Most people who dabble in real estate investment focus solely on wholesaling, rehabbing, and acquiring properties.Only a few pay attention to land investment, which actually offers high returns at pretty low costs. Michelle Bosch, the Cofounder of Orbit Investments, shares with Moneeka Sawyer how to take advantage of some dirty piece of land and turn it into something profitable. Michelle looks back on her journey from being an immigrant to a full-time real estate professional, dissects the four stages they used to structure cashflow, and underlines the importance of pouring all of your courage and concentration on your selected niche.

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Create Inflows Of Cash And Ease In Real Estate With Michelle Bosch

I am excited to welcome to our show our guest, Michelle Bosch. Michelle is the Cofounder of Orbit Investments and a full-time real estate investor since 2002. She has bought and sold over 4,000 pieces of real estate and built the third largest land investment and auction company in the United States, bringing that company successfully in the eight bigger revenues in a matter of eighteen months. Through the recession, she positioned Orbit Investments for rapid growth in the single-family and multifamily investing space with over $40 million in assets under management.

She’s also the creator of the nationally recognized Land Profit Generator program, focusing on teaching others how to invest in land, and has created over 145,000 followers via the Forever Cash podcast radio show, LandProfitGenerator.com, UltimateBoardroom.com and social media channels. Her businesses have been featured in Inc., Fox, NBC, ABC, and Forbes, and she holds an MBA in Business and Finance from Thunderbird Global School of International Management, the world’s number one graduate school in international management. Michelle, welcome to this show.

Thank you, Moneeka for having me. It’s an honor to be here with you.

Why don’t you tell us Michelle, a little bit about your story, how you got going and started doing all this amazing stuff?

It sounds like an amazing bio, but at the end of the day, we all have to have faith in the small. We started small with humble beginnings. Both my husband and I are not originally from the US. We’re both immigrants. I am originally from Honduras. He’s originally from Germany. We came here to study. We decided to stay here, got jobs, and found companies that were willing to sponsor our working visas and eventually, our permanent residency or green cards. We got jobs 100% travel. We hated it. We’ve spent all this money on an MBA, on a degree in the promises that you’re going to go and get a job and live the American dream.

We were far from living the American dream. We had living paycheck to paycheck. A glamorous life for about three months and then traveling 100% gets old and working 60 to 80-hour weeks for someone else as a consultant and a client-side was not necessarily our idea of how I thought that the end goal was supposed to look like. We started looking for something else to do. We came here with two suitcases to our names and hearts full of dreams. Parts of those dreams were getting the job, but it wasn’t entirely fitting the picture of what we thought we were going to be doing in terms of having the freedom of money, time, relationships, and purpose and living out those four freedoms. As a result of discontent with our life back then, which was comfortable, but it was comfortably miserable.

That’s how many people live, constantly miserable. They don’t feel miserable. They’re like, “I’m fine.” There’s a difference between, “I’m fine too” to “My life rocks.” It’s a completely different thing, but we don’t know that when we’re stuck in comfortably miserable.

My family back home had some experience in real estate with a commercial property. I knew about passive cashflow from back home and I’m like, “Let’s start looking at real estate.” When everyone thinks about real estate, the very first thing that comes to your mind, at least for us, it was like, “Let’s look at single-family homes.” Perhaps we can get home, wholesale it, rehab it, flip it, make some money and be a hot side hustle because we couldn’t go over jobs. Our jobs were the ticket to a permanent residency here, so we couldn’t leave our jobs. We put a junker under contract. We realized quickly that we’re way over our heads. We had no idea how to estimate repairs, a new kitchen flooring, which had foundation issues, and roofing. Nobody took our wholesale special that we were going to have to probably look for money partners and have holding costs. Eventually, secure probably traditional financing, so on and so forth.

Land Investment: Nobody talks about land. Jurd is something that is so way out there for people.

It’s not like we didn’t have bad credit. We had no credit because we were not originally from here. There’s a lot of moving pieces. To cut the story short, we decided, “We’re not doing this. We’re pulling out during our due diligence period.” We came across something interesting to us, Moneeka. Here’s where I think that a lot of it is your perspective and the immigrant advantage. I always talk about the immigrant advantage being that you have, number one, zero fear of hard work because you’re willing to create a better world than the one you left. Number two, you see opportunities that others perhaps missed. What we came across here in the US was a concept that was completely revolutionary to us. Both in Germany and Honduras, people do not lose their properties to property taxes.

I found out about tax liens and tax deeds. I went to Sonoma County to a tax deed, which means they’re auctioning off a property that has been delinquent five years or more. What I noticed that most of the properties that were coming for auction, which is incredibly competitive were pieces of land. I’m like, “These people have decided mentally, have checked out and let these properties go probably years before this is coming to auction.” My husband and I were like, “Why don’t we send them a letter and try to see if we can get some of this vacant land before it goes to auction because I saw it going for good numbers, for way about what it was doing back taxes.”

We perfected what we call our proven performance ladder over the years. It took us about three years to perfect our methodology and split test every sentence. The whole process of buying from the lead, all the way to closing on a property and having actual profit been made. I’m like, “Let’s put the pedal to the metal. This is it.” We’re able to get properties to this day, not just ourselves but our clients and our students are able to get properties for $0.05 to $0.25 on the dollar. For every 750 to 1,000 pieces of mail that we send, we get anywhere between 6 and 15 calls for every hundred offers about three deals.

Those are amazing conversion rates when it comes to comparing that to the house flippers. The house flippers need to send 10,000 pieces of mail in order to be able to get one deal. For us, it was a gap in the industry that others overlook and don’t care to explore. To be frank, if you go to any real estate investment conference, anything that people are going to think of has to do with rehabbing, with wholesaling a home, with multifamily, small multifamily, large multifamily, commercial property, and notes. Nobody talks about land. Jurd is something that is so way out there for people. That’s the opportunity that we saw that there were in a blue ocean with no competition.

We could get these properties cheap and that we could turn around and sell them quickly because we were getting them cheap. We could sell them for 60% to 80% of the market value. We specialize in three types of properties. We buy properties that are infill lots in the cities, in the path of growth, or that are in recreational areas. This is how we started. The first year, we did 60 deals. In the second year, we did about 100 deals. By that time, our green cards were coming. We’re like, “We can let go of our jobs.” We didn’t put a two weeks’ notice. It was more a three-month notice because I’ve always thought you always want to leave the door open with someone that has given you a hand. We were both immensely grateful to our companies for having given us the opportunity to stay in this country permanently forever legally.

How long did you work for each of them?

Five years.

That’s great because they sponsored you. They also got good high-performance out of you. It was a win-win and I loved those stories.

We decided to go at this full-time, then the next year we did about 150 deals. That was with us doing this full-time. What we noticed is that we were at a point where we were as tired, as exhausted putting the number of hours that we were putting in our jobs we were putting it into the business. We were like, “Do we shrink in order for us to have the freedom of time that we have because we were making good money, but we didn’t have any freedom of time, or do we expand so that we can have a team that helps us leverage our time?” That’s what we decided. We went for expansion. We hired a team that next year. We did our first auction and we sold about 200 pieces of land in one day.

We used to do those once a quarter. We continue doing that even through the recession. What that allowed us, Moneeka is to have an incredibly privileged situation. When 2008, 2009 came around, a lot of people were losing their shirts. We were having a situation that we were sitting on a ton of cash and a ton of liquidity from our cash flips, which are anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000 for each piece of land. We can either flip it for cash or we can flip it using seller financing. For example, I buy a property for $1,000, I sell it for $20,000. Somebody gives me $2,000 down so I have recouped my entire investment. They make $300 to $400 payments for the next 5 to 10 years. That’s how we’ve been able to make land cashflow.

At some point, we had over $70,000 in passive cashflow, $12 million in notes from the land. It’s like doing the right strategy at the right time in the market. It was our time to start allocating some of the cash profits because our land continues to be our cash machine and putting those profits into single-family homes. We went crazy shopping because in Phoenix in 2009, it was the bottom of the market. We could buy a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home for $40,000 to $50,000, put in $5,000 and $10,000 and rent it for $900 to $1,100. Those properties have quadruple in price and we’ve sold some and bought in other markets where we could buy them again for $40,000 to $50,000 and do the same thing over again.

Back in 2016, we’re doing this amazing thing because the end goal has always been at the end of the day, passive cashflow. We call it Forever Cash. There’s one-time cash from flips. There’s temporary cash from notes and the land, then the Holy grail, in my opinion, of all cashflows is that Forever Cash. That comes in forever. We decided, “How can we start not looking at one door at a time, but a hundred doors?” That’s when we started looking into multifamily. We now have four projects. We are almost coming full circle with one of them where we purchased, totally improved, efficiency operating it at a high level. We increased market rents. Any deferred maintenance that was there with the property is taking care of, and we’re looking to sell it.

We’re coming full circle with our first project, which is 94 units from a purchase in 2016. As we grew as investors in our sophistication and understanding, we were able to go up asset classes. To be frank, the land is my darling because it is the cornerstone of our wealth. It has been transformational to us, Moneeka not just like real money in my bank account, but as individuals, people, and entrepreneurs. Nothing will sculpture spirit. Even if it’s a small deal where maybe your spread is $3,000 to $5,000, going through the process of having the courage, talking to a seller, talking to a buyer, figuring out the documentation pieces, how to close on it, and how to market. There’s nothing like that to sculpt your character and help you become a better person in all aspects of life.

A couple of questions I have for you, first of all, where do you live? Where are you located?

I live in Phoenix, Arizona, in Paradise Valley. There are beautiful mountains here. I’m five minutes from the mountain preserve and a hiking trail. We love the outdoors. Now’s the time to be here. Usually, June through September. We try to escape the heat from Germany. We have a yearly pilgrimage to Europe. Part of it is from leveraging our time with the team, but also finding asset classes. In the beginning, an asset class that we could wrap our mind around and that could put our family first and could give us those four freedoms. We’re all looking for freedom of time. We’re all looking for freedom of money, but also relationships and a purpose. The land business is giving me also that freedom of purpose is that we’re teaching that to others. I’m able to give back in some way, shape, or form, and pour my heart into developing a person from going from an employee mentality into an entrepreneurial mentality using land as a vehicle because it’s simple.

That’s been a lot of my purpose too. I use my favorite vehicle which is real estate. I’m a buy and hold person, but my journey and message are about living a life of bliss, which is all about the four freedoms that you talk about. For me, that emotional freedom too, living a blissful life. We’re aligned. Where do you invest? Do you invest in Phoenix or do you invest all over the place?

Land Investment: With land, you have to be much more creative to move it quickly and for the prices you want.

For land, we invest all across the US only because we don’t need to look at the land. Back in the day, there was no Google Earth. Now, we can do everything through that. I don’t need to look at any single piece of dirt whatsoever or run down to negotiate with a seller with the land. These are people that have never been approached by anyone ever. They are happy to take my offer whenever I’m ready to give them an offer. It’s single-families. There are three markets and multifamily three markets that we specialize in so that we can understand those markets well. We can understand the employment base and become masters because I’m all about mastery. Repetition creates the possibility to scale. That repetition also gives you the opportunity to do something over and over again until you mastered it. We write on those two asset classes when it comes to single-families and multifamily. We like to focus on those three markets only.

My big question about land is if you buy it on $0.05 to $0.25 on the dollar, where are you going to sell it? Who do you sell it to? Why they did just sell it?

This is the story of our lives. It’s beyond me, but people will sell at that amount of money or that level of discount because they decided that they were going to purchase two pieces of land, one in Florida and one in Arizona. They decide to retire in Arizona. There is a piece of property in Florida, their kids don’t want it or they pass away, Arizona want it, or there’s a divorce and they need to get out. There are endless reasons why, but circumstances are always difficult for people. There are always reasons for money. Why didn’t they list it with a realtor? Many actually have. Realtor suck when it comes to selling pieces of land. You cannot put in the MLS a piece of dirt with two corner markers and expect to sell it. You have to sell a dream when you’re selling land. You need to sell the possibility of what could be in that piece of land and create your listings and your marketing with a completely different perspective than when you’re selling a home, which is easily stageable. With good lighting, you can make it look attractive and pretty. With land, you have to be much more creative to be able to move it quickly and for the prices that you want.

If the buyers are developers, it’s a quick lookup. It’s looking up on Google, an association of builders in the city that you’re in. You can get a list of builders that you could send your property and market your property to. If it’s an infill a lot, neighbors will win your property. We have what we call our proven neighbor letter. Fifty percent of all our sales and our client’s sales come from a neighbor letter. You can sell on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Zillow, LandWatch, or LANDFLIP. There are many places where you can do it for free. You don’t even have to pay to market the property.

Are they easy to sell?

Yes. If your listing is looking nice and a piece of property, it’s not going to sell. It is just a piece of dirt with two corner markers, but if you say, “Selling two acres of paradise for 40% under market value,” and that’s your heading versus “Here are my two acres of land in such and such county or such and such city.” You start building the dream of, “Look at all the amenities. We’re about an hour away from the main city of such and such. These are the homes and developments that are happening in the area.” You put views of that, “These are some of the hospitals and some of the employment centers.” You then go narrow your focus and maybe your picture number 5 or 6 is the actual piece of dirt.

You finalize by saying, “I offer either 40% market value, or we could talk about seller financing with a low down payment and monthly payments of X.” All of a sudden, you’ve opened your pool of potential buyers when you have the opportunity for them to buy with seller financing. Maybe not everyone is going to have $20,000 sitting around. Maybe they’ll have $2,000 to give you as a down payment and then you can start creating those notes and that passive cashflow. Now, what has been off the hook has been Facebook Marketplace out of all places.

You do land, single-family homes, and large multifamily. Talk about how you’re structuring your cashflow to get that from each one of those that you invest in.

For example for us, when we started our business, after that Forever Cash and after those four freedoms. We have broken up into different stages, a level of freedom in each of those four areas. Our first level is always like, “What we call our security plan?” If the security plan of my lifestyle costs me $5,000, how can I create with passive cashflow from land, houses, or multifamily? $5,000 is easily 10, 20 properties of $20,000 each, where I’m getting maybe $400 or $500 in monthly payments. That’s easily doable in a matter of 1 or 1.5 years to build that passive cashflow.

That was our first milestone. How can we get the first $5,000 over lifestyle to be paid? For everyone, that security will be different. When we started, we had nothing. $5,000 for us was a great lifestyle. We even afforded a vacation if we wanted once a year. We then moved on to our second plan, which is our comfort plan. That comfort plan for everyone will be different. For us, it was about $10,000. How can we create $10,000 of passive cashflow either with land, with a single-families, or with buildings? How can we build up to that? All our lifestyle is being paid for that and luxury.

Now, we’re working on our luxury plan. For that, it’s going to be different for everyone. Maybe someone wants to have living la vida loca and fly private. Maybe that idea of passive cashflow for you is $50,000 to $100,000 a month. Maybe for some of you, $20,000 would be fine, so it depends. For us, we gave ourselves personal numbers of what each of those would look like. In the beginning, we use the land, and then we transitioned some of those land profits and cashflow into the single-families, which we continue to own to this day and into the multifamily. At the end of the day, one drawback from land is that there are no benefits when it comes to taxes. There is multifamily where you can use a lot of the depreciation to shelter and offset. What we use is a lot of the depreciation from the multifamily and the single-family to offset a lot of our active income that comes from the land flips. We get the benefit of both worlds. That’s how we structured it.

I’ve never heard it done that way. Everybody that I’ve spoken to that does land love land and they will not touch anything else because everything else is higher maintenance than land is. From my perspective, the land wasn’t that exciting in the past. I’ve looked at it several times. You would bring in the other asset classes so that you could take the tax benefits that offset your profits, which gives you a lot more income. It’s a simple way to do that.

It’s still in an industry that I understand now intimately well. I don’t understand the stock market. I don’t understand foreign exchange. I don’t understand cryptocurrency, but I do understand dirt and I understand creating a home in a first in the class community for someone such that they can continue paying rent and there’s that pride of ownership in our community. I understand how to do those things, but I don’t understand a lot of other things. It’s like sticking to your lane. There are so many shiny objects out there that it’s an exercise and discipline in terms of putting blinders on. I always say to my husband whenever he comes home, “So and so is doing this.” I’m like, “Is that a carousel ride?” I call it a carousel ride because of those shiny objects. You get on the carousel. You go for a wonderful ride. It’s fun. For the three minutes that it lasts or three months or whatever you’re doing, get out of the carousel. You’re in the exact same spot financially. If it’s one of those I’m like, “I don’t want to hear about it.”

You meet some good points here. First of all, there are a million ways to make a million dollars in real estate. We have a lot of options. The first thing is to get to know real estate, but you do need to specialize and you need mastery. When you up-level what you’re doing, you started on land. You wanted to use that cashflow differently so you up-leveled to single-family homes and then to multifamily.

The team is also up-leveling so that you can have ahead of the horse that you’ve mastered. That runs on its own before you can go and get diluted with something else. That’s the key.

The point that I’m trying to make is when you decide you need to do something different, don’t suddenly jump to Forex Trading, Bitcoin, or from, “I own land and now I’m going to run a syndication project on this apartment building.” You don’t know anything about it. You need to step into it and allow your mastery to be the foundation for those next levels that you go to. You want to make sure that you’re climbing with mastery rather than starting on the ground floor for every single thing that you do. That’s what we love about your story. It’s true with building a team too. You start with one employee and then you might grow to 100, but you got to start with one. You’re not going to in general unless you’re a big corporation buy another company with 100 employees if you’ve never had employees.

Land Investment: If you are going through uncertain times, it will only last for a specific period of time. It will pass.

You want to make sure that when you are deciding to grow, many of the ladies that are reading are just beginners. They’re trying to figure out, “Where am I going to start that path towards mastery?” Maybe it’s going to be land. Maybe it’s going to be single-family homes. I do BRRR where I rent things out. What is it that we want to do? What is the starting point for that? The thing that I want to say to the ladies is where you are now, you’re not going to be able to see that next step. You create mastery where you start, which means it takes a commitment. It takes a willingness to cry through some nights because things get hard and you don’t know everything yet. It takes an understanding that you’re going to make mistakes and that’s part of evolution and mastery.

As you move through that, you become, as Michelle says so eloquently and I love, your business will turn you into something you didn’t know you could be. It will be an amazing journey. Sometimes it’s hard, but it’s so worth it. The thing is that if you’ve got bliss tools like I talk about, you learn to see the hard as a piece of the puzzle, a part of the game. Even though it’s stressful, it’s part of what you do. You learn to reframe it, but then when you get to mastery, you understand. You can look at some other things and you’re like, “On top of this, what can I build?” I love this image of starting with land and then building a single-family home because that’s what you do. It’s literal, but in your business is more metaphorical, then you go, “That’s kind of playing monopoly too. You buy land, you buy a house, and you buy a hotel.”

It’s important to start your journey towards mastery and understand all of those pieces and become the person that you want to be and you need to be to make that successful and then evolve into the next step of mastery. That’s the way that it goes. I’ve been in this business for many years now, and the growth and the learning never stop. I didn’t have all this knowledge back when I started. What if I had waited and not done that waited for the mastery? You have to grow into mastery. It’s a one-step process of the time. You have to have the full experience.

In our ecosystem, we talk about the four Cs. The first one is commitment. Commit to one thing. If your lane is going to be land or if your lane is going to be housed in a specific strategy, commit to that one thing. What you’re going to find is that once you commit, you’re going to be like, “What have I gotten myself into?” You’re going to have to muster the second C, which is courage only for a period of time. You’re going to go through uncertain times, uncomfortable times, but it’s only going to be for a specific period of time. It will pass.

As you do and willing to get your hands dirty, you’re going to gain the capability from doing it. That’s the third C, capability. Once you have the capability, you have the confidence of looking back, “Look at what I’ve done.” That gives you the opportunity to go say, “Now that I have this confidence, I can go and iterate in zeros and look at properties with a few more zeros at the end.” It’s like an upward spiral of confidence of going through those four Cs, committing, killing other options because if you feel overcommitted, you haven’t decided. Deciding on one thing, mustering the courage, gaining the capability by doing it, getting dirty, and doing the hard work. We all have to do it. There are no shortcuts.

There’s a way to collapse time, which is through a mentor, especially when we started on the multifamily side because we didn’t have any mentors for the land. I don’t know if anyone back in 2002 was out there teaching land, otherwise, I would have invested. By the time we wanted to do multifamily, we invested in a mentor. We invested in someone willing to basically bring the deal, mentor us. We put in our money for the escrow deposit. We did the fundraising and so forth. It has been the best money spent because this person has helped us collapse time and has steered us away from possible landmines that we would’ve never known were there.

It takes a little bit of sometimes banking on ourselves and willing to reach out for support more than likely. Once you have found the vehicle, a lot of the answers are not going to come on how-tos and what, but from who is going to have the what’s and how-tos for you and help you steer you in the right direction. That’s something that I wish I would have focused on earlier. Who’s in my life are going to hold me accountable that are going to walk me in and collapsed times and help me have less heartache and fewer headaches.

We’re almost out of time. We’re going to head towards the end of this part of the show. I want to let the ladies know that on Extra, Michelle and I are going to be talking about the details of how to get a land business going. We’ve never had anybody cover that in this show so I’m excited about that. We’re going to talk about specifics on how to get started. How do you pick areas? How do you do a mailing? That’s going to be valuable information. Before we head into our three rapid questions, could you tell people how they can reach you?

They can reach me by going to MichelleBosch.com. I’m also on Facebook, Michelle Bosch, Michelle Bosch Official on Instagram. You can also go to LandProfitGenerator.com/bliss. You can find me in any of those places.

I know that you’re offering a free masterclass as a gift to my ladies. Could you tell us a little bit about it?

It’s a masterclass on the five steps to finding a deal and closing a deal with land. You can go to LandProfitGenerator.com/bliss. I know that you guys are going to be blown away by the simplicity of the method and how so many of us are looking for that one thing. We’ve been looking sometimes in the wrong place, especially on the house flipping world. A lot of the stuff out there is not designed for a beginner. There’s nothing like finding that one thing that where things are going to click where things align where you can see yourself doing this, and getting an ROI quickly.

I love what Michelle said, “Who I like to be a hero for is the beginning investor.” I can see based on the masterclass and how you talk about this that you are. You’re a hero to the beginner. I appreciate that Michelle.

Our mission is if we can touch a thousand families and turn them into millionaires, bring fathers to become stay at home dads or allowed them to retire a spouse that hates their job, allow them to have private schooling for their children, that home that they’ve always wanted, moving closer to family, traveling the world or extra money for retirement. I’m all for it. We’re already well underway. It’s incredibly fulfilling to see the stories, especially like I was telling you inside of our Facebook community. Just seeing people making their dreams come true. We’re not talking dreamers, but these are people that are doers as well. I have found a higher purpose, a higher why and therefore, there’s a higher income as well that correlates with that. Sometimes it’s just tapping into that and snapping out of that comfortable misery somethings were in.

Thank you for the free gift. I know I’m going to go download it. Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions? Tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

The first time I’m going to say is to take bold action. I know that this has been said and it’s overused, but I cannot overemphasize how important it is. Courage loves speed. If you are sitting there doubting, analyzing and being stuck in paralysis analysis, nothing happens when you’re stuck. Things happen when you’re moving. Take action and make sure it’s an action that is bringing you forward. Sometimes we think, “I’m taking action. I’m setting up my website. I’m setting up my LLC.” That’s all fantastic, but that’s not what’s going to make you money. What’s going to make you money is reaching out to sellers, making offers, and selling properties. Those are the three activities. Don’t be like thinking that busy movement is moving forward. It’s a good movement. It’s better than nothing, but take bold action that scares you, at the same time, excites you. That is bold action.

What is the strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

The strategy on being successful, if you’re going to scale, have the discipline to go through the repetition. The repetition will eventually allow you to bring in team, to leverage your time by leveraging other people’s time. That’s the secret to scaling. Otherwise, you’re stuck like we were back in the day with freedom of money, but no freedom of time. When I say bring in team, it’s not recruiting them. It is developing leaders within your team. In the beginning, it’s like, “I need to find someone that helps me.” You might get a VA and that’s fine. I’m a big proponent of being all-in. If someone is all-in in my company, I want to be all-in with them. The Return on Involvement or ROI that I get from that person being 100% dedicated to me versus a VA that is dedicated to maybe 3 or 4 different clients. The ROI, I find it with someone that is full-time. They’re dedicated for you. You’re not recruiting, but building up and empowering to make decisions with the intentions that buy into your mission and into your vision for sure.

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

Land Investment: As long you are willing to get your hands dirty, you’re going to gain the capability from doing it.

I practicing something that is called Yoga Nidra. Back in 2011, I went through a period of complete burnout. Burnout is something that we hear about. It’s very real. I was burnout mentally, physically, emotionally. It was not because, “We still needed to get to where we needed to.” It was because I had noticed that we had gotten to where we needed to. I had not allowed myself the opportunity to enjoy and smell the roses and that journey. One of the practices that I stumbled into was yoga. Within yoga, there’s a meditation called Yoga Nidra. You don’t even have to sit up, criss-cross applesauce. You can lay down.

It’s a visualization of relaxation through the body. I love starting my day with that. It includes a little bit of breathwork. I love doing that also in the afternoons before picking up my daughter from school. That way I can let go of whatever crazy energy I’ve had during the day. Pick her up completely grounded and centered. Sometimes we can be a complete jerk to the people that we most love and it’s because we’re stressed. That does not help me with my relationships, but it also creativity. It has helped me in being braver and more courageous because how can you freaking be brave and courageous of your stress out of your mind? That meditation has been instrumental for me so I highly recommend it.

This show has been truly amazing, Michelle. I can not wait to move into Extra to get more details. Thank you for what you’ve been offering so far.

Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

We do have more in Extra. Michelle is going to be talking about the details, the specifics on how to get started in land. I’m want excited to engage in that conversation. I hope you are too. If you are not subscribed to Extra but would like to be, it’s easy. This is what you do. Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You’re going to subscribe. You get seven days for free to test the waters and see if you like the content. Once you become a member, you will get that episode wherever you’re reading this. You don’t have to worry about, “I need a new app. I need new tools,” nothing. It’s all right there.

When you drive, you walk, you’re working out or whatever, we can read that piece in the same way. Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com to check that out. If you are leaving Michelle and I now, thank you 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 life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you next time. Bye.

Important Links

• Orbit Investments
• Forever Cash
• LandProfitGenerator.com
• UltimateBoardroom.com
• MichelleBosch.com
• Michelle Bosch – Facebook
• Michelle Bosch Official – Instagram
• LandProfitGenerator.com/bliss
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

About Michael Bosch

Too often, many people make real estate investing seem harder to get into than it actually is. In fact, for Laura Gisborne, you don’t necessarily need to know everything. You can just start by buying a property, adding value to it, and watching it take you to the next. In this episode, she joins Moneeka Sawyer to help simplify the process for us. As a highly successful business expert with over 20 years of experience from structuring and selling small boutique businesses to owning a multimillion-dollar wine and real estate empire, Laura has the wisdom and insights that could help us find our path towards success. She shares some of those with us and how, more importantly, she is giving back. Tune into this conversation to learn more about creating notes and going the owner financing route, all the while doing good in the world with it.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Creating Notes And Doing Good In The World With Laura Gisborne – Real Estate Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome you to the show laura Gisborne. She is a highly successful business expert with many years of experience. From structuring and selling small boutique businesses to owning a multimillion-dollar wine and real estate empire, she has owned nine businesses. Her first, when she was only 23 years old. She is an internationally recognized speaker and serves as a business consultant for business leaders and entrepreneurs in a wide range of industries. The innovative business model of her company, Limitless Women, exemplifies that companies can be both profitable and purposeful.

Through her initiatives, thousands of women and children are receiving regular contributions in multiple countries across five continents. She has served as a Guardian Ad Litem for foster children through CASA, Parent Education Coordinator for Family Outreach, board member for Habitat for Humanity, The New Peaks Foundation, and is on the Business Engagement Team of the Pachamama Alliance. They’re all important and relevant for what Laura stands for, that’s why I wanted to let you know what she’s about around all of this stuff. She is the author of the books, Stop The Spinning: Move From Surviving To Thriving and Limitless Women. She has been featured as a guest expert on both CBS and ABC, as well as on the national bit show, The List. Laura, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Moneeka.

Laura and I are part of a community called The Thriving Women in Business. We met at a luxury retreat with a bunch of other women in Hawaii and hit it off immediately. We have much in common. I wanted to have her on the show to share all of her wisdom with you. Laura, why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about your real estate journey? What’s your story around that?

First of all, thank you for inviting me. I’m super excited to serve you and to help however I may. Ask away whatever questions you’d like to ask. For the real estate journey, it’s interesting. I started back in 1996, I went on a timeshare tour. I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a timeshare tour or not, but it was a fascinating thing. I had no idea what it was. I said to my husband at that time, “We’re not going to buy anything. Let’s go look.” The woman who was our real estate broker, which is like you and I, we hit it off. We had a great affinity right away. The story behind the story is at that point, we had owned three restaurants in Texas.

We sold them and moved to Arizona with the idea we’re going to open up a different kind of business. A bed and breakfast or something that we could do with small hotels. Something we could do while one of us could always be with our children. This woman who sold us a timeshare said, “You should get a real estate license. You’d be great at this.” I said, “I’ve never sold anything in my life.” My background is hospitality and law.” I thought I’d be a lawyer when I grow up. God had another plan to get all these adventures, but that’s a whole other story. It took about two months at the time to get a license if you went full-time.

I got my real estate license. I thought, “This would be a good side hustle to do in the meantime. I’ll get into real estate and do that for a little while, while I’m building my next business.” I started selling, doing well in real estate. I started taking my commissions from real estate sales and buying real estate. Leverage was a beautiful thing back in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. I would buy one piece of property and then get it ramped up and then borrow against that property to buy the next one and so one thing led to another.

It’s intuitive investing. That’s what I did too. I did not become an agent, but once I started buying, I would fix it up, have it increased its value, and then take money out and buy the next one. It’s such an easy way to go. What I love about your story is that it shows women that this thing is possible in an intuitive, flowing way. There’s no magic here. You made some extra income. You decided to invest in property. That property was appreciated because you added value. You take more money out and then you bought another piece of property and just rinse and repeat. What I want ladies to read at this moment is how easy this can be because many people out there are talking about the cool ways or exciting ways to make money in real estate. You could buy everything and no money down. You can do these options and syndication. You don’t have to know all of that stuff. You can just buy a house.

That’s the piece, start with one. My first husband that I got divorced, almost two years after we’d moved to Sedona, I met my current husband. When he and I got married, he moved into my house. We turned his house into a rental. It was that piece. He said, “I can buy you a diamond. I can buy this empty lot.” I was like, “No, buy the lot. Diamonds later. Let’s get some real estate.” It’s a little hedgy. You want to start collecting and our strategy was to cashflow properties. I went to a real estate investing bootcamp in 2004 with John Burley, who was a great guy. Burley looked at what were the different strategies that were working and what works best for us over the years. I would say, it has been that cashflow that we would buy a house and then we would carry the note for somebody who was having a challenge with financing. We do owner finance for them. It worked out great. When they were ready and they were able to qualify, they were able to buy us out and it always became a great win for them too.

Let’s dive a little deeper into that because that’s not something people have talked a lot about in this show. When we talk about cashflow, usually what people think is you buy a place, rent it out for more than what you owe on it and that’s how you make cashflow. There are lots of different ways to do cashflows. Let’s dive a little deeper into the owner financing route. We haven’t had anybody talk about that. Could you break that down for us a little?

One of the things you always have some questions about is, “What do you need to get started?” Good credit is a great asset. It’s not necessarily the only asset because even if you struggle with credit, you can bring in partners. That’s also been another strategy that was successful for us to joint venture with other investors so that we can pull our money together. We’d put in 10%, they’d put in 10%. We get our 20% down, and we would go in and do a project. That was a whole other side. Generally, we would buy a house. The strategy behind this was that we live in a high ticket area.

As real estate investors, the rule of thumb that we’ve found over the years is that if you drive out for the epicenter of your city, the farther out you get, the lower the prices of the houses become. We’ve always done well with cashflow properties from blue-collar type of families like firemen, school teachers, people that have great jobs. They may not have high revenue, but they have consistent income. They have a good job history. People fall on hard times. I talk about that in my first book. I went through my journey when I got divorced. It didn’t make my life easy with my credit. I made some mistakes, but I cleaned them up and was able to move forward.

When somebody’s gone through some life situation like death or divorce or disease, you can look at their credit and find out, “Was it an isolated time? Do they have a better history before?” Banks are not always forgiving, but as a lender yourself, you can be forgiving. You can find those people that you trust and work with them. A lot of times, that gives them the opportunity to get into a house, and our structure was, let’s say somebody who normally would pay $1,000 for rent if they were doing a lease option which is the owner finance with us who would have them pay more. Maybe they’re paying $1,300 or $1,400 a month, but a portion of that would be going towards the purchase of the property.

If they could get it together and then get their own financing, which happened for every house we ever had in Arizona, they always ended up cashing out which was great. You think as you keep them as high ticket renters for a long time, but the goal is to help others get into their own homes. You figure out a price, you buy your house for $100,000 and you decide to sell it to them for $120,000. They live there for a few years, pay the rent, and because they had an ownership in the property, they would take better care of the property first and foremost. They wouldn’t call you for every like, “I need a new light bulb,” because it’s their property. They had pride in that.

Did you get a down payment and what percentage would you normally get?

It depends on where they were. That’s the idea too. I know a lot of people that do resell houses with no money down and 4 or 5 high ticket leases. Our intention was always to have a win for them and have them be able to get to a place that they could afford.

You did take some down payment so they felt like they had bought?

Let’s say that you’re doing a security deposit on a rental. You do first, last and one-month security on a $1,200 property, that’s $3,600. Over time, they came up with $5,000. We didn’t charge them much more. The round numbers we love working-class neighborhoods as families. Those are the ones that get the hardest hit when the economy goes south.

Stop The Spinning Move: From Surviving To Thriving

With a lot of the owner financing that I’ve seen, they’re structured a little bit differently. What kinds of percentages do you normally give them towards their house, for instance?

People that are credit challenged are used to paying a little bit more interest. The interest didn’t come into the equation so much. If I could give you a base rate, it would be like interest rates you’ll see out there is 3%, if I charged 5% or I charge a little bit higher interest rate because it was a higher risk. It was more tied into the lease option.

You would charge an interest rate and everything else went towards paying down their house?

Correct.

Did you normally still have a loan on that property when you did this?

Yes.

That is such an interesting structure. I’ve never seen it like that before.

It worked well for our family and it made us feel good to be able to help people get into houses that couldn’t get in otherwise.

They’re the ones that usually get hit hard when things go bad and it’s not that they don’t want to own homes for their families, nor that they don’t work hard enough for it.

It’s the idea of 10% down payments. It’s hard for them versus if they can come up with a little bit down and then pay a little bit more each month. It’s like a savings account for them to move towards where they have the equity. The house is also appreciating at the same time. It was all these years in Arizona. When they go to refinance and qualify for a more traditional loan, they’ve got some equity in their other down-payment and they would cash us out.

How quickly do they normally cash you out? How quickly do they normally buy?

It’s an average of 2 to 3 years. That’s in a market where lending was more flexible. We don’t know what’s going to happen after COVID. It’s going to be interesting to see what the banks do. Interest rates are at an all-time-record low and certain things are easier to get financing for than others.

Do you help them with getting their credit fixed if they’ve had any problems or you allow it to season its way out?

No, I think they season. If they’re motivated to buy, to purchase, they know they have to make their payments on time. I’ve met a lot of people over the years when they go all-in on hard times are good people who needed a chance to pull it together and get back on their feet.

One of the things that I love about Laura is her whole outlook on life is she wants to be a limitless woman herself. She believes in time, emotional freedom, financial freedom and true freedom. Being truly limitless and lifting the people around her. She reaches out into the world in many ways whether it’s being on boards of charities or that she finances people in their homes or the way that she coaches her business, coaching clients. Everything that Laura does, her aim is to lift those people around, to be better off than they were before.

Part of what struck me about Laura in the very beginning when I first met her is she’s always, “How can I be a service for you? What can I do at this moment to help you?” She comes from this place that I call one of my bliss tenets, which is to give back to the world, to be of service. When we’re out there and serving, it’s hard to feel bad inside. We’re being of service, but it also fills us up. It gives us more to think about, to do, to feel good about. It also helps us to raise the vibration around us because anybody who then is going to come around us are going to be people that have that same vibration, intention, and blessed in their life. Wouldn’t you say?

I would. I went to a yoga class right before you and I have this interview. I was listening to a sermon on the way. One of the things he was talking about was how much we can be around people that pull us down and how important it is for us to always surround ourselves with others who lift us up. I feel like I’m hearing it twice. God must be giving me a message. This idea of who we surround ourselves with is important. We want to be with people that inspire us, that lift us up and see us when we have a hard time seeing ourselves.

That’s kind, generous and uplifting. I know much of the time when I’m not down as often as I had been. A lot of my journey to bliss was because my life experience was very unhappy. We often focus on the things that have challenged us ourselves. I remember learning early on this thing that everybody says, you become the five people you spend the most with. It sounds trite. The truth is the most time that you spend with people, those are the people that are going to influence you the most. It’s important that you decide who you want those people to be and you do have control over that.

Creating Notes: Banks are not always so forgiving, but as a lender yourself, you can be and you can actually find those people that you really trust and work with them.

We don’t have control over the family and don’t dump your family. You don’t want to do that. You want to make sure that when you’re out there in the world, when you have the choice, you’re choosing people who are going to support the joy in life, help to uplift you and support your values. I can’t imagine Laura ever hanging out with someone that did not believe in philanthropy.

It’s not a new journey for me. The work that I do is all about business training, to lift women so that they can use their profits for purpose. All of that’s come as a typical overnight sensation. I started volunteering many years ago. While I was building my private sector life, our restaurants, our retail stores, our real estate and our wine business, I was always volunteering as a separate. I felt like I had one foot in either world. I had a private-sector world and my volunteer world. What’s been beautiful is over these last few years, we put our stake in the sand and made our whole business about fundraising and raising awareness.

Even prior to that, even when we were percolating this business starting about 2012, that was always a common theme. We’re good. We’ve raised our children. We’ve traveled the world. My husband had a terminal diagnosis many years ago and now he is healthy and on track. We’re thrilled. We try to celebrate every day that we get to have together. For us, the motivation is not about how do I make more money. I’m more curious about how I can use my experience and my voice to lift up other women that they can find sufficiency and freedom for their families, and then join us in the contribution phase. What we know from experience of doing this work now is it’s difficult for women to see themselves as philanthropists and givers when they’re struggling financially. We need to help them get to sufficiency first.

You and I both started at a place where we weren’t in a financial place that people would normally think of us as givers. I started my philanthropic journey when I was sixteen living in India. I didn’t have a lot of money and we started to volunteer time, and a little bit of money for me. It was $10 a month. It’s important that we feel lifted up enough. You don’t want to give when you don’t feel like you have. You never want to give them more than you feel you can give. That is true whether it’s of your heart, time, or money.

There’s a little paradox in that for me only because it’s my understanding and my core premise at this point in my mid-50s. I grew up in a very poor family. I did not have access to resources and no one had ever been to college. It was that whole idea of education and freedom. It wasn’t something that we had access to and didn’t know that access. My parents did their best to ingrain in me. I can do attitude and willingness to work hard. I’ve always been a good student. I’ve got a lot of gifts and a lot of things that have come through that helped me again when I couldn’t see myself.

The most successful people that I knew and that I’ve had the blessing of knowing throughout my journey at this point are people who were always generous of heart, generous of spirit. It wasn’t someday when they got wealthy that they gave. It was getting through the stretching through the expansion. There’s something in that for us. I believe that giving causes growth. It’s an interesting paradigm when women come to one of our programs and they want education on how to build a business. I asked them to make a donation in exchange for your education. There’s often a little hesitancy if that’s a new paradigm for them. They haven’t done it before. I say, “If you can afford to invest in yourself here, you can afford to give there.” What it does is it starts them being expanded. This is either they can, then they start being a whole different level of leader.

We’re saying the same thing. I feel that women often over give. In their homes, they say yes too often. That’s more of what I was referring to about, we do need to keep ourselves filled up emotionally, internally, and mentally so that we can then stand in our power in the world. What’s also funny is that you will never expand until you understand that being of service is the most important thing. When you are able to start to understand that, then you expand in every way. You expand emotionally in your capacity to give, your compassion, wisdom, personality and also wealth.

My husband learned something from me very early on. We were broke as newlyweds. I remember one day, we were talking about the budget and I said, “I still have to donate to the temple.” He says, “We pass on it this year.” I said, “No. We’re going to double it this year,” which frustrated him. For me, when I start to close down, to cringe, feel that I can’t do it, is when I open up even more because then that releases all of that. Now, money, energy and creativity start to flow.

It sounds like it’s your story. It sounds like it’s your truth.

Do you find that’s also true for other people?

It depends on where they are. There’s some truth in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When somebody is in survival mode, I’m always in awe, when I meet people who live on less than $3 a day, who find a way to give. There’s a place where a lot of times there’s a spiritual component that kicks in. Most people that I meet in the developed world are still running the myth of not enough, but they’re still trying to be more, do more, have more. Yet, if they can’t overcome that, then my conversation is not the right conversation for them. If they’re stuck in that, then all we can do is love and try to support them as much as we can with where they are.

What do you mean by a limitless woman?

Monica Nyiraguhabwa, who you’re familiar with, is also a donor for Girl Up Uganda through Kimberly Writing Women In Business Giving Circle. When I met this woman who’s in her mid-30s, I started to learn more about her story. She’s incredibly humble. You don’t know that until you start getting in there and digging in. She grew up in the suburbs of Kampala. She had her first pair of shoes at age thirteen. People may or may not know this, but in most places in the world, education is not free. She had to come up with school fees.

Her parents had to decide, “Do we send our son or daughter to school?” They decided to send their son because chances are, he would stay in the village versus her getting married and moving away from the village. She was resourceful. She started selling vegetables. She found a way to make her school fees. She started this at about age seven. It was mind-boggling to me. She went on the Government of Uganda partnered with the University of London and created a scholarship fund for five students in the entire country. There were 5,000 applicants. She was one of the five students who got the scholarship, went to England, stayed on for a Master’s degree in Public Policy, and then came back to Uganda to the slums. I mean no electricity, no water, no roads, no transportation, and decided to dedicate her life to lifting up other young women.

They wouldn’t have to be in a family where a family had to choose. That to me is a limitless woman. Everything that was presented to her was what we would consider I believe a limitation and she chose not to see it that way. She chose to stay deep in her faith to keep taking the next step that she could. She’s an Obama scholar, spoken to United Nations, on the Today Show. She’s right there in Uganda, in the trenches, making a difference for hundreds of thousands of girls. A lot of times when we face adversity in our lives, things that could be in way, perspective is important. For me, there’s nothing at this point in my life that makes me more excited than supporting a woman like that who’s out to change the world.

That was an amazing story. Thank you for sharing it.

She’s a limitless woman. That to me is the epitome of a woman who overcomes amazing adversity. An ordinary girl with extraordinary faith and perseverance. She chose not to just make it about herself. She has nine adopted daughters. She’s 36 or 38. She’s my relevant hero. I have many of them. It’s this work of how do we, as women, lift each other up? How do we as women continue to shift the idea that there’s any competition? There’s no competition. There’s a tremendous amount of abundance in the world. There’s a tremendous amount of resources.

If we’ve been blessed to have an opportunity to do well for ourselves, meaning that we’ve reached sufficiency. We’ve been able to take care of ourselves, our families. Who else can we help so that they can do the same? My family of origin could not help me past a certain point because they didn’t have any reference. They didn’t have any perspective. There were other people who saw me from the outside who said, “You can do this. There are other possibilities. Somebody has to open up and shine a light on what’s possible.” I feel like I’ve been very blessed. All the way plus up to this point, and as long as God lets me stay here. It’s good to be here.

Creating Notes: The epitome of a woman who overcomes amazing adversity is in being an ordinary girl with extraordinary faith and perseverance and choosing not to just make it about herself.

Laura, how can people reach you if they want to get in touch with you and find out more?

The easiest way to get connected with me is through the web. If you go to Free Gift Friday, you can opt in for a copy of my first book, Stop the Spinning: Move from Surviving to Thriving,where I tell my own limitless woman story, where I came from and where life has taken me. It’s a little bit of that journey and the power of the formula. The tools and the resources that I and the most successful women I know used to keep themselves on track financially, with the time, their operations, and community. You can always contact me through the website, LimitlessWomen.com. There’s a Contact Us form that comes right to me.

Ladies, I would go there and get that book. That sounds amazing. I know I’ll be doing that. Laura, are you ready for three rapid-fire questions?

Yes.

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

One of the fastest ways that you can grow your real estate business is to get comfortable with using other people’s money. When you think like an investor, you look at how the profit on a property is made when you buy it, not when you sell it and you get clear about your numbers, metrics which all are part of the education. You can bring in business partners because everyone will run out of their own money at some point. If you want to keep growing, you want to keep expanding your business. Learn early on how to make it a win for other investors. A lot of people don’t necessarily have the time or inclination to get an education. If you’re one of those women who’s motivated by giving the education, understanding how to do this, and you partner with someone who’s an investor, who wants to get a good return on their investment, but they don’t want to have to do all the work, that’s probably the best super tip that moved us the fastest.

What would you say is a strategy to be successful as a real estate investor?

You have to get clear about what your revenue-generating activities are. If you’re not writing offers on houses, connecting with investors, and bringing in joint venture partners, not advertising your properties and finding leases, you’ve got to get clear to where are the actions that drive your revenue, not shopping. Shopping as fun as that is, that’s not always the best thing to be spending your time on. Get clear about your paradigms. Get your education in place, and then get into the actions that going to bring in revenue to your company.

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

I’m a very faith-based person. A lot of conversations with God throughout the day and I never say never. Almost every day, I don’t get out of bed without a deep gratitude practice. I have an incredible amount of blessings. I’ve overcome an incredible amount of adversity by American standards. At the same time, I know that we get more of what we focus on. I’m constantly in prayer and gratitude for all the good things that are happening. I’m open-minded and allowing myself to be led to what the next step is.

I love how you talk about that. You’ve had a lot of adversity according to American standards. Let’s keep it in perspective.

As a child, I was sexually molested. I experienced a tremendous amount of abuse and domestic violence relationship in my late teens. This is the piece, not that those things weren’t hard. They were very hard and I always had a roof over my head and I had fresh water. Now, the perspective I have after working locally in charity projects humbles me. It tells me what people are capable of creating and achieving with little in the way of resources. I’m inspired to see how many of them I can continue to support.

Laura, I loved this conversation. Thank you for what you’ve offered to my ladies.

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

Ladies, thank you for joining Laura and me for this amazing limitless conversation. I look forward to seeing you next time. You know how much I appreciate you. Always remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life that your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

Important Links:

• Stop the Spinning: Move from Surviving to Thriving
• Limitless Women
• The Thriving Women in Business
• Monica Nyiraguhabwa
• Free Gift Friday
• LimitlessWomen.com

About Laura Gisborne

Hey! I’m Laura

An entrepreneur, philanthropist, writer, wine maven…

And fierce advocate for helping brilliant, passionate women like you mobilize their richest gifts into a business they adore that transforms lives and the world around them.

Working with me, you escape working harder and harder just to feel “good enough.” You shed the frustration of not being where you thought you’d be by now.

And instead, start living your greatest purpose. Far faster and with far greater ease, clarity and power to do good than you ever imagined possible.

Now, just in case you’re thinking “Sure, Laura, easy for you to say. You’ve already got the luxury of freedom and time. You’ve already got a string of successful businesses under your belt.”

As host of the Real Estate Investing for Women podcast, we rarely hear what Moneeka Sawyer has to say about her experiences in real estate. In this episode, she sits on the hot seat as her customer, Chaitra Rai, asks some of the most curious questions that let us take a peek into her life, most especially with her real estate journey. Moneeka talks about her book, Choose Bliss, laying down what her typical workday looks like and how she inserts meditation and gratitude into her everyday life. She then goes to real estate and tells us some of her ways of finding a good investment deal, giving a loan, and applying for your second investment property.

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Listen to the podcast here

[Customer Convo] Choosing Bliss, A New Giving Thanks Practice, And Real Estate With Chaitra Rai – Real Estate Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

Chai, welcome to the show. How are you?

I am doing wonderful. It’s great to hear your beautiful voice again. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. I’m sorry, it’s taking long for us to finally get this together, but I am excited about this conversation. You’ve got good questions. Thanks for being patient with me.

It’s all worth it. It’s all for the greater good.

Some of the questions that you sent me, you had some stuff about my book, Choose Bliss and you also had some real estate questions. Shall we start with Choose Bliss? Does that sound good?

That sounds great. After reading your book, I have a lot of questions that I wanted to talk to you about. One of the biggest questions I had after reading your book, you seem somebody who has varied interests in addition to your business ventures. I was wondering if you could share with us how your typical workday looks like and how many hours you spend on different things like your business ventures, blog, writing and podcasts. Do you have time for hobbies after that?

The first thing that I want to say about that is we each design our lives based on what makes us feel the best. How I would define a blissful life is that we get to do the things that make us feel most fulfilled. There are a lot of people that are out there talking about having a balanced life. A balanced life is a farce because there is a lot of stuff in a balanced life that doesn’t make our hearts sing. I designed my life. The way that I designed my life is more about doing the things that make my heart sing, spending more time doing that and less time doing the things that don’t make my heart sing.

I do have a typical day, but it depends on what my main focus is. I’ll give you an example. I have a property that’s being turned over, which means we’re in transition. I had a tenant leave and I’m putting a new tenant in. When I talk on my show about, “I only spend 5 to 10 hours a month,” what that means is most months, I spend zero hours and then if I have a transition, I might spend closer to 20 to 40 hours on that transition. It takes a lot of time to do a transition and do it right.

I only might do a transition every two years. I don’t do that often. I don’t spend a lot of time on real estate. In the morning, I wake up and I have a morning routine. That morning routine includes my shower, meditation, a little bit of journaling, a walk with my dog and my husband, coffee at the coffee shop and a walk back home. I sit at my desk and I look at a library of things that make me feel good, whether it’s a YouTube video, clothes or it’s a sweet letter that someone sent me like good reviews on my books or on the podcast.

I have an arsenal of feel-good material that I start the day with. I might take three minutes for that unless I’m watching a longer video, but that’s what I do with the first thing that I sit down at my desk. After that is when I start dealing with email. That’s how my day starts. After that, there are other things that happen. I do my email and then it’s what’s the focus of the day. Now, the focus of the day is I’m calling references for employers and for past landlords. I’m doing credit checks. I have to go to the property every single day because there’s something going on. It’s either I’m meeting a contractor, I’m putting up a new sign, or I meeting a possible tenant.

I’m spending a lot of times specifically on the real estate piece. However, I do think that I’m going to have a renter. It’s taken me about a week and then I will go back to my regular schedule. Once a week, I record shows and then the rest of the week, I might have a couple of hours set aside for writing. I do a lot of reading and a lot of background stuff that has to go on with running a business. I’ve got to keep my website and products going. Sometimes I’m dealing with technology all the time. It’s our best friend. It can also be a time thing for a lot of things. There are all of those things. I usually start work at about 10:30 or 11:00. My husband is at home because of COVID, so he and I take about 1.5-hour lunch.

That’s called work-day balance. Having a balance includes that.

I have a good solid amount of time that I work in the afternoon. It’s starting about 1:30 until 6:00. I take a break in the middle of the afternoon to do a twenty-minute meditation. There’s also something interesting now that David is home, we’ll often go for a twenty-minute walk in the middle of the day. He goes back to work and I do the meditation. I get a 40-minute break in the middle of that afternoon.

That’s super productive for the brain as well to break it up in chunks like that.

I get some good focus time, but I also get some nice breaks so I can rejuvenate. One of the things you asked me before the show is to talk a little bit about dance.

That’s the exciting part, your love for dance.

It’s such a big piece of my life and there’s an unfortunate truth. In the book, I talked about a one-car accident, but I’m recovering from another one. Most people don’t know, which is fortunate. I’m doing fine, but it was a highway pile-up about several years ago. My right arm has not been working very well since then. In the first two years after the accident, my legs were not badly damaged, but I was in a lot of pain. For whatever reason, my legs, arm and back got jammed in the accident. I’ve been in physical therapy, acupuncture and all of that stuff. I had surgery on my shoulder. There’s been a lot that’s going on. What that has meant is that I can’t dance every day.

If you read the book, you know that from my perspective, and we’ve heard this from many experts, exercise is a big factor in keeping happy. Our bodies need to move. I was a dancer. I didn’t even have to think about exercise and that was even better. Now, I’m not able to dance and I’m not moving. I have been able to move. I’m starting to be able to move my arm so I can start to dance again. Even before I would try to move and my arm would get torqued because it’s sympathetic movements in your whole body when you’re dancing.

That was painful, but in order to make sure that I am getting the exercise that my body is used to getting, I do four twenty-minute walks a day. I do one in the morning with my husband, one in the afternoon and one after dinner. That’s three and then somewhere in between. For instance, in the morning, we might do twenty minutes before coffee and twenty minutes after. It ends up being a full hour or we’re out with a dog and having some coffee. It’s 3 or 4 twenty-minute walks a day.

Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment

You found an alternative to getting your dance practice. You’re doing more walks now.

That’s one thing that I want to emphasize to people is we get so busy in our lives that we forget that our bodies were built to move. If we don’t move, the body cramps up, so we physically don’t feel well. If we physically don’t feel well, it impacts us emotionally. The other thing is that exercise releases all these endorphins in your body that are natural mood enhancers. This makes you feel better in general. Exercise is such a big piece of creating a blissful life. It’s the piece that people tend to overlook the most because it feels like a time sink, but it’s such an important part of staying blissful. Does that make sense?

I totally agree with you. It’s this principle of contraction versus expansion. I feel like when you go out and have your walks, you’re expanding your mind and your consciousness. As opposed to staying inside the house and your body is not getting any movement, and you’re contracting in some sense. You get the blood flowing too when you’re out and about.

Get some air and your creativity flows a little bit more because you’re not so focused on one thing. You open and expand, and more can come in. It’s having peripheral vision rather than tunnel vision. You can take in so much more.

When you’re out in nature too, you get all these creative ideas and thoughts, which would not have come if you had been stuck in the house.

Did you have any other questions about the book?

In your book, you have mentioned your gratitude habit and I thought that was fascinating. You mentioned that as you wake up first thing in the morning, you write out three things that you’re grateful for. I’m wondering if you could expand a little bit about that. Do you do a gratitude habit in the morning? Is it something you practice throughout the day? Do you write more than three things that you’re grateful for? Anything you could tell us about that would be helpful.

I’ve created a whole new practice that nobody knows about yet. I’ll let the secret out for you. I even don’t get up. My alarm goes off and I push the snooze. It’s during that snooze period that I do the gratitudes in my mind. The way that I do it is I feel into the emotion. Any gratitude practice is good, but there is a right way to do a gratitude practice. That is to get into the emotions of feeling gratitude. I find this in my own life. I was in a car accident years ago and woke up every single morning in pain. When you do a gratitude practice and when you’re feeling pain or you’re feeling bad, it feels uncomfortable to be feeling that level of gratitude and joy. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience.

You’re lying to yourself in some sense until you believe it.

When you start to believe that you’re afraid, it will run away. That’s been my experience. There are a lot of times that I’m like, “I don’t want to get too happy because it’s not feeling real and comfortable.” The first thing to realize is that our most natural way of being is to be in bliss. Let me explain to my readers why I’m saying this. When we were born, we were born as these little bundles of bliss. We’re filled with joy, excitement, awe and wonder. We’re newly alive and we want to learn. There’s no fear and we’re going to try everything. That’s who we’re born as and somehow through life, we learn about fear, shame and we’re bad. We learn all of these things and it chips away at that bliss that is deep at our core.

That bliss is that light that’s talked about inside our core. It shines bright as always.

Gratitude is the quickest access we have to that little light of bliss deep down inside of us that wants to shine through our entire bodies.

It’s a gateway that do that special vision in us.

It’s okay that as you move into gratitude, sometimes you’ll get flushed with this feeling of joy and it’s uncomfortable because we’re not used to it. The more that you do it, the more natural it becomes and the more willing you are to go there. What’s even more delightful is that you start to stay there longer. Your body gets in the habit of being able to sustain that level of emotion on that vibration. Everything that happens inside of our bodies, whether it’s endorphins from exercise or being on a diet, whatever it is that we’re doing, our body needs to adjust to accommodate the level of bliss that we’re capable of.

The more that we practice, the more our capacity expands and the more comfortable we are with that. That also means that when we fall or things go bad, we’re more quickly able to move back into that place of bliss rather than staying in those distracted emotional states like depression, sadness, anger. Even ecstasy can be a huge distraction because it doesn’t support what you want in your life. It’s a good feeling, which is great. I’m not saying I don’t feel that. I’m saying that we want to live in this place that it’s expansive and supportive of our sustainable joy.

It’s like you’re attuning your body to the frequency that is emitted by that inner vibration. Your body needs to get acclimatized to that.

I do it first thing in the morning and that gets me started. I have an alarm on my phone. When it goes off on my screen, on my phone, it says, “I am so grateful for.” During the day, 2 or 3 times, I might be reminded to do a little bit of gratitude. The other thing that happens is I get in these moments when I’m working and I want to throw my computer across the room. At that moment is when I take some deep breaths and I say a couple of gratitudes because that calms me down. It clears my mind as a fog that happens in us when we get frustrated so that I can then think more expansively. If that doesn’t work, that’s when I go for my walk.

Gratitude can also help put you back in a rational place, so you can be more creative and more productive. That’s all the stuff that was covered in the book and what I’ve been doing for many years. Now, there’s a new piece and this is a piece that I do in the evening. I started to do a new I love you practice. At night, I write a little love letter to myself and what the love letter says is, “Dear Moneeka, I feel so lucky to be you and to be able to live my life through you,” and then I put gratitudes about myself and my life.

I might say something like, “I am grateful for your spirit and your willingness to share your point of view with the world. I know sometimes that’s hard for you and I appreciate that you do that,” or “I so appreciate your commitment to getting the word out there that bliss is a priority. I know that people sometimes look at you like you’re a crazy person, but thank you so much for being tenacious and committed.” I’ll say things like that. At the end of it, I’ll say, “Thank you for being you. I love you so much,” and then I sign it, Moneeka. You have no idea how good that feels.

After you write a love letter like that to yourself, and you go to sleep, you wake up in the morning wide open. It’s almost like an emptiness. There’s a space where it’s completely open that you can fill it with the good stuff. Most people, when they wake up in the morning, the first thing they think of is, “It’s another day, I want to sleep a little longer, or I’m late.” There are all these other things. Those are all negative things. Instead, if you do a gratitude practice, you’re filling yourself up with good things. The other thing that’s important to make sure that you’re not distracted from the gratitude piece is to be careful about what you’re waking up to.

Choosing Bliss: Gratitude is the quickest access we have to that little light of bliss deep down inside of us that wants to shine through our entire bodies.

You want to wake up to a sound that’s pleasant to you and that does not feed your subconscious mind negative information. For instance, do not wake up to an uncontrolled music or news station. Don’t listen to the news. The second that you wake up, don’t wake up to that because most of that is negative stuff. You don’t want to put that negative energy in you when you first wake up. The other thing you don’t want to do is have advertising because advertising is designed to make you feel like you are not enough of a person, because of that, you need this product to be a better person. You don’t ever want that to be fed into your mind when you’re first waking up.

You don’t want sad songs. If you can control it, you don’t want things that are going to make you feel bad, hurt, or have bad memories. This sounds controlling, but you do want those first moments that you wake up, that you open to the world, that’s going to set up your entire day. You’ll make it a lot easier for yourself if you wake up to something beautiful, some beautiful tinkling, soft nature sounds, and birds chirping or crickets chirping is something I know one of my clients likes to listen to. My husband wakes up to Mexican music. He speaks Spanish, I don’t speak Spanish, but I love the way mariachi sound. It’s wonderful to hear that in the morning. Controlling what you wake up to is also going to help to support that gratitude practice.

It’s like you’re controlling your mentality on some level so that you can put your best foot forward as you start your day. Another thing I loved about what you share with us is your love letter the previous night because they say what you sleep with at night is what goes forward. It’s important to have positive things, not only when you get up, but when you sleep as well. That’s why I love your new practice that is incorporated into your routine. Thank you for sharing it.

One of the things that I love talking about more than anything else is how people can live a blissful life, and I feel that we can keep talking, but I think we should move on to the real estate piece.

You’re taking your first loan, venture into your first real estate investment and you go to the bank and because of the period we’re in, there are certain downturns in some areas, banks are asking for a higher down payment. Once you do buy your first property and you go ahead with the process, how do you know that this is a good deal? How do you find a good investment deal when you’re doing this for the first time?

There are a lot of different pieces to that. First is finding the right property, the right loan and what happens next after that? It’s a three-step question I heard. We’re going to talk about the economy later. There’s no such thing as a perfect property, but there is a perfect property for you personally. I teach this in my coursework. The short version of this is that you want to look at your resources and your tolerances before you pick a property. My bank is offering a loan at 3.25% interest with a down payment of 30%, is this good?

Every bank is going to be offering different things. Most of the banks are requiring a down payment between 25% and 35%. Yours is right there in the middle. A rate of 3.25% is fantastic. It’s fluctuating about an eighth of a point. You might be able to go down to eighth, but you also might end up at 3.75%. I got quoted at 3.875%. For our readers, understand that we’re talking during COVID. I want to give you an overview of what I look at when I’m looking for a loan.

What is the market bearing right now? The market is asking for between 25% to 35% down. A rate of 3.25 % is right in the middle of what I’m seeing. You’re going to find out more about that by calling a broker and getting an idea because a broker has access to many different products. He will have access to a product that’s only 5% down, but he’ll tell you the rate is higher and you’re going to have to put five points down, which is 5% down in fees. Brokers are going to be able to tell you the range of what rates are looking at and what down payments are looking like. That’s the first thing.

The other thing is going to be, can you put that 30% down? If you can’t put it in your area, how much do you have to put down? What is that 30% of? If you have $30,000, 30% means that you can only buy $100,000 price. That’s going to also determine if this is the right time for you to buy or not and what to buy. The next thing that I always look for is the perfect property for you is the property that is in a neighborhood where you’re going to find tenants that you like doing business with and it’s a property that you enjoy maintaining.

Let me give you an example of what that looks like. I have a property that is vacant. When I bought that property, it is walking distance to Starbucks and the Sprouts and to a bunch of cute walking area. The property is only a three-bedroom, one bath. It’s fairly small. The tenants that I was looking for at that time, and I predetermined this, was a small or a new family, husband, wife and 1 or 2 kids with no pets. You’ve got your customer avatar. My tenant is my customer.

They’re starting their life. They’re involved with their work, helping the kids with homework and family time. They don’t have time for all the maintenance of a house and all the gardening. They’re looking for something that’s a little bit lower maintenance. A condo might be a good idea. They’re making about this much money. These are the tenants that I want to work with. The other thing is where does that tenant want to live?

If they’ve got young children, they’re going to want a safer neighborhood. Ideally, for me, I wanted a safer neighborhood and here is why. Every evening, I’m going over to the property after my workday to do something, not every evening, but frequently. If I’m going over there in the evening when it’s dark, I need to feel safe as a woman. Men are going to have different considerations. They want to feel safe too, but it’s going to feel different to them what’s appropriate and what’s not. I need to feel safe in the neighborhood, in the home and with my tenants. That’s another thing that I consider.

When you’re looking at the perfect first investment property, you want to take all of that into consideration and you want to look for the property that is perfect for you. Does that mean you might have to wait to get the right property? It does, but you don’t want to wait for the perfect property. The first property that I bought was a smaller property, a three-bedroom and two baths. Now, much of what I own is executive homes.

The ideal property was an A-class neighborhood and executive home. That was perfect for me, but I couldn’t do that at first. In the beginning, I had to do something that was a perfect fit for the first investment. That means I needed to feel safe, I needed to be able to deal with the kinds of tenants that I wanted to do business with and how much money I have to put down. You might have to wait to get in because you may not have the money to buy into that neighborhood. Make sure that the second you can buy into a neighborhood that fits your parameters, that you do that because sooner is always better than later.

Those are great points about the safety aspect. I wouldn’t have thought of that.

Most people don’t, but for women, it’s a big deal especially if you are managing. My husband is not managing my properties. He helps me out every once in a while when I’m desperate, but that happens rarely. The other thing you asked about is the loan piece. You get your first loan, your first property, and now you’re like, “How do I get the next one?” It depends on what area of the country you’re in. Fannie and Freddie, which are the government-backed loans, in most areas, they will allow you to go up to ten conforming loans without rates going up. That’s pretty easy. Conforming is different in different parts of the country. In some place it’s 149, in California it’s 510. In California, our parameter is five loans. After five loans, we can still get the next five loans, but the rate will be about one percentage point higher. The rates on the first loans are all at 3.25%. The next one would be at 4.25% or 4.75%. It’s going to go up a point to a point and a half after the fifth loan. That’s when you go to loan number six. That’s in California.

If you’re talking to a mortgage broker, they’d be able to give you their parameters. When you’re talking to a mortgage broker, find one who is well-versed in investment properties. You want to find out, do they have investors? How many investment loans do they do per year? Is that their main business or they’ve got 1 or 2 clients that they do or they might do 1 or 2 a year. They’re not going to know enough. You want somebody who can answer all these questions like, “How many loans can I do? What are the different investment property products? How is my primary residence loan going to be affected by those other products and vice versa? How many points can and how much more down payment?”

You want them to know all of that stuff. Some of those loans will have restrictions based on the CC&Rs, which is all the HOA rules for condominiums, townhouses and PUDs. If you have a mortgage broker who understands investing, they’ll know the right questions to ask, and they’ll also know how to guide you as far as what kinds of properties to look for. My loan officer asked me for all of the information that then he’ll say to me, “Moneeka, what’s going on out there? What would you expect those to be?”

Let’s say my HOA dues are $650, that’s going to take down the price of my house that I can buy by about $100,000. That’s calculated into the debt-to-income ratio. I have to pay that additional amount. If it’s only $200, it’s going to be a different thing. He knows to ask me that so that we don’t have an ugly surprise when we send it to the underwriter and they’re like, “There are these HOA dues that we did not calculate into the debt-to-income ratio. You don’t qualify for as much.” That’s one example.

When you talk about your loan officer, do you normally take loans from the bank or private investment companies are an option as well?

Choosing Bliss: Advertising is designed to make you feel like you are not enough of a person; because of that, you need this product to be a better person.

You can do either one. I’ve done everything through the bank right now because it’s super easy. It’s streamlined, but I have a lot of different options as far as private money and other investment options too. I just haven’t taken advantage of them. That was all of that. Did you have any other questions on that stuff? I know I covered quite a lot there.

You answered all of those three. We covered finding the perfect property, getting that loan and the third one was applying for your second investment property. You told us about the conforming loans. That was very useful. The loan officer would be able to give us that information too.

If you’ve got a loan officer that is used to dealing with investors, then they’ll be able to give you all that information.

Thank you. That was super helpful, especially in the location, how important it is when you’re selecting your first property. Real estate investing is known as hassle-free, once you have the perfect property and things are going well. How do the ups and downs of the economy change that? Would it change in case the economy has some major changes?

The economy is a big question that people want to hear a lot about. I’ve done several shows on this. Here’s the thing that I always say about predicting the economy and predicting real estate’s movement. Someone out there is going to be right on their predictions, but we don’t know who that person is going to be. I talk about my experience of many years in real estate of what that looks like. I’ll talk to you a little bit about what my experience has been and what I have gleaned from that. It was either ‘87 or ‘89, my dad was paying for my college education through real estate and then the tax laws changed. Prop 13 came in California and they removed some of the tax benefits of being an investor.

The real estate property values plummeted. There were a lot of us that were in school at the time whose parents were paying through real estate. There was a lot of stress about money during that time. Things recovered and then the market started to march up. It was going up. It was doing phenomenally well because people adjusted and property values all recovered. In 2001, it was when we had our next crash. When I graduated from college and got married, my husband and I bought our first home with 5% down. Our property was going up. We took an equity line on that first property and we bought our second property, the beautiful home that we bought. We bought that in January of 2001. Right after that, the whole market crashed again.

We went along. We stayed in that property. I took another equity line. I bought a few more properties. In 2008, I bought my dream home. It was a million-dollar condominium on the top floor. In 2009, the market completely crashed again. My timing was not good. I wish my timing was better. I do think that it is wise if you can time the market. I’ve never been able to do it with any level of success, even so, we started our real estate investing journey with about $10,000. By twenty years later, I would have been able to retire, in spite of the fact that the market crashed twice during my journey in real estate.

The California market is volatile. We count completely on the appreciation. You’ll see that the properties are volatile. What we see mostly is properties in the very low-end and high-end tend to crash most often. In 2001, if it was below $200,000 and above $700,000, you would see a lot of volatility. If it was between that $200,000 and $700,000, it stayed fairly stable. It might have lost 5% or 10%. In 2008, it was a completely different thing because the crash was caused by a real estate-specific problem, which was the loan industry.

We saw all houses dropped fast. That particular phenomenon will hopefully never happen again. That was something that was real estate-specific. There was a problem with the banking system and we fixed that in many ways. That kind of crash is not likely to happen. Are we at the top of our economy? We’re pretty close. Real estate is going gangbusters here in California or Northern California in the Bay area. However, I don’t know how it’s doing in the rest of the country. I don’t think it’s going gangbusters the same way. One of the things that I’ve been giving advice to people and I have been given advice also is to look at markets like what you talked about where in Central Texas, for instance, the pricing stays stable even in 2008. When you are looking at that, what’s also going to be true is have the market values appreciated significantly since 2008?

They have, especially in areas like San Antonio and Houston. They’ve appreciated. There’s a lot of demand.

If you can find a magic area like that, where it’s fairly stable, but then you’ve also seen a lot of appreciation, you’re going to have a good chance of not being heavily affected by the economy. Most areas that are not going to be affected by the economy as much are going to be places that are more cashflow places. What will happen is you’ll get a property that is going to cashflow right out of the gate, which you can never find in California. If the economy takes a turn, that cashflow will stay stagnant or will continue because people still need to rent homes. People are not flooding into those areas so the property is not going to necessarily go up high, but it’s also not going to go down very low. It’s going to stay fairly stable.

When you’re looking at an economy, you want to look more for those safer markets where you’re going to get some cashflow and that cashflow then offsets any loss that you could make or you could endure. Those markets are also likely to recover after if they take a 10% drop. If you’re investing in a place like California or an appreciation-focused market, you’re going to see a lot more volatility. What’s important then is to have the wherewithal. What I mean by that is liquidity. You want to have some cash, the emotional wherewithal and the mental mindset to hold on for the long-term. You want to make sure that if things go wrong, you have time to recover so that you can become right again. You need about a ten-year cycle to recover from a hard hit.

What you’re saying is location matters very much, especially if we’re seeing some uncertainties in the economy. Keep in mind that if you’re in an area that has substantial cashflow, that’s probably a better area to invest in.

I still want to buy property in California. This is the market that I love. I need to have a ten-year timeframe on that. I need to make sure that I don’t need to make money on that property right away. I want to make sure that I’m covering my mortgage and my expenses. If the market turns and I lose a significant amount on the property, if I’m upside down, then I can continue to pay that mortgage either through rents or by selling something that I have liquid. For instance, stocks or there might be other things that we have that are liquid, that we can then put into our real estate to sustain ourselves. I’ve been known to do that. When things go bad, I make sure that I can cover myself.

That’s great planning.

I tell people don’t put all of your money into real estate. It’s very solid. It’s the most secure investment on the planet, but there are times when it cycles also. It’s good to make sure that you’ve got some cash and some different things so that if you need liquidity, you’ve got that. The other thing I always say is always have an equity line taken out on your primary residence. You can’t get them on rental properties. That can also serve as an emergency fund if you need to pay mortgages or stuff on your rental properties. Don’t use it for things like vacations, buying a car and consumer debt. Use it to make sure that you’re sustaining your investment business so that you don’t end up losing properties if things turn and you need a little bit of help during that time.

I can’t believe how much information has value that I’ve been able to get out of your show and your readers too. You explained everything so beautifully and easy to understand. We could have asked for a better mentor than you.

Did you have any other questions before we close?

This is coming back to your book, your new habit, the beautiful letters to yourself. I wanted to know if you were planning to come up with a book on affirmation.

I’m not. Many people asked me that. There are many out there that are good. I’m a co-author of a book called Experts & Influencers: Women’s Empowerment Edition. It came out and we are doing their little quote cards. Each of us ladies that were in the book wrote six quotes and you can get a card deck with all of these quotes. If anybody is interested in a card deck, please email me and I can send that to you. It’s $20 per card deck, but you get 52 cards in any case. However many that you get, you get all of these quotes by powerful women that help you to empower yourself and live your best life.

Experts & Influencers: Women’s Empowerment Edition

That sounds like an amazing deal. I wouldn’t want to miss that.

You can go to BlissfulInvestor.com. You’ll see my email address there. Let me know if you want some cards. This is a good conversation. Thank you so much for asking your questions. This can benefit my entire readers and all the ladies out there. Thank you for being willing to do that.

Thank you for being a great mentor to all of us ladies who tune in to your show regularly. I’ve got so much value from it. I’m coming from your knowledge in real estate investing to feeling like I’m learning so much and I’m ready to move ahead. Thank you for everything that you do.

It’s my pleasure. It’s comments like that that lets me know people are reading, and I love that. Thank you. It makes it all worthwhile.

I look forward to catching up with you soon. Thank you for this opportunity to ask you questions. I love your book and I’ve been recommending it to all in Sundry.

Ladies who are reading, I love doing this show and having the conversations that I get to have with these amazing experts. The reality is that I am doing this to be in service of you. If you have any questions, email me and maybe you can be on real estate investing for women as one of the guests. We can have another conversation like I had with Chai. It can help all the other readers too. There’s never a dumb question. All the questions that you’ve had, all the other people have had before you. Feel free, and other people have after you. Many readers have the same questions. Please let me know if you have any questions, and we can record a call and help all the ladies out there.

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When I read your book, every chapter touched something in me and the chapter that you mentioned about giving also touched a deep chord in me. You found a school in India that you donate and you help run. It’s been a dream of mine to do something like that to provide education and school. You found a school that makes your heart happy and you’re donating. How did you find your calling to serve this particular organization or this particular school? How did you know that this was the right fit?

There’s no real right answer. I want to mention how my husband found his, because he didn’t have a heart calling. One of the things he does is he goes online when he’s looking at an organization that feels like it resonates with something that he wants to donate towards. One of the things that he looks up is how much of the funds go to administration and charitable services. He’s always looking for organizations where most of the money goes to services rather than to the administration. That’s a tip-off the top of my head that he has always done.

I went to India when I was sixteen. I was a foreign exchange student. I was out and about and I was meeting people. One of the things that struck me was how the women in India were being treated as opposed to what I was used to in the United States. I would hear these horror stories about Sufi, about these arranged marriages of these girls that were very young and how girls didn’t get any education. There was all this stuff that horrified me. At a young age, I decided that I was not going to be like that. I was going to be the captain of my own life. Nobody was going to determine who I married, how and when. I was going to get an education. I determined those things for myself, but I also realized I had the freedom to do that in the US and that in India, women didn’t always have those options.

I became committed early on to the education of women in India. One of the things that I was convinced of was that the more educated a woman is, the more likely she is to be able to make choices that are more supportive of her than if her life is completely run by her father and by people that were “more educated than her.” The other thing that I realized is that women can fight for their rights, but if we are constantly fighting against men who do not believe the same things, we can never win. It’s important that the education of men also supports the equality of women. Women need to know what is possible for them. Men need to understand and believe that women are equal to them.

I started donating to schools in India at the age of sixteen. I would do $5 a month. I started to donate to different schools in India that supported the education of women and the upbringing of women as equals. In the United States, we used to go to a temple. When I moved to California in 1976 or ‘77, my parents plugged into a Hindu temple that was up in Oakland. That particular Swami, we became close to. It was in 1987, he started this school in India. When we started talking about what the philosophy of the school was, I knew I had to get behind it.

That’s why I started donating quite a lot of money to help to support the school and those sorts of things. Because of that, I was able to impact also some of the direction of the school, the way that the approach was for the education of both girls and boys for the uplifting of women in India. I’m close to the Swami. I’ve gone to India and I did a little movie in the school. I’m involved. The thing that I loved most about it was that I knew the people that were running the organization and I knew what the accounts were.

They didn’t have a huge amount of administration. Most of the money was going towards the school or in the United States. It depends on where you donate. You can donate to the school or you can donate to the temple here in the United States for the upkeep of the building and the temple here. You can designate those funds. I see and I watch every single year more buildings go up. They get more computers, they’ve got more students, and there’s a new farm. It’s becoming a little bit more sustainable. They had to build a bunch of wells because their water levels went way down because their wells weren’t producing.

This is a thing that happens in many of the villages in India. We know that that’s another problem. I’ve been watching the whole thing and where the money goes, and that’s why I feel so committed to it because I know that it’s going to essential services. That’s how I made that choice. It happened as a process throughout my whole life. For David, he will find something that he wants to donate to and he’ll find an organization where most of the money goes to the essential services.

It sounded like it almost happened in a natural way for you. It unfolded naturally.

It did. It’s in my book. It’s one of my pillars of Bliss. It has defined so much of who I am because when you’re looking at the world for a way that you can help and that you can make it better when you’re making an impact, there’s something that happens inside of you. You’re not as a mercy of the world. You’re able to create impact and affect change. It feels empowering. It feels good on so many levels and it’s also helping the world. It’s that thing that we’re giving back. When you feel grateful for everything that you have, if you’re truly grateful, you want others to experience having some of the benefits that you have. Having the opportunity to do that makes you feel even more grateful. It also fills you up with this feeling of empowerment and feeling like you’re doing good things in the world. It’s always been integrated.

You’re making a difference.

In the book, one of the things that I talk about is making an impact is not about giving money to a school in India or Africa, or helping with a water system somewhere. It’s also holding a door for somebody. It’s giving somebody a smile if they seem to be having a bad day. It’s being kind. All of that is creating an impact in the world. It creates a ripple effect of kindness and bliss everywhere you go. That in itself is making an impact. It doesn’t have to be something big. It doesn’t have to be something monetary. It can be who you are being in the world when you’re out there with people.

It’s being aware of our behavior when we’re out there with people.

Practicing kindness and giving back in that way.

Thank you. I have a lot to write in my journal from our conversation.

Thank you for asking that question. That’s not anything I’ve talked about on this show. I’m sure the ladies will get a lot out of that. Ladies, thank you for taking this extra step towards your future, bliss, and financial freedom. Always remember, you do have control over your success. I’ll see you soon.

Important Links

• Choose Bliss
• Experts & Influencers: Women’s Empowerment Edition