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

 

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

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

Real Estate Investing For Women

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

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Lauren, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

You’re welcome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

How do you find a JV partner in that market?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Important Links

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

 

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SOULMAPPIN: The 10 Essential Alignments For A Blissful Life With Cary Jack – Real Estate For Women

 

What if there was a way for you to quantify how close you are to your vision of a successful life? Today’s guest shares the ten essential alignments that you should measure to see which areas in your lifestyle need some tweaking. Joining host Moneeka Sawyer is Cary Jack, a lifestyle entrepreneur, podcast host, author, and Founder of The Happy Hustle. Cary breaks down the ten alignments that will help you in your path to achieving a blissful life. He has coined these alignments as SOULMAPPIN: selfless service, optimized health, unplug digitally, loving relationships, mindful spirituality, abundance financially, personal development, passionate hobbies, impactful work, and nature connection. Understand each one, be inspired, and start the course on your journey to a successful life by tuning in to this episode!

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

SOULMAPPIN: The 10 Essential Alignments For A Blissful Life With Cary Jack – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome Cary Jack to the show. He is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur, Author, Podcast Host, Professional Actor, Model, Biohacker, Eco Warrior, and Martial Artist. He’s a humanitarian striving to make a positive impact on the planet. After experiencing entrepreneurial burnout, he then founded The Happy Hustle. His mission is to educate, inspire and entertain while reminding you to enjoy the journey, not just the destination, as you happy hustle for a life of passion and purpose.

You guys can see why I have him on the show. For successful entrepreneurs to spiritual masters, he interviews an array of powerful guests, including myself, The Happy Hustle Podcast, to help you transform your dreams into a reality. His book The Happy Hustle is coming out in 2021, and he couldn’t be more excited at the opportunity to share his message of Happy Hustlin’, a way to balance your life and your love. Cary, how are you?

I’m fantastic, Moneeka. It’s always a pleasure to connect with you and I’m honored to be here.

Thank you for coming. Ladies, I had to share Cary with you for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was on his show. He’s an amazing host. Go check that out at Happy Hustle Podcast, and then also he runs a mastermind that I’m a part of. As podcasters, we share a lot of ideas and he always shows up super consistently as the happy hustle guy. One of the things that you know I put a lot of emphasis on in life is about living bliss consistently.

You want to develop those bliss muscles and habits so that no matter where you go emotionally in your life, you’re always able to come back to this baseline of bliss. Consistency is the key. The people that I have on my show talking about bliss, it makes a difference if they themselves are showing up for their lives and for the people around them consistently and Cary is one of those people. I’m excited to share him with you and for this conversation. Cary, thank you again.

It’s very important to disconnect to reconnect. Share on X

Thank you for having me. When I think of bliss, I think of you. I just tried to keep up.

Give us a little bit about your background and start with what brought you to where you are.

It started with growing up half in Sarasota, Florida, and then half in Red Lodge, Montana. I was basically surf and skate half the year, then camping, fishing, hunting and hiking. The other half was playing cowboy, and I reside in Big Sky Country, Montana. I’ve always been an entrepreneur since an early age and just valuing the dollar and having to earn every penny for myself.

My dad and mom are both entrepreneurs and they always instilled in us that you had to basically go out and hunt for it if you want to eat, and so I have that blue-collar work mentality and I think that’s served me. I did experience entrepreneurial burnout along the journey and that’s what led me to Happy Hustlin’.

I was a fancy tech entrepreneur with my big data tech startup in New York City, wearing the fancy suit and tie. My brother and business partner and I were soliciting this seven-figure VC funding deal, and we ink partnerships with Microsoft, IBM and all of the things. We work 100-plus hours a week, and I just burnt out. At that point, I sacrificed everything to get that deal and those partnerships. My faith, family, fitness and fun all went to the gutter.

It wasn’t until I achieved the profit and success that I realized this isn’t worth it. I flew to Bangkok, Thailand, lived there for ten months. I figured out a better way to work and live and that’s where The Happy Hustle was born. Now I’m focused on being a lifestyle entrepreneur, investing my hard-earned fruits of my labor wisely into different assets, businesses and people. What I found is that you can achieve blissful balance if you just measure yourself in each of these ten alignments. I just scratched my own itch first, which was going from burnout to bliss and now I’m helping others do the same.

I love that you are so comfortable using the word bliss. People usually come on this show, and they’re like, “What is that?” I’m delighted that you’re so comfortable with that, and I see you living that lifestyle. Talk to us a little bit about these ten alignments that create that blissful balance for you and for everybody.

S – Selfless Service

This applies to everybody. It’s an acronym. I’ve found that it’s difficult to remember ten alignments in my tribe. I made it an acronym. It’s SOUL MAPPIN. S stands for Selfless Service because, as Tony Robbins says, “The secret to living is giving.” I think it’s very important to focus on giving back to others. Giving your time, money and expertise.

As I go through these, I urge your audience to measure 1 to 5 where you rank at each of these ten alignments. This is a practice that my tribe I do every Sunday. It’s very important that what you measure you can manage. You have to know where you may be out of balance. If you’re feeling stressed, unfulfilled or burnout, in any capacity, you may be lacking in one of these ten alignments and it’s important to recognize it first. Awareness is the first step. As I go through these, feel free to interject anytime as well, but basically, measure five would be an A. You’re crushing it. You’re happy hustling.

 

One is an F. You’re failing. Selfless service, that’s the first step. How often are you volunteering? How often are you giving back? How often are you not just thinking for yourself? If every day, that’s a five. You’re crushing it. If it’s a one and you’re never helping others, you need to prioritize change maybe because that’s a big component to happiness and fulfillment.

O – Optimized Health

The next one is O, Optimize health. Health is wealth. You have to have your health if you’re going to be happy hustling in any capacity, if you’re going to live a blissful life. For me, I think a lot of people complicate it. I used to run a high-end biohacking company. We worked with pro-athletes and Fortune 500 CEOs. I learned a lot from what the top 1% of high performers are doing and I think a lot of people complicate it.

U – Unplug Digitally

For me, it’s moving the body minimum of 25 minutes every single day. Drinking a gallon of water and just eating healthy, all-natural organic foods, no processed crap. Measure right now where you’re at 1 to 5 in each of the ten alignments and specifically for O. U is Unplug digitally. A lot of people are plugged in so much to their devices now, on their smart TVs, smartphones and tablets, and we’re so disconnected from our present moment, mother nature and even the people right beside us.

It’s very important to disconnect to reconnect. I’ll put it in a little sprinkle of tips throughout each of these, but even just 60 minutes of undivided no device time in the mornings when you wake up can go so far. I even doubled down in the evening time 60 minutes before bed, no devices. Those two simple happy hustle hacks can make a big difference and that’s you. Measure where you’re at. If you’re always plugged in and you’re never disconnected, that’s a one. You need to prioritize change.

I do want to highlight this a little bit because this is something that we don’t realize when. When I hold my choose bliss retreat, which is called the Bliss Retreat, this is one of the very first things we talk about. Your mind is most vulnerable and highest capacity just when you wake up and just before going to sleep.

Those are not times you want to be looking at social media, which can be highly negative or overly positive making you feel bad about your life. You don’t want to be looking at the news. You don’t want to be susceptible to the subconscious messages of advertising. You don’t want any of those things and now our phones are not just a phone. They’re all of those things.

It’s important not even to check texts because when you check a text, you’re now plugging into somebody else’s agenda. You want to make sure that you start the day and end the day focused on your own agenda, life, bliss and gratitude. That’s the first thing. I just love this because people don’t talk about this as much. The other thing about that is before you go to sleep, if you have screen time, your eyes have a physical reaction to the screen.

The toxic blue light.

It takes time to decompress from that for your eyes to settle in to be able to go into REM sleep. It’s not just the mental activity of looking at that screen. It’s a physical reaction that our bodies have. In the morning, it’s hugely important to start your day off. Do not start with other people’s agenda, advertising bad news, and at night you don’t want to have all of those things you’re going to dream about at night. You don’t want to be dreaming about other people’s agendas, bad news and advertising. You also want to make sure that your body has the time to decompress and relax so that you sleep blissfully. I love that the hour on either side gives you just the space to prioritize yourself for long enough to set yourself up for bliss.

Money is a tool, and it’s very important. Share on X

I’ll take it a step further. What our devices I meant is a toxic frequency. It’s EMS, electromagnetic frequency. It’s basically radiation. Whether you’re on your Bluetooth headset or you got your smartphone in your pocket zapping you with EMS, these have shown to break down ourselves on a DNA level.

If you’re wondering why your mitochondria are not functioning properly, also known as your energy powerhouse cells, you need to check your screen time. You need to check your device usage. This is a huge factor and a lot of people are missing it, and especially now with the rollout of 5G. I don’t want to go down the woo-woo train here of like, “Tinfoil hat guy.”

It’s a factor. You have to use technology wisely and if you are going to use your devices past dark, put on some blue blockers. Those help your eyes. That affects your retina and your cornea, and it does take time to compensate for that toxic blue light. It’s an important factor both physically, mentally and emotionally. Watching social media and the news, that stuff is oftentimes other people’s agendas and priorities, not yours. Those are important steps there.

L is Love and relationships. This is an essential part and just living the happy hustle, blissful life. You have to have love in your life. What’s it all for? What’s all the investing, money and the accumulation of wealth for if you don’t have people to share it with? I’ve found that a lot of my fellow entrepreneurs sacrifice specifically their loved ones to get to the cliché top of the mountain, and then they look around, “The view’s bad,” and they’re isolated. No one’s there.

The view is gorgeous, but there’s nobody there with them.

Hopefully, the view is gorgeous, but oftentimes I see people don’t even like the view. They’re like, “I should be on that mountain. That mountain looks a lot better.”

It’s cloudy and cold.

That’s the truth. For me, I have a fiancée. We’re getting married soon. We have date night every week. We have a Sunday beer talk. We have a love calendar where we measure where we rank in our relationship. Every single day I ask her. This could be something that you implement with your lover. It’s the simple whiteboard calendar. It sits in our room. I ask her every night, “What’s your love day?” She’s like, “It was an eight.”

We had lots of passion, love and maybe even intercourse. Measures up, and then she asked me, “Mine was a six. This was why.” We average that out a seven. I’ll put it on the calendar for that day. I put a heart around it, and then we move on to the next day. At the end of the month, you can see where you rank because oftentimes, we as humans have this negativity bias and we focus on the negative, that nitpicking and nagging. She didn’t do the dishes or I didn’t do the laundry.

L – Loving Relationships

This is a way to calculate and you want to be 90% love days. Hopefully, that’s the goal of 10%. There are going to be some mess-ups, but if you start dropping down below 80% love days, then you might need to reassess and reevaluate. Is this a healthy relationship for you? That’s just one happy hustle hack for you, but loving relationships both with your family and friends is a really important piece. I would say measure 1 to 5 where you rank, and that’s L. Now we got the Soul part of SOUL MAPPIN.

M – Mindful Spirituality

M is for mindful spirituality. I know you’re big into meditation and breathwork and just being spiritual in whatever capacity. I don’t necessarily care if you believe in one God or another. I just think you have to have faith in a higher power. Get still ten minutes minimum a day, focusing on my breath and gratitude and doing my gratitude practice. I’m doing my I am incantations on my rebounder, just training my subconscious. That is the central part of mindful spirituality.

Meditation oftentimes gets complicated, but all you have to do is focus on your breath in a quiet place. Just enjoy the given moment, feel, use your different senses, but measure where you rank right now, 1 to 5 in each of these ten alignments and, specifically, mindful spirituality. You see the highest performers at every level. From the real estate game to the business game to any high performer in the sports field, they are using mindful spirituality. If you’re not, maybe this is a wake-up call. That’s M.

I ask the three rapid-fire questions at the end for every single guest that’s been on here. We’ve had 250 guests on the show, and I will say the two biggest things that people say are some forms of meditation or exercise. It’s so interesting because you don’t think those aren’t business-related things. I get up and I block time and every week, I do this. It’s none of that. It’s taking care of the human element first of you so that you can then go out there and be your very best self in the world. Meditation is huge and there are a million different kinds of meditation and you can complicate it. You can do what Cary just said, but choose something.

Especially as entrepreneurs, we have a monkey mind. Get settling into that. At least at first, it feels like a challenge. You can push through and just keep doing it until you’ve trained your mind to do it, or you can pick something else that will keep you going until you can get there, for instance, a walking meditation. I do a dancing meditation because I’m a dancer. There are different ways that we can engage in meditation, but find something that helps you to heal and nourish your mind.

It’s a great way to just get out of our heads and into our hearts. We spend a lot of time at the monkey brain, just overthinking and overanalyzing and just that anxiety and stress. It’s a great way to just take a step back, and it’s clinically proven that six deep breaths change your state. Just six deep breaths can do wonders.

In EXTRA, we are going to talk about his box breath. Stay tuned for that because that’s a really good fast technique to get you back into your body creativity, to relax the mind and the body so that you perform better. We are going to cover that in EXTRA. I’m excited.

A – Abundance Financially

We’re moving on to A. A is Abundance financially. If you want to invest in real estate, if you want to invest in yourself and if you want to invest in a business, you have to have money. I look at money as a tool. It’s energy and you essentially need money to use this energy. One thing that was the difference-maker in my financial wellbeing was financial literacy. Knowing how to invest, save and spend wisely.

It wasn’t until I took financial literacy seriously, then everything started to transpire positively for me in terms of money. There are sometimes some negative connotations around money. It’s okay if you want money if you want to be rich and if you want a big life, go for it, but you have to change your money story first and foremost, and you have to educate yourself. In the real estate market, you have to be educated in order to make quality buying and selling decisions.

The same goes with investing in stocks or bonds, with investing in crypto, investing in yourself, and in business and partnerships. It’s very important to have abundance financially so we can live the happy hustle, blissful lifestyle and take care of those who we care about. Let’s face it. We’re all out here working for freedom.

Freedom both financially, creativity and time are three forms of freedom. Money can oftentimes truly help you provide that, but not at the expense of your time. A lot of people trade their time for money. I really very much focus on getting paid for value delivered, not time spent. I think that’s an important correlation or an important distinction to make, but money is a tool and it’s very important. One thing I’ll just say, “Get good at sales.” Sales are the lifeblood of any business. I love selling. It maybe the hunter in me, but sales is just extremely important.

I do the majority of my sales on Zoom, which is hilarious. I learned a lot selling over $1 million, working very little, to be honest with you, over Zoom calls. It’s all emotional intelligence and how to read body language. I don’t say that to brag or anything. I have experience in this niche of selling over digital Zoom calls and very awesome/important techniques to utilize. I think whether you’re selling on the phone or you’re selling one-to-one in person or you’re selling over video calls, you have to learn sales in order to achieve abundance financially. Measure where you’re at right now in terms of abundance financially. Five is you’re crushing it. One is living paycheck to paycheck.

 

You ran a business where you gave it everything. You were doing the 100-hour week, you were doing all of that stuff and now you have a very successful business, much more passive. I want people to think about this. This is a very important point. If you’re trading time for hours, your capacity to earn is very limited to your capacity to work.

If you go on vacation, all the money stops. What you want is passive income, and this is why real estate is so amazing. You want your money out there doing this little thing. You want it doing its hustle and you’re on vacation. Make your money hustle for you. You don’t hustle. That’s the thing and it’s amazing with real estate. You can do it in a lot of different vehicles.

The very rich invest in stock portfolios, real estate and businesses, those are the top three. You’re welcome to do all of those and I do all of those, but for me, it’s a very passive experience. The most time that I spend on my business is in the podcast business or my coaching business, and that restricts me from taking my vacations, but my real estate business does not.

Now I’m trying to move towards making this business a little bit more passive and conducive to my lifestyle. It’s a really important point, ladies, and notice, I mentioned my own transition. We are all at some place in that spectrum of fully passive to trading time for money. Sometimes we have to trade time for money in order to get the money to create the passive income. That’s okay, but have that as your goal because there’s a journey that we go through to get to that place, to where your money is working for you and you’re now off on vacation.

If you’re not growing and evolving, you’re shrinking and dissolving. Share on X

It’s so true. I’m still on my journey. I’m still figuring it out. I know you are as well. There’s a delicate dance between trading your time for money and having passive residual income. One strategy that I’ll just throw out to your audience that I’ve seen effective in my life is affiliate relationships. Affiliate relationships leverage your time most effectively because you can promote a product or service that you believe in, but not have to focus on delivering.

I have some very lucrative affiliate relationships in my business. They pay me nice $5,000, $10,000 every month and it’s beautiful. There are some that require a little more time, maybe a little more content creation, connection and touchpoints, but it’s important to think about how you can leverage your time most effectively, so you can spend it more doing what you love.

P – Personal Development

The first P, that is Personal development. If you’re not growing and evolving, you’re shrinking and dissolving. You have to focus on growing every single day in some way, and we can learn from anyone. We can learn from the garbage man on the street to the high-rise female boss entrepreneur in the office. There’s a lesson in each interaction. What I like to focus on is 90 minutes of personal growth every single day.

I’ll do 30 minutes of reading something inspirational and educational in the morning, 30 minutes of listening to something inspirational and educational in the afternoon and then 30 minutes of watching something inspirational and educational. I find I draw a lot of inspiration from these different forms of content and people learn in different ways. That’s why I recommend three different mediums.

If that sounds a little like a lot to start, start with fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen in the afternoon and fifteen in the evening, but just start focusing on your personal development and make things relatable to where you’re at right now. In your business, life and investing portfolio, make those things relatable of what you’re learning.

P – Passionate Hobbies

If you’re not doing these things, measure where you rank or where you are. That way, we can course correct. At the end of this interview, you should know where you’re ranking in each of these, and it’s just important to measure. That’s the first P, Personal development. Next P is Passionate hobbies. This is one that I think a lot of people miss big time. They’re working their tail off, they’re grinding and they’re hustling, but they’re not happy hustling.

This is where you fill your cup with passionate hobbies or doing things you love. Fun things regularly that you might even have to pay for. Maybe you’re big into art or dancing. For me, I love fly fishing. I love martial arts. I go camping, hiking and horseback riding. It’s important to fill your cup so you can give from your overflow. Here is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle. If you want to achieve blissful balance, if you want to create your dream reality, you must prioritize each separate calendar engagement with the same priority.

Your passionate hobbies, like maybe Moneeka loves to go belly dancing, that get the same priorities as this interview with me. It’s the same priority with the date night with her husband, gets the same priority as her workout and that’s how you create the blissful balance in your life, both personally and professionally. If you’re lacking in passionate hobbies, I highly recommend scheduling two fun things right now on your calendar and holding yourself to them as if they are just as important as your meeting with your next potential big partnership or whatnot. That’s the second P.

I want to add something to that. I do all of those things. I have a date night every single week with my husband. That’s one of the big things and that counts as one of the fun things that I love to do. Here’s an interesting thing that I just want to point out that you may not be thinking about as you’re out there building your life. First of all, I don’t know, all work, no play makes Jack a very boring boy. That’s one of those things that people would tell us as younger people, and it’s not emphasized anymore.

Just being single-dimensional, intellectual, workaholic and mom or dad to the kids makes you feel bored in your own heart and makes you boring to others. Being boring to others is its own thing. It’s subjective. What happens is through life, if you have not developed your passions, if you are not paying attention to the things that make you happy, what are you going to do when you have all that money and you retire? You’re probably going to fall into a huge depression. I know so many people fully identify as a software engineer as their job. That’s who they are. I think my husband is one of these people. We’re dealing with this now.

My husband has well-developed hobbies, but they’re not enough of a passion that they would engage him if he had 24 hours to himself, and he was no longer working his 50-hour week. For me, I’m in transition to retirement. What does that mean and who am I going to get to be in that? That person has been developed my whole life.

I’ve been a dancer since I was five. I sing. I like walks. We do fine dining. We love to travel. I read books. There are a lot of things in my life that engage my passion. When I retire, I’m excited because there are about 10,000 things I could do with every single day, but if you only work, you suddenly lose your identity and instead of being full of joy, you’re now really depressed because you don’t know who you are. You don’t know how to fill your time, all of those things.

For some of you, ladies, I know there are like 21-year-olds reading this. They’re like, “What in the world?” Just understand that who you are growing to be is who you are going to amplify and become more as you get older, and that’s what’s going to be amplified when you’re wealthy. Do you want to give back to people? Do you want to be a passionate, joyful person or are you going to be grumpy and a hoarder?

What are you going to do? What’s going to make your life blissful when you’re not so focused on the day-to-day? That helps to raise your bliss factor also. To feel that passion every day in some way or have something really joyful to look forward to every week or every day. We just love this. We are complete people. We’re not just mom, wife and employees. Explore. We are these multidimensional beings and we don’t allow ourselves to focus on all the amazingness inside of us and what we can do with our lives and our time.

I resonate with all of it and I think it’s sustainable, happy hustling. It’s sustainable investing and the accumulation of knowledge, resources and wealth. Sacrifice everything and you get everything that you thought you wanted and you realize that’s not what brings joy and fulfillment. You will become depressed and have to start over and re-find yourself.

I – Impactful Work

You are better off to do it from the beginning a little bit at a time. That’s the second P in SOUL MAPPIN, and now we’re on to I, which is Impactful work. We spend the majority of our lives either working or thinking of work. In The Happy Hustle, we focus on the three pillars. It’s a little cliché, but passion, purpose and positive impact, and passion for me is inward-facing. It’s my calling. It’s what problem I truly feel called to solve.

Then purpose is outward serving. It’s who exactly do I feel called to solve that problem for? It’s very important that it makes a positive impact. Your passion and purpose don’t exploit the earth’s resources negatively or hurts others. It’s very important that it makes a positive impact. I would ask yourself, is your work right now giving you passion, purpose and making a positive impact? If not, it’s time to make a change because life is short. We got to live this to the fullest. I just think there are a lot of people sacrificing out there and I hope that’s not you, but if it is, make a change and infuse that passion, purpose and the positive impact. That’s I.

N – Nature Connection

Nature connection. We’re living like zoo animals. We’re inside our offices getting recycled air, toxic blue light and EMS. We go commute in our cage on wheels with recycled air and manufactured light, and then we go home and then we have the more of the same. I think it’s so important that we get back to being human beings and being outside, connecting with Pachamama, this beautiful planet, and then protecting it in the process.

Climate change is real and I have a company with my brother called Ecopreneur Evolution. That’s fighting the plastic pollution epidemic. That’s creating positive solutions to climate change. We invest in social entrepreneurs essentially in third world developing countries. It’s very important to me to solve this problem, not just for my generation but for future generations or at least be a part of the solution. It’s a big problem to solve. I do believe that just getting outside, walking even just ten minutes a day barefoot in some nice grass or swimming in a natural body of water or just sitting in a park can do wonders for your soul. That is the SOUL MAPPIN framework. Measure 1 to 5.

G is for go. Go happy, hustle your dream reality. I’ll make it easy for everyone. If you just want to measure yourself in each of these ten alignments, I have a simple quiz. It’s completely free. It takes maybe 60 seconds. You just go through CaryJack.com/quiz, and you’ll just measure 1 to 5 in each of these where you need to prioritize change. That’s the ten alignments of being a happy hustler.

It’s important to fill your cup so you can give from your overflow. Share on X

Thank you so much, Cary. It’s so concise and has such good tips. That was amazing.

Thank you for allowing me just to rattle them off.

We are going to have Cary give us some stuff in EXTRA. We’re going to talk in a little bit more detail about some of his happy hustle hustling hacks. We are going to do that. In particular, I wanted him to share the box breathing breath. We’ve heard that in EXTRA ones before, but he’s got a little bit of a different take. This is the thing about breathing. There are so many different ways to do it and some resonate with us and some don’t.

He’s got another technique. We do this at his mastermind every couple of weeks. I’m going to have him share that with you, and then he’s got some other stuff he wanted to share with you too. We are going to be talking about that in EXTRA, so stay tuned for that. Cary, could you tell everybody how they can get in touch with you?

Pretty simple. Just CaryJack.com is the place where everything lives. The Happy Hustle Podcast, if you went on to listen to Moneeka on there. That’s a great episode. She rocked the mic and crushed it. We have something special set up for your audience. I don’t know if you want to talk about that.

Tell us about that right now.

That is The Journey: 10 Days to Become a Happy Hustler. This is probably one of the best digital course products I’ve ever put out in my life. It’s essentially walking you through those ten alignments that we just went through, how to create blissful, balanced and healthy habits in each of those ten alignments. You just go to TheHappyHustle.com and then we have code Bliss set up, where you save 20% off.

Basically, you could just start happy hustling and it’s super simple. If you can allocate an hour a day to just going through the content and implementing, you are going to become a happy hustler. That’s something we got set up specifically for your lovely ladies out there, but specifically your tribe. Click on the Yes, I Want In page and then it’ll take you to the checkout page. You just basically plugin code Bliss and there you go. You get your discount.

 

Cary, are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

I am born ready.

Tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate?

Financial literacy. Read, first and foremost. I love this book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Great read. That book will educate you in so many different ways.

What is one strategy for being successful as a real estate investor?

I would say sales because whether you’re buying, selling or investing, there’s some form of a deal and there’s some form of selling. Either you’re selling yourself as a buyer or you’re selling yourself in your property. Get good at the psychology behind what makes humans buy.

What would you say is one daily practice? I know you’ve got a ton of these, but one daily practice that contributes to your personal success.

Ice baths. I get cold every day.

That sounds horrible.

They are. They’re never fun. I never look forward to it, but ice baths do wonders for the body, getting in a tub of water that’s somewhere between 38 and 52 degrees. It decreases the inflammation in the body, from which a lot of disease stems from. It increases blood flow circulation. It basically is just a supercharger for your immune system, and it builds mental fortitude because doing hard things regularly will build discipline and mental fortitude itself.

Who you are growing to be today is who you are going to amplify and become more and more of as you get older. Share on X

I learned this from a biohacking friend of mine. We’re at the end of a shower. The last 30 seconds, I do cold water. Is that good?

There you go. Yes. You get in cold.

I don’t think I could do the ice bath, but I can do the cold water for 30 seconds. Cary, this has been an amazing first part of our show. Thank you so much for all you’ve offered.

Thank you for having me. This has been my honor.

Ladies, thank you for joining Cary and me for this portion of the show. We’ve got EXTRA coming up for some deep dives, a new breathing technique, some other information on how to live a happy hustle life, so stay tuned for that. If you are not subscribed but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get this out for seven days for free. Check it out.

For those of you that are leaving Cary and me, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. I so appreciate you and I look forward to seeing you next time, and until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. Take care. See you soon.

 

Important Links

• The Happy Hustle
• The Happy Hustle Podcast
• Happy Hustle Podcast – Retire Rich and Live Your Bliss with Real Estate Investor and Millionaire Moneeka Sawyer
• Ecopreneur Evolution
• CaryJack.com/quiz
• CaryJack.com
• The Journey: 10 Days to Become a Happy Hustler
• I Will Teach You to Be Rich
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Cary Jack

I grew up splitting time on the beaches of Sarasota, Florida and in the mountains of Red Lodge, Montana. The son of two entrepreneurial parents, I knew from an early age that I would forge my own path. So I set out to do so, while living a life of passion and purpose. I am so grateful for the adversity for it has made me stronger as it wasn’t always peaches and cream…

Coming from a divorced home, filled with hostility, I fostered problems of my own at an early age. I had an extreme stutter, OCD, and anger problems. I turned to self-abuse and used to bang my head into walls (which probably explains a lot lol). I went to years of counseling and got kicked out of multiple schools. I moved homes 24 times as a kid due to my mother’s sickness and was far from stable.

I got involved in plenty of mischief while growing up, most of which I’ll leave off this site, but I learned many lessons the hard way. I ultimately failed forward and decided to trade my life of hustlin’ for a life of happy hustlin’ where I vowed to use my powers for good.

 

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

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What Common Mistake Do Many Real Estate Investors Make? With Zack Boothe – Real Estate For Women

 

What is the most common mistake beginners in real estate make? They try to figure things out on their own. Moneeka Sawyer’s guest today is Zack Boothe, the founder of Driving For Dollars Mastery. Zack shares with Moneeka how listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos won’t give you a clear path as coaching can. Find a mentor you connect with to help you find a path that works for you. It’s only when you have massive belief in what you’re doing that you succeed. Tune in and learn how to find the right mentor for you!

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

What Common Mistake Do Many Real Estate Investors Make? With Zack Boothe – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show Zack Boothe. A few years ago, Zack was a window cleaner. You can even find his window cleaning tutorial videos on YouTube with millions of views. However, Zack always dreamt of being a real estate investor. Taking a leap of faith, he walked away from window cleaning. With a handful of years, he was making over $1 million per year from real estate investing. With his successful business, he now spends his time helping others see how simple it is to make money with real estate. Zack is here to share his insider secrets to finding massively discounted properties, regardless of your experience level. Zack, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.

I’m so glad that you’re able to make it. He told me before, Ladies, that he wasn’t feeling very well. I thought that this conversation was interesting. I didn’t want to put it off. We’re going to go ahead and go for it, Zack. I’m excited to have you here. Tell us a little bit more about your story, like the high-level two-minute version.

I was a window cleaner. It was good. I was providing for my family, but it wasn’t quite enough. It was a struggle. I wanted something different. I wanted to be able to provide a better life for my family. The day my son was born, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed and stressed about how I was going to pay the medical bills. That pushed me to want to get into real estate investing. I did my first investment deal back in 2012. I bought a rental. It was a pre-foreclosure. My wife and I got dirty and cleaned it up ourselves and rented one side and lived in the other.

We had that experience and got the bug. We wanted to do more deals. We have so many roadblocks after that. Debt to income ratios, getting the loans, being self-employed, especially because I wasn’t making a lot of money as a window cleaner. I found out about real estate wholesaling. I got a mentor and it’s changed my life. Now I’m making six figures a month from this business. I have a team that does it for me. I do it in two different markets. I coach other people to do this, which is my passion and what I love doing. I create content. I have a podcast and YouTube channel around it. I love it. That’s the two-minute version of my journey and where I’m at.

Zack, how much time per week would you say that you spend on your business?

 

In coaching business, a lot. That’s where I spend all my time. If it’s a workweek and I work all week, 6, 7 days a week, it’s all day every day. As far as the wholesaling and investment business, I maybe spend four hours a week. I’ve been picking up about one property that I’m keeping for myself. I consider that my holding company. I’m spending a couple of hours a week on that business as well, but the wholesaling business that’s generating the majority of my money, I spend very little time at this point.

I look at what I do and people might be like, “That’s not true.” It is true, but where I spend my time is every Monday, I have a team meeting. I sit in on the Monday meeting. On Wednesdays, we do KPI reviews. What is that? I sit down with my two main people in my company, my marketing director and my lead acquisition manager. We sit down and look at our numbers. What our business did and where we’re at? Another thing, I’m going to lunch with a potential financial private money lender. Those are the kinds of things that I do. I meet with high-level people. I interview someone that’s going to be a project manager for a flip or whatever that might be, but I don’t spend much time in the business.

How long did it take you to get to this point where you’re only working about 4 to 6 hours a week?

I quit window cleaning and went full-time into real estate investing at the beginning of 2017. It’s not long. A few years ago, I transitioned out of the day-to-day. It took me about two years to build the company. The first year we did $118,000 in income. The second year, I did shy of $500,000. The next year we did $1.2 million, and that’s what I walked away from the business and put other people in place.

The cool thing is I cut a lot of expenses but also cut revenue and had some hiccups doing that. The next year, we only did $700,000, but my profit margins were better. In May 2021, we’re at $700,000 already. We’re fully expecting to have our best year ever because I increased our ad spend by 25%. We should end 2021 between $1.5 million and $2 million in sales with a 40% profit margin.

Ladies, this is why I’m having this conversation. The conversations that I’m most interested in, and I know so many of you ladies are interested in, is you’re successful, and this is what you’re doing right now, but how did you get here? I only worked 5 to 10 hours a month, and people were like, “Was it always this way?” No, there’s a ramp-up time. When you start your business, what is it that you’re doing to make that happen? For me, I’ve always worked those hours, but my business was a side hustle. I wasn’t paying attention to it.

I’ll admit openly that I probably would have reached wealth much faster if I had paid more attention. I loved this conversation with other successful real estate entrepreneurs to find out what the ramp-up looks like and where they’re at. That’s why I wanted to ask these questions, Zack. One of the pieces that I wanted to ask you is, in the first three years, how much time do you feel like you were spending in that business? Was it part-time, partial time, more than part-time? What did that look like?

It’s overtime hours. I still work more hours than most people, but I believe that this life is not made for sipping piña coladas on a beach. I believe that we find fulfillment in life by challenging ourselves and growing. Once I started finding success in real estate, I happened upon coaching. It wasn’t even planned. I started finding fulfillment helping other people find success. My mentor said something that stuck with me. He said, “When you win in the game of money, there’s no joy in running up the score.”

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People say all the time, as wealthy people, even though, “Money’s not important.” Someone hears that, and they go, “Yeah, because you already have money,” but they’re both right. There’s a certain amount of money that is very important. You’ve got to provide for your family. You’ve got to eat. There is a certain level of money once you hit that. More doesn’t equal that same level of comfort and peace. I started having a massive amount of financial success after hustling for two years, and I wanted something different.

I’m going off on a tangent here to answer your question. I worked very hard in my wholesaling business in those first two years. I walked away from my window cleaning business. I had two months until I was not going to be able to pay the mortgage. I hadn’t done a wholesale deal. I hired a mentor and I was going to do it. I know it’s a little crazy for most people. I had to put my coaching fees on a credit card. A lot of my marketing is on a credit card. I was going to make it happen.

I was working until 10:00, 11:00 every single night, seven days a week, until I did my first deal. I did my first deal. It was $10,000 and it was amazing. My biggest deal that first eight months was $30,000. That was the $100,000 that I made in that first year, the first eight months of wholesaling. I kept working my butt off. My mentor also said something that stuck with me. He said, “Hustle is a season, not a way of life.”

I feel like I hustled to work hard, but then it got to the point where I started working a little more strategically to build out the team. To get to that level of success, you have to start somewhere. Where do you start? Your goal is to get your first deal, your second deal, and then your third deal. It evolves from there. Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t look at someone that’s had levels of success and has a team and says, “I only work five hours a week.” I was like, “How’s that possible?” They work their butts off in the beginning.

You and I have a little bit of a different point of view, but I love that each of us has how we define bliss and then that’s what we work for in our life. That’s what gives us fulfillment. Could you tell us the mistake that you see beginners make in real estate investing, the biggest mistake, the most common one?

The biggest mistake that people make is they try and figure it out on their own. They listened to a podcast. They watch a YouTube video and then they watch another podcast. They take some action steps, but it’s unorganized. It’s not clear. They don’t know exactly if it’s going to work. When they’re doing those action steps, they’re not super confident in them. One of the guys that I follow that I love, Tony Robbins. He talks about the cycle of success that people have.

To be able to tap into our full potential as people, we have to have a massive belief in whatever we’re doing. If we start wanting to do a wholesale deal and we watch a YouTube video and be like, “They said to go buy a list from PropStream and to send postcards. I’m going to try that.” You go do it. You’re not sure if it’s going to work. You’re not going to give a massive amount of effort. For example, you’re not going to drop $7,000 on postcards. You don’t have a massive belief.

If you know for a fact that if you spent $5,000 to $7,000 on postcards, you’re going to make $30,000. Would you do it? Yes, because you have a massive belief in it. What happens is if you have a belief, you’ll give massive action. If you give massive action, you’ll have massive results. You’re going to build your confidence. If you’re going to do another deal and another deal, and you’re going to grow, do more deals and add more marketing strategies or whatever that might be.

The problem is people don’t go at it with confidence because they’re going at it alone. They’re trying to figure it out from just a podcast. That’s why it was so important to get a mentor. That’s why I got a mentor in the beginning. I would not be successful without my mentor. Tom Krol was my mentor. He doesn’t coach anymore. I love him to death. He changed my life, got me out of window cleaning and into this business.

 

He’s out of Florida, but he gave me the action steps. There was no confusion of like, “What do I do next? If I do this, will it perform?” He said, “Zack, go do this and this.” I went and did it. I’m like, “Done, now what?” He said, “Do this and this.” I went and did it. I did it in mass. I took very uncomfortable steps, but he told me to do them. I knew that he was successful.

If I did what he did, I’d be successful. That’s how I had success. I feel like that’s the number one issue. People put a toe in instead of jumping in, but the problem is they don’t get a mentor. That’s jumping in. It was like getting a mentor that gives them the step-by-step action steps so they can implement them and do them. I also believe there are bad mentors.

I do, too. Yes, thank you for addressing that.

I’m not going to pay anybody, but I believe getting a mentor that’s going to get you there is very important.

How do you pick a mentor? What would you recommend?

There’s a handful of things that I would suggest. Some people might be hearing this and going, “You’re saying that because you are a mentor,” yes, but I’m not going to coach everyone that wants a coach. Find your mentor, first of all, that you connect with. Someone might have already heard some of the things I said and completely don’t vibe with me. First of all, don’t even think about working with me. Find someone that’s a mentor that you vibe with.

The type of person that you have, and also are living the types of lives, have the same core values, same core beliefs. They’re your port people. They would be your best friend in different circumstances. That’s the first thing I would look at. The second is that they are doing what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t hire mentors that only teach but don’t do what they say. If you want to get into wholesaling, make sure they also wholesale and coach, not just coach.

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The next thing I would look at is do they have successful students. It’s one thing to say, “Yeah, I know how to do it.” It’s a whole another thing. I promise. Coaching and doing wholesaling are two different things. If that coach hasn’t been able to help lots of people become successful and you can’t talk to those successful students and have those successful students say, “Yes, that person changed my life.” Just like I talked about Tom Krol. If their students aren’t saying those kinds of things, don’t join the program. That would be my advice, those three things.

Thank you for that. I do get a lot of people who call me and they’re like, “Moneeka, you talk about getting a mentor. How should I get a mentor?” That’s great advice. Thank you for that. What would you say is the best strategy for finding deeply discounted properties? That’s what you do?

That’s what all of the real estate investing is. It’s finding discounted properties. I was reading a book called Multi-Family Millions, but it’s talking about doing giant multifamily deals, million-dollar projects. He said something that clicked. This was at the beginning of my real estate journey. He said that, “Real estate investing is marketing. Our product is real estate. If you can’t get that between your two ears, you won’t be in business for long.”

He has a couple of sections in there. We talked about how you find discounted properties. It doesn’t matter if you’re wholesaling or giant properties. Our business is marketing. We have to find discounted properties to do deals on. There’s the cliche saying, “You’ve got to buy low to sell high.” You have to start with a good deal. It doesn’t matter if you want a wholesale, buy and hold, flip, syndications, whatever it might be.

One of the things that I do and everything that I do is branded Driving For Dollars Mastery or DFD Mastery. My website is DrivingForDollarsMastery.com. Driving For Dollars is a strategy that I use to find discounted properties. It’s simple. You drive around neighborhoods and find the ugly properties, the ugly multifamily houses and single-family houses. You add it to a list. You find out who owns it, and then you see if they want to sell. That’s simple.

Obviously, there are things to be more efficient to do on a larger scale and to be able to be very profitable. I truly believe that is the best way to find off-market discounted properties. There are lots of ways, though. There are banded signs, radio, online marketing. There are lots of different things, but I truly believe that is by far the best, most profitable, and fastest way to deals.

Zack, where are you located?

I’m in Utah.

It’s a hot market there, too. It’s a hot market everywhere.

It is everywhere. I also live in Tampa. I do it in two different markets.

Talk to me a little bit about how you do this in a hot market. I live in San Jose, California. If someone wants to sell, if you send them a letter and you say, “Do you want to sell?” They’re very aware of what their property would be worth if they put it on the market, even if it was as-is. It’s hard in this area to get a discounted property because people can put it on, and bids will come in. Everything’s going for multiple offers. Things are going for several hundred thousand dollars over asking. Finding a discounted property is difficult in my experience. What would you say to that? What do you recommend?

It’s very important to understand that you have to be a deal finder, not necessarily a deal creator. Many people think that you have to be this swindler or dishonest, or shady to get discounted properties because everyone knows or understands that it’s a hot market and they can get a lot. What you need to understand is some people want convenience over the price. For example, we are real estate investors, wholesalers. We’re pawnshops for houses.

That’s the best explanation I can give. For example, if someone takes a piece of jewelry out of their house and they go, “I don’t want this piece of jewelry anymore. I want cash.” They could list it online. Put it on KSL, Craigslist, whatever online resources, eBay, and try and get as much as possible. You could drive down to the corner store and say, “Here’s my ring. Give me cash.” You’re going to make less at the pawnshop, but there’s a convenience factor, pawn shops to make money.

There are only a select few people that want to sell stuff at a pawnshop. There are people that and you might think that doesn’t exist, especially in a hot market. That’s not true at all. It’s not true because I’ve made $700,000 in five months doing this. It works. The funny thing is I have the same conversation with my neighbor, my cousin that calls me and says, “I need to sell my house. Will you buy it?” I say, “You might make more money listing it with an agent. Why don’t you do that?”

“I’m an investor. I can have it done quickly, but I might not be able to be your best offer.” They say, “Yeah, I’m not in a hurry. I’ll probably list it and fix it up myself.” It’s like, “Okay, best of luck. I can’t help you.” They say, “Yeah, I don’t necessarily care about getting out the money. I don’t want to fix it up. I don’t want to deal with an agent. I want to be done.” When they say that, that means it’s a deal. They want a pawnshop for a house. The biggest thing is you put out a net to the ugly houses in your neighborhood and ask them if they want to sell. You have that exact conversation.

Why don’t you listen, it sounds like it’s a decent property? It might need a little work. Why don’t you fix it up and list it? If they tell you, “No, I don’t want to,” then it’s a deal. I’ve captured those conversations. They’re on my YouTube channel. I straight up say, “You will make more money, listing it with an agent. Why don’t you do that?” They say, “I don’t care. I want it gone.” That’s who we’re trying to find. Are there very few people that want to sell their houses for speed and convenience? Yes. That’s why it’s so important to do marketing and to have a strategy to find off-market discounted properties.

Zack, I’ve never heard that analogy. Thank you.

You’re welcome. I stole that from Tom Krol as well. I’m not lying when I say, “Get a mentor. He changed my life.” I’m changing people’s lives by helping them. It’s going to snowball. There are going to be 2 or 3 people that I changed their life. They’re going to change more people’s lives. That’s fulfillment to me. I can go to the grave with all this money. It’s not going to make a difference, but what will make a difference is this content that we leave behind, the YouTube videos, the things that we talk about, the people that we helped. I will always have nothing but love and respect for Tom because of the action steps and the things that he did for me and the things that he gave me. I want to pass that on.

You talk a little bit about having different exit strategies. This is a hot topic for me that I talk about quite a lot. Could you talk a little bit about how you decide on your exit strategies to make the most money when you get a property?

 

When I first started, everything was wholesaling. I find a deal and a buyer that wanted to buy my contract and close on it. I didn’t have the money. I didn’t have the ability to do anything else. I was broke. I didn’t have debt to income. I didn’t have credit. I didn’t have private money investors. I didn’t have all those relationships I do now. What I do is we put together the deal. I don’t sign any of the contracts anymore, but the deals are presented to me. We’ll blast an email out to all of our cash buyers. We do a full inspection on the property.

Our agent goes to the real estate inspection. Our project manager goes to the inspection and all of our cash buyers. We get all of our cash offers in. We take the highest and best is what we tell our cash buyers. There’s no telling what our offers are and those kinds of things. I just want to get offers in. I don’t want to play the game of, “Tell me where I need to be. People are waiting to give me offers because they want to be last,” all that garbage.

I can assign it and say, “I’m going to sign a deal for $30,000. I can assign it for $30,000, or I can close on it with my cash. Keep it as a rental and refinance myself out or hard money and refinance myself out.” I evaluated it as a rental. I also have my project manager rough give me the numbers and present the Excel spreadsheet where we’ll be if we flipped it.

That’s why I have my agent there. What we could sell it for fixed up, what needs to be done as far as remodeled to get it there. The bids put together for that. I get to choose, “Do I keep it as a rental? Do I flip it? Do I wholesale it? Do I close on it and list it?” I have whatever strategy that I want to approach. During the acquisitions portion, we’re also talking to the seller. See if seller finance is taking over the mortgage is an option or if the cash offer is all they want. Depending on what they get it under contract for, then we’ll evaluate the deal from there.

I usually have three exit strategies, so it’s nice to see that you’ve got four. Ladies, this is an important thing to keep in mind. Zack, in the beginning, had to do it one way. Even me, I started in construction. This is the worst time on the planet to be in construction. Even when I got in, I had three exit strategies planned out. It wasn’t like I have to build this thing and sell it, or I’m going to die or go bankrupt or lose everything.

Even in the beginning, for me, if I get stuck with something, I know what I’m going to do with that. When you’re starting, even if it’s a wholesale thing, you had to make money. If you did end up getting stuck with a property, you would have a strategy to get out of that. Think through when you’re putting together your strategies, what could plan B be if things go bad? Wouldn’t you agree with me on that?

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Yes. I also believe that’s the power of wholesaling. Why wholesaling is so amazing is there no risk. There is no getting stuck with the deal. That’s why I started with wholesaling because I saw it as a way to build a rental portfolio. I saw it as a way to build well because not only could I start my marketing and start finding off-market discounted deals there, step one, write good deals, but then I could get cash for them and not have to take any risk. As I built up more cash, then I can take that cash and maybe flip one and make a little bit more on the deal than just assigning it. The thing is, my average assignment deal in Utah is $30,000. In Florida, that’s $18,000 a deal. My profit margins are 40%.

That’s a lot of money. It’s a chunk of change. Eventually, getting into holding properties or flipping and taking those risks and having those other strategies is great. There’s nothing wrong with starting off at first with having wholesaling because if you do it right, we’ll have it under contract. In your contract, you’ll have a timeframe to inspect the property and to try and find a buyer for your purchase contract. If you can’t find a buyer within that time, you can cancel that agreement. You don’t put properties under contract. You don’t think that you can find a buyer for it. That’s the beauty of wholesaling. It’s a great place to start, and it’s way less risk-taking debt to flip a house.

Thank you for all that. Zack, tell everybody how they can reach you.

The best place to find me is my website, it’s DFDMastery.com. DFD stands for Driving For Dollars.

I know you don’t have a specific gift for people. I know that you’ve got a lot of content that you wanted to share with my audience. Tell us a little bit more about that.

I worked hard to help and to give back the content I create. I went down to Florida and the goal was to take $1,000 in a whole new market and turn it into $40,000 in 40 days. I opened up Florida. I’ve said, “I do deals in Florida. This is how it all started.” I flew to Florida. I had 40 days to make $40,000. I documented it all and had a film crew there and shared it for free on my YouTube channel. You guys can go see what it takes to get started in wholesaling with a very small budget and to see what kind of work that includes. You see the ups and downs.

I share the deals that fall apart. I share the frustrations, the exhaustion because it’s every day I share an episode. You get to see the entire process. It’s totally worth watching. We ended up with seven contracts. Two of them fell apart. We closed on the other five. Two of them, I kept as rentals with $100,000 in equity in both of them. Three of them, I ended up wholesaling. I sold the purchase contract. We made $93,000 on those three deals. Since I did everything myself, that’s pretty much all profits. It was a chunk of change. I don’t know very many people that could make $100,000 in a month. It’s not because they’re not smart enough or don’t have the work ethic.

They don’t know how. The whole point of that challenge is not to show off or anything, but it’s to show you guys that you guys can do it. I don’t feel like I’m anything special. I was a window cleaner. I didn’t go to college. I didn’t come from money. I had a good work ethic. You should see my spelling, it’s bad. I’m saying that I did that whole challenge to encourage you guys and to show you what’s possible. I don’t want to sugarcoat any of it, it’s hard. It’s a lot of hard work. The process is simple, but it’s not easy. That was the whole point of the challenge to show what it took to be a wholesaler and how to get started and what that initial hustle looks like.

Zack, that’s so generous that you did that. How do people find it on YouTube? What should they be looking for?

If you go to YouTube and search DFD Mastery. My YouTube channel is DFD Mastery. Everything I have is branded DFD Mastery, which stands for Driving For Dollars Mastery. You can find my YouTube channel. There’s a ton of awesome content in there. I’ve been producing three videos a week. We’re going to bump it up to four episodes a week. It’s a lot.

Ladies, go check that out. Thank you for that. Are you ready for the three Rapid-fire questions? Tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

Get a mentor, find a mentor.

 

What’s the strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

I believe that the most important thing is getting good at finding off-market discounted properties. If you can get good solid leads of people that want to pawnshop for their house, you will be successful. I believe that is a portion of investing, in general, is good deals.

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

I have a giant list of tasks. There is never a day that I don’t have a list that I can’t get to. I have a big list and what I do is I pick what’s going to move the needle towards my goals the most. I have a very clear direction, a 3-year goal, 1-year goal, and a 1-month goal outlined at all times. When I’m looking at my tasks and everything that I have to do, I pick what it is that I do it. Most people do the opposite. They do what sounds comfortable, like checking their emails. They skip the uncomfortable stuff, like cold calling to get a lead. I’ll even archive my entire email because I got 50 emails and it annoys me. I archive it all. I’m like, “If it’s important, they’ll call me.”

I get 3,000 emails a day. It’s funny.

My team will call me like, “Did you get my email?” I was like, “You know me. No.”

“Do you want to talk, give me a call?” I’m not that person, but that’s an interesting way to handle that.

I believe that’s a huge thing that I do is attack and it’s usually always the uncomfortable things. I believe what’s going to move the needle is what makes us uncomfortable. That’s why most people don’t ever move the needle in their lives is they’re like, “This is my giant task.” They’re like, “I’m working hard,” and it’s like, “Are you?” You’re not because you’re busy, but you’re not working on the right things. You know you’re not. You’re lying to yourself to make yourself feel proud of yourself when you know you’re not working on those hard things.

There is a difference between busy work and productivity, very definitively. Thank you for that. This has been amazing. I’m so excited. Thank you for all you’ve shared on this portion of the show, Zack.

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. It’s fun.

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Ladies, thank you for joining Zack and me for this portion of the show. If you are subscribed to EXTRA, we do have stuff for EXTRA, but I have to clear something with Zack first. I have a special topic I want to talk to him about, but I need a yes from him. I’m going to tease you guys this time and not tell you what we’re talking about, but do take a look at RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get your first seven days for free. Check it out.

For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining Zack and me for this portion of the show. I love having you here. I look forward to seeing you next time and until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

 

Important Links

• Zack Boothe
• Multifamily Millions
• DFD Mastery – YouTube
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Zack Boothe

Man, I remember what it was like when I first got started in real estate. I’d wake up every morning full of confidence and courage, ready to attack the day. I had a focused plan and I knew exactly how to find smoking hot real estate deals, and quickly turn those deals for huge profits.

Quite the opposite. In fact my reality was fear, doubt, overwhelm, and frustration. I worked my butt off but I was drowning in bad advice from gurus, and strategies that either didn’t work or just weren’t congruent with who I am.

Five years later and I’ve done over 300 real estate deals and have generated millions. Over the years I’ve made a lot of mistakes and have learned a lot of lessons (sometimes the hard way), and I’ve built a dream real estate business…and I’d love to show you how you can too.

 

 

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

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Be The Queen Of Your Own Life With Harriet Morris – Real Estate Women

 

Are you a princess or do you want to be the queen? Do you crave outside affirmation, or are you confident in what you are and what you can do? In this episode, Moneeka Sawyer sits down for a talk with eating psychologist and body confidence coach Harriet Morris. Harriet discusses the different archetypes people fill, and zeroes in on two: The princess and the queen. We learn the differences between both and why we need to unleash the queen inside. Tune in and learn more on becoming the queen you were meant to be.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Be The Queen Of Your Own Life With Harriet Morris – Real Estate Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome you to the show, Harriet Morris. She is a coach and host of two podcasts, The Rebel Queen Empath and The Eating Coach. She’s almost a total failure as an employee and a miserable binge eater until the age of 40. It was at this age that she discovered her secret superpower. This is the ability to turn failure and self-sabotage on their heads through curiosity and experimentation. She has used her superpower to reclaim her life from compulsive eating, doubled her income in a year, and get over 200,000 podcast downloads. That’s impressive because if you know anything about podcasting, 20,000 in five years is fairly standard. Two hundred thousand downloads are amazing. She appears on shows like Entrepreneurs on Fire, which I have been on also. Her mission is to help women in midlife step into the role of queen, which means owning their power, dismantling their fear of success, and embracing their own imperfections. Ladies, you can tell why I wanted her on the show. Hello, Harriet. Welcome to the show.

Instead of waiting for life to present an opportunity to you, life's going to say, “Well, no, you've got to do some work first.” Share on X

Moneeka, thank you so much for having me.

Harriet, tell us a little bit about your story. The two-minute high-level version.

In my first career in teaching, I was no good. It was pretty bad. It was an adventure failure. Many people come on podcasts and they go, “I was a corporate bigwig,” and then I changed a bit, “No, I was a complete failure.” I then had kids and decided that I wouldn’t do teaching anymore so I did a variety of online adventures. When I turned 40, everything changed for me. I realized that I wasn’t going to live forever. I wanted to be free of the compulsive eating that I’d have for years and years. I released myself from compulsion by experiments.

There’s this one time I remember, and it was from giving up sugar. I’d given up sugar for about six weeks. I had done it through experimentation when no other gurus could help me. What happened was, I was standing in the supermarket and I was right in front of all the chocolate. I thought, “I’ve had enough of all this that I’ve done.” That food rebel was back and I’m going to have the junk. My hand reached that and said, “Which bar shall I have?” As that happened, the most bizarre thing took place, which was my feet turned to walk in the other direction.

 

We’re generally attached to our feet. I was like, “What was going on?” What was going on, in a nutshell, was that I had trained my subconscious over six weeks through experimentation to take a different action when I got a craving. It was a distraction action. Even though that day, I said, “I’m not doing any of these distractions,” my subconscious noted that I was stopping and it decided that we were going to walk away anyway.

I was annoyed because I wanted the junk. At the same time, I was like, “Wow.” From then, a couple of years later, I started coaching people with binge eating. It all went from there and I started my podcast. It was all these things that I was scared to do. I had no self-belief when I gave up all the junk. I had no self-belief when I started coaching and podcasting. I did everything as an experiment. That is the message I want to give people. You do not need to have belief in yourself. You just need to be curious.

I love that story about how it’s like a magic wand. Your feet had a life of their own right. Ladies, I know that normally, I don’t have people that talk about eating on the show. Part of what engaged me with Harriet was, first of all, she’s delightful so I wanted to share her with you, ladies. I say this on the show all the time, how we do anything is how we do everything. If we have compulsive behaviors, they are going to show up in different ways. Sometimes it can be a good thing.

My husband is compulsive and how that shows up is he gives me a lot of attention. He’s compulsive about me. There are good things about compulsions but a lot of times it shows up in a bad way. For instance, a compulsion to be lazy, procrastinate and self-sabotage. There are a lot of things that we do compulsively that show up in a bad way. If we have tools to adjust our compulsions, even if we’re talking about an eating disorder, now I can use them in making telephone calls, talking to my clients and tenants. It’s all of these things that we do in our lives. Now we’ve got a tool to adjust all that.

It's good to do affirmations and to work on your beliefs, but it has to happen along with action. Share on X

I also am always on a diet. My metabolism doesn’t cooperate as much as I would like to sometimes. My initial attraction to Harriet was I want to figure out how to have the magic wand to make my feet move the other way. What I realized was through getting to know her more is that this is relevant to real estate too. Ladies, you’re going to get two birds with one stone when we’re talking to Harriet. Thank you so much, Harriet. I’m excited. Let’s start by talking about the queen identity.

This is an interesting thing that’s not talked about very much. When I was doing my eating psychology training, we were told about this and you can imagine that the majority of people doing an Eating Psychology Coaching Certificate are women and a lot of women in their 40s. We all fell off our chairs with, “That’s me.” It’s originated by Carl Jung and he talks about archetypes. Does that mean anything to you?

It does.

If somebody hasn’t heard of it and they’re scratching their heads a bit, this is a big subject. For the purposes of our discussion, you can think of an archetype as a role you play. In any one day, you can play a number of roles slot into those archetypes. You can be the mother, the jester or the trickster. It’s quite interesting, but what Jung said was that there are some archetypes that are age-appropriate. He says that they are different for men and women.

For a woman between the ages of 0 and about 30, she is in the princess archetype. When I’ve said this to clients, some of them say, “I don’t like that word,” because they think it’s Disney. If you don’t like the word princess, you could choose a different word but this is what he used. The princess archetype is something like this, “I am not sure of myself. Do people accept me? I need affirmation from the outside.”

It doesn’t necessarily mean weakness. For example, if you took something like Katniss from The Hunger Games, she’s in that princess age and there are lots of brave things about her. She’s not a shrinking violet but she’s got lots of self-doubts and she doesn’t know if she can trust people. It takes her a while to inhabit this role of the revolutionary leader. You’ve got that from 0 to 30.

What should happen in an ideal world? As we all know, we don’t live in an ideal world. At the age of 30, a woman should start to transition to the queen identity and it’s a long transition. By the time that we’re 50, we should have got that out. By the time a woman is 40, as we told in my training, “Be on the queen program.” The difference between the princess and the queen is the princess is full of stuff that she wants affirmation from the outside.

The queen is sitting on a throne. She doesn’t need that outside affirmation. She’s sitting there and people come to her, and she knows who she is. What’s happened in our culture is that traditionally, women have been told to try and be younger, “Get the anti-aging cream on,” and to try and be like a princess. It’s interesting because a lot of the women have come to me with eating issues. I say to them, “You’re binge eating. It’s a bit like this beautiful alarm call saying, ‘Stop trying to do this,’” because they’re trying to diet to be less. It’s very princess when life actually wants them to sit on their throne and be the queen, and accept themselves more.

If they’ve got weight to lose or get fit, they can do that in an empowered way. Anyway, that’s a side point because I know this is not the point in this interview. Once I saw this, I was like, “I learned this in my early 40s. I can’t wait now I’m on the queen program.” It’s all about reframing things. Let’s say you have a negotiation issue that comes up with rent or something like this, instead of maybe thinking, “I must be collaborative,” because girls are brought up to please people and to be collaborative. I know these are massive generalizations but it’s about saying, “I’m on the queen program. How can I be more regal about it?” Does that make sense?

It does. It’s interesting because the capacity for collaboration is one of the female superpowers that men are not as gifted with. As we take it from the princess area where it’s collaboration for affirmation, we move it to collaboration to create empires. As a queen, now you’re collaborating with other queens and you’re creating empires and big things. You’re not looking for validation. You’re each bringing your own gift to the table like the Round Table of Queens. As all of us bring our superpowers, we now can create something much larger than ourselves. Collaboration still exists but this idea of being on the throne puts us in a different position.

 

This conversation is interesting because I have always called myself the princess. I always say, “I’m royalty without responsibility,” which is a goofiness about me. It wasn’t that I didn’t have self-confidence. I went through all of that but that was my thing. I never wanted to be queen, but now I definitely am the queen that sits on my throne. I’m more collaborative. I lift women up more. I have more power and I have a lot more self-respect. I’ve earned my own self-respect. It’s hard because you don’t know what’s happening. In my case, it wasn’t an intentional thing, but it’s been interesting to watch that transition and how the world has changed around me because of the paradigm shift that’s happened inside of my own head.

What does it do to the concept of middle age and getting older? It’s like, “Yes. That’s it.” I remember once when I was in a bar and I went into the bathroom. There was a girl there. She was so drunk and she was crying to her friend. She’s like, “He doesn’t want to see me anymore.” She was texting him. I remember I looked at her and I thought, “I’m so glad I’m not a princess.”

If he doesn’t want to see me anymore, his loss. Whatever.

Where’s the nearest throne?

Let’s talk about how actions change beliefs. I love this topic. I know that as a queen, we step into action before we believe our queen.

That’s exactly it. This is a concept that I created because I was tired. You can google inspirational quotes and you can see all these quotes of people saying, “You have to believe in yourself. Just believe in yourself and everything will follow.” When I was compulsive, all I knew was that I hated my life. I’m thinking of somebody who is starting out with investing and they may have a certain amount of money. You tell me if this happens, but somebody might say, “You need three times the amount to get going. Don’t bother.”

“You need three times the amount. Real estate is risky. You don’t know enough. Nobody else in the family has done real estate. Why do you think this is going to work for you?” There are all sorts of stuff like that.

I’m not recommending going and taking massive risks, but there are certain actions that you can take to start to help you see yourself as an investor. It’s the actions we take that then give those beliefs legs. It’s good to do affirmations and work on your beliefs but it has to happen along with the action. That’s how I’ve managed to do anything that I’ve done and help anybody that I have. It’s by diving in and doing it imperfectly as well.

There is this belief that if we have a particular mindset, things will be attracted to us. I even mentioned the way I changed and now the world is showing up differently. It’s is true but I didn’t just change my mind. I changed the way that I acted, the way that I was showing up, and what I was doing. Most of it was scary. I hope this doesn’t sound like bragging. It’s not that. It’s that I get it. This is hard and hopefully, to model what the possibilities are. You too, Harriet, are modeling what the possibilities are. Even if we have self-doubt, if we take focused action, we have the affirmations to boost up enough to take those actions and to support them. We’ve got our minds working in two ways to move us forward. That’s going to help us. A lot of people think that this whole attraction idea sounds like magic and it’s wonderful, but nothing happens until you take action. Action has to happen.

There’s a great quote from Steve Pavlina. He’s somebody that I follow. He’s a personal development blogger. He says that the best tools of the Law of Attraction are your hands and feet. I would also say your mouth when you’re negotiating, when you want to set something up, or when you want to ask for help. You can sit there and do affirmations until you’re blue in the face, but it’s going out and taking action. I don’t think in terms of the universe. I think in terms of life. I’m doing deals with life. It’s like, “If you want to start off investing, go out and do something,” because you’re saying to life, “I’m having a go.” Instead of waiting for life to present an opportunity to you, life is going to say, “You’ve got to do some work first.” I quite like that idea of making deals with life.

My dad used to always say, “God helps those who help themselves.” As long as I’m out there taking action, God will support me. I’ve always believed that and it is always proven to be true. He’s got to know what I’m doing, what I’m wanting, and what I’m willing to work for. The next topic you talk a lot about is this imperfect visibility. Let’s talk a little bit about that.

I started out with incredible body hatred and I worked on this. In 2019, I created something called the Body Confident Project. It was a project to see if I can help any woman, including myself, because I had my own body image issues and started accepting herself when she looked in the mirror. This is so important for women. It’s not just a beauty thing. It’s about how you’re showing up as the queen. I see so many women and they’re incredible and they’ll say something like, “I need to lose 5 pounds.” The queen shrinks to the princess. This happened and I and the clients I was working with could look in the mirror and go, “I look great.”

The funny thing is that in lockdown, everything changed because I couldn’t go to the gym. I’m thinking about the gym in the right way or in an empowered way as, “I want to be stronger rather than be less.” That was a big part of this imperfect visibility. Lockdown changed everything. I went ten steps back. On my podcast, The Eating Coach Podcast, I recorded an incredibly personal episode and it was like somebody who’s gay coming out. I would say, “I want to tell you that I’ve been compulsive during the lockdown. I’ve put weight on. I’m now dealing with this in my own empowered way without feeling about calories or anything like that.” That was to say that this is me and I’m imperfect. That is so incredibly powerful. It’s also powerful for us as role models.

One thing I hear time and time again is this longing from women in midlife to be better role models for the younger women, but they don’t know how to be. That’s one of my things. I want to help them step into that imperfect visibility so they can say, “No, I don’t eat like a supermodel.” How many people do you know who live in a mansion? Not all of us but nobody gets up and says, “I’m so angry. I don’t live in a mansion,” but they seem to do that with their bodies. That stops people from living their lives. I’ve gone on quite a lot. I get passionate about this topic.

Your discomfort can take you back and then you don't feel very good, or it can take you forward. And that's where your life can change. Share on X

I love your take on the idea of uncomfortability. Can you share with my ladies your take on that?

Uncomfortability is saying, “I am willing to be uncomfortable.” There are two kinds of discomfort and people don’t understand unless they’re already doing it. They go, “I do that,” or they experience it. For example, let’s take the first investment you want to make. You’ve done your due diligence. You’ve got the advice and it’s a risk that you can manage. You’re still, “I don’t know what to do.” You’ve got two choices. The key thing is accepting both of these choices include or will lead to discomfort. Discomfort number one is not doing this and staying where you are. That’s okay. It’s not as bad initially as the other discomfort but you don’t get anywhere. Nothing changes.

The other kind of discomfort is what I call this uncomfortability where I’m going to go in and do it. From that, you’ll learn something. Your knowledge will go further and you will learn to make better decisions. What’s interesting is that you manage your cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is, for example, somebody who smokes. They know that it’s bad for their health but they’re smoking. It’s having two contradictory truths in your head. What’s interesting is that the brain can’t stand it. Hardly anybody smokes anymore. I don’t know anyone who smokes now, but when people say, “I’ll give up next month,” or, “My granddad smokes and drinks whiskey. He lived to be 100.”

People will come up with this nonsense to kill this cognitive dissonance, but there’s something else you can do, which is much more interesting with cognitive dissonance. You can use it to move over to a new identity. With the first investment, for example, it’s like, “I want to be an investor but this is scary. What if it fails?” You’ve got these two truths. What you do then is what you would advise people to do. You would say, “Do the thing which makes you feel uncomfortable and align with the new identity. Accept that that cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable,” but it’s got a shelf life.

That’s the thing. It’s like me in the supermarket with my feet going the other way. I’ve reached this point where the discomfort has changed. That is where the shelf life was. That’s where it started to get much easier because when my feet turned and went the other direction, I thought, “I can do this now. I’m never going back. This is magic.” Your discomfort can take you back and you don’t feel good, or it can take you forward and that’s where your life can change.

I love how you talk about it having a shelf life because you’re only going to feel uncomfortable in that position for a short period of time. Eventually, your alignment will catch up and suddenly, this is the new normal. You see this when people get a brand-new car. You’ve always driven $20,000 cars, and now you got a $50,000 car. You’re like, “This is amazing.” You drive that car for two weeks and suddenly, you deserve a $50,000 car. This is your new normal. You’re not super elated about it because it’s now the new normal. We’ve grown into that new person with that new identity. This can happen in anything and whatever you’re doing in your business. We go into that person that we are being. I love that. I like your term of adversity proofing yourself. Could you expand on that?

It’s tied up with everything I’ve been talking about. It comes down to one question and I want to go back to talking about the queen. It’s not like everything is great. This is Carl Jung. He was quite clever about the human mind. It helps you deal with adversity and it’s the idea of instead of being a victim or, “Why is this happening to me? Why has the deal fallen through? Why has the market changed?” You say, “How am I going to manage this?” The key question which I love and it’s got me through some quite difficult times, is when I hate a situation, I can choose to be a victim but instead, I’m going to ask, “What would the queen do?”

Let me tell you a quick story. When I was learning about the queen, I was also doing a lot of audio relaxation and self-hypnosis. One day, I woke up and this image came to me. This was when I was going through my divorce. I saw myself as a shipwrecked queen and I was on an island. I’d been on a boat and it’s all gone apart. I wear the queenly robe and they were all tattered. I remember thinking, “I’m shipwrecked but I’m still the queen.” Nobody can take that title away from me in this visualization I was doing. If you think about all the resources that we’ve got, we can feel sorry for ourselves but anybody reading, you have an internet connection. You are educated enough to read this blog. You have so many more resources than you might think. That’s your queen power.

“What would the queen do?” I’m going to start asking myself that. That sounds great.

I watched the film Elizabeth. She had some horrible decisions to make but she had to be the queen.

Ladies, in EXTRA, we’re going to be talking about how to negotiate like a queen. I’m excited. Harriet brought it up a little bit during this part of the show. It’s about the way that you set boundaries, the way that you speak and view yourself in any given situation. We’re going to do a little bit of a deep dive on that. I can’t wait to hear a little bit more about the queen power. We’ll be doing that in EXTRA. Before we move into our three rapid-fire questions, could you tell everybody how they can reach you?

 

My email address is [email protected]. I’ve got a gift called the Queen Audit. The Queen Audit is seven questions you can ask yourself to help you pivot and move into that queen stage of life and give you clarity on some key things. For example, dismantling imposter syndrome. I would be excited to bring that to you because I don’t see anybody talking about this topic. It’s being transformative for my clients and myself.

Ladies, the URL for that free gift which is the Queen Audit Seven Powerful Questions to Help Any Woman Shift into Queen Identity is at BlissfulInvestor.com/harriet. As you’ve been reading, I know that for the ladies who are reading, the age range is 15 all the way up to 80. We’ve got a huge range, and the queen identity does not belong only to women over 30, 40 or 50. If you can sit on your throne significantly earlier in life, a new way of living happens for you, and then your queen can evolve. Don’t feel that if you’re a younger woman, this isn’t for you. As a matter of fact, I would encourage you to step into that queen as soon as possible because there’s no reason to doubt yourself. You’re this same person so start sooner.

If you think about somebody like Hermione from Harry Potter, she was a princess but she had definite queen elements to her personality, so you’re right.

Harriet, are you ready for three rapid-fire questions?

Absolutely.

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

Never tolerate the objection “I don’t know.” In this day and age, “I don’t know” won’t cut it. That is victim talk. If more than two people can do what you don’t know how to do, you can find out. This is the internet, so “I don’t know” is not going to cut it.

What was one strategy for being successful in investing in real estate?

I would say belonging. I’ve heard on your show where you talk about the certain clubs that you’re inviting people to. This is a great idea because you’re going to come across problems and maybe people who are trying to step on you in some way. If you’re part of a group, especially a part of the group who knows more than you, then that gives you a core inner strength. It’s something I call cave brain that I talk about an awful lot. The cave brain needs to be part of the group. If you’re beginning, you need to leverage other people’s greater experience.

Even if you’re not beginning, I still do. I’ve been doing this for many years. Having that community is a huge part of my success too and it will always be. This is the way that we work and how we expand. What is one daily practice that you would say contributes to your personal success?

You can choose to be a victim, but instead, you need to ask what would the queen do? Share on X

It’s quite boring. I was going to say meditation or something like that. That is good but it’s doing the most important thing first because you can go, “I want to do this, this and this.” In the morning, our brains are at their best. If you do the most important thing, you have this feeling of satisfaction and everything else falls into place.

This has been amazing. Thank you for all you’ve shared on this portion of this show.

Thank you. It’s been a delight to come on. I’m honored.

Ladies, we’ve got more. We’re going to be talking about negotiating like a queen, which I’m excited about. Stay tuned for EXTRA. If you are not yet subscribed to EXTRA but would like to be, this is going to be a fun episode. You might want to do it now. Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get the first seven days for free so check it out and you can stay if you like. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining Harriet and me in this portion of the show. I appreciate you. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

 

Important Links

• Harriet Morris
• The Rebel Queen Empath
• The Eating Coach
• Entrepreneurs on Fire – How to Use Psychology and Neuroscience to Achieve a 95% Drop in Binge Eating with Harriet Morris
• Body Confident Project
• [email protected]
• BlissfulInvestor.com/harriet
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Harriet Morris

My name is Harriet Morris. From the age of 12, when it suddenly hit me like a lightning bolt that I was fat (NB I wasn’t fat – in retrospect I can see I was just reacting badly to the normal changes of adolescence), I was always unhappy with my weight. I followed numerous diets, detoxes, fasting, punishing exercise regimes – you name it, I tried it. Some worked temporarily, but none had any lasting impact – except to embed the idea that I was a fat, willpower-free zone.

I was also a compulsive eater. I used to steal my kids’ Easter eggs and tell myself I was looking after their dental health. Even moderate stress became a regular trigger for trips to the deli (or should I say dealer) to get my fix of fat and sugar. I used to regularly wolf down half my daily calorie needs in less than a minute- all in shameful secret, of course. I was never able to fully concentrate on conversations at parties, or shows at the theatre – all because at the back of my mind and an insistent voice kept whispering “FOOD”. I thought about it constantly, except when I was eating…or should I say inhaling.

My curiosity and creativity have allowed me to come up with some powerful practical strategies to change my eating and exercise habits in ways that empower me, instead of making me want to rebel. In essence, I sat down and had peace talks with my food addiction – while tying its shoelaces together under the table! This has not always been easy – what big life change ever is? – but it has been easier and often far more enjoyable than the endless yo-yo dieting and weight loss/weight gain vicious circle I used to endure.

I am a fully qualified eating psychology coach. I trained with the Institute for The Psychology of Eating.

 

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Senior Living As An Real Estate Investment With Eng Taing – Real Estate For Women

 

There are a lot of different asset classes available for real estate investors, but there is one asset class that has yet to be tapped fully. That asset is senior living. In this episode, Moneeka Sawyer talks to the founder and CEO of Touzi Capital, Eng Taing and they discuss senior living. Eng also talks about how to keep more of your earnings using the tax code. Listen in and learn more on senior living assets in this episode.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Senior Living As An Real Estate Investment With Eng Taing

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show, Eng Taing, CEO and Founder of Touzi Capital and highly experienced real estate investor with $100 million in assets under management. He works hard to help people reach their full potential. He’s an economist by training from the Wharton School of Business. He also experienced leading data science and analytics at Apple, Capital One, and AT&T. He applies that experience when identifying and underwriting investment opportunities and markets. He has presented at companies like Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, where he teaches employees how to minimize their tax burden and keep and invest more of their earnings so they can achieve financial freedom.

Touzi Capital is a real estate investment company focused on investing in Kansas City who believe that your money should work for you. Touzi Capital has been investing in commercial real estate for many years and trust that this is one of the best ways to predictably build wealth through passive income. Touzi Capital focuses on high cashflow investments and providing passive income to investors by acquiring and optimizing multifamily, industrial, and senior living assets. In doing this, they want to make a real estate investing accessible for the everyday investor through a technology and data-driven platform along with our dedicated team that puts you first. Eng, welcome to the show.

What a mouthful. I don’t even know who wrote that.

Talk to us a little bit about your real estate journey. You went to Wharton Business School and then you moved into real estate. Tell me how that worked out for you.

I would love to take a little step back to my formative years and highlight why I got into real estate. It’s probably why it’s more important thing for me. I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. My parents were Cambodian and we escaped the Khmer Rouge. I have lots of interesting stories of hiding in jungle and laws and out of hiding and keeping out. Those are some pretty terrible stuff. It’s more of my parents’ story. I did grow up in LA and I grew up poor.

I grew up with not having much, but I grow up lucky of having been growing up in America, being fortunate enough to be good at math and to have a family that put a roof over my head to not see what I didn’t have, and to have enough hunger to drive me. It’s been my biggest why and hopefully, that’s a lot of your audiences’ big why to help provide security, financial freedom in whatever form that means to your family. That’s been my biggest driver.

When I started to get good at math, I gravitated towards invest in banking because that was the thing people did in my age group. Everybody said, “Let’s go do get invest in banking. This makes a bunch of money, being a stock trader, whatever it is.” I did all that. I’m pretty good in math, understanding data patterns. What I found about myself is I did not like the volatility, the up and down, the movement, checking the market. I went to the financial crisis. When you book $4 billion losses in subprime assets, but seeing that side of things and seeing the value of these houses go down, that’s how I first got into my first real estate investment at the young age of 23.

I’m lucky enough to have the capital to deploy at the time. I remember very clearly it was $125,000 investment or purchase price, so $30,000 purchase price of investment to get $1,000 a month in net monthly income. I like that feeling of having predictable monthly income. Obviously, I’m hiding a little bit of like all the things I had to do with painting the house, remodeling it, getting tenants, and tenant issues. In general, that’s how when you come from so little you having a little bit of security gets you a lot of confidence. My story isn’t a story of getting into real estate and doing real estate. I started as someone who have always tried to do a lot of things and had a side passion for real estate and now is about to main passion of my full-time job or my business.

In general, when you come from so little, having just a little bit of security gives you a lot of confidence. Share on X

It’s always been a side hustle, and for me, probably like someone else is, you work 9:00 to 5:00 and you buy real estate. For me, having that passive income helped make better decisions. I was able to go to the Peace Corps when everyone in my cohort went to MBA. I met my wife in the Peace Corps. I was able to take bolder career decisions of asking for more, of not having a fear-based life of financial insecurity of saying, “I can’t go for this job or make this offer.”

That helped because I was buying real estate every year and having that little basis of support grow where I know that I didn’t need to have much to survive. Having that on top of everything else I was doing gave me more freedom of choice and urgency. Long story of how all these formative things helped me get into real estate as well as why I’m doing more real estate and why I love preaching the choir of real estate. It’s also very tax advantage. I’ve heard a lot of people invest in real estate and not pay taxes. I love talking about that as well.

I went out to lunch with my mother-in-law and I told her, “I’m not sure what’s going on with me,” but I am getting teary-eyed with everything that’s happening around me. It’s not everything, but things touch me so deeply. I’m not sure what’s going on with that. Hearing your story about being refugee and running to Thailand first and then escaping to the United States. It’s a very similar story of my parents who had to flee from Pakistan during the separation because they were Hindu.

They were being chased with just the clothes on their back. They ran across the border and stayed. They had these big houses in Pakistan and in India, they had 15 or 18 people living in a dirt floor shack. I know the story. I never had to live it. They came to the United States and then had me. When I hear these stories, you realize how insanely lucky we are here in the United States. What I wish is that people understood that luck and that it did not deter from their drive. How old were you when you moved to LA?

Three years old.

You probably don’t remember too much of that struggle. As little people, we still get the subconscious impact of that, but your parents brought you here and they had this drive. They wanted to create safety for you and you got to see that, and then that helped you to build that drive. Sometimes, those of us that come from immigrant families have this huge advantage of understanding what it could be like if we were not here and we didn’t have this opportunity. That touched me and I wanted to say thank you for sharing that story.

That was the purpose of sharing the story. I love to share my story. My story is my parents’ story. My story is a lot of people’s stories, of not just immigrants or refugees, but of people who don’t have much but still, I fully believe it’s a lot of mindsets and having that mindset to be grateful for what you have, for what you can have, for your health, for all the stuff. My son, Aiden, is probably going to grow very spoiled. I’m trying to figure it out. I don’t know how to not spoil him. I want him to have fun, too. I want to buy him a lot of toys, but I have pictures of me at his age chasing chickens in a camp, so different journey.

 

You’re right that mindset is everything. You got a mindset from your parents and you’ve inherited and developed your own mindset. That mindset will then hopefully impact us. It will impact your children, and it impacts the world around you. Everything that we do is done through the filters of our own eyes that are affected by our own mind. If you come from a filter of gratitude, everything that you see will be of gratitude and living that life helps our children to understand it and see it. My parents, even all they went through, we’re so grateful to be here, for their children, and for their opportunities. That’s a big reason why I’m so grateful for everything, too. I totally understand what you’re saying. That mindset piece is huge. I’m sure no matter how spoiled your little one is, he will get that from you, too. He might be chasing chickens, but he might be doing it at the park.

That’s what rich people in San Francisco didn’t know, they just buy a chicken coop. It’s a sign of affluence. I got chickens and fresh grown eggs.

It has come full circle. How interesting is that? It’s not just an immigrant mindset. Thank you for emphasizing that. There are a lot of people that come from a place where they are not very privileged or they had very little, or they were in bad circumstances. Through the change of their mindset through drive, through being able to have a vision of what might be possible, they’re able to overcome that and create a life of freedom and choice. I released my TEDx Talk, which is called, Who is the Boss of You? It’s all about economic freedom to give you choice. We’re on the same way of laying about that. Let’s talk about real estate specifically. Talk to me about your favorite asset class.

I’ve gravitated towards senior living as a great asset class. For those who don’t know, senior living has many varieties to it, nursing homes, independent living, adult 55 plus, and assisted living. I was fairly in the middle of assisted living, where folks, elders, residents, and they had the greatest generation and they contribute so much to this country. They’re 85 plus. I love to invest in places where you have strong fundamentals and asset class is coming from those. That means there’ll be a lot more old people in the future. That’s the demographic shift that is known quantity in America, the silver tsunami, the growth of this aging population that will need more care, that would need more better communities and better facilities to take care of them.

Why I love this asset class, and I’ll compare this to multifamily because I do have both. It’s both business as well as real estate. Real estate has so many great intangibles, renting, we have depreciation, you have to leverage, all these things that real estate gives you. You also have a business which essentially for us is an all-inclusive resort where our rents are typically five times the amount that you would pay for a comparable apartment.

You have $500 revenue, but you have three times the costs, and that comes from making sure that you have three meals a day, and all the stuff. It’s by creating community. I love thinking about creating community and how we can give our seniors the best community as these are their retirement years. These are the years that they funded and they will stay for probably their entire lives. What I like to compare to multifamily is that typically, three years is the average length of stay. Once you get somebody in, they’re staying for a while, and because we do private pay, not Medicaid or Medicare, we know that they can afford these things three-ish years, and overall, they are income resistant.

In the pandemic, you can lose job, you might lose your income, you might be on unemployment. Our tenants are, I would like to call, recession resilient. They don’t have an income. They have the money ready. The pipe put that out from the funds. They’re using this for the last remaining years of making sure they’re in a great place. I’ve gotten deep into senior living. The reason why I got into senior living is because I love cashflow. I invest with cashflow and I’ve been investing in California until it didn’t make sense. I’m always a nimble and flexible person. I don’t want to be, “This is what I’m doing. I will only do that. I’m never going to do anything else.”

While you will learn expertise in that thing, but if the market shift, if California gets more expensive, which it had, if it gets more regulated and my control which it has, and if multifamily becomes more expensive, which it has, then I can’t get to think the cashflow that I’m used to. I’m spoiled. I like spoiling myself with double-digit cashflow, and I’ll invest this as well. I will chase after good asset classes that there’s a good moat around.

When you invest for appreciation, it's like you're planting a tree and then it becomes a big tree. Share on X

When I started, I bought something. We’re very approachable to people, because I was like, “I didn’t have any guidance of how to buy real estate.” I said, “Let me look on this site which they didn’t have sites back then, and figure out what to buy, and do the math myself.” I was pretty good at math. I can figure it out. If more people can do what you’re doing, that means the return sounds good. It’s going to be more competitive. What you want to do is get to more uncompetitive areas where you can create a moat of competitive advantage, and senior living is a huge moat. No one’s going to go figure it out like, “I want to invest in senior living nowadays.”

Hopefully after this show, maybe some of your audience will, but it’s a great moat. Lots of people in the space, but not as many as it should be. Lots of communities that are thriving even during COVID. When I think about what I wanted to continue to do from investing overall is I just love investing in cashflow. I say cashflow risk appreciation even though all my LLS is half-appreciated. This is what happens to assets, especially when the government prints a of money.

I like it because I can get that money now and then compound it or invest in many different things. When you invest for appreciation, you’re planting a tree and then it becomes a big tree. That’s very risky if you just have gone through, but when you’re investing for cashflow, I like to think of that you’re planting tree and you got a forest. You can invest all the cashflow into many different things, and having high cashflow, double digit, meaning if you put $100,000, you get $1,000 a month. That gives you freedom to do a lot of different things.

That also gives you a lot of buffers because if you’re just investing for appreciation, I don’t want to say negative, but others have investments because they can do both. That’s money that you got to put into it every month. If you lose your job, you might not have that cashflow from that property to cover the debt. Cashflow investing for me is always a big buffer of safety. I’m always thinking of like, “How conservative, how safe can it be, and how much money can this investment make, so that it pays for itself and pays for all my other investments?”

For senior living, I love the way that you talked about that, and I talk a little bit about California is an appreciation market. Usually, you’re going to have negative cashflow, which is now everybody’s like, “It’s the bad word. Don’t do that.” When you have an appreciation market, you’re usually not going to have any cashflow, sometimes you’ll break even. If you hold for a while maybe, but there are different ways of investing and it is good to consider those different like what are your goals and to pick a strategy accordingly.

I love that you’re so clear on exactly what you were wanting. Talk to me a little bit about with senior living homes, what I have heard, because I’ve looked a little bit into it. I’m very curious about it. I’ve got a lot of elderly family members that have been in homes. I hear a lot about insurance issues, not insurance like medical insurance, but insurance as un insuring the home. It’s its own big thing that none of the other asset classes have. Have you found that to be a particularly big challenge? What do you think about that?

I think of it as an added cost, which baked into the revenue and your NOI and your OPEX expense are baked into it. It has more costs at three times costs. You have licenses you have to get. Oftentimes not medical license, but when you open anything to have a license, make sure that we’re building single-story community where typically, we have 80 to 90 people in the community. We have many different layers of liability protection. Both from having insurance, which can be costly, but speaking to the cost, to also a management company.

 

We either own or a third party, which would have the liability of all the HR because it’s a people business. It’s having people and taking care of people. You want that liability off your investment. You have three entities when you’re investing in senior living versus when you have multifamily, you might just invest in your own name. You may have a real insurance. You could do an LLC, but in California, it’s $18,000 a year.

It’s a little bit more complicated, but it’s just part of once you get to know that business, you know how to handle those things.

I love complicated things. I love to figure it out and then maybe someone else won’t do it because it’s complicated. If they don’t do it, there’ll be more for me. That’s great.

There are two other questions I wanted to ask you. First of all, I do want to talk about opportunity zones and how that fits into this. I know that we’re going to talk more about that in EXTRA so we will get there. The other question is, do you invest in homes and take other people’s money to invest in them? For instance, if I wanted to invest in senior living but didn’t want to have to learn all that stuff, can I do it through you?

That’s exactly what we do. Thanks for bringing that up because I will say all these complicated things and hopefully you do something. One of the things you could do is at least know that Touzi Capital, I’m here to provide you an option to invest with us and participate in the same cashflow that I’ve been talking about. The same stuff without us having to sign a loan, without having to get an insurance, or having any liability, because you’re not even on any of the paperwork and in the liability business that we take care of everything. That’s all the headaches of hiring people and all that stuff we’re taking care of and we’re doing this at scale so that when you’re doing anything ten times, you get better. It’s something that I appreciate myself. I love to have anyone potentially participate in investing with us and growing with us.

Thank you for that. Ladies, we will be asking him how to get in touch with you with him, that’s one of those things you might want to talk to him about it. If you have an interest in senior living homes instead of learning the whole game, you can have a piece of your investment portfolio with him and make income passively. That’s a possibility, too. Talk to me a little bit about opportunity zones. We’re going to do the deep dive in EXTRA about this, but just give us a little high level, because I know that several of your properties are in opportunity zones. Is that true?

We’re developing two properties in opportunity zones. One is in Jacksonville. We’re breaking ground. I’m going to be flying over soon to the ribbon cutting ceremony, wearing these hard hats, and the state senators and congressmen around finding jobs. I love opportunity zones and what it represents. What it represents is a new law that was passed during the Trump tax cuts, where if you know the letter of the law or the tax code, you can reduce your taxable income.

What that means is you can keep more your earnings. Ladies and gentlemen, you work hard for your money, keep more your money. Use all the things that all the rich, relative people, and investor class use all day. Opportunity zones are great because for my audience, we have a lot of folks who have a lot of stocks. I come from Apple and they make a lot of money from stocks. When you sell stocks, you have to pay capital gains. In fact, we can sell almost any asset for capital gains. That capital gain is taxed, and for opt-ins, it’s the first class of investment that you can essentially say, “I’m not going to pay that, not now.” Pay that later, put that money into an opportunity zone. If you owed $100,000 of taxes on capital gains, don’t pay that, pay that later.

If you know the letter of the law or the tax code, you can reduce your taxable income, which means you can keep more of your earnings Share on X

We defer taxes all the time. That’s a great strategy. That’s all real estate. That’s what people mostly do at real estate. You need the 401(k) because you want to defer taxes in the future. You defer taxes for six years, so not too long, and then you reduce it by 10% and then you hold it for ten years. It’s quite a while for any real estate investment. All future capital gains get eliminated. The $130,000 change, you’re not doing all of that. Compare to a non-optimized investment, and I do have both. If given the same number of returns, say 12% of each annual returns, the options I would give you more than 50% more money at the end, because you would have free money going in and free money going out.

Like a rough of 401(k), I can go into detail on that, too, but if you can, don’t pay taxes. We can do that, even if you’re a W-2 employee, if you’re working hard, there are many ways if you’re investing in money, investing in opportunities and in places that the government is saying, “Invest in this place, you would get a great tax benefit,” and these places sometimes are great places to build senior living communities.

You totally piqued my interest. I would like to do a deep dive on that in EXTRA where you can talk a little bit more about how that works, because you do the high level, like I asked. I want to hear more about that exactly how that works. Ladies, we’ll be talking about that and EXTRA, so stay tuned for that. Before we go to our three Rapid-fire questions, tell everybody how they can reach you.

You can reach me at our website, TouziCapital.com and reach me at my email [email protected]. I am always happy to talk about taxes, real estate, or investing about financial freedom. It’s all the things I’m passionate about. I have YouTube videos and TikTok. I got options. I was viral. I don’t know. It’s a million views viral. I love talking about it. What I love about this space compared to everything else I’ve been doing I’ve done a lot is just talking to people. Seeing people in the journey. I’ve learned so much by talking to people. If you’re trying to do anything, this networking and relationship building is key to success.

Get in touch with him. He’s very generously offering some of his time, which not very many people do. Be respectful and kind, and if you’re interested in this topic, give him a call or send him an email. Eng, are you ready for our three Rapid-fire questions?

Yes. Let’s do it.

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

I hate saying it depends, but what I always say is get started. Do it. I know a lot of people would think and I think too much. I think all the time. I’m a very analytic. Getting started is giving you the best way to learn. It’s like a non-answer, but if you’re short of money, find somebody who has money. If you’re short of time, find someone who has time. Partner with somebody. Those two things, time and money, will allow you to get in real estate. There are so many technologies now in space. Use Redfin, Zillow, all these great applications that I didn’t have when I started. That helps to get into it. Get started. You will fail and learn, it’s all the same. It’s going to be a great training.

Tell us one strategy on being successful in real estate.

 

The big strategy that I’ve came to is to value your time. At a certain point, your time is worth more than anything. If you don’t value time, then you can create processes or decisions that is going to keep you down in the weeds of Craig Meyer, figuring out how to evict somebody or do this or that. You have to do that in the beginning. If you’re trying to be successful, that means you try and do this a lot.

Not just trying once and get lucky, you try this ten times. Think about what you want to do 5, 10 times over and figure out how to scale. That’s why for me, it’s always been about going up and scaling and knowing that. Multimillion loans are easier than $100,000 loan. I didn’t need to income for it. I need to have tax clearance. Scaling and thinking about how to do things multiple times is always a great strategy to be successful.

Scaling and systems that conserve your time. What is one daily practice you would say contributes to your personal success?

I do fasting. I’m an intimate faster, so that’s a little bit of me not having time and not eating breakfast. I used to eat a lot when I was working at a corporate job and I love having lunches and all that stuff. What I found is there are some great health benefits of fasting for me. Not for everybody. For me, it was giving me a little focus during the day to have a black cup of coffee and then getting my routine, and that helped me focus on the task at hand every day.

Nobody said that on this show. Thank you for that. Eng, this has been fabulous so far. Thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show.

Thanks for having me.

Ladies, we’ve got more. We’re going to be talking about opportunity zones and how they can save you in taxes and capital gains and all that cool stuff. I’m super excited about that. Stay tuned for EXTRA, if you are subscribed and if you are not, but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. You get the first seven days for free, so you can download this one and whatever ones you want to listen to, and just check it out. It’s RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you for joining Eng and I for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just streams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

 

Important Links

• Touzi Capital
• Peace Corps
• Who is the Boss of You? – YouTube
• [email protected]
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com

 

About Eng Taing

Eng is an experienced private fund manager with $100M assets under management. He has 12 years of private market and real estate investing experience and has focused on cash flow investing to create significant passive income. Eng is an economist by training, from the Wharton School of Business. He also has experience leading data science and analytics at Apple, Capital One and AT&T. He applies that experience when identifying and underwriting investment opportunities and markets.

Eng is the classic immigrant story that can only happen in America. He was born in refugee camp in Thailand, where his family escaped the Khmer Rogue from Cambodia. Having grown up in Los Angeles, he pursued economics by day trading and playing Poker to pay for his tuition while attending the University of Pennsylvania. There he trained as an economist and afterwards went into Investment banking. Later he would leave the financial world to join the Peace Corps, volunteering in the Republic of Georgia–a year after the Russian invasion. There he met his wife–Jennie, who was also volunteering abroad. They now have one son, with another on the way.

Eng has presented at companies like Apple, Facebook, & Amazon where he teaches employees how to minimize their tax burden and keep and investing more of their earnings so that they can achieve financial freedom.

 

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