. We’re going to be talking about opportunity zones and how they can save you in taxes and capital gains and all that cool stuff. I’m super excited about that. Stay tuned for EXTRA, if you are subscribed and if you are not, but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. You get the first seven days for free, so you can download this one and whatever ones you want to listen to, and just check it out. It’s RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you for joining Eng and I for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just streams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.
Eng is an experienced private fund manager with $100M assets under management. He has 12 years of private market and real estate investing experience and has focused on cash flow investing to create significant passive income. Eng is an economist by training, from the Wharton School of Business. He also has experience leading data science and analytics at Apple, Capital One and AT&T. He applies that experience when identifying and underwriting investment opportunities and markets.
Eng is the classic immigrant story that can only happen in America. He was born in refugee camp in Thailand, where his family escaped the Khmer Rogue from Cambodia. Having grown up in Los Angeles, he pursued economics by day trading and playing Poker to pay for his tuition while attending the University of Pennsylvania. There he trained as an economist and afterwards went into Investment banking. Later he would leave the financial world to join the Peace Corps, volunteering in the Republic of Georgia–a year after the Russian invasion. There he met his wife–Jennie, who was also volunteering abroad. They now have one son, with another on the way.
Eng has presented at companies like Apple, Facebook, & Amazon where he teaches employees how to minimize their tax burden and keep and investing more of their earnings so that they can achieve financial freedom.
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
“I’m rubber, you’re glue. Whatever you say bounce off me and sticks to you.” This is a strong famous saying that you would say towards bullies. This saying is in fact true because people who pass judgment on you are really just troubled people too. They project all their hate towards other people. All you need to do is to be yourself and be strong. Women have been labeled by society for too long and they need to work together to destroy those labels. Join your host Moneeka Sawyer and her guest Colleen Biggs as they discuss what it means to be a strong female leader. Colleen is the founder of Lead Up for Women. She believes that life is about thriving and not simply surviving.
Learn how to accept yourself and discover your inner strength.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Be Yourself: How To Lead With Who You Are With Colleen Biggs – Real Estate For Women
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am excited to welcome to the show, Colleen Biggs. She strives to reach all women through influence to engage the understanding that in order to have and do anything in life that you desire, you must first show up. She survived in early childhood of chaos, loss and abuse. It was through these trials that she gained the clarity to understand the magnitude of loving others unconditionally and realizing the power of community.
She is an inspiration to others by helping them realize their worth, gain clarity and show up. She believes that life is about thriving and not simply surviving. She has extensive success and experience in Corporate America for over 30 years, coaching over 300 CEOs, franchising, voluntary, national and local community service and numerous project launches.
She has served as a director for her church and organized women’s retreats and local girls camps as well as serves on several advisory boards. She loves the successful business, Lead Up for Women. Lead Up for Women is an elite community of like-minded women driven by passion, power and purpose. She has a weekly podcast and interviews powerful leaders weekly to inspire, educate and motivate on Lead Up for Women: Speak Up to Lead Up. She is an author to the number one bestselling international book, The Anatomy of Accomplishment and publishes a biweekly magazine. Colleen, welcome to the show.
It’s very interesting when someone reads your bio because you get to hear about all your accomplishments, but then you think back like, “Yeah.” I’ve modified my bio and I’ve done all these other amazing things since then. It’s amazing to me when we listen to someone read back what our accomplishments have been and who we are.
I feel the same way. It feels like every week. There’s something new that I would have changed or added or adjusted, but it’s also fun to see where we’ve been and where we’ve come to. It’s totally awesome. Talk to me a little bit about why this topic is so important to you.
The topic for showing up for women really leaning into who they’re meant to be is huge to me because I have seen many women for so long, including myself hide behind these shields or in these cloaks that we put on. The problem is they’re heavy. Picture yourself in this shield or a cloak, and we lock ourselves in what we would call a cage of our disbeliefs of who we think we are based on the labels that we’ve allowed others to place on us. What we haven’t realized is a handle has been on the inside the entire time, and it takes our power to turn the handle and to walk out. For me, I struggled in Corporate America because I was a very dominant personality.
I’m a very atypical personality, but I love other people and I want to help other people. Even to my own detriment sometimes, and I couldn’t deal with some of the females as I was climbing the corporate ladder that didn’t feel that way. It was all about competition and judgment. I realized that if women are going to get ahead, we want to power through, create these paths and trailblaze for women that are coming behind us, and we want to be with the women of history that make change, we must band together and help each other show up.
Be Yourself: It is your responsibility to be a leader in our families, communities, and our careers. If you’re not leading, then who’s leading?
What would you say all about this showing-up thing that you would want to share with women that we could make all the difference for them?
There’s only one you. There will only ever be one you. How you pioneer your future is up to you. No one is coming to give you permission to be who it is that you want to be, and we all know who that is inside. We all know who we were meant to be and who we love to be. I say hang out with your most favorite girlfriend that makes you feel like the best you’ve ever felt.
The one that you can always be yourself around and figure out what is it about that moment that makes you feel free. Why are you holding back in the other areas of your life and not bringing her forward? Women already control the global economy. We have so much power, and I won’t even get into how much power we have over men because my husband looks at me and says, “Women have so much power over men. It’s ridiculous.”
We all know why we have so much power over men, but we just need to believe in ourselves. By women showing up, she’s raising the next generation. If she’s not giving herself permission to authentically show up as herself, she’s not giving that gift to her children to authentically show up as themselves. That’s going to be a domino effect if we’re not working on the women now to helping them show up and shine their lights bright.
You said something that was like, “We’ve got this door in our way, but the handle is on the inside.” I love this imagery of, “I can walk through, I can bring my children through, and I can bring my other women friends through.” We each have the power to open the door for ourselves, also aid those around us that we care about to open the door for and lead them through because there are no closed doors. Figuratively and for the most part, literally, there aren’t closed doors. We do have a path through if we are willing to show up.
I believe it is our responsibility to be a leader in our families, communities, businesses and careers. If we’re not leading, then who’s leading?
We’ve talked about this on this show a lot that there are a lot of women that don’t feel like they’re leaders. We all have different personalities, and some of us are very definitive leadership types. Some of us are much happier being in the backseat or the passenger seat. That’s just the personalities that we have. The truth is no matter where you show up socially or where you’re most comfortable, you are the leader of your life.
You determine if you walk through that door, when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed, and all of these things. If you think you’re not a leader, it’s not true because you do lead yourself. I don’t want to be over-generalizing here, but women do lead in our families and in our communities. That’s a place where we shine. It’s a place where we naturally are drawn to, and it’s a place where we’re looked to for leadership. Just that idea of being the leader, leadership can show up in a lot of different ways but being the leader that you are meant to be is important. Don’t you agree?
Agreed. I met a woman named Tammy in a leadership class I was in, in my community. The first thing she said was, “I’m not a leader.” She didn’t have a job, so she didn’t think she was a leader in her family because she didn’t work in the workforce. We were all like, “What?” She has become this amazing leader in our community. She’s leading her family. She’s helping lead classrooms volunteering. She didn’t understand the definition of what it was to be a leader, so she automatically assumed she wasn’t. You’re right, we lead our own lives and we need to understand how we do that without asking for anyone else’s permission because it’s our life.
Talk to me about a challenge that you’ve been through and what helped you through that?
One of the biggest challenges that I went through was trying to identify where I fit. We all go through this at one point in our life. For me, it came at that point where I became an empty nester, and I had identified as being a mom my entire life. I got married at nineteen. I started having babies at 21. I was a very young mother. I preferred it that way to this day. I still prefer it that way because I have eleven grandkids. I love having this large family and being a very young grandmother, but I identified as a mom.
I had a career. I loved my career, but I didn’t allow my children to pass through me. I allowed them to be me, like identify with me. What that caused was I had this identity as the mother, then when my children grew up and didn’t need me as much, that’s what caused a little bit of the friction because they were off getting all of their friend’s advice and all the other advice, then they grow up and move out. I was super happy when they were growing up and moving out because that’s what I prepared them for, but I do remember sitting on the couch and I looked at my husband and said, “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
It’s because I’m used to being with my kids and taking them places and identifying with my children, and I didn’t know where my place was. I think we all struggle with this. We’re not sure where to show up. I was showing up for my family every day, but we need to remember that we have to show up for us, and I neglected that for a long time. Even though I would run marathons or do things for me, I didn’t know what my favorite color was or my favorite food was. I was eating fish sticks when the kids moved out still. I don’t even like fish sticks.
I’m thinking of all of the things I was doing. I remember my kids when they were younger, I drop them off at daycare, and I would drive the whole way to work listening to Barney. I never even switched it to listen to something I wanted to on the radio, and that’s when you know you’re going that. You’re homie with your kid. Who listens to Barney that long, if anyone can do that from that long ago?
It is crucial because our children watch this more than they listen to us. The more that we’re identifying and sharing that we are an individual, “I am this woman and I’m leading in my family,” they identify that and that will help them as they get older. We need to realize that’s not being selfish. That is about showing up for your children and showing them what a leader you are.
We do model. I think that sometimes, we confuse love with a lack of boundaries. If mom becomes completely identified with me, now we’re the same person. That’s what love looks like. That’s when you take out into the world. It’s instead of I’m my own person with boundaries, a capacity to love, but that capacity to love is filled up by myself because I take good care of myself.
Those are things that a child doesn’t learn unless it’s modeled for them. Then you go out into the real world and you have adult relationships and you’re like, “I wasn’t trained in this. Love looked like this to me.” I love what you’re talking about. It is funny. We think we’re taking care of ourselves. We’re working out, we’re going and getting our spa treatments, or we’re doing our stuff. It’s not all about that stuff, although that’s fantastic and please don’t stop doing it, but who I am is the biggest key to creating that ability to show up fully.
Be Yourself: As a woman, you need to believe that whenever anyone has judgment towards you, it has nothing to do with you. It’s their own self-reflection and it bounces off of you and sticks right back on them.
The one thing that Tammy, my friend, that I said did the best thing for herself was to be part of that leadership class. It brought her the opportunities to be a leader in the community to meet other people to get more involved. That was something that she did to develop her own skills.
Tell us some advice that you got as a younger woman that you wish you had gotten and had to learn the hard way.
You talked about it a little bit in my bio. I had a pretty chaotic childhood. I didn’t get a lot of good advice. I remember my parents once said to me, and maybe you would remember this. I don’t know if your parents shared this with you. Do you remember kids at schools saying, “I’m rubber, you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off and the mean sticks back on you?” We would use that for bullies on recess for us to say, “Whatever you’re name-calling me, it doesn’t stick on me. It goes back to you.”
As I got older and I started doing a lot of self-development studies, I realized how true that was, that as women, we need to believe that whenever anyone has judgment toward us as anything to us, it has nothing to do with us. It never had and it never will. It’s all their own self-reflection. It bounces off of us and sticks right back on them, but yet we allow it to stick on us. We walk around with labels of what we think other people think about us forever, and it just breaks you down. When in truth, that person is struggling with something going on with themselves and they’re projecting that to you.
One thing you can remember walking around that, “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” whatever you say. Whenever anyone says anything bad, you’ve got a review on your book or review on anything online, if someone shouts out a cannon because there’s a lot of keyboard warriors out there, they’re so brave. There’s no need to shoot back at them. Be the humble and the graceful one. When you notice that what they’re saying is about them, you look at the situation with a different heart and a different perspective. Now you feel full of emotion and love for that person versus feeling like they attacked me because that’s how they feel about themselves. It’s very interesting.
When someone says something about us, they’re reflecting what’s going on for them. It’s also true for us. When we are consistently saying something about other people, other things, or the way our life is working, that’s reflecting what’s going on inside of us. It’s as if our life is a movie of what’s happening inside of our mind and our body. Yes, allow people to just be themselves and not take it personally. How easy that is to say and hard it is to do, so I get that. Also, because then it releases you from the responsibility of what they’re putting on you.
The other piece is if you start to consistently see patterns in yourself. For instance, I might go through a period, and this happened as I was early in menopause. I was very irritated with rude people. There was something that was coming out of my mouth a lot, “Why was that person so rude? I can’t believe that person was rude.” I’m like, “I’m practicing my bliss practices, but they were rude.” Once I had said it 3, 4 or 5 times in the same day, I noticed, “I think everybody is rude. Maybe I’m being rude,” and so I’m like, “That’s not the person that I want to be.” It goes both ways.
You have to take responsibility for all of those things that you’re projecting on to other people too, and it’s not that you have to. It’s that you get to because then you get to be a person that’s happier. You get to see what’s going on for you and what may not be working. If you’re always saying, “That person was so great. I got such great service.” You’re walking around and everything you say is lovely. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re naive. It means that what’s going on inside of you is all of this joy. I think that that can go both ways and benefit us in both ways.
Words are very powerful. Women are the worst at this and how we talk for ourselves. We need to be kinder to ourselves, we need to give ourselves grace, and we need to talk very sweet to ourselves. I do an exercise at one of my retreats where I have them write down everything that they hate about themselves. It was all the negative stuff, then they don’t know what I am going to do. I have them get up and line up, and then I say, “I want you to tell the person across from you, and you’re going to say you are, and you’re going to go through your list of every single thing.” They start crying because they would never talk that way to another person.
One of them, the first thing she said was, “You are fat.” She was like, “I’m so sorry,” and she started crying. That’s how horrible we talk to ourselves. We need to recognize that because that right there has a lot to do with how we don’t show up, how we do show up, or how we don’t give ourselves permission. We need to be kinder to ourselves.
In EXTRA, we got more, ladies. Colleen and I are going to be talking about what she does to juggle her work and family life. I know through COVID, this has been such a big issue as we’re moving out of it. It continues to be, and it’s always been an issue for women. This has never been an issue, but we’ve seen a lot of evolution also in how we look at ourselves around this.
It’s always great to have some tools to do that. She brought this up and I thought, “We haven’t had someone talk about this in-depth.” We’re going to be talking about that in EXTRA. I’m excited about that. Colleen, before we move onto our three rapid-fire questions, could you tell everybody how they can reach you?
I made it very easy for everyone so they can never forget. It’s LeadUpForWomen.com. You can find us on @LeadUpforWomen on Facebook and Instagram. I have a Lead Up for Women community that you can join. You can connect with me as @ColleenBiggs on LinkedIn, but we’re everywhere. We’re on YouTube or all over the place. We have videos constantly going, tips and tricks and workshops, and you name it. We’re constantly out there promoting our members, promoting their messages and promoting women.
Tell us about the wonderful gift you’re offering to my ladies.
I love our magazine. We do a bi-monthly magazine, and it’s written by our members for women. They write about business, leadership, lifestyle, philanthropy. Our members write the magazine, and all of the articles are from them. They’re not only giving you practical, tactical tips for you to be able to use and apply, but they’re sharing their heartfelt stories and the struggles that they’ve had through their business or their personal lives, and how they’ve overcome that. It’s very cleansing for them to write these articles.
Be Yourself: The strategy of being wealthy as an investor would be to utilize the line of the money that you’re investing. You should be able to create more wealth, then invest in that wealth to create even more wealth.
On the homepage, you scroll down and you’ll see our magazine, and click Claim My Magazine.
Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions? Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
Getting invested in real estate to me is purchasing your first rental home. That would be for me. That’s how it started for us.
What about a strategy in being successful as an investor?
The strategy of being wealthy and being an investor would be to utilize the line of the money that you’re investing to create more wealth, then take that wealth to invest to create more wealth. Not spending it, but taking that line to invest to create more wealth, and that is one of the biggest secrets.
What is one daily strategy you do that you would say contributes to your personal success?
One daily strategy that I do that contributes to my personal success is giving myself an hour of time every morning to sit down and write my gratitude, read, and educate myself no matter what that book is. I take that time for myself, and we need that every morning. That has changed my world for my personal gratitude because if you feel that you’ve already achieved something, then you achieve it. If you can think it, it must exist. That’s just how the world works. Believe it or not.
This has been so much fun. Thank you for all of you.
It’s been my pleasure.
Ladies, thank you for joining Colleen and me for this portion of the show. We are going to be talking about some good yummy stuff in EXTRA, so stay tuned. We’re going to be talking about her strategies on how to balance work and family and live a blissful life. Stay tuned for that in EXTRA. If you’re not subscribed but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get seven days for free, so you can check it out. See if you love it. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining us, and 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.
Colleen Biggs strives to reach all women through influence to encourage the understanding that in order to be, have, and do anything in life that you desire, you must first Show UP!
Colleen survived an early childhood of chaos, loss, and abuse. It was through these trials that she gained the clarity to understand the magnitude of loving others unconditionally and realizing the power of community. She has extensive success and experience in Corporate America for over 30 years, coaching over 300 CEO’s, franchising, voluntary national and local community service, and numerous project launches.
She currently has a weekly podcast, Lead Up for Women: Speak Up to Lead Up, is an author to the #1 Best Selling International Book: The Anatomy of Accomplishment, published two additional Journals in 2020 and publishes a bi-monthly magazine.
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
Nothing smells of passive income better than investing in self-storage units. This isn’t your everyday job where you’ll wake up at 6:00 in the morning and manage your facilities. This can be done remotely, anywhere in the world. Get into self-storage with your host, Moneeka Sawyer and her guest Stacy Rowles-Rossetti. Stacy is the founder of StorageNerds and REI USA. She teaches people to invest in self-storage so that they can earn passive income. Her mission is affordable financial literacy. Join in the conversation so that you can start investing in self-storage. Do you want more time for yourself or your family? Listen in and learn how to change your lifestyle with self-storage.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Investing In Self-Storage To Generate Passive Income With Stacy Rowles-Rossetti – Real Estate For Women
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am so excited to welcome to the show, Stacy Rossetti. She invested in self-storage, teaches people to invest in self-storage and owns StorageNerds and REI USA. Her mission is affordable financial literacy. Stacy, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for letting me come on. I’m honored.
We’re so excited to have you. We’ve had nobody come on and talk about self-storage so far. I know that this is a hot topic and my ladies are going to love this. Thank you so much.
Anybody that wants to hear about self-storage is a friend of mine. That’s why I call myself a storage nerd.
Stacy, tell us your story. How did you get into self-storage and why?
I’ve been investing in real estate since 2010. When I first got started investing in real estate, I was wholesaling and rehabbing, if anybody knows what that is. What happened is in 2015, I got pregnant. What had happened for the first five years, all I wanted to do was rehabs. I was one of those crazy people that did like fifteen rehabs at a time. I was really crazy. I was like running around like a crazy person, stressed out. I got pregnant and then, of course, as a woman and as a mother-to-be, I started thinking to myself, “How am I going to take care of fifteen rehabs at the same time, take care of this little tiny baby? There’s no way at all.”
I was already working 100 hours a week. I basically told my husband I was like, “That’s it. We’re done with rehabbing.” He was like, “Okay. What are we doing?” I said, “I don’t know. We’re doing something that has to do with passive income.” I wanted to focus on passive income and up to that very point, I had not focused on passive income at all.
Essentially, I was always about like, “Let’s just get this rehab done and get to the next rehab.” When I got pregnant, I talked to my realtor and I have a realtor that I’ve had for years, the same one. I was like, “Can you get out there and start looking for passive income for me?” He was like, “What do you want to look for?” I was like, “I don’t know, whatever.”
We looked at portfolios of houses. I was like, “Maybe we could roll this money over into a portfolio of 10 or 20 houses.” We looked at multifamily. This is back in the day. Remember when nobody multifamily wanted to buy multifamily? Everybody was focusing on rehabbing and that’s it. All the multifamily deals that I looked at, they needed huge rehabs. At that point, I was like, “I’m done with rehabbing. I can’t do it, because there’s no way because I have to take care of this baby.”
What happened is my realtor was like, “What about storage?” I said, “What about storage?” He said, “There’s a facility at 15, 20 minutes from your house. Would you be interested in that?” I was like, “Yeah, possibly.” As I drove up to this facility, I already knew I was going to buy it. The reason why is when I drove up to this facility on the left side, it’s like an industrial area.
It was very run down. For me, anything run down doesn’t scare me because I’m a rehabber. I drove up to this facility and on the left side near where the keypad was to get into the gate, there was a huge pile of tires that had been sitting there for years and years. I had already known. I was like, “This is going to be a good one.”
Anything that’s ugly and scary looks like money to me. That’s what happened. I called my realtor and I was like, “Let’s meet the owner. I want to figure out what’s going on with this thing.” It had been sitting on the market for five years and nobody wanted to buy it. We can get into why, if you want to do that.
I knew when I drove up to that thing that it was just so dumpy and ugly looking, but I could tell that it was going to be a good deal if I could get that at the right price. I instantly fell in love with storage and been focused on storage ever since. That’s basically my story is that I got pregnant and then all I cared about was figuring out how to make passive income so I could stay home with my daughter. That was it.
I got two questions for you. First of all, why was it sitting on there for five years?
This is back in the day when property used to sit on the market for five years and nobody would buy it. 2015 was still coming in the upswing. You would have a property that was sitting on there forever. One of the main reasons why, so the name of the storage facility was Big John’s Storage. I told my realtor, I was like, “I want to meet Big John.” He was like, “All right, let’s go meet Big John.” I went over there. I already knew it was going to be a good deal, so guess what I did? I invited my lender. I invited my husband and then my realtor and then me. We all went over and met Big John. John was his name.
John was a little tiny old man, like 88 years old. I was like, “Why are you called Big John?” He’s like, “Back in the day, I used to be called Big John.” He was ready to retire. His wife wanted to move to Florida and been complaining about it for years, but nobody would buy this facility. He had to sell it first so that he could take that money and go to Florida.
We started walking around the facility and as we were walking around, essentially the way this facility looks, it’s a long skinny facility made out of metal, like a metal storage facility. It had 64 10×10 units. It was on three acres of land. It was a huge piece of property. What he did is parking around it. Remember that there wasn’t an industrial area. He was parking like big rigs and like tow trucks and stuff like this, but he had no rhyme or reason to how he was parking. He was just like, “Go find a parking spot, wherever you can find one.” Parking was all over the place. The place was super dumpy. The tires that you saw in the front of the building also were everywhere else.
Self-Storage Investing: Once you figure out how to automate and systematize your property, it truly becomes passive income. Then you will be able to manage it from anywhere in the world.
In fact, in the end, there were thousands of tires that we found once we bought the place. We walked to around and what my husband and I did is we tried to figure out how much money we could make on that thing. What we did is we talked to John and he gave us the story that he built it in 1980. For the first twenty years, it was awesome, and then the last ten years or so, he didn’t want anything to do with it. He ran it into the ground. This is very typical. This is what we call a mismanaged facility, so it’s very typical, and I only buy mismanaged facilities. The reason why is because I’m a rehabber at heart and I want to buy ugly properties and fix them up.
We walked around and we both counted. We figured out that we could probably have about 60 parking spaces in that area, and then we would have the 64 10×10 units. We asked John, I said, “How much money are you making?” He said, “I’m probably making around maybe $2,200, $2,300 a month.” If you calculate up 64, 10×10 units at like, let’s say $70 a month, and then another 60 units of parking at $70 a month, you come up to almost $8,000, $9,000, $10,000 a month. He was only making $2,000, $2,300 or whatever he said. Anytime they ever tell you a number, it’s always the wrong number.
I was like, “John, why are you only making $2,000 a month when you could be making like $10,000 a month?” He’s like, “I’m just tired of this thing.” He’s like, “It’s paid off. I’m making $2,000, whatever.” We basically got into, I said, “I want to buy this place.” I said, “I’m not buying it for $500,000.” He had it listed for $500,000.
If it was full 100%. It could have been worth $500,000 plus if he was actually having customers paying and stuff because the thing with commercial real estate, it’s all income-based. Essentially, if you say, “It makes $5,000 a month,” it’s valued at this much money. He was making $2,000, so he was making like $2,400 or whatever. He made $25,000 a year. It’s only valued at like $200,000, $250,000. That’s it.
That’s when I told him, I was like, “Nobody’s going to buy thing, John, because first of all, it’s a dump. Second of all, you’re not making enough money to value it at $500,000. It’s valued at $200,000,” so my offer is $200,000. He was like, “No. I’m never going to sell it at $200,000.” I said, “Okay. Just think about it. Actually, my lender is right here. He’s going to lend the money to me.” I said, “Rick, is it okay? Do you want to buy this?” He said, “Yeah, let’s buy this.” I said, “I offer $200,000.” He was like, “No. I’m not doing it.” “That’s okay. Just think about it. Let me know.” The next day he called back and he said he would do $250,000.
We picked that thing up for $250,000 and it took us a good couple of years to figure out what we’re doing with that. It was our very first facility, but we fell in love with storage. It’s really given us the life that we want now. We’re buying our 10th facility right now. That thing is making almost $100,000 a year. We got an offer of $950,000 on that facility.
How long have you owned it?
Five years in July 2021. Isn’t that crazy? That’s why I love mismanaged facilities and it took us a good year and a half to figure out what we are doing to get into how to automate and systematize everything. We bought four this year already, and we’re on track to buy ten for the year. Once you figure it out automated and systematize it, it’s like doing wholesale deals or rehab deals. You get into making it truly passive income. When you can make it truly passive income, then you should be able to manage it from anywhere in the world and that’s what we are focused on now.
How much time do you spend to manage those properties?
We’re buying our 10th one now. We’re completely vertically integrated. We have 1,000 doors, essentially. We have my husband who manages the facilities and then we have our office manager, who’s the operations manager and does all the phone calls and things like this. We have like a boots-on-the-ground person to go around and overlock people and clean up the trash and all that stuff.
That’s it. There are three people to manage all that, and the two of them, the office manager and the boots on the ground person, can really do most of the work. Eighty percent of the work is done by both of them. My husband does the high-level stuff. He does the QuickBooks and the numbers and that stuff is what he does.
That’s the one thing I love about self-storage as well too. Everything that you hear about self-storage, it doesn’t take a lot of time. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. It really truly is like that, unless you become a mismanaged facility. All of the facilities that I’ve bought, essentially, the owners get up every day and go to their office and sit in their office and run their facilities.
For me, that’s a waste of time and money. I was like, “Why not automate that?” We’re completely electronic, completely virtual. Essentially, they just go online, book themselves, get their code, go in and do their thing. In fact, we haven’t even met any tenants in years. The first one that we bought, the very first one from Big John, that one, we were out trying to figure out what to do and meeting tenants and try to figure out how to automate and systematize everything.
By the second one, we were like, “We’re not going out to meet anybody. We’ve got to figure out how to make this electronic.” When COVID happened, we were already virtual electronic contact list. We didn’t have any issues at all. All the ones that get up every day and go and have the tenant sign a contract and stuff like this, those are the ones that were hurting. We didn’t have any issues at all.
Do you have any issues with people stopping paying and abandoning their unit or any of that stuff and what do you do?
The way it works is like, just think of the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent are going to pay on time, 20% are not going to pay on time. You put in rules. If you don’t pay by this day, you get a charge. If you don’t pay by this day, you get overlock. If you don’t pay by this day, you go to the auction process. You implement all these rules.
Most of the time, by the time the auction process comes up, we have very few. In fact, we haven’t even had any auctions because everybody’s paying, but there are those people that they get to the auction and then you’re like, “Come on, you better pay now. Otherwise, we’re going to do it.” There is that, and our office manager handles all of that.
How did you find your office manager and your boots on the ground person?
Just on Craigslist.
All of your units are in one location. You’ve got one boots on the ground person that manages all your units.
We’re only in Georgia, but we’re all over. We’re Southern Georgia. We’re all over Southern Georgia, but maybe within 30 minutes to 1 hour from each other, so he rides around and manages all of that is what he does.
Define mismanaged facility. Why don’t you define that and the definition between the two, mismanaged and income-producing?
Those are the two most popular types of facilities. Mismanaged is exactly what I said. They’re like 50% full or less. The owners are maybe only taking cash. They don’t have their books. Big John, when I asked him for his books, he opened up his drawer and pulled out his ledger. I have a student right now that’s buying a facility that has almost 300 units in it. Just imagine this, that’s 300 units and the owner does not own a computer.
Self-Storage Investing: Self-storage doesn’t take a lot of time. It doesn’t take a lot of effort either unless it becomes a mismanaged facility. Those are 50% full or less.
You find this all the time. Those are considered mismanaged facilities. The thing with mismanaged facilities is that you cannot go to a bank and get a loan for that. In the commercial real estate world, you have to prove income. If you can’t prove income, then the bank’s not going to give you a loan. That’s why you have income-producing properties. Those are really easy to fund and banks love storage facilities because you have very few defaults ever.
An income-producing property, then you could go to a bank and get a loan and you put 20% down and you can just go buy a property. Whereas a mismanaged property, they don’t have proof of income. They don’t have a P&L. They don’t have balance sheets, tax returns, rent rolls or anything like this. You have to find money from some place. Either you have to pay cash for it. You have to partner with somebody, you have to get a private lender to lend you the money, or you can get them to owner finance it to you.
Mismanaged facilities are a little bit harder to fund than income-producing properties. The question that you should be asking yourself is, if you want to get them to self-storage, it’s like, “Where can I come up with the money? Can I come up with a couple of $100,000 or not?” If I can’t come up with myself, if I have to borrow the money to get it, then I should be focusing on income-producing properties.
If somebody, or if I have a couple of $100,000, you could go and find a mismanaged property. What I love about mismanage is that you can double or triple that value within the first two years that you own that thing. That property that we have that we’re selling it now, we got an offer for $950,000. We’ve been full in the first 18 months to 2 years. It only takes a little while to get those up and running.
You did say that with Big John, your lender said that he would lend against it, but basically, he chose the value based on what the income was. Is that true?
Yes.
If you pay cash for it, can you refinance it once you’ve gotten it up to snuff?
Absolutely. That’s exactly what you want to do. Once you get it to where it’s 100% or 90% plus full, then you could just go refinance it out and just get a bank loan on it.
For the bank loans, these are commercial loans, so they’re based completely on the value of the property. They don’t worry too much about personal income. All of your personal information that you would normally give for a single-family home. They do pull credit. Is that true?
They do look at credit, but it’s asset-based lending. That’s why I love commercial real estate. It’s really asset-based lending. That’s what you tell your sellers when you talk to them, it’s like, “You think it’s worth $500,000,” but the truth is, is that there’s no bank that’s going to fund this for $500,000, if you can only prove that you’ve made $2,000.
That’s how you get the sellers to say, “You’re right. I need to either prove that it’s worth $500,000 or I’m going to have to drop the price.” A lot of sellers don’t understand that concept because it’s like on the residential side. They’re like, “It’s worth $350,000,” but it’s really only worth $250,000. You have to be able to prove it and that’s what I love about commercial lending.
Through COVID, we’ve seen that there’s a big outflux from the cities. More people are moving a little bit more to the burbs. Not a little bit more, but quite a lot. I’ve always thought of self-storage as being really good in the city space where there’s not a lot of space. People are in condos or apartments, and so they need this self-storage because they don’t have a garage or they don’t have their own little storage in their backyard. Now, as people are moving out more into the burbs or have done that, have you noticed any changes in how your self-storage units are doing?
Every storage facility that we own is either in a secondary or tertiary market. There are three different markets, primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary would be in the city. Those cap rates of those facilities are super low, and then you have tertiary markets where it’s a mid-range cap rate. Those are burbs. Then you have tertiary, which is like country.
Storage is based off of migratory patterns and everybody is moving out. Especially huge, big storage facilities, companies like U-Haul and Public Storage, they’re looking at the migration of people and trying to figure out where are the trends. Where is everybody moving to? What cities are they moving to? What plays a key role in learning to invest in self-storage is number one, the population of cities.
Is it declining or is it growing? Is there a growth market or declining? You want to pay attention to that. If it’s declining, then it may not be a good area. Also, what you want to look at is you want to look at total square footage of a radius of maybe 3 to 5 miles, depending on if it’s a primary, secondary or tertiary market.
If you wanted to go and buy a facility in a tertiary market, out in a city that has 15,000 people or 10,000 people, essentially, what you would do is like, “Within this five-mile radius, how many storage facilities are there?” You would take the total square footage of that and you would divide it by the population of that area as well too, and your number should be between 6 and 8 or something like this.
If the number is 6 and 8, then it’s a thumbs up, but if it’s on the outskirts of that, and it’s probably not a good deal. When you’re looking at investing in self-storage, you want to look at the population of a town, population of the area, total storage square footage, competitors, and look at the market and see if it’s a good deal or not.
We pretty much own most of our facilities in tertiary markets. Some of them are in secondary but most are tertiary. We’re 100% full in every single one. We bought one in January that was a mismanaged property in a small town in Georgia. It was like 50,000. It’s not super big, like 50,000 people. That one, he said it was full, but it was really just full of people’s crap and nobody was paying.
That one, we’re still trying to lease-up, but other than that, all the other ones that we have, they’re all 100% full. I have one that’s in a town of 300 people. It has 60 units and it’s 100% full. The need for storage is so great right now that even if you wanted to build, which is another way to get into self-storage investing, I highly recommend it. The material prices are a little bit higher, but that’s not going to last forever. We’re thinking about building as well too. We’re definitely going to be building.
Obviously, it’s within your space. Can people do this virtually?
What I tell all my students is, “If you are going to get into self-storage investing, you need to be making this truly passive income.” There’s no reason for you to be getting up every day and going and managing your facility. That would be considered a job, not an investment, so you want to make it passive income and you want to build passive wealth, and self-storage investing is exactly the way you can do that.
We travel 6 to 8 months out of the year and we’ll be traveling the entire year. We just bought an RV and we’re going to be traveling. We’re gearing up to be able to do that and try to figure out how we can do that. I want to prove to my students that you should be able to manage your facilities from anywhere in the world.
During COVID, when everybody was freaking out and staying home and hiding, essentially, what we did is just hit the road. We went to almost every state. We visited every state. We did sixteen national parks in sixteen weeks. We went to Florida and hung out there for a month. We went up to Maine and hung out there for two months.
You can manage and all of our facilities are in Georgia. We weren’t even in Georgia for eight months out of the year. We weren’t even there. I tell my students, too, it’s like, “It’s probably better for you to buy something that’s further away because then what it does is it makes you automate and systematize that business.” Whereas if we have one facility that’s probably twenty minutes from our house, my husband’s like getting up every day and just going out there and hanging out and doing whatever. All the other ones that we have are way in South Georgia, 4 to 6 hours away. He can’t do anything with those, so he has to let our boots on the ground person manage those. He has to let the operations manager manage those. Whereas the one that we have right around the corner, he always getting up and going over there because it’s just a habit.
Buy stuff that’s a long way away and learn how to automate and systematize it because that truly is passive income when you can do that. I think the best-kept secret in the real estate investing world is self-storage. I honestly really don’t understand why more people don’t invest in self-storage. It’s a lifestyle investment. You can truly make your life the way that you want to with self-storage investing.
I invested in a syndication for a self-storage where they were building a 500-unit facility in Pennsylvania. I invested but I haven’t done it myself. I wanted to get into it. I’ve also done a syndication into a mobile home park. I’m investing into some of these things I’m hearing so much about, but I just don’t know enough about them to look at it as a possible primary investment where I focus my time on it. Ladies, in EXTRA, we’re going to be talking about how to buy your first storage facility in the next 90 days. If you want to do that, at least get more information.
Definitely, we’re going to be talking about that in EXTRA. The other thing is I wanted to say that Stacy, I don’t normally do this, but I’m so delighted by Stacy’s knowledge that we’re talking about this topic, which many of you ladies have asked about. Also, I’m a little bit surprised. Stacy has a self-storage course.
When I’m out there looking at coursework for real estate, it’s huge. $997 is nothing in my book and it sounds like you can do this truly passive. This isn’t something I’ve tried, but you can do this truly passive lifestyle. I feel good about saying you really take a deep look at that because I’m watching Stacy. She’s walking the talk. In other words, when we first got online and we were in the green room and we were talking, she’s like, “I’m on the road,” but she’s got this great backdrop. She’s got this big great backdrop. She’s got this lighting. She’s got her mic, she’s got this whole set up.
Most people who are traveling when they come on the show, they’re crackly. Their backdrop looks terrible, but she’s got the whole setup. This means she’s actually on the road and she’s setting herself up to travel for a year, running this business. If that’s true, then it is really passive income and she’s proving it. To me, that says quite a lot on so many levels. I’d encourage you to connect with her. Her course is $997, but she does also have some freebies for us. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that?
Self-Storage Investing: When you’re looking at investing in self-storage, you want to look at the population of the town. You need to look at every detail to really understand the market and see if it’s a good deal or not.
If you’re interested, we’ll give you a link to go and get what’s called Stacy’s Six Step System to Storage. It’s a template. It’s like an eBook. It will take you step by step on the way that I teach, and which is I teach in departments. If you think of your self-storage investing world, and it’s like you have six different departments.
That is your office admin, setting up your office. Doing your marketing, getting your acquisition stuff done, getting the financing, managing the facilities and then possibly liquidating them. I go through each of those departments in the Six-Step System. It’ll take you step by step and it’s a process. You can get that for free with the link that we give you.
We’re still figuring out that. If you don’t know where to go, go to BlissfulInvestor.com/stacy. The reason it’s really important is I know a lot of you connect with my guests and then you just go directly through their link, which is fine. What happens is then I don’t know that you were interested in that topic or that person.
If you use the links that I post, then I know you’re interested in this topic, you want to hear more. You’re interested in that person, so maybe I bring her on more or we do some partnership, which then gets you better deals, but it’s great for tracking to figure out what you ladies want. You know I’m all about serving you.
I’ve talked to so many of you like, “I signed up with that person,” and I was like, “Did you use my link?” They’re like, “I’m so sorry.” It’s about taking care of you ladies. Whenever you go to any of my guests, go take a look at the blog post on BlissfulInvestor.com. If you sign up for their program or you get a free gift, use the link that I put in there so that we’ve got some tracking. It’s not like I’m going to come back to you with any, I know some people are like, “I don’t want to be tracked.”
This is simply marketing numbers so that I understand what it is you’re wanting from me. I’m not just covering topics that you’re not interested in. Sorry for that big thing, but I’ve been hearing a lot of ladies lately where they’re like, “I didn’t use your link,” but then I just don’t know what you’re wanting. Please go to BlissfulInvestor.com/Stacy. Look up Stacy’s blog with the title where we’re talking about self-storage and use that link so we can track it. Did you have anything else you wanted to add, Stacy, before we move into our three rapid-fire questions?
I know we covered it all, but you did talk a little bit about lending and I wanted to just reiterate that as well too. You really want to get into self-storage. The truth of the matter is, is that if you’re super busy and you got other things that you’re working on, there’s nothing wrong with lending out just like you did.
The truth of the matter is, is you’re making money and you’re not doing anything right now just by lending that out. I always tell my students like, “Even if you can’t get in there, you don’t think that you can own a facility and manage it, because it’s just too much time of work.” Land. Get into a syndication or get into a fund or find somebody and partner, and you’d be the lender, and then that way you can still do it as well too.
It is a good way to test the waters and different asset classes to see what it is that you like, how does it work out? Someone else has the knowledge and is taking all the risks. Thank you for that. I have three rapid-fire questions for you. Are you ready?
I’m ready.
Stacy, give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
Getting started in investing in real estate, I would say honestly, is like, “Just don’t be afraid to just take action and focus on marketing.” People do not market enough, especially in real estate, to find deals. If you’re not finding any deals, guess what? It’s because you’re not marketing enough. Take action by marketing and having a whole bunch of strategies for marketing.
What is one strategy for being successful as a real estate investor?
It’s the same thing. Take action. A lot of people don’t. You have to keep moving forward because guess what? In the real estate investing world, everything is 11th hour. It’s so annoying. I wish I had a deal that closed and it was just like easy peasy, lemon squeezy, but it’s not. We’re closing on a storage facility now that we are supposed to close. There are title issues and it’s so frustrating. You’ve got to keep moving forward because it’s just how it is in this industry.
What is one daily practice that you would say contributes to your personal success?
I’m a walker, so I’m exercising. My personal success is that I’m a busy person. I need a lot of energy because of all the stuff I do. I do the 12-3-30. It’s like when you get on a treadmill. It’s a twelve incline of twelve and like a pace of three miles per hour for 30 minutes. I do that 5 or 6 days a week, at least, and it gets me pumped up. I feel so much better mentally after I do my walk. Sometimes when I’m having a hard day, I’ll take a walk and it’s only 30 minutes of walking. I’m sweating to death. If anybody’s interested, check out the 12-3-30. It’s a great exercise.
This has been amazing, Stacy. You have me so intrigued. Thank you for everything you shared on this portion of the show.
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for me to hang out with you.
We had fun and I am so excited about the EXTRA, where we’re going to talk about how to get your first facility in 90 days. Ladies, if you are subscribed to EXTRA, please stay tuned. If you’re not, this may be the time to get subscribed. Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com, and you get the first seven days for free. You can get this one for free.
Take a look at the membership, and if you love it, that’s great, and if you don’t, you’ve just got some great content. Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. For those of you that are leaving Stacy and I now, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. I look forward to 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 next time.
As a real estate investing expert and coach, I have built my name on the results I have created – for myself and for my students.
Investing in real estate has changed my life, opening doors for me and my family and affording me an outlet for all my creative and entrepreneurial energy. Through scaling up a renovation company in Atlanta with hundreds of transactions to learning to invest passively through creative financing deals and storage facilities, I have not only overcome many trials and tribulations, but systematized and organized my days so that I can run several successful businesses.
Day after day, I work hard at what I do, striving to stay ahead of the curve by building on my knowledge and making shrewd decisions. This did not happen overnight, of course. My early days in real estate were slow, exhausting and hard, but little by little, I earned a sense of what worked and what I needed to do to achieve consistent results. Because I taught myself all this learning through experience and mentors, the process was gradual and required the utmost diligence on my part.
Today, I own and operate REI USA and StorageNerds. REI USA is an online education and networking platform that is exactly the tool that I would have wanted when I was getting my start, something that aspiring and established investors can turn to, a means to cutting your learning curve dramatically.
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
What do the wealthy do that makes them wealthy? We find out the answer to that and more in this episode. Moneeka Sawyer is joined by the co-founder of Erbe Wealth, Stephanie Walter. Stephanie talks about breaking away from corporate America and investing in real estate. She also shares insights learned from working with wealthy people, offering great cash flow and tax strategies that can give you the push towards their direction. Tune in to learn more tips from wealthy investors.
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Watch the episode here
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Cashflow And Tax Strategies: What The Wealthy Do With Stephanie Walter – Real Estate For Women
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am excited to welcome to the show, Stephanie Walter. She is the CEO of Erbe Wealth and a legacy cashflow specialist, capital raiser, syndicator and real estate investor. She has been a financial educator for many years and a real estate syndicator. Stephanie’s passion is teaching people to unlearn what most of us have been wired to think about money and re-educating people on attaining wealth that can be passed on to the next generation. Stephanie, welcome to the show. How are you?
I’m great. Thank you so much for having me.
I am excited about this conversation because there are many myths, ideas and lies that we are taught about money. I hope that’s not too strong a word but it’s awesome to have somebody come on board that’s going to share some of their wisdom around this. Before we get started, could you tell us a little bit about your story like how you got to where you are?
I started like most people into the corporate world out of college and realized not too long thereafter, when I was continually getting these 2% raises that, “This was not for me.” I quit my job and started an insurance agency in 2006. I’ve always loved real estate. I never had much training to it, so I went out and bought a lot of single-family homes and learned by my mistakes and successes on how to do that.
I decided I wanted to scale up in 2016 and get some great education and learn more about possibly buying apartment complexes or commercial real estate. I got into RE Mentor, which is an education program, like getting your Master’s in Real Estate. I did that and completed my first syndication in 2016. After that, I started getting to know people and became a partner with someone who didn’t like to raise money.
I started raising money at that time. Ever since I’ve worked a lot with wealthy people, I and that’s learned a lot from working with them about how they use their money, unlearning everything we’re all taught as fact. I transitioned a lot of my assets, doing what they were doing. I sold my day business, which is insurance and I’m retired. Other than I’ll continue to raise money. I like to teach people about what I’ve learned because I believe my path is definitely doable for everybody.
Could you share with us some of these things that you learned from wealthy people? What is true about wealthy people is they do think differently about money and investing than other people. What’s also interesting is how we define wealthy. I want to give a little bit of my perspective also on this and that. I live in California and people are impressed with the income that we make and the net worth that we have, but for a Californian, we’re upper-middle class.
We’re not the wealthy around here. The wealthy around here are more like Bill Gates, Bezos and Zuck. Even though I’ve had a huge education in building wealth, my dad was a great mentor even as a young person, but still, I don’t think that I even have that real wealth mindset because I’m not a wealthy person in my community. I’m eager to know about people that define themselves as wealthy. What are those things that they do differently than the rest of us?
What’s interesting about that and you probably know that from where you live is that you’re not always going to recognize a very wealthy person. A very wealthy person, a lot that I deal with, you would never know. They live in a pretty average house and drive pretty average cars but their net worth is pretty impressive. The thing that you noticed by going through their finances pretty clearly is that they invest largely in real estate.
That’s the bulk of their investments. They invest directly in businesses, not in mutual funds. If they invest in the stock, it’s usually, “I got this tip from so-and-so.” It’s almost like their fund money but what they’re very concerned with doing and what they would probably tell you is that cashflow to them is more important than net worth.
There’s a perfect example of what you’re saying in your community is that you’ve got a lot of people that probably have very significant net worth but yet they may be working paycheck to paycheck to keep that lifestyle where it is. Whereas someone who’s wealthy is very concerned with cashflow that the cash flow is building up enough.
It replaces their income so that they can do what they want and love to do to contribute to society. The biggest thing that I learned is that most wealthy people don’t talk a lot about their net worth, even though it probably is pretty impressive but cashflow to them is huge. I learned that lesson myself because I live in Colorado. Colorado’s changed a lot. I started investing here in 2005 and needless to say, the prices have gone up unimaginably.
On paper, I had a very good net worth but I still had to work and continue running my business because I did not have a cashflow strategy in place for this money and I wasn’t very concerned with what my money was doing. Wealthy people know what their money is doing for them. They want the money to be working at all times for them. They view money as a tool that is working for them. That’s a mindset thing.
Until I transition different assets around to see how they were performing and analyzing, “What is my money doing for me?” It was largely inequity and it had a return of zero. To transition that into assets that would pay cashflow, as well as have a good interest rate return, that doesn’t take long to do that to have the goal of having the cashflow for you to be able to be truly wealthy, whatever that looks like for you.
What The Wealthy Do: Most wealthy people don’t really talk a lot about their net worth, even though it is probably pretty impressive, but cash flow is huge.
Talk to me a little bit about how that might translate for people that are not yet wealthy. How can they adopt those mindsets when so much of the time so many of us are living paycheck to paycheck and trying to survive but that wealthy mindset is available to us? Could you talk to us a little bit about that?
That’s another thing that I became pretty aware of when working with wealthy people is that they have a view that money is abundant. That sounds small to people but think about your view on money. Do you view money as, “There’s only so much of it and if I take some money from someone, then I’m making someone else less wealthy?”
They view money as a stream of water and that money is always flowing, abundant and coming. I didn’t probably have a mindset about money but once I did learn about the abundance mindset, I made a point of changing that. That sounds small but if you believe that money is flowing and coming, then it gives you a different perspective on money.
You say that’s small but it’s huge. That mindset tweak is huge. I was explaining this to a friend of mine and I got this image in my head that money is a little bit, rather than being like a stream where it’s inflow, it’s more like a fountain where it comes in, goes up and down, then it comes back in. It’s this circular thing. The power of the pump that makes that go is your willingness to circulate.
I donated to a woman I met $1,000. Everybody else was donating $10. Why did I do $1,000? To me, $1,000 is part of that pump. It’s more going out. That means that more will come in. The pump is stronger because there’s more circulating. Please forgive me. I hope that didn’t sound like a brag. Don’t spend beyond your needs. I’m not saying, “Go spend a ton of money.”
I’m saying that the circulation of money is imperative to creating wealth, community and to uplifting people. Unless money is going out, they are not jobs. Unless those people are not spending, there’s not a community. There’s nothing for us to do together. This is an interactive thing. All of us benefit from the spending and earning of money.
It’s not a zero-sum game this. Even for me, I came home and I was like, “That was such a great visual.” I want a strong pump in that fountain so that the circulation of that wealth is bigger, impacts more, stronger and more fun for me too. I like a powerful fountain. Does that sound right to you or do you feel like something is in there that doesn’t work?
That’s a great analogy. Something that offshoots from is that, granted there are stereotypes and all of that but wealthy people I meet that have been successful are very giving. It’s that same abundance mindset. There’s plenty for me to help you get. What I find very interesting about wealthy people, as opposed to the average person who does the 401(k), is they put their money into this because they’re told that’s what they need to do, a wealthy person invests their money teams of people and ideas.
Let’s use real estate as an example. They find a project that is compelling and interesting. They’ll do their due diligence but they’ll look for a team that has experience who has proven themselves to be successful. Then they’ll put their money into that team, step back and let the team do their thing. They’ll check in on the reports but largely, they’re passive.
Wealthy people invest in business plans and directly in the business. Whereas, us with a 401(k), who knows where our money is invested in? It’s invested in maybe thousands of companies that we know nothing about. They’ll invest their money directly in a business, someone’s business and, “What is this person’s business plan?”
It’s the same thing. They do all their due diligence but they invest directly to people and in people, more than a 401(k) or throwing your money out there and hoping that it grows but you’re not sure what you’re invested in. The wealthy are very conscious of who they’re investing in, where their money is and what it’s doing at all times.
Would you say that approach is true in real estate too for them?
Yes. I find that they don’t want to be the landlord and be managing. They want to understand the exit and business plan for this particular property and then they want to invest in it. They’ll sit back, review the quarterly reports, collect their monthly distributions of cashflow and do the same thing with another investment that comes along.
Talk to me a little bit about debunking these myths. What are those myths that you learned about from these people that we learn the opposite so much of the time?
What The Wealthy Do: Money is always flowing. It’s always flowing, and it’s always abundant. It’s always coming.
I’ve gone over a few of them already but big one is 401(k)s. That might not be a popular subject but I believe that we have to take a look at why we do things and if these things that have been set up for us by I’m not sure who work to our advantage or not. The thing that brought my attention to that is I look over lots of wealthy people and their financial statements. Virtually none had 401(k)s.
That was eye-opening because I was like, “What? I didn’t understand.” It didn’t compute to me. That’s a large myth and then you have to look in more closely. It makes sense because wealthy people want to know what their money is doing at any and all times. They want to know the returns that they’re generating and also what they prepare more than we do for taxes. By not preparing for taxes, that’s a huge thing that the majority of people don’t do.
If someone tells you how much they have in their 401(k), do they have that much in their 401(k)? In twenty years, what is the tax rate going to be and how much of what they have is going to be taxed? To simply not address your tax and mitigate for your taxes, it’s something that the wealthy do all the time. I use the analogy of these two people playing a game of chess and the regular Joe investor is looking one move at a time.
He’s looking, “How are my investments doing? What is the return?” While the wealthy person is looking several moves ahead. They’re checking, “How are my investments doing? On the other hand, what is my exit strategy? How can I mitigate for my taxes?” They’re looking side by side for income and taxes. That is why wealthy people get wealthy.
The myth that I understand there was saving your 401(k), your taxes will be less when you are finally pulling your money out. Don’t worry about that piece. You’re doing a tax-deferred type of program and you’re going to defer it so that you’re paying taxes later. In your experience or from what you’ve seen from the wealthy people, is that true that tax rates will be lower later?
No. Any of us can see what’s happening in our country regardless of what’s happening politically. We know that we’re spending a lot of money and in a lot of debt. People may not know this but our tax rates are on the low side. Historically, they’ve been much higher than they are. We know that the tax rates are going to change in the future. Are you prepared for that?
The tax rates are going to change but I also think that people don’t want to live a lesser lifestyle when they retire. For example, personally, I’m not going to want to retire until I can have the lifestyle that I have now without the work. What does that mean for me? I’ve got this lifestyle with this house and car and this excitement and joy for travel.
Now I’m not working, so I’ve got more time to travel more, hang out, hopefully take care of my parents more and my own health stuff. If I’m to look at my retirement, I’m going to say, “I need 50% more than what I’m making, at least, in order to continue to benefit from those many years of work.” I don’t want to have my lifestyle go down and be able to afford less.
Whatever my retirement vehicles are, if I’m pulling more than what I’m doing now, even if tax rates stay exactly the same, my tax rate has not gone down. It’s exactly the same. I’m not paying less taxes later but same tax. If the tax rates go up, now you’re paying even more. This whole idea of deferring taxes is an okay strategy.
Be aware that you’re not going to be paying less taxes later. You tell me what you think of this. You have money going in that’s compounding without being taxed, so it happens more quickly. You’ve got more on the backend, supposedly. That’s a compounding and a great investment strategy for growth, possibly depending on what you’re doing with it but it’s not necessarily a tax strategy.
I don’t want to tell everybody to get rid of your 401(k)s. A lot of people are into them but what I do say is be aware of what returns you’re getting. What fees are you paying? I ask a lot of people and they’re not aware of these things. You’ll look at the prospectus and what they’ve made over the last years. Sometimes it’s like 3% or 4% after fees.
I bring that to their attention and they were not aware of that. They’re looking at the long-term of what they think will be projected for them but it’s important to do things that will lower your fees especially, but also get the maximum growth that you can. People try to put off the financial responsibility onto whomever that is, whether that’s your Merrill Lynch person or the 401(k) administrator at your work.
Be more interactive with what’s going on, know what your options are. If you want to take part of your money from your 401(k), there are ways of investing some of that money, setting up a self-directed IRA and investing in real estate. There are other things that you can do and I honestly don’t have a preference but I want people to know that you should be in control and you probably know more than these professionals that are managing your money.
I want to do a deep dive into the analysis of a 401(k). Would you be interested in doing that with me on EXTRA?
What The Wealthy Do: Don’t be afraid to dive in, educate yourself, and learn that there are other investments outside of the stock market.
Sure. Thank you.
I want to dive deep because we have been trained. You’re so funny. You’re like, “I don’t know where that comes from,” and we all know that it was marketing. Somewhere along the way, this marketing trend started but we should not be subject to marketing only. We have the opportunity, with all the financial education that we have out there now to take a look at that. I’d love to do that in EXTRA. Do you have a way for people to reach you?
I get a lot of the same questions asked of me over again. I set up a group of question and answer videos. I keep adding to it every week. Hopefully, I’ll get up to about 100 of the most commonly asked questions. You can go to AskStephanieNow.com and you can get onto my website and look through some of those questions and answers. My actual website is www.ErbeWealth.com. There are tons of content. I find it very rewarding to be able to educate people. I’m constantly updating the content because I view this as my purpose in life. There’s plenty of reports, eBooks and all that great stuff.
I wanted to mention that there is a gift if they go to your website. That website is ErbeWealth.com. Tell us a little bit about one of the free reports people can get.
I have a report. It’s the Investment Report: Five Reasons Passive Investing Might Be For You.It’s a great dive into all the reasons that you may consider an investment that gives you a passive income every month.
Thank you for that. Stephanie, I have three Rapid-fire questions. Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
The biggest tip I can give you is probably a mindset tip that you can do it and not be afraid to get educated. There’s so much information out on the internet about learning these investments that used to be reserved for very wealthy people, banks and insurance companies that are now available to us average people. The only reason that is the case is because of the information available on the internet. Don’t be afraid to dive in, educate yourself and learn that there are other investments outside of the stock market.
What would you say is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing? If you’re already in it, how do you be successful?
It’s setting goals. That’s a simple answer but it is true. When I started, I envisioned, “How could I retire?” I reverse engineered that back to, “How much do I need to come in every month?” From that, then I viewed money that I had and, “What is this money doing for me?” From that, I was able to eventually get enough money to replace my income.
Just having goals, maybe they don’t have to be that big and it’s, “I would like to do one and become alternate investment a year to see how this changes our lifestyle in terms of the passive income and the tax savings that you would get.” Be consistent. Whatever you’re doing, keep at it. I remember when I started investing in real estate, I was like, “I’m going to invest in one single-family home a year.” Have some goals and direction of what you see for your future and then act on it. I see lots of people that talk about it and don’t ever act on it. You go to act on it.
What would you say is one daily practice that you do that contributes to your personal success?
I blocked time for myself. That sounds very simple. Especially if you’re a mom or you’ve got lots of stuff going on. If you can block yourself time, let’s say, “I want to accomplish these three things,” or whatever they are and you know that you get that done every day. That’s going to move you ahead towards your goals.
This show so far has been amazing. Thank you so much for all that you’ve contributed. I can’t wait to get to EXTRA.
Thank you. Me too.
Ladies, stay tuned with Stephanie and me for EXTRA. We’re going to do a deep dive on 401(k)s and why that may not be the best investment for you and for a place to put your money. We’re going to talk about that. If you are subscribed, stay tuned. If you’re not but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com.
You get seven days for free. Check it out and then you can stay on board or not. It’s up to you. For those of you that are leaving Stephanie and I, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. I appreciate youand I look forward to next time. 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. Bye.
Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
Investing in real estate is a learning process. From buying your first property to scaling a multifamily portfolio, investors learn many lessons in between. In this episode, Moneeka Sawyer sits down for a discussion with Liz Faircloth, a social worker, entrepreneur, co-founder of The DeRosa Group, and co-founder of The Real Estate Investher community. Liz shares how she got into real estate investing and talks about what she learned about investing in many types of real estate. She shares why they settled on multifamily and what you need to do to become successful in the real estate game. Tune in to learn more on what it takes for real estate investing success.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Scaling A Multifamily Portfolio With Liz Faircloth – Real Estate For Women
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am so excited to welcome to the show, Liz Faircloth. Liz Faircloth co-founded the DeRosa Group in 2005 with her husband, Matt. The DeRosa Group based in Trenton, New Jersey is an owner of commercial and residential property with a mission to transform lives through real estate. DeRosa has vast experience in bringing properties to their highest and best value, which includes repositioning single-family homes, multifamily apartment buildings, mixed-use retail and office space. The company controls close to 1,000 units of residential and commercial assets throughout the East Coast.
Liz has been interviewed for many articles and top-rated podcasts, including mine. Including being a two-time guest on the top-rated BiggerPockets Podcast and the Best Ever Show. On the personal side, Liz is an avid runner, has completed several triathlons and marathons, has two adorable children and is a New York Mets fan. Hello there, Liz.
Thank you so much for having me.
You and Andresa do so much cool stuff with the InvestHER Community. I love what you’re doing together but I haven’t really gotten to chat with you about what you’re doing. Liz, why don’t you give us a high-level version of your story of how you got interested in real estate and what your path has been?
The Only Woman in the Room: Knowledge and Inspiration from 20 Women Real Estate Investors
It wasn’t a linear path. At the time, my now husband and I had started dating. Before we started dating, I was in graduate school for Social Work. I got my Master’s in Social Work. I want to open my own practice and help people. That’s been always my passion. During that time, my brother-in-law who was the only entrepreneur I ever met, grew up in a great family but middle-class family. My dad was a teacher. I was never introduced to entrepreneurs or investors, that just wasn’t in my sphere of any context growing up. Hard work ethic was there, but certainly the business piece of it, I was not familiar with or didn’t have a lot of exposure to.
Until I met my brother-in-law, who was an entrepreneur, started a business and handed me Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I’m 23 at the time and he’s like, “You have to read this.” I’m like, “All right.” I like personal growth books. I started in college reading different books and I always enjoyed them. I like learning and growing. Long story short, I read that it. My eyes were opened to this idea of passive income. I honestly never heard of that before. It’s like, “I can have money working for me, not me working for money.” It was a whole new, open-my-eye concept, which I know a lot of people have said.
What got us involved was
I then started dating my now husband. We lived about two hours from each other. Every weekend, we go to all the REIA meetings and start learning. We’re in our twenties, didn’t know anything. We didn’t have any money to invest, but we said, “Let’s give this a go.” We started taking courses. This is before Facebook Marketplace. This is literally open the newspaper, go to ads and call tired landlords. That was the million-dollar tip we got at one of the events. That’s what we did every weekend, literally knocking on doors, right outside of Philadelphia, where my husband lived and when I visited him.
One day, we got someone to say, “That’s interesting. Let me think about that.” Then we called them back and struck up a deal. A year into us taking courses and door knocking and cold calling and bootstrap whatever we could do, we struck up a deal and bought our first property. It was a duplex about $150,000. We learned everything on that property. We’d go with the people. When you buy a property, the tenants that are there may not be your tenants ongoing because there’re a new sheriff in town. The whole multifamily opened our eyes. There are only multis in this neighborhood. It wasn’t like we chose a duplex. It just so happened because it was like older homes right outside of Philadelphia. There were only duplexes and small multis. We got our start there and then we moved to New Jersey and then started our business focused on New Jersey and buying properties there. We sold that property and did 1031 into a four-unit, then that started our trajectory in New Jersey.
Over the fifteen years I’ve been doing this, we had lots of twists and turns. I wish we just focused on multi but we didn’t. We got involved a lot of different things early on. People would get distracted as we usually do. We were probably a little naïve and young. We flipped houses, we got into tax liens, we bought a commercial building, we bought raw land. Every random thing you could possibly think of, we probably have done it, until we doubled down on multifamily. Our business now is focused on multifamily. We went from a 2 duplex to a 10-unit. We grew very steadily. We didn’t go from a 2 to a 200-unit. We did, but over time.
Now, we focus on larger multis and we’re starting a fund where we’re actually investing with other operators. We’re diversifying a little bit outside of multi but more like from a funding perspective. I’m involved in that, not day-to-day, but more from like a strategic level and helping build our team out. It’s exciting to be able to invest in different sectors of real estate, not just multifamily. We do love multifamily. We have a letter of intent on a property in the Southeast, which is where we are focused on now.
Tell me a little bit more about this fund. Let’s dive a little deeper in that.
It’s something that we’ve talked about over the year and then COVID obviously happened. COVID happened, the pandemic and everything. You’re in California, I’m in Pennsylvania. We’re in the thick of shut downs. I know things are opening up, which is wonderful and people are getting along. All the conversations we had were like, “How’s this going to affect our buildings?” I have to say with our multifamily, any loan that came out, we took advantage of. We didn’t know how it was going to affect. We didn’t know who’s going to be able to pay. We didn’t know what’s going to happen with tenants and everything like that. Our buildings, knock on wood, the ones that were doing well are stable and have thrived during COVID.
We had a building in North Carolina that was 40% occupied. It was literally a turnaround building. It was 200 units. We got it up to 90% during COVID. Some of these buildings thrived. Other buildings that were having some issues prior to COVID continued to have some issues. While that was a stable sector for us, we’re all in on that sector. My husband and I talked a lot about as we grow our businesses, what do we want to do? We want to diversify and the importance of that, and what does that look like? The fund is an opportunity. We’ve always focused on raising money and then putting it specifically into a building, into a project.
With regards to the fund, we talk to people all the time. People are like, “This sounds like a great opportunity to pass an investor.” Then you’re like, “I don’t have a building. I don’t have anything under contract right now.” We refer them. We know a lot of people we like and respect in the business. We have no problem with that. There are a lot of good syndicators out there. We wanted to have another flavor of ice cream, if you will.
The fund will obviously be an ongoing rolling fund, and it will give investors what we’re going to actually invest in are all things that we know, and that we’ve vetted it. We’re not going to start investing in a business that we have no idea because that’s a whole other level. It’s like mitigating risk. We want to mitigate your risks. You want to make sure you’re mitigating risk for yourself, but most importantly, your investors. Hard money loans, that will be one. We’re going to start to work with maybe the hard money operators that we like and respect that we know do good business. We’re not the hard money loan lenders. They are, and we’re going to do that. Multifamily will be a piece of it. If we have a project that comes up, we’re going to almost invest in our own projects and that will be a piece of it.
Those are the two main pieces. I want to say even like self-storage and those operators, that might be another sector. They’re related to investing in real estate on some level, but it will be in a way that we are not the sole operators of everything. As we evolve, you don’t want to do everything yourself. You want to be able to do what do you do well. Once you figure that out, you have to focus on that. That’s what that looks like. We’re building out a team and that’s been in the making for some time, but that’s the goal.
I’m fascinated by that idea because I feel like, for me too, there’s something that I do really well. I do executive homes in the Silicon Valley. I’ve got my entire systems. It’s all built out. It runs itself. I don’t worry too much about it. I was telling you before that I’m taking all of my May off for my birth month because that’s where my birthday is. We’re traveling to Hawaii and I’m going to a spa in Palm Springs with my sister. We had our vaccinations, we’re all taken care of, we’re doing our tests, everything’s good. We’ve decided that it’s time to celebrate. That lifestyle is fantastic. I’m not particularly interested in working significantly more. I do get boards, we have construction projects, we have some other stuff going on so that my entrepreneurial mind doesn’t slow down or get bored.
Multifamily Portfolio: What commercial brokers care about is if you’ve closed deals, they do not want to work with people who are going to get to the finish line and not be able to pull the money together because they want their commission.
What is happening is I found several different syndicators doing different things. I’ve invested in storage, multifamily and a variety of different things. I often wondered because each time that I invest, and I don’t know how this is going to work for you guys, but every single time I invest, it’s a minimum of $100,000. That’s great for us because we have that money, we’re looking to retire, we’re moving that way, but not everybody who’s reading this has access to $100,000 for this and $100,000 for that. They want to be able to diversify without spending that much money. What does that fund look like for you? Is there going to be a minimum investment? Have you worked that out?
I think we’re still working that out. One of the key team members that we knew that we needed, it’s not how but who. You can start to build out different businesses, you can’t know everything. I don’t want to know everything quite honestly, that just hurts my brain a little bit to know everything. We’re women, we want to know everything. Anyway, one of the people that is a key principle in this endeavor is a fund manager from Wall Street who has run funds. As we’ve talked to him, I think the minimums are going to, I’m not sure exactly. I will say though, one organization we’ve started working with is called Republic. Basically, what they do is they in essence have a similar type of approach, in that people can invest $10,000, even down to $1,000. Don’t quote me on that, but I’m not familiar.
What’s fascinating though for our last indication was a 336-unit apartment building. Our minimum was $50,000 on that project. Not everyone has that but they want to invest in real estate. We found this company and what they’re doing is they’re the investor in that project, but they’re the ones going out to the accredited investors to then say okay to all pooling all this money together. Then they are the investor in that project with us. They’re all pooled in this together in this company called Republic, then Republic is ultimately the investor, if that makes sense.
It was cool because that was the first time we had ever done that. If you think about it, we have a 336-unit apartment complex. We had close to 80 investors. It’s a lot of people, even with a minimum of $50,000. We had some people who put $500,000 and some people put $100,000, any amount. There’s a lot of money. I’m the cheapest person, I’d be putting $1,000 at anything. That’s me. I know, I get it. We were really pleased to see that. It’s a neat approach. I think that’s the future to be honest because I love that concept and I was really intrigued by it. As we do other deals, we’re going to be working with them. I’m not sure the relationship exactly how that’s going to play out in the fund, but that was just a neat example for our last indication that gave everyone the opportunity.
Are they more of crowdfunders or are they syndicators? Do you have any idea on their structure?
I’m not too sure which level they are. I just heard about it conceptually and was intrigued. I know that they’ve been around and they’re not just at the start of their company. There are a lot of different pieces around it to ensure how you do it. Some funds are accredited, not accredited, and all that plays as well. There’s a lot of legal stuff, a lot of money to see attorneys and all that stuff. Because it’s a project, you can’t solicit. It’s illegal to do that. There are other projects from friends and family. I know that with this particular project it’s because we only accepted accredited. It’s a neat approach and I’m happy to get more info.
Let’s put our heads together. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. I’m always looking for ways when I get phone calls from my ladies, when they say, “I’ve only got this much.” What can we do with that to benefit them in the biggest way? That would be amazing. Another topic that I’m getting a lot from my ladies is this idea of out-of-state investing. Especially here in California, there are a lot of markets where people feel like, “I can’t really invest in my backyard,” and they’re scared to go out-of-state. I know that you do a lot of multifamily out-of-state, so let’s talk a little bit about that, your perspective and how to look for projects and stuff like that.
For our first seven years, we invested locally. We had a rule where we don’t invest more than 30 minutes away. We did a team. We did a leasing agent. We had our bookkeeper who did all the accounting. We have a tenant relations person. We had a maintenance person. We had four people on our staff besides me and my husband, helping us manage our local properties. We bought a property in Philadelphia which was an eighteen-unit and that was 35 minutes, so we went, “We could still do it.” Then the market shifted. I’m in the Northeast, and New Jersey is not the most favorable state on taxes in this country. Even in Philadelphia, the projects that we were looking at were getting outbid, it was getting more expensive. We raise money, we work with investors. The returns are important to ensure that we’re going to get into the right projects. We’re not just parking millions of dollars from a relative.
We’re constantly looking at how we’re going to get into the right area for our investing goals and our investors. A broker had brought the same broker and that’s the first thing I’d say as a good tip is start building relationships with commercial brokers. Sometimes it’s tough, especially now. Think about a hot market, everyone’s calling commercial brokers saying, “I invest in multifamily, do you have anything for me?” “Yeah, you and 90 million other people.” You’ve got to differentiate, keep that in mind too.
We had closed that eighteen-unit with the same broker who called us about a property in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour and a half from where we were living at the time. He said, “Are you interested?” We’re like, “Cool, like an hour and a half. We’re not going to send our leasing agent there. We’re not sending our maintenance person there. We need to look into property management companies.”
After vetting the deal, and that’s a great story that ended up itself. The first domino always is a good property management company. You’re going to need that. Some people successfully invest in properties and they self-manage the properties. I’ve heard of it. I know a lot of women who do it successfully. We knew at a 49-unit, that wasn’t going to be our best strategy. We knew it was going to be important to have a good and local property management company. Why I say that’s a great person to have on your team? Say you’re sourcing an area in Alabama or wherever you’re sourcing deals. Before even looking for a property, start getting to know the property management companies there because that’s going to follow. If you cannot find a property management company in a geographical area, that might be a sign for a lot of reasons that something is off.
Even with Airbnb, which is very hot, vacation rentals and luxury vacation rentals, whatever the people are interested in. If it’s a hot area, there are people managing in that hot area, and that’s a great source and a great team member to start to talk to. Number one, they know the area. What streets are good? Which streets aren’t good? What areas are up and coming? What areas are too hot and expensive? Because we know that’s the case. We’ll wait in an exuberant way now. Everywhere is like, “Hold on, what do you want?”
Multifamily Portfolio: The idea of the diversity of jobs is even more important than job growth, they’re both important.
I called up my way to Target. You’re a real estate investor, you never turn it off. I saw a sign that said ‘For Sale’ and it had a handwritten phone number. I’m like, “That’s a good sign.” Great area, Bucks County, where I live and I’m like, “That’s an interesting area.” I texted the person, guy, gal, I don’t know who it is. I said, “How much is the lot and what’s the size? Is it with sewer?” all the things you ask. We’ve done a bit of new construction a lot of times but we could probably pull it off. “$250,000.” I don’t even know if you’d get $500,000 for the property. That’s just for the lot. People are nutty with their prices right now.
Going back to out-of-state, I think property management companies are helpful to have on your team as an initial team member. What commercial brokers care about is if you’ve closed deals. They do not want to work with people who are going to get to the finish line and not be able to pull the money together because they want their commission. That’s what they care about. Beyond everything else you want to talk about with them, they care about if you’ve closed with them or with anyone. If you or someone on your core team has closed deals that you’re looking for. If you’re looking at a 100-unit, you better have someone that you’re bringing to the table that’s like, “This is the kind of team we have, the kind of team we’ve done and this is what we’ve closed.” That is what they’re thinking right now when you call them.
This broker brought us this project and we started to talk to property management companies in the area and vet the area. What really helped, and I always say this, if you have somebody in your family or in your network who lives in the area is really helpful. They don’t need to have a degree in real estate. They don’t have to have ten years in investing. If you have some boots on the ground and feet on the street, people that aren’t just property management because remember, property management company is a vendor.
We always like to offer our property manager company’s potential ownership in the building. Every time we buy a building, we say, “We’re syndicating this, would you like to own part of it as well?” It’s not the best sign if they’re like, “No.” Even if they put $25,000, maybe they think that’s like chump change. Most of all the property management companies we’ve worked with have invested in our deals and that’s a good sign as skin in the game, so to speak.
I would say the second thing is to start to look at, “Is this an up-and-coming area? Do I know anyone in my network that can help me? Is there a reason to go there? Do I want to go there?” If you’re going to invest in an area, those are questions to ask, “If I have to now get on a plane, is that on the way to my aunt or my parents? Is this an area that my kid can go to college for the next four years?” Make it make sense. Versus an area that literally you know no one. That can work but if you can blend a few things in there and it is an up-and-coming area, you’re going to want somebody that’s 10, 15 minutes from the property, whether it’s a realtor, whether you have to pay them hourly. If you can’t get there, someone needs to get there because fires happen, things happen.
We have a cousin in this area, Lancaster. When we’re looking at it, we’re like, “What do you think?” He’s an investor, which was even better. He was able to be our boots on the ground. He’s part of our general partnership. We had a fire there years ago. We want to make sure everyone’s okay. We also want to see what’s going on. In an hour and a half, the fire is probably going to throw a little more damage than ten minutes.
A couple of things that I want to highlight is that people think that you hear about an amazing market and you should go invest in there. I remember in the mid-2000s, everybody was in Henderson, Nevada, right outside of Las Vegas. I had close friends who all invested. There was also Florida, there was also Chicago. Those were some big hubs where they were really marketing to investors from out of state, especially California. Californians had a bunch of equity and it wasn’t working for us. Everybody could get loans by just stating things.
There were these pockets that were trending. People were making money hand over fist. For me, I always play the longer trend. I don’t play the short-term trends. I would admit, I would probably be a lot richer if I got that right more often, but there are many people that get that wrong. Part of it is that they didn’t do some of the things that you talked about. It wasn’t a place that I would ever want to visit. It wasn’t a place on the way to anything. Las Vegas, it is. Chicago, it is. Florida, it is. A lot of people didn’t have that mentality of, “Would I want to go there? Would I vacation there? Would I want to live there? Would I want my kids to go to college there? Is there any reason for me to go there?” Even in Henderson, it’s not like people were like, “I’d like to have something in Henderson because I like to go to Las Vegas.” No, it was, “I’m investing in Henderson because everybody else is investing in Henderson.”
I love how you talk about this, especially in your first few deals, I think this is hugely important is as you’re getting to know what this is like. The very first time you step out of state, you don’t want to be in a market that you completely don’t understand, that you just get a bunch of numbers from someone that’s a vendor. They’re interested in selling these properties. They’re not going to lie to you, but they’re definitely going to paint a pretty picture.
We had a friend that moved to Henderson and we went to visit them one time when we went on a trip to Las Vegas. He was like, “There are all these crazy investors coming in here.” All around town, people were like, “This bubble is going to blow,” because there weren’t as many people in the restaurants anymore. There were things that were closing down. We’re like, “How is it possible that all this expansion is happening but the actual economy is shrinking?” There’s no way to have known that if we hadn’t had this conversation with our friends that had just moved there. There’s all this hype about Henderson, but they just closed down the local Whole Foods or whatever market it was.
I love what you talk about is we don’t have to have boots on the ground all the time, every time. Eventually you do develop a skill in getting to know markets or you focus on certain markets. Especially in those first few deals that you’re going out, that is all such good advice, Liz. Make sure that it’s someplace you would want to go. It’s like basic, intuitive, common sense stuff that we don’t think about because we get whisked away by the excitement of what’s possible. Those basic stuff, “Would I like to go there? Is there anything there I appreciate? Do I have someone that’s relatively close by, maybe within a half hour?” Even if they’re not going to be boots on the ground, just have the conversation once in a while. See how things are going in that market.
Thank you so much for that because normally people are like, “You need to look at the colleges, the employers or the average income rate.” Yes, you do need to do all those things, but it’s not the end of the story. Especially when you’re starting, it’s not necessarily going to give you the comfort that you need to actually get out there and do it. Here’s the thing, nothing happens for you until you take action. If it’s just the numbers and that’s not inspiring you to take action, then nothing is happening for you.
Multifamily Portfolio: Everyone gets stopped after they lose money and something bad happens. But don’t give up.
Many people do get caught up and there are many important numbers as you’re analyzing markets and analyzing deals. Even just the idea of what COVID taught is the importance of diversity of jobs. Are there different jobs that people can actually be employed by? They’re all in on the tech, all in on the government or all in on whatever industry. The idea of diversity of jobs is to me, even more important than job growth, they’re both important. To know that people can get different jobs, there are jobs that can do positive things. There are many markets that don’t have that. Even high-priced areas don’t have that. We probably invest more in the workforce housing, more up and coming areas, not areas that are on any hot market list. Those are the too expensive areas. We’re like, “We don’t want to invest in an area that’s on any list.”
I love that, it’s much more practical advice. My ladies here have a lot of good advice from very smart people. Sometimes, we just got to ground it. This is how you make yourself comfortable with that. Ask yourself some real common-sense questions because so much of building a real estate business is common sense. There’s a lot of fancy languaging. There are a lot of people that say things that sound smart, but in the end, it’s a common-sense business. Thank you so much for grounding that for us. It was helpful. We are going to do EXTRA. We’re going to be talking more about building your team, finding partners when you’re in state or out of state. She likes to say, “Who’s on the bus?” and then team building with all those people that are on the bus. I love that picture because you’re all going out on a field trip and you’re all on this bus. Where are you going to go? How are you going to get there? Is it going to be fun? Is it going to be profitable? We’re going to talk about that with Liz in EXTRA. We have that to look forward to. Before we move to our three rapid-fire questions, Liz, could you tell everybody how they can get in touch with you?
In terms of some of the active multifamily projects which are fun to learn more about some of the day-to-day real estate projects, you can go over to my husband’s nice business called DeRosa Group, DeRosaGroup.com. My husband spent a lot of teaching as well. We both love teaching and helping, so you’ll see a lot of YouTube content and things of that sort from him. In terms of women who are interested in getting more support from women and getting connected, check us out TheRealEstateInvesther.com. From there, you can learn all about our Meetups that are across the country, and our Facebook community and membership, and things we’ve got going on with helping women. You can check us out there.
Thank you for that. Liz, tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
Don’t get distracted, focus on a niche and go all in on one thing.
What’s one strategy to be successful as a real estate investor?
Don’t give up. You’re going to lose money. I hope you don’t lose money, but you may lose money like many of us. Fifteen years, I can tell you a lot of interesting stories. You’ve had money like a Bernie Madoff situation where literally hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen from us. We don’t give up. That makes anyone that successful in any line of business or anything in life. Don’t give up. Know that your mistakes are going to make you propel you forward, and you’re going to learn from it and you’ll grow from it. If you don’t have that attitude, then everyone gets stopped after they lose money and something bad happens. Don’t give up. That’s the key.
What would you say is one daily practice that you do that contributes to your personal success?
Something that I’ve always done and then go back and forth and don’t really do it consistently is I do a daily prayer. I read a little spiritual prayer. I think about it. I’ve been doing ten-minute meditations. I’d like to increase that eventually. For me, it’s been super helpful. I focus on whatever I learned in that prayer. I focus on that in my meditation. If I miss a day, it’s rare, but I have maybe missed 1 or 2 days for four months, but every day I usually get that in.
My meditation practice gently worked its way into my life to where I don’t even think about it. It started to just happen. I missed three days and my husband and I were on edge. I lost my temper at a restaurant. I didn’t yell at anybody but I didn’t have the patience to wait. Nobody saw it but I felt it like, “What is going on with me? Who is this person?” My husband was like, “Are you really stressed out?” I was like, “I think I haven’t been meditating. I haven’t been taking Moneeka time.” I have been taking Moneeka time. I got a pedicure. I still do, but that piece that starts my day has been so important. I’m glad you mentioned that.
You have to practice it. It’s like going to the gym. You can’t do it once and you’re good.
I always say in all of our Bliss practices, you can’t just brush your teeth once in your lifetime and hope your teeth are going to be good. You’ve got to brush it every day. You’ve got to keep doing those little things. Liz, as always, I’ve loved our conversation. Thank you for everything you’ve shared in the show.
Thank you so much for having me. This was amazing. I hope I was helpful and gave some content that your audience will help them.
Ladies, Liz and I have more to talk about. We’re going to be talking about building teams and who’s on the bus, all of that really good stuff. Stay tuned for the EXTRA. If you are not subscribed, go to RealEstateForWomenEXTRA.com, and you get the first seven days for free. Check it out. See if you love it. If you don’t, that’s totally fine, but do check it out. For those of you that are leaving, Liz and I now thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. 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. Bye.
I’m Liz. I was born and raised in a middle-class family in New Jersey where my home was filled with love but going out to dinner was a big deal. From an early age, I have always wanted to serve others and even went to a graduate school program to become a social worker.
While studying to become a social worker, my brother in law who was the only entrepreneur I had ever met, handed me Rich Dad Poor Dad. This changed the trajectory of my life forever. Over the next couple of years, I started learning as much as I could. After a year of taking courses and hundreds of attempts to get an offer accepted, my boyfriend at the time (now husband) purchased our first investment property a duplex with none of our own money since we did not even have the money.
I started in my 20s not knowing anything about investing, business, and no money to invest. Now, 16 years later, our team owns and manages millions of dollars of real estate. What most people don’t know is that this evolution came with a lot of lows, loss, heartache, and challenges.
As someone who was not handed anything I have today, I have learned a ton of lessons from not giving up to managing the balancing act of life as a woman. I am constantly working at balancing all the priorities of my life from being a mom of young children to a wife & biz partner with my husband to taking care of myself. It has not been easy so that is why we created our InvestHER community.
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
Moneeka Sawyer
Eng is an experienced private fund manager with $100M assets under management. He has 12 years of private market and real estate investing experience and has focused on cash flow investing to create significant passive income. Eng is an economist by training, from the Wharton School of Business. He also has experience leading data science and analytics at Apple, Capital One and AT&T. He applies that experience when identifying and underwriting investment opportunities and markets.
As a real estate investing expert and coach, I have built my name on the results I have created – for myself and for my students.
I’m Liz. I was born and raised in a middle-class family in New Jersey where my home was filled with love but going out to dinner was a big deal. From an early age, I have always wanted to serve others and even went to a graduate school program to become a social worker.