Using Both Sides Of Your Brain In REI – The Art And Science Of Off-Market Acquisition With Jeff Stephens – Real Estate For Women
If you’re following an extremely conventional path of looking only at listed properties, you only get to grow at the rate the market says you can grow. There’s freedom in off-market acquisition that allows you to focus more on connecting with your clients. Moneeka Sawyer’s guest for today is Jeff Stephens, the founder of The Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur. Moneeka and Jeff discuss using both sides of your brain when interacting with your clients. Real estate tends to be very left-brain. Jeff explains you work best when you use both. You need to be analytic but also empathetic. Tune in to learn more!
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Using Both Sides Of Your Brain In REI – The Art And Science Of Off-Market Acquisition With Jeff Stephens – Real Estate For Women
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am excited to welcome Jeff Stephens to the show. He is the Founder of The Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur and host of the show, Racking Up Rentals. Jeff is a full-time real estate entrepreneur by day and a real estate investing mentor, coach and podcaster. His focus both as a real estate entrepreneur and coaching others is on growing a rental real estate portfolio that builds long-term wealth through the timeless fundamentals of relationship and negotiation directly with the seller to buy off-market properties with seller financing. You can visit him at ThoughtfulRE.com for more information and we’ll talk a little bit more about that. Thank you, Jeff, for coming to the show. It’s nice to see you again.
It’s nice to see you too. Thank you for letting me be a guest on your awesome show.
It’s my pleasure. Ladies, when I was on Racking Up Rentals, that was probably one of the nicest, most blissful conversations I’ve had on someone else’s show. You need to go check it out. It was good. I love this whole idea of thoughtful real estate. It’s very aligned with my idea of bliss. Jeff, could you tell us about your story and what brought you to where you are now?
The right approach to real estate investing is the approach that feels most authentic and aligned. Click To TweetI first fell in love with real estate probably in the way a lot of peope did, which is we picked up a book that has a lot of purples and the word Rich Dad in the name. This is going on many years ago. I got excited and I’m a high-action taker. We bought a property. It was a very conventional deal and that went fine. It was not the most exciting transaction but it was okay. I got more excited. I got started, then learning some of the more entrepreneurial ways to do real estate. I went down the rabbit hole of all that education, but I’ve hit two walls that led me to where I am.
The first wall was when I was attempting to do some wholesaling. Deep down, it didn’t feel super authentic to me, but I was taking action. I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. I had this traumatic experience one day, where somebody showed up on the doorstep of my own home. I had gotten myself into a transaction and I was trying to wholesale it. He was standing on my doorstep, angry, pointing at me and saying, “I see what you’re trying to do here. This is sleazy. We don’t do that kind of stuff around here.”
Maybe that doesn’t sound that traumatic but for me, my whole life up to this point was like, “Jeff is a good boy. Jeff follows the rules. Jeff does the right thing,” and this was my early twenties. That rattled me to my core. It practically knocked me out of the game for about seven years. I continued to dabble, but I would do very benign types of things in real estate. Eventually, I thought, “I have to do more because I want to learn this.” I got back on the horse and I started learning again. I found that the more I connected with people, the more success I had in the sense that they liked me. We could come to an agreement, but I couldn’t always figure out how to structure the deals.
The second wall I hit was when I saw that I had some peers who I respected who were getting deals done that I could not figure out how to do. When they would explain it to me, it sounded like they were speaking a completely different language. At that point, I hit that second wall. I did what I needed to do to learn more creative deal structuring. The two things clicked for me, an approach that felt authentic to who I was and secondly, the technical toolbox I needed to be able to get deals done. Those two things together then catapulted my progress from there.
It’s interesting the way that you talked about that because one of the taglines of this show is, “Goals without action are just dreams. Get out there and take action.” First of all, when I say that, it’s because taking action is one of those barriers. A lot of people won’t act. They want to learn and learn. We get stuck in analysis paralysis. We get stuck in, “I need to take one more course. I don’t know enough.” However, just taking action is also not the solution. We want to take action, but we want to take intentional action.
What I love most about what you talked about is this thing about feeling inauthentic or sleazy. It doesn’t matter one way or the other what anybody else thinks. What matters is what you think of yourself. A friend of mine, Leeza Gibbons, will often say, “You need to earn the right to your own respect.” Earning the right to your own respect is feeling good about who you are, how you’re showing up in the world, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to make $1 million in real estate. Choose whatever makes you feel good. Learn about that and then take action.
It’s the self-image of how you see yourself. I can’t think of anything much more important than either be an enabler or absolute restraints to where you’re trying to go. The right approach to real estate investing is the approach that feels most authentic and aligned. A word I think about a lot is alignment. Until you get that alignment, you’re just trying a lot of different things, but once you get it, for some reason, things seem to take off.
They’re simpler. You’re more successful. You’re able to stick with it when challenges happen because we both know challenges always happen, then you’re able to get through them. It becomes more of a growth experience rather than a taking you off the horse experience like you had.
It becomes a North Star. You get to a point. You find that challenge and say, “I know that my guiding light is in this direction because that is authentically who I am.” It does help navigate difficult decisions or situations.
Let’s talk about what you do. You focus on owner financing, which means your acquisition process is going to be a little bit different. Let’s talk about that acquisition. You do more off-market rather than listed properties.
My heart is in long-term holds. I love the fun, excitement and entrepreneurial opportunities of things like flips and whatnot, but I primarily look for long-term holds. In that process that I described there when I was stumbling around in the dark, trying to find alignment. I realized that I like to connect with people. I feel I’m an introvert, but I like to connect with people. They seem to like to connect with me. I thought, “There’s clearly a correlation between the success I’m having and my contact directly with the person on the other side of the table.” I started to think, “Do I need people or agents standing between me and a seller?” I started to realize, “No, I feel like it’s almost like I’m a tailor. If I can measure the seller in a lot of different ways, I can propose something that’s going to fit them well.”
My whole approach now is finding the people with who I can connect and sit down face-to-face to see if we can work something out together. Oftentimes, that does lead to seller financing. I have a belief that as real estate entrepreneurs, we should get to have the right to grow our portfolios at the rate that we want to. I feel like if you’re following an extremely conventional path of looking only at listed properties and going only to banks and credit unions for loans, you get to grow at the rate that the market and lender say that you can grow. I like the freedom of these off-market deals and the seller financing that can come with them.
Off-Market Acquisition: Find people you can connect with and sit down face-to-face to see if you can work something out together.
Talk to me about this phrase that you use, “Solve the person, and then you can solve the deal.” I know you’ve already alluded to that, which is why I wanted to continue that conversation.
I have a framework called the Y.E.S.S.E.S Framework. The two S’s in the middle are solve the person and then solve the deal, but solving the person comes first. What this means is real estate is dirt, sticks, bricks, but real estate doesn’t sell itself. People sell real estate. To me, even though the words “it’s a people business” might sound a little trite, I can’t believe how true it is. I believe that you have to solve the person before you can solve the deal. If you don’t understand the person on the other side of the transaction, what they’re trying to accomplish, what matters to them, what they think about their own property, what they think about the economic climate, the market or a million things. If you don’t have the empathy to be able to understand the other person, whatever proposal or offer you put in front of them is going to be a version of a shot in the dark.
I know that so much of the time, when people are teaching real estate, there’s an adversarial attitude like, “I need to get the best deal.” They give a lot of lip service to, “I’m going to help that person.” I’m like, “You’re getting a property at $0.60 on the dollar is helping them get out of a problem.” To me, that feels inauthentic, not because it’s not true. In many cases, it is true but it’s the approach about it. It doesn’t feel like you’re on the same team. It feels like you’re on opposing teams. I love how you talked about when you’re solving the person, you end up being on the same team to make everybody happy. You’ve got something that will make you happy, and they’ve got something that will make them happy.
One of the most powerful questions I’ve ever asked a seller is, “Paint a picture for me here to understand how you’d like to see this thing come together.” In “normal” real estate, nobody asks that question because it’s more about protecting your own interests. I believe that Jeff is going to get more of what Jeff wants if Jeff helps somebody else get what they want. Not to talk about myself in the third person or quote Zig Ziglar too much, but I do honestly believe that. There’s this coexistence simultaneously of self-interest and helping somebody else. I believe it’s best for me if I do what’s best for them. That’s been my experience.
Talk to me about this belief that you have that you need both sides of the brain to be successful in real estate.
Real estate tends to be a very left-brain. They’re very analytical.
There’s one that’s analytical.
There’s one that’s relational, intuitive and creative. I think that we are at our best when we have both of them firing simultaneously. A great example is when I’m sitting in a seller’s living room. That’s my venue. That’s my arena. That’s where I go to step onto the stage. I am talking to that person and trying to solve the person, which is very right brain. It’s relational. I’m trying to ask good questions, listen and read between the lines. Meanwhile, there’s this computer apparently in the back left corner of my brain that is calculating like, “Here’s the possibility with this. We could buy it for this. The rents would be that.”
Both things are happening simultaneously. What we do is like a dance with the seller. Like any dance, you got your arms around somebody. There’s a leading and following that happen at the same time. I feel like that’s the left brain, right brain thing here a little bit too. There’s so much value in thinking through the possibility and then asking a thoughtful question to that seller that may tests out that opportunity. It’s a dynamic balance of the two thought processes. Most real estate people grab a clipboard, and they’ve got a worksheet of questions. They’re like, “How many bedrooms are there? When was the furnace replaced?” They’re just making entries into a database and a computer. They’re going to hit the submit button and come out with an offer. That’s not how I do it at all.
In real estate and in any kind of investing, the numbers have to work. We don’t make money unless the numbers work, but I agree with you that it is a people game. We talk about selling real estate and people think of it as hardcore, but it’s also buying. We are buying so that then we can sell too. Both sides of those are all about the relationships that we build, whether we’re building with a seller or buyer. There are a lot of other relationships we’re building. We’re building maybe with agents, vendors or a bunch of different people. I love what you’re talking about here that it is a relationship business because once the numbers work, the rest of it is all how we show up and build those relationships.
I couldn’t even say it any better than that. It’s true. We’re not going to get the level of collaboration, cooperation and flexibility that we need if we don’t have sharp people skills to deal with the most important ingredient in the whole recipe, which is the humans.
Could you tell me the five myths of seller financing?
Yes. I love talking about seller financing for reasons we’ve already discussed. When I observe people talking about seller financing, there are a few things that they make as assumptions. These myths are assumptions. These are the five that stand out to me, and then the quick way I can refute each one. Number one, people think that seller financing is what a seller does when they can’t sell their property in the other way. We’re looking at something that’s been sitting on the market forever, funky or not financeable. While those things might be levers that would lead to seller financing, there are plenty of sellers who want to do seller financing.
With a little light bulb that you could help come on in their brain, they would realize that it is in their very best interest to do so. To put it very simply, those are the people who might have capital gains concerns. A well-structured seller financing deal would help significantly with that. Those are the people who want to sell a property but they don’t want to give up the income stream that they have. I’ve had sellers call me and in the very first contact, they said, “By the way, I want to sell this on a contract.” It doesn’t get any better than that for me, but there are people who want to do that. That’s the first one.
The second one is the inverse of that. That is seller financing is only offered because the buyer can’t find any other way to pay. That’s not the case either. A lot of people like me could finance a deal in lots of different ways. At the end of the day, I believe a well-negotiated seller financing deal is framed around what the seller wants to accomplish. It isn’t that the buyer can’t do it in any other way. Maybe there are some scenarios like that, but that’s not always true by any stretch.
Number three is that people tend to think seller financing loans have above-market interest rates. This ties into the first two, which the seller doesn’t want to do this but if they’re going to, they’re going to demand something super high-interest rate. While there are scenarios where I’m sure that that does happen, if you can find a seller who has the proper configuration of motivation, maybe you can unpack that conversation with them in a way that helps them understand the benefits. They will be more than motivated to simply provide very reasonable terms. It very well might not be much different interest-rate-wise than what you could get with a financial institution.
The fourth one is that people tend to think seller financing loans are for short-terms. That also sprouts off this idea of, “The sellers don’t want to do this anyway. I better be fast if I’m going to have to carry this note.” There were a lot of people who want to sell their property and continue to get an income stream for selling it for a long time. They want to take their capital gains and punt it as far into the future as they possibly can. Short-terms is not another issue for me or for most of the people that I work with at all.
The fifth one is that seller financing is only possible when a property is owned free and clear. It’s probably simpler, and there might be more options when it’s owned free and clear. Seller financing is a broad umbrella of things that could fall underneath it. Mostly what I do and teach people is about what I call note and trustee investing, “I am becoming the owner. The seller is now becoming the bank and I make payments to them.” There are other things that would be creative deal structures like lease options, land sale contracts or lots of other different things that could be considered seller financing. I think of it as a bunch of tools in a toolbox and based on what the seller’s situation is. One of those elements of their situation is outstanding debt, then you pick the right tool out of the toolbox and get to work.
I’ve had a few other people on the show talked about they create the notes themselves so they become the bank. They’ll buy a place and put their 20% down. They might get a loan at 4% or 3%. Someone else who might not qualify for a loan but is looking to buy, they’ll then sell it to them and carry it back at 5.5% or 6%. They’re making the delta. They’ve got some cashflow and also helped someone get into a home who wouldn’t normally be able to get into a home. Other people can also be doing this. I know that there are a lot of people, especially here in my area, where their houses have appreciated dramatically, but they’re no longer working. They’re looking for ways to create cashflow. They know in real estate investment, they’re not going to be able to make more than a couple of percents. You’re able to offer them something attractive that helps them supplement their Social Security or whatever it is they’re planning to retire on.
Solve the person, and then you can solve the deal. Click To TweetThere are a few simple clues that you can listen for that a seller might say. For instance, they might say something like, “I’d love to sell this property, but I don’t want to deal with the capital gain. I feel compelled to do a 1031 exchange, but the truth is I don’t want to trade one responsibility for another.” They might say, “I want to sell this property, but I don’t know what I would do with all the money anyway. I want to sell this property, but I don’t like the stock market. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I like tangible assets.” All of those things are clues. It can be a very great solution for you to propose to them that is also excellent for you as the buyer. It scratches their itches perfectly. They might not be aware of that yet, but if you unpack that conversation with them in a thoughtful and sensitive way, they’ll get the picture for sure.
Could you share with me how do you structure it to avoid capital gains? I know you’re not a lawyer or CPA. Could you give us a high level of what that looks like? People have said it all the time and nobody will explain that.
I will explain it to you like I would when a seller asks me that question. Thank you for the disclaimer. I always make that disclaimer to you. I’m not a CPA. Here’s the big picture as I’ve understood it in a non-technical way. When you sell your property, you will find yourself receiving a capital gains tax bill in a way that’s correlated with when you receive the gain. If you bought a property for $200,000, now it’s worth $700,000, factoring all your things like depreciation and all that complicated stuff. The main idea is you have this big gain of $500,000 or so. As you receive that gain back, that’s when you will be expected to pay the tax.
The concept with a 1031 exchange is, what if I don’t receive that gain back at all, it goes straight into a third-party intermediary and then I’m not getting the bill? The same idea applies here to our seller financing structures that say, “Let’s make sure that you are receiving your gain on a schedule that correlates with when you want to pay this tax.” As the buyer, if I come along and say, “I’d like to give you a down payment and then make monthly payments to you over time,” the basic idea is if that down payment is going to be part of the gain that they receive, they might have a little tax bill from the down payment.
If the payments are interest-only, they’re not receiving a principal or gain back during each of those payments. They’re avoiding that capital gain at that time until there’s maybe a balloon payment at the end. You have to reckon with the gain one way or the other. It’s about asking the seller, “When and how do you want to do that? Let’s work backward to structure the timing of your receipt of that gain in a way that works for your financial strategy.”
I am in the process of creating notes. I’m buying small houses and creating notes. One of my ladies is doing the same thing with me. She was talking about you can structure it so that you pay the capital gain. Let’s say we structure a note for seven years. You can either pay the capital gain at the end of the seven years, or you can pay it annually so that you don’t have this big capital gain that you’re paying at the end. Is that true?
Part of that is a little above my pay grade as a non-CPA. If the loan was amortizing heavily over seven years, then I can see how that would trigger an equally amortized capital gains bill. Perhaps there are other provisions that allow you to make installment payments on future capital gains. I don’t know how that part works. Most of the people I work with are thinking, “I’ve got this gain. I’ll figure it out later. I know I don’t want to deal with it now. Give me a small down payment, so I know you’ve got some skin in the game, but not too much because there’s going to be a tax bill associated with that.” We’re going to set a ten-year term and I’ll deal with it then.
I can see why some would be like, “I know I’m going to sell this. I don’t want to have this big bill at the end.” Although if you get the big bill at the end, there are other ways to deal with it too. I hadn’t heard of anybody talking about that. I wasn’t sure if you had heard about it.
An important point off of that is to do this as the buyer, you don’t have to be CPA-level informed on every nuance of that area of the tax code of the installment sale. There certainly comes a time when, as a thoughtful person who’s dealing empathetically with the seller, you’re going to want to say, “Seller, I want to make sure that you have got all your questions answered and you feel good about this. Do you want to call your CPA and ask some questions? You don’t have a CPA? Do you want to call my CPA and ask some questions? I want to make sure you know what you’re doing.” That’s part of the nature of being a good direct-to-seller type of buyer. You give them the opportunities to check with the outside resources to feel good about what they’re doing, especially on a complicated potential topic like that.
I love your verbiage around a lot of this stuff. It’s a great demonstration of what talking to somebody to help solve their problems looks like. I’m looking forward to our conversation in EXTRA because we’re going to be talking about this Y.E.S.S.E.S Framework. Could you tell us a little bit more about what that deep dive is going to look like?
I’m going to talk about how the Y.E.S.S.E.S Framework applies to intentionally source deals that you can buy with seller financing to hold for the long term. There are a few key strategies I’ll share in there about how we’re not shopping for a property. We’re shopping for a person. That’s one thing we’ll talk about. The idea of seller financing is that you buy your financing when you buy the property. That is a very different mentality by itself. We’re not going to talk about that. Overall, we’ll talk about if you want to buy properties with seller financing. It’s critical to start with the end in mind and reverse-engineer the whole marketing process so that from the very first step, it’s all about finding those people for whom seller financing would be an excellent solution. Their Y.E.S.S.E.S Framework will be our step-by-step process for discussing those strategies.
Can you tell everybody how they can reach you?
If you look up The Thoughtful Real Estate, that’s who we are, ThoughtfulRE.com. We have a Facebook group called Rental Portfolio Wealth Builders. We’d love to have anybody join us there to talk about this specific way of doing acquisition for investment real estate.
I know that you’ve got a gift for my ladies. Let’s talk about that.
I am putting together a download that is called the Three Ways Women Can Have a Real Competitive Advantage in Real Estate Investing as Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneurs. These are my thoughts, reflections, and experiences. When you take a look at what it means to be a thoughtful real estate entrepreneur, women are well-suited naturally to be great with those skills. I hope that’s very encouraging to your audience. I wish that I saw more women in my own communities trying to do these things. They’ve got so much potential. If someone wants to get that, they can go to ThoughtfulRE.com/bliss. It will be very easy to download that special guide.
Ladies, Jeff and I were having this conversation. He’s putting together a gift, especially for you and this show. One of the things I’d like to talk about in this download is empathy. It’s funny because I have never thought of myself as an empathetic person and yet he was like, “Really?” You noticed that as human beings, we take for granted our gifts. We don’t notice them. It’s nice to have someone to shine a light on what your strengths are and what you should be highlighting in a way that maybe you can’t see. Maybe you’re blind to it. I love getting this different perspective.
Women all have ideas of what we’re good at. It’s fun to hear from the other side like, “What do men do? What do they look at?” Then say, “Women are good at that thing. I wish I was better at that. I need to learn that. That’s a skill that they know and take for granted. I need to develop that.” I know that Jeff, Based on the conversation that we’ve had, I know that Jeff is going to give us some good ideas about what our strengths are and what we can amplify, utilize and value in ourselves.
It’s such an important point. We can’t help but undervalue the things that come naturally to us. We don’t even necessarily realize they’re gifts. I’m going to try to point some of those things out and see how they can be aimed at being a great real estate entrepreneur.
Thank you for that. Jeff, are you ready for our three Rapid-fire questions?
I’m ready.
Tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
Here’s what I would recommend. Maybe this is not common advice. Instead of thinking about, “I want to buy a property. What is available for sale?” I would say, “Everything is available for sale.” I don’t mean, “Everything is for sale at the right price.” I mean, “Everything is available when there’s a relationship.” Here’s what I would like you to do. I would like you to go into your town and identify ten properties that you would like to own, “It sure would be awesome to be the next owner of that property.” Maybe I see potential or think it’s beautiful. You love it, that’s all that matters. Grab a pen and a stack of paper. Sit down and write a simple, nice handwritten letter and send it to the owner of that property.
Don’t say, “I’ll make you an offer of this. I’ve got the cash. I can close quickly.” It’s none of that stuff. Say, “Hi, this is my name. I see your property all the time. Frankly, I love it. If you would ever consider selling it, would you please let me be somebody who could talk to you about that? Hold onto my letter for whenever the time is right. I hope to hear from you.” Send that handwritten letter ten times. Chances are your phone will ring whether it’s immediately or not too much time. That is a great practice. It’s emblematic of overall what we need to be doing more and more as real estate entrepreneurs.
I have to ask a question. If someone doesn’t respond, do you write it again and again to the same person?
Yes. I’d say send it 3 or 4 times a year. Every 3 or 4 months, write another letter to the person. Make it seasonal if you want to. Don’t photocopy and send exactly the same thing. What I used to do is I would go sit in my car in the neighborhoods where these properties were. I would write the letters by hand so that I was soaking up the environment of where these properties were. You could do that. If you ever get to go to a coffee shop again, you go sit down in the coffee shop and do it.
What is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?
It is very much what we have talked about in the broad sense, which is to take a people-oriented approach to real estate. It’s people who sell properties. It’s not properties that sell themselves. I saw in a Facebook group that somebody said, “I’ve identified 3 or 4 properties on the market that would be good for seller financing.” I had to comment, “I appreciate your enthusiasm but properties aren’t candidates for seller financing. People are candidates for seller financing.” Take a people-oriented approach. Don’t be afraid to talk directly with people who own properties. Don’t be afraid of saying the wrong thing, screwing it up, or over–committing yourself. Get comfortable with the idea of talking. Practice talking directly to people who own properties. Good things will come of that one way or the other.
What would you say is one daily practice that contributes to your personal success?
I’ve been trying to think of a catchy way for this to be articulated, but you know how they say, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This is a work in progress, “A handwritten thank you card a day keeps the poverty away?” I’m still working on the last part. One of the best things you could do would be to go online or go to your local office supply store, buy a giant box of thank you cards, get a bunch of stamps and have that pen sitting there. Every time I meet with a seller in person, maybe a potential lender or a regular person, I always send a handwritten thank you card. Sometimes people comment about that, but even if they don’t comment about it, just the fact that you did it says so much about you and shapes the way they perceive you in a very positive way. It’s very difficult to send too many handwritten thank you cards. If you send one a day, that’s a great rhythm that you can get into and it’s not a difficult habit.
It’s also like your own personal gratitude practice in a way. Jeff, this has been amazing. I loved this portion of the show. Thank you so much for all that you’ve shared.
Off-Market Acquisition: If you don’t have the empathy to be able to understand the other person, whatever proposal or offer you put in front of them is going to be a version of a shot in the dark.
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share this perspective. I know I’m the oddball in the world of real estate investing. This is not how most people do it, but I’m cautiously optimistic that the more people who hear this message will go, “That would be authentic for me too.” I hope some of your readers can have that light-bulb moment.
Ladies, thank you so much for joining Jeff and me for this portion of the show. We have more in EXTRA. We’re going to be talking about his Y.E.S.S.E.S Framework. I always say, “Say yes because it’s so much more fun than no.” He’s got a six-step process that he’s going to be talking about. We’re going to be doing that in EXTRA. If you’re not subscribed but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com, and you get the first seven days for free. You can check it out. I appreciate you. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams, so get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.
Important Links
- The Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur
- Racking Up Rentals – Episode with Moneeka Sawyer
- Rich Dad
- Rental Portfolio Wealth Builders – Facebook group
- ThoughtfulRE.com/bliss
- RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com
About Jeff Stephens
Jeff loves delivering presentations to great organizations! In his first entrepreneurial career, he was a paid speaker at banking and credit union conferences all over the US and Canada, and even spoke at a marketing conference in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
Today, Jeff speaks to groups of entrepreneurs and real estate professionals.
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
The Secrets To Dating Money And Having A Friends-With-Benefits Relationship With It With Olympia Hostler – Real Estate Women
Having a good relationship with money is like finding a date. You have to overcome the fear factor and actually start dating it. You need to cozy up to it until you form a friends-with-benefits relationship with it. How exactly does this apply to the world of real estate? Well, for one thing, it helps that a lot (like a lot) of the people who know anything about money have been involved in real estate in one way or another. Moneeka Sawyer is excited to unpack this topic with Olympia Hostler, an award-winning business consultant and speaker who is known as the “Queen of Wealth.” Take a moment to listen to their conversation as Olympia reveals the secrets towards achieving time and financial freedom in the shortest time possible.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Secrets To Dating Money And Having A Friends-With-Benefits Relationship With It With Olympia Hostler – Real Estate Women
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am excited to welcome to the show, Olympia Hostler. She loves working in playing in the realm of millions and billions. She is an award-winning business consultant and speaker of Fortune 500 companies. She’s a partner and a leader of the highest natural national securities program worth billions of dollars. By the age of 33, she was a corporate executive leading multimillion-dollar programs making more than $50 million in sales, facilitating sales for more than $10 billion, and leading teams of up to 100 people. As the Queen of Wealth, Olympia unshackles business owner’s freedom to scale their companies and fast forward their success without working harder or longer on their fastest path to freedom of time and money. Olympia, welcome to the show.
I’m excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
This conversation is going to be fun. Let’s start by giving a version of your story. Tell us about yourself.
I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I started out as a corporate executive at 33. That’s where we’re going to start our chronology. I quickly realized that Corporate America was not for me. I went off and started my own business consulting company. I’ve been doing that for over 25 years. I’ve helped all kinds of businesses, products, services and real estate. I’ve been in real estate for over twenty years as a licensed broker. I’ve had a partnership with CBS Television in New York for real estate.
Tell us more about that.
When we get our unconscious and subconscious mind on board, there are no limits. Freedom is all around us. Everything we do is free. Click To TweetThat was super fun. We did a groundbreaking state-of-the-art joint venture partnership and also a website. We spent $1.5 million on the website alone, creating these new searching technologies. We were the first to implement VOW or Virtual Office Website, which is collecting all of the other listings from the other brokerage houses and putting those into our website. We also created the first real estate television show in New York. That’s what we did. It was a lot of fun doing it.
Have you ever noticed that anybody who knows anything about money has been involved in real estate in some way?
Yes, I have. It’s a training ground.
I read on Instagram that 90% of the millionaires got that way through real estate. It’s the original get-rich strategy. I love your topic. This whole thing of money as friends with benefits. I want my money to be friends with benefits. Tell me more.
To have friends with benefits relationship, first of all, we need to start cozying up to it. We need to stop being afraid of it if there is a fear factor, which many people have, and start dating it. To do that, we need to get rid of the obstacles that are in our way. Those obstacles typically come in the form of mindset, heart set, and body set money blocks, as I call them. These blocks are programmed in from our experiences in life, from the people we’ve hung around when we were younger, our parents.
There are all of these blocks have been created. Whether we have created them ourselves or our parents and other well-meaning loved ones, it was their blocks and then we adopted them. The key to having that awesome relationship, friends with benefits, is we have to get rid of that stuff. If you think about it, if you wanted to date people, you have to get over your fear of dating, but you also need to get out of the house. You need to get out and start doing some things. Addressing those core blockages, clearing them, and resetting them is going to be beneficial in your entire life, not just with money.
Talk to me about unshackling. You can have the business that you want without working longer or harder.
This is super fun. We started talking about the shackles with our favorite question. The shackles are the ones that we put on ourselves. How are we going to unshackle ourselves? One of the best ways to do it with a business, in particular, and the real estate business is a great example. We have to be able to know what our big worldly why is. Why are you doing what you’re doing? That is what will drive you. Why are you doing it for the world if you’re doing it for the world? There’s a second why that I’ve created called my self-care why. Why are you doing it for yourself? You might know it, but if you’re not in touch and connected with it, then it’s a hard road to unshackle yourself because you’re always wondering, “What’s the point of this? What’s the point of that?” If you’re not consciously thinking that, you are definitely unconsciously thinking that. It will drive you so you’ll never work another day in your life. It’ll be fun and play, and who doesn’t want that?
You ask a good question which is, what’s more important, time, freedom or money? From my perspective, the freedom of time and money is a thing that I’m reaching for, but I like how you distinguish them separately. Tell me about that.
We all know that there are different types of resources. Some are non-renewable. They have a finite amount, and that would be time. Money is a renewable resource. You can always get more money. You can never get more time. Freedom spans both. Freedom is very subjective. One person’s freedom is not another person’s freedom. That one can go either way. Freedom has the potential to always be there. In that regard, it is renewable because it’s always there. Whether you’re tapping into it or not, that’s up to you.
I would define freedom as time and money. Having enough time and money to do what I want, where I want and with whom I want.
That’s how I define it. Many people will go around and say, “I want freedom.” If they haven’t defined what it is, then you haven’t given your unconscious mind the target. We were speaking earlier about neuro-linguistic programming. When we get our unconscious mind and our subconscious mind on board, there are no limits. Freedom is all around us. Everything we do is free.
We’re talking about this relationship with money. One of the things that happen with investors is they have a house. They want to rent it out. They’re like, “What should I ask for the house?” They list it and put up this beautiful ad. They list the price that they think is right in the market and people are not knocking on the doors. The very first thing that they say is, “I priced it too high,” which is not the first place that we should be going. The first place we should be going is if you want to think about it, “What is it that I’m saying in my ad that’s not attracting the right person for that house,” and not, “Is this too high?” Price is only one factor when you’re renting out a house. Could you talk to us about this relationship with premium pricing?
Dating Money: The price you pay for not detoxing your money blocks is high because these money blocks are also driving the show for every other area of your life.
To talk about premium pricing, we need to understand pricing’s place in the marketplace. My commercial real estate broker, the first one I ever had who I worked underneath, told me, “Olympia, I can make any deal happen. It’s a matter of price, terms and time.” It’s one of those three. If your price is right, the other two can float. When you’re not getting the traffic that you want, I wouldn’t go first to price. If you’ve done your research and you know you’re in the money, then stick to your guns. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe you haven’t painted it. Maybe it needs a fresh coat of paint. Maybe something’s happened in the neighborhood and you need to do a little research and know what that is. I would look at many other places before I would look at the price. I would say stick to your guns on the price.
With commercial real estate, it was price, terms and time. In residential, that whole heart set piece is a big distinguisher on how we view a home. When I’m looking at something and people aren’t knocking on my door, I don’t immediately go to my is too high because I know, based on what the market conditions are, that I’m not. I’ve done that research. I’m not evoking an emotional response in the people that are looking to buy a home. A lot of people will say, “I need a three-bedroom, two-bath, this many square feet, this close to my work, this kind of school.” They have all their statistics. The reality is that there might be five houses on the market that meet the criteria. What was different?
It could be some of those things that don’t get checked off that’s on their list. The biggest thing is, are they having an emotional response to your home that you’re providing for them? For me, yes, maybe it needs a coat of paint, but that’s all external to the real indicator which is, are they emotionally attached? How can you get them there? Your premium pricing isn’t about pricing. It’s about their emotional attachment to the product that you’re providing. Would you agree with me on that?
I agree with you. If you can appeal to their five senses when they walk in the door, this was something I used to do when I do open houses. I would always bake chocolate chip cookies. No wonder I was so awesome at sales for real estate. People come in and they automatically get that emotional response. They’re like, “I like it already.” They haven’t even opened their eyes necessarily. If you can appeal to the senses, that’s going to go right to the emotions.
I used to do the cookies thing too until everybody started doing cookies. I don’t know who started teaching that. I was doing it long before. That was by mistake. One time, I brought brand new cookies from Mrs. Fields. They are home-cooked cookies. I brought them in and served them, but they were fairly fresh. I hadn’t baked them there. People were like, “I love the smell of cookies.” I then started baking them. People then started teaching this. I’m like, “Now everybody’s doing it.” Now I bring stargazer lilies or fragrant candles or something. I might have a fire in the fireplace. It’s like touching their senses and some different ways that are a little bit unexpected and make them feel something new. Talk to us about detoxing money blocks. What happens? What do you give up if you won’t do it?
The price you pay for not detoxing your money blocks is a high price because these money blocks are also driving the show for every other area of your life. The program that creates the money blocks is also creating blocks in relationships, spirituality, personal growth, health, all of those areas of life. You’re going to have some glitches in more than just your money. Why not take care of the money piece, get squared away, get a clearing done, get a reset done. Once you’ve reset these programs, they are running in the background just like they are now. Now, they’re running in the background. They’re running amuck, but you don’t think about it. You don’t have to give affirmations. It’s just happening. Once you change it to a more positive, healthy program, it’s as if you flip the switch, then you don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to say one million affirmations. It’s running now. You have your new normal.
How do you do the detox? I know that we’re not supposed to talk about processes but I’m curious.
I use neuro-linguistic programming. I use trauma recovery techniques because I treat money like a trauma. I’m training from another business that I own in trauma recovery and helping people recover from abuses, accidents, surgeries and pain. I’m using brain science and resetting the nervous system of the body from being in a fight-flight-freeze response. I’m doing that. At the same time, I was changing the program using neuro-linguistic programming. We’re resetting false beliefs and limiting decisions. Stuck emotions is a huge one, conflicting parts, and strategies that have gone amuck. It depends on what’s happening with the person, which technique we’re going to use. Almost always, everyone is going to need a roto-rooter job on the top five stuck emotions.
What are the top five stuck emotions?
If you don’t have the money you want, you don’t even have to look at the symptoms. You have money blocks, period. Click To TweetIt’s anger, sadness, fear, hurt and guilt. Those are the top five. I was working with a client on this. We’ve gone through those, and those are just the top five. We then go into the next layer. The next layer is usually some flavor of abandonment, rejection, shame, and those types of things. The top five have to be cleared in order to get to the others because the others are like a house of cards. They’re based on those other five. Typically, those are relationships. You knock those legs out and then you are left with these, then those will clear much easier.
Many of the ladies that are reading this are saying to themselves, “I’ve done a lot of work on this. I don’t have those money blocks.” Our money blocks are like blind spots. Even if I look at myself, and as you’re talking, I’m thinking, “I’ve made multiple millions of dollars. I’m a very successful businesswoman. I’m proud of that.” I have hit a plateau in my life. It’s such an interesting thing. There’s the next level for me. I’m trying to figure out how to get there. I realized that I’ve dealt with a lot of my money blocks, but there’s more to go because otherwise, I wouldn’t be at a plateau. What prevents us from seeing those blind spots? Help us to be motivated to look at that because it can be a little bit scary, overwhelming or even intimidating.
It could be a blind spot because we are not consciously aware of it, or we have been consciously aware of it and we don’t want to go through the pain, the challenge or the hardship to clear it. We sweep it under the rug. It doesn’t matter which scenario is active. It’s the same way to clear it. What happens is the blind spots are there to protect us. It’s our nervous system that has activated our fight-flight-freeze response, which causes a lot of things to happen in our mindset, body set and heart set. Things like pumping our body with adrenaline and cortisol. It feels like you’ve got your finger in a socket 24/7. You’re pumped up because your mind, body and heart think that you’re going to be chased by a saber-toothed tiger.
It’s the reptilian part of our brain. It’s right about here. It’s called the amygdala. Welcome to your amygdala. It only knows the input from these five senses. It will determine, “Am I safe or am I in danger?” It can create a blind spot if you’re in danger. It’s doing that to protect you. What it seems like is self-sabotaging. The key is to go into and calm the nervous system. Once you do that, then we can work on taking these patterns away. If you think about it, if you’re running from a saber-toothed tiger and somebody says, “Moneeka, I’d love to give you a hug. Could you please stop? I want to give you $1 million.” You’re going to go, “No, thank you. I have a tiger chasing me at the moment. I’ve got to keep going. Give me your number. I’ll get back to you.” I’m simplifying it but that is what it is.
How do we notice them? How do we know they’re there?
You have to look more at symptoms for that like, “Am I having a heart attack? Let’s go through the checklist.” I have a whole checklist called, “You might be a money blocker if,” and then all of these things. There’s the checklist, “You might be a money blocker if you are not doing all of these other things.” It’s all kinds of things. As you said, you’re at a plateau. That’s a sign. That’s a symptom. If you’re at a plateau, there’s a money block happening. Do you wake up to do work and you’re resisting? Any resistance toward money or money-making or having fun is a money block. There are many of them. If you don’t have the money you want, you don’t even have to look at the symptoms. You got money blocks. That’s the shortcut.
Tell us how about how we can rewrite our story with money so that it is a love story with a very happy ending?
It’s so nice because all we need to do is to understand a couple of things. One is, how you do money is a seven-step process. We need to make sure that we go back to the beginning and change it there, then that ripples through, because the love story or the horror story, as some people have. Whatever your story is or the oh-ho-hum story is related and directly coming from step number one. Most people think, “I can change my thoughts.” I’m going to say good luck with that because that doesn’t work. Thoughts are the 5th of 7 steps of how you do money. Steps 1, 2, 3, 4 all feed into 5. If you’re trying to change it here at 5, which is a conscious mind activity, what happened to 1 to 4? They didn’t change. They’re going to always keep producing a number 5. You’re always going to have those blocks.
You need to go back to the very beginning, which are these things we’ve talked about, the false beliefs, limiting decisions, stuck emotions, conflicting parts. Strategies are another fun one, the process of how you do things. To go back and change them at the beginning, that will ripple through. It will automatically change your story. You will find yourself saying things or doing things or feeling things differently. I’m working with one client and she’s tripled her income in six months. It’s like she got this superpower persona because we’ve been working on this at the ground level. It’s rippling through. The things she used to do that didn’t make money, she doesn’t do those anymore. She’s like, “I’m doing this. I’m doing that.” A new business I’m branding into is called Business Titans. She’s saying, “I’m a tiny Titan.” She only wants to play with other Titans. She’s like, “I’m not playing in the kiddie pool anymore.” It has this whole ramification and you will have that happy ending and the love story.
This is also true with relationships. This whole thing about you can see what’s going on in your mind, by what showing up in your life. It’s like your mind is a movie projector and it’s got a reel in there. Your life is the screen. Whatever the story is in the movie reel, whatever that story arc is, whatever those characters are, they are in the movie reel and they’re showing up in your life. You know if you’ve got a story you like in your head based on what’s happening in your life. It’s not an immediate translation. There’s momentum and things take a little time to change. Someone’s got to get in there and change the reel.
It’s interesting because I think that we forget to see that those symptoms are outside of us. They are glaring right in our face with big bright lights on a big white screen showing us what’s going on inside. If you’re only going to play with Titans and you’re noticing that your best friend is a cat lady, no offense to cat ladies, maybe the reel inside your head is different than what you think you want. This is true with relationships. That’s how I started this whole conversation. The relationships that show up for you, whether it’s your relationship with money, a guy or your children. Most relationships are being dictated by the reel that’s in your head.
The reel that’s in your head has a starting point where this whole process started. It’s the beginning of the movie. The beginning of the movie changes the trajectory. Every movie does not start the same way and the same story. How many times does Hollywood tell a love story? Boy meets girl, girl falls in love with the boy, boy and girl get married, and they live happily ever after. It’s the same story, but there are different beginning and different characters. That beginning is what launches us into where we’re going to go. I see that in relationships, in our health and with our money.
One of the newest realizations that people are having is that collaboration, which is relationships. It’s a fancy word, relationship, but collaborations in business are the new juicy carrot. In collaborations, you can get a lot more done in a lot less time, with a lot less money, and you can have more fun. You’re going to leverage lots of resources. You can potentially make more money as well, depending on how you’re leveraging those relationships into a collaboration.
I love that in business, we’re moving more towards collaboration rather than, “If I win, you have to lose,” which is the old way of doing business. A lot of the big business titans from the old world still built their businesses that way, but the new generation of businesses are realizing that collaboration is the key. I love it because we’re leading the world in that. You see it even in our small businesses. Collaboration with your tenant, vendors, sales, real estate agent, and all of those things. The better those relationships, the better the business is.
The business is all about relationships. You are not going to have a great business unless you have great relationships. That’s according to Olympia Hostler. That’s what I believe.
Let’s talk about what we’re going to be continuing on with EXTRA. In EXTRA, we would talk about how I can avoid being sucked into the busyness and distraction vortex to start supercharging my success. I’m excited about having that conversation in EXTRA. Could you tell us how the ladies can reach you?
I am so available at [email protected]. My phone number is (917) 288-7477. Do you want me to talk about the quiz now?
Tell us about the free gift.
The free gift is a quiz. Who doesn’t love a quiz? They are so much fun. You get to take this quiz at MyMoneyBlocks.com. Within two minutes you’re going to know your relationship with money and what’s standing in your way. Have fun.
Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?
I’m ready. Let’s go.
Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
I’m going to address this as investing in a business. A super tip is to treat your time like it’s money. Think about your time as I call them money blocks. How are you going to spend and invest your time? Treat it like it’s money.
What’s one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?
That would be to make sure that you know with as much certainty as you can what your ROI is going to be or can be. Weigh that against your risks because all of life is a risk–reward. Whether it’s business, real estate or relationships. It doesn’t matter what it is. Make sure that that ROI is what you think it’s going to be. Within your risk tolerance, whatever that is, that might change, but it’s within what it is now.
What is one daily practice that contributes to your personal success?
Dating Money: You are not going to have a great business unless you have great relationships.
Every morning, when I go in the shower, I sing a James Brown song. I dance and get the whole thing going. If for some reason, I haven’t done that, which is rare like if I’m in a super hurry, I miss it. I have different energy for the whole day.
This has been so much fun. Thank you for joining us for this portion of the show.
You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. I had a blast.
I can’t wait to talk about how to get out of the distraction and busyness vortex and supercharge our business. Ladies, if you are not subscribed to EXTRA but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. The first seven days are free. You can get this EXTRA. You can get a bunch of others, and then you can decide if it’s for you. Go check it out. For those of you that are leaving Olympia and me, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. We 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.
Important Links
- Olympia Hostler
- Business Titans
- [email protected]
- MyMoneyBlocks.com
- RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com
About Olympia Hostler
Olympia works with 6 and 7 Figure plateaued business owners who are overworked and want more. She helps them radically 2X their income, fun and freedom.
Olympia loves working and playing in the realms of millions and billions. She is an award-winning business consultant and speaker, a Fortune 500 companies’ partner, and a leader of the highest national security programs worth billions of dollars.
By the age of 33, she was a corporate executive leading multi-billion dollar programs – making more than $50 Million in sales, facilitating sales of more than $10 Billion and leading teams of up to 100 people.
As The Queen Of Wealth, Olympia liberates business owners’ freedom to scale their companies and fast forward their success without working harder or longer on their fastest path to freedom of time & money!
Since she earned her MBA in Finance, she specializes in business growth strategy that fast tracks success while also having a joyful and meaningful life. Olympia works with high-achieving business owners who seek success and wealth to make a difference for themselves and humanity.
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
Getting The Benefits Of Real Estate Without Being A Landlord With Matt Argersinger – Real Estate for Women
You can invest in real estate without being a landlord through real estate investment trusts (REITs). Today’s guest is Matt Argersinger, who joined the Motley Fool in 2008 as part of its analyst development program. In this episode, Matt discusses with Moneeka Sawyer why investing in real estate is much safer than investing in the stock market and why you don’t need to be a billionaire to start investing in real estate through REITs. It offers you the option of investing with as little as a hundred dollars! If you’re an income-seeking investor, you may want to know that REITs have a high dividend yield because it pays out 90% of the profits to investors in dividends. Excited to learn more? Join in the conversation and find out how you can start investing in REITs today!
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Listen to the podcast here
Getting The Benefits Of Real Estate Without Being A Landlord With Matt Argersinger – Real Estate for Women
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am excited to welcome to the show, Matt Argersinger. He is the Lead Advisor of Mogul. He joined The Motley Fool in 2008 as part of the company’s Analyst Development Program. He’s worked on numerous full-investing services including Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Million-Dollar Portfolio and Supernova. He helped establish The Motley Fool Germany and also appears regularly on The Motley Fool Podcasts including Market Foolery and Motley Fool Money. In addition to stocks, Matt and his wife, Jean, own and manage a few income properties in Washington DC and have an interest in several commercial real estate developments.
He’s excited to use that experience and his full-investing knowledge to help Mogul and Millionacres members find the best real estate opportunities. Matt earned a degree in Economics from Brandeis University. He lives in Washington DC with Jean and his beloved King Charles Spaniel, Daisy, who we’ve heard about before. Other than hunting for investing ideas, Matt enjoys traveling, skiing, mountain climbing and board games that take at least four hours to complete. Welcome to the show, Matt.
Thank you so much for having me, Moneeka. I’m happy to be here.
Ladies, you met Deidre Woollard with The Motley Fool. She was with Mogul. Is that true, Matt?
Yes, she’s with Mogul. She’s the editor at large for Millionacres.
You heard about the amazing thing that happened. It wasn’t amazing for them. It was amazing for me. I got rated in their top ten podcasts to listen to for real estate. I did a happy dance because I’ve had this long relationship with The Motley Fool since 1994 when their very first book came out. You guys started me on my journey in investing. That’s what started the whole path to the building wealth paradigm that my husband and I have followed. You’ve been a big part of my life. For you guys to reach out to me was like God reaching out down his hands saying, “You have won. You are awesome.” That sounds weird. I don’t know how to express it. Anyway, I’m excited to be talking to you, Matt. This is fun. I want to talk about you in a second, but I want to talk about the difference between what Deidre talked about and what you’re going to be talking about.
With Deidre, she spoke about our mobile service, which is a real estate service design for accredited investors. It’s looking for deals in the private market, oftentimes, deals where you need a substantial amount of capital to get started. What I’m excited to announce is that we launched a new service called Real Estate Winners, which is designed for more beginning investors or investors looking to gain a bigger exposure to real estate within their stock portfolio. It’s a service where you can get started quickly for hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars, no matter how much you want to invest. All you need is a brokerage account and you can get started. It’s our way of reaching out and trying to broaden the number of people who can invest successfully in real estate. Overall, what we’re trying to do with Millionacres is to help people get happier, richer and smarter through real estate investing. Deidre probably said that many times. I’m going to say it a lot too. It’s our guiding light.
Each company has their mission. You want to make sure that everybody is consistent with that mission. Give us a high level of your story of how you got to where you are now working with Real Estate Winners.
I started with The Motley Fool in 2008. I’ve worked mostly on our stock investing services at The Motley Fool. I loved it. I had a great time. I worked closely with David Gardner, one of the Founders of The Motley Fool. Over that same time when I was doing that, my wife and I were investing in real estate. We bought our first property in 2009 in Washington DC. It was a house we lived in but it also had an income property attached to it. I love telling the story because one day we bought the house. We were figuring out how to rent the property, the income apartment. My wife read this article. It was the New York Times at the time and said, “There’s this new company called Air Bed and Breakfast. They’re expanding.” Now we know that as Airbnb.
At that point, there were three Airbnb listings in all of Washington DC. We thought, “This is interesting. Let’s try renting this income property through Airbnb. People like to come to DC for short periods of time. Let’s try it.” That was successful. We listed it on Airbnb. Within a week, we were booked for six months. It was amazing. That was the catalyst for us to invest in more properties and follow that same short-term rental approach. We did that several times. Now we own several income properties in DC.
Eventually, we also were able to invest in some commercial properties. For example, a self-storage facility out in Colorado and a big apartment building that’s being developed in DC. We expanded. As I’m working at The Motley Fool, I’ve got this sidetrack of real estate investing going on with myself and my wife. A few years ago, I sat down with a few colleagues at The Motley Fool and said, “Real estate is this big asset class. It’s three times the size of the stock market.” If you add in single-family homes and commercial real estate, it’s three times the size of the stock market. It’s a huge asset class.
Through crowdfunding or real estate investment trusts, there are so many ways to get involved in real estate investing. Click To TweetIt’s not as volatile.
That’s right. It has all these great things. I met with some colleagues and said, “Let’s try to do something with real estate investing at The Motley Fool. We’ve been so focused on stocks. We got real estate out here. A lot of investors want to know how to invest in real estate.” That was the genesis of Millionacres. We launched the site a couple of years ago. We’ve been building new product since and trying to get more people to invest in real estate.
Thank you for that. I’m glad you guys did move into that asset class because it is huge. Deidre talked a little bit about when you look at the dynamics of how many women are investing in real estate as opposed to men, the percentages are low. There’s a huge asset class and huge opportunities on many different levels and women aren’t getting in. I’m proud to say that because of my show and several other leaders in the industry that are now women, we’re seeing a lot more women flooding in. I love it but still, we are the minority investors in real estate. I want to see that expand because of the potential.
The great thing is I feel like real estate now is more accessible than it’s ever been. It was that asset class that not just women but any individual investor who had never done real estate looked at it and said, “How do I get involved in real estate investing? Do I have to save for a down payment for years? If I ever wanted to buy a commercial property, I have to be a millionaire. There’s no way.” The beautiful thing about now is that through crowdfunding or Real Estate Investment Trust, there are many ways to get involved in investing in real estate and getting exposure to this asset class. It has a great track record over time. It’s less than half as volatile as the stock market. If you’re tired of the up-and-down swings in the stock market, real estate is certainly a great option.
I want to point something out. I had this conversation with my dad. He loves stocks and they’ve done phenomenally well. David, my husband, loves stocks and we’ve done phenomenally well. Thank you, Motley Fool. I’m not dissing on the stock market but I will say this. Unless you understand it, the volatility can get you. Let me tell you a little bit about what I mean by that. Let’s say you put in $50,000 in the stock market. It goes up to $100,000 in 3 or 4 years. It doubles, then there’s a huge crash. In 2008 and 2001, there have been some big crashes in the stock market because it was so volatile. It goes down. Let’s say it’s at $25,000. You’ve lost 50%. It feels bad because you lost $75,000. Let’s say it doubles again. Now you’re at $50,000 right where you begin, but it says that it’s doubled.
The volatility is what happens with it. The thing is the difference between the stock market volatility and the real estate market are two big ones. The first one is it’s liquid in the stock market. When that thing crashes and you have this emotional response, what do most people do? “Get me out of here. That was scary.” If the real estate market crashes, you can’t sell usually. You can file for foreclosure, which most people won’t do if they can avoid it. You’re forced to stay in for recovery. Here’s the thing. You don’t take a loss or a win until you sell. There’s forced longevity in real estate. The other thing is leverage. Let’s talk about what happened in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The stock market was going gangbusters. This happened in 2001 too just before the bust of the boom. Do I have those dates right?
Yes. Starting in 2001, the dot-com crash had started.
Before that, what happened was the stock market was going up. People were so excited and they were starting to margin their accounts. When you margin an account, what you do is you take the amount that you have and buy double the stock. You’re at 50% leverage. What happens is if you’re at 50% leverage and the market is going up, you’re making double the money. That’s exciting. What happened in the bust was that those accounts were leveraged and then the stocks dropped. The problem is when the stocks drop, all the brokerage firms need to come up with the money so they call your margin. People ended up owing hundreds of thousands of dollars on a stock they never owned fully. They owned 50%.
That’s what the problem was with the stock market. It’s not that you couldn’t hold on to good stocks. It was a lot of people were margined so they got called on that. The other thing was the freak out of, “Even though it was a good company, look at the way the stock market tanked.” Let’s compare that with what happens in real estate. In real estate, we put 20% down and we’re margined to 100%. We’re margined 4 or 5 times. What is that, Matt? Is that 4 or 5 times?
It’s 4 or 5 to 1. Usually, you keep 5% down.
If the value of the home drops, you don’t ever get called on that margin. You keep making payments. You get to hold on to that property. You get to watch it recover if you stay in. When we talk about the volatility of the stock market versus the real estate market, there are a lot of things involved in that. There are a lot of reasons that real estate is a much safer investment. I’m not dissing on the stock. We do a lot of it. We don’t margin on the stock. There are some things that we do to keep ourselves safe. Ladies, I just wanted to give you perspective because it was top of mind. My husband and I were talking about this. When you’re investing in real estate, that’s what happens. If you go with Millionacres and they’re talking about REITs and stuff like that, understand that you’re investing and somebody else who’s making those same decisions. How that works relative to volatility is still relevant.
Real Estate Investment Trust: Real estate is a big asset class; it’s actually three times the size of the stock market.
Your points are so spot on. We did a study once that looked at America’s billionaires. It turns out that none of us is a billionaire. Maybe some of your readers are billionaires. If you looked at the billionaire families that have sustained their wealth for decades, almost all of them are in real estate. They were never forced to sell and panic emotionally. They couldn’t offload their properties. They invested in properties. Oftentimes, they’d roll them over, put 1031 and save on taxes so you save on capital gains They kept rolling into real estate and holding on. That’s such a key point. If we talk about REITs for a moment, REITs are like stocks. They are traded in the public market. A lot of people will think, “What’s the difference between a REIT and a stock? It’s probably just as volatile.” They’re not.
If you look at the historical performance of Real Estate Investment Trust and the data that goes back over 50 years. Not only have they outperformed the stock market, but they’ve also done about 50% of the volatility of the average stock. You’re investing in a REIT. Most of the time, you’re getting a nice dividend out of that so you’re getting income. The stock doesn’t move nearly as sharply as your typical stock. It’s a lot easier to hold on. You’re building wealth over time and you’re getting income. I love that part of the stock market because it gives you exposure to dozens or hundreds of real estate properties. If you’re investing in a retail REIT, you’re getting exposure to hundreds of retail properties. If you invest in a multifamily REIT, you’re getting exposure to hundreds if not tens of thousands of apartment units around the country.
There are going to be downdrafts in certain markets or there’s going to be volatility in the overall market. Over time, that should build wealth. The volatility is so much less that you can sustain your investment in that and not get panicked out of it. It’s a great option for any investor. We know on the Millionacres side, a lot of people were thinking about retirement. They look at REITs as a way to generate a nice, steady income in a lower volatility part of the market. That’s one of the benefits of real estate investing.
Let’s define what a REIT is and how it works.
REIT stands for Real Estate Investment Trust. They were formed by Congress in the 1960s as a way for the average individual investor to buy into a pool of real estate. Nowadays, there are hundreds of REITs. They’re all structured so that they don’t pay taxes at the federal level. In order to qualify for that, they have to pay out 90% of their after-tax income in dividends. That’s why your typical REIT has a pretty high dividend yield. That’s because 90% of the profits from its real estate operations pay out to investors in dividends. It’s a great option for an income-seeking investor. Over time, the REIT category has grown. Now, it includes things like data centers, for example. There are data center REITs.
If you ever drive on a highway, you’ll often see a big tower that looks like it has dishes or rays on it. Those are often cellular towers. There are several REITs that only invest in cellular towers, wireless towers. As we roll out 5G and we use more data on our phones, those towers are being used. You can invest in those in Real Estate Investment Trusts. It’s expanding. There are self-storage REITs that only invest in self-storage facilities. There are all kinds of ways to get exposed to real estate. REITs are a very efficient and profitable way to do that.
The historical track record is so great. In fact, Moneeka, we look at this all the time. If you look at the last twenty years since 2000, the average REIT has returned twice the return of the S&P 500. It was remarkable. If you think about that, we had this massive financial crash in 2007, 2008, which a lot of us think was real-estate driven. It was to a certain extent but even through that, REITs have outperformed the stock market and with lower volatility. I’m biased but if you ask me where do I invest most of my money when it comes to the stock market, I tend to do it with REITs.
Give us some real and clear comparisons between investing in a REIT versus other real estate investing opportunities.
If I’m starting out as an investor and I’m thinking about where am I going to invest and I wanted to get exposure to real estate, I could invest in a rental property. That often takes a big down payment. Generally, your mortgage options on a rental property are not going to be as good as they are if you’re buying a primary home. That can be a big burden to take on. The commercial side of real estate is very big. You have to approach it with millions of dollars and it’s very expensive to get into. REITs offer you the option of investing as little as $100 or $1,000. All you need is a brokerage account. Instantly, you buy a basket of REITs and you got exposure to hundreds of real estate properties around the country.
It is probably the cheapest and most efficient way to get exposure. You can also invest in real estate stocks. Let’s think about Zillow, for example. Everyone knows Zillow. They’re publicly traded and you can say to yourself, “I can invest in Zillow. That’s a real estate company that’s publicly traded.” With that, you’re investing in a stock. Hopefully, you understand how Zillow’s business works. You’re going to face some serious volatility by doing that. I buy a REIT instead. A REIT that I’m familiar with is Mid-America Apartment Communities, which they’re the biggest apartment owner in the country. They own most of the apartment buildings in the Southeast and Southwest parts of the United States where a lot of people are moving these days. They’re a good performer over time and consistent. They pay a nice 3% dividend. That to me seems like a great way to play the real estate market rather than the high-flying or other expensive alternatives in the market.
You brought up a good point about one that you were interested in. How do we decide what kind of REITs to get into? With stocks, we all know there are a lot of different resources to get information. How do you do that with REITs?
By investing in REITs, you don’t have to be a hands-on landlord. All you need to do is sit home and collect a dividend check. Click To TweetThere are a lot of ways. When I am learning about a REIT, I find what I’m interested in. Go to the company’s webpage. We’ll use the example I had, Mid-America Apartment Communities. You can Google Mid-America Apartment Communities Investor Relations. That’ll take you to their website where they have presentations. They’ve got press releases and filings. You can get to know the company a little bit, the history of the company and how many properties they own around the country. One of my favorite things and it’s easy to do is if you look at the long-term track record of the stock. The ticker for Mid-America is MAA. Look at how they performed over time. If you look at MAA, over the last twenty years, they’ve delivered a great return to investors. They’ve had the same leadership in place the entire time.
You can have confidence, “I’m getting a great return from this REIT. I know I have a management team there that’s been in place for over twenty years.” They’ve been through many economic cycles and yet the stock continues to outperform. It’s a good bet that Mid-America is probably going to continue to perform well in the future. My tip is always if you find a REIT that you’re interested in learning more about, go to the website, learn more about the REIT. See how that’s done over time for investors. If you have a REIT that’s been around for at least ten years and it’s performed well, it’s a good bet that REIT is going to continue to perform well for investors. Especially if you see it has raised its dividend over time, that’s another good indicator that it’s a well-managed REIT that’s raising the amount it’s paying to investors over time. You can use it as an opportunity to earn income and grow as the stock grows.
The other thing that happens is with the stock market, we’re hearing about stock all the time. It’s culturally something that people find interesting to talk about. You might say, “I’ve heard about this company called Google and they spun off ABC. I want to check that out or this weird company called Amazon.” You hear about this culturally out there in the world but we don’t hear about REIT. Where can we go to even start? I might be interested in a REIT to do research on, but how do I even find out what I should be looking at especially if there are thousands out there? It can be confusing.
One place to start, it’s a little boring but if you look up the National Association of REITs, Nareit, they have a website. It’s not the greatest website in the world but they have a lot of information about REITs on that website. You can go check it out. There’s a lot of great information. If you want to find out some great investment ideas in the REIT space, go to Millionacres.com. That’s our free website. We have dozens of articles we’re publishing every day, at least a few each day on REITs. We have several writers who focus full-time on finding great REIT ideas and stuff in a marketplace. They’re writing articles every day and putting reports out there.
The URL to go to would be Blissfulinvestor.com/millionacres.
Start there. Nareit is a great service out there. The links you put out for Millionacres, use that as well because I think you’ll find some great timely articles on REITs if you’re looking for ideas.
When you sent me the information, it says, “Real Estate Winners’ advisors identify a select group of real estate investments and REITs that are at the heart of some of the biggest demographic and technological trends shaping society today to generated returns of 15%, 18% and even 21% annually.” Could you talk a little bit about that?
If we think about real estate, it can seem quite boring. It’s rental properties, office buildings, retail, hospitality, hotels. Some interesting parts of the real estate market are seeing tremendous change. We’ve already talked about data centers and cell towers, for example. When we think about data usage and cloud computing, there’s real estate infrastructure behind those big trends that you can invest in. Industrial is an interesting one. When the average person thinks about industrial, they think of a factory, manufacturing plant or something like that.
In real estate, there are also some interesting facets of industrial if you think about warehouse space or logistics centers. Think about how much time people are spending at home and ordering online these days. There’s real estate out there that’s benefiting from that trend. The returns you threw out. We’ve identified companies with our Real Estate Winners service that we think are benefiting from these trends. We do our projections of those returns that we think investors can get with the dividend. Those are some of the returns we’re finding.
Real estate isn’t boring if you’re earning 15%, 18% or over 20%. That’s possible out there. You have to do your due diligence, get to know the company and the management a little bit, see how they’ve done over time, and if there are some tailwinds behind it. One of the reasons I like Mid-America and keep coming back to that name is because if you think about the country at large, there’s this big Sun Belt migration going on. A lot of people are moving to places like Florida, Texas, Arizona, away from the traditional Northeast or Coastal cities. I’m looking for companies that own a lot of real estate in these places where people are moving to. I like to say, “Real estate follows people. It follows capital.”
As people move to these places and income flows to these places, real estate is going to follow. A lot of these places are underserved in terms of how many apartments they have available or other types of properties. There are some big trends out there in real estate. In 2020, we accelerated a lot of them and we’re going to see those play out in 2021 and beyond. What we’re doing in Real Estate Winners is trying to identify those trends and put money behind them.
Real Estate Investment Trust: If you’re investing in REIT, you’re going to get exposure to hundreds of retail properties.
We’re going to be talking about that, ladies, more on EXTRA. He’s going to talk a little more in detail about those trends, where they’re going to be looking, and where we should probably look in 2021 to take advantage of the trends that already have some momentum. I’m excited to talk about that in EXTRA. Talk a little bit about the premium subscription service. There are Mogul and Real Estate Winners. You have a few different things. You started by talking about that. I want more information. I want to know all about it.
Under the Millionacres umbrella, we’ve got a service called Mogul. That was the first service we’ve launched. That is what we think about as our go-anywhere real estate service. We’re looking at REITs like we talked about. We’re looking at the stock market, but we’re also looking at private opportunities. There’s this whole world of crowdfunding now. Some of your readers might have heard of Fundrise, CrowdStreet or maybe some of the other big platforms out there. These platforms are coming out with private real estate deals all the time. We wanted to develop a service that would help investors navigate these platforms and figure out what the best deals are among those platforms. With those deals, you often have to be an accredited investor. You have to come to the table with a pretty high income or net worth.
It can be pretty prohibitive. That was one of the reasons why, in addition to Mogul, we launched Real Estate Winners. Real Estate Winners is geared toward the person who’s either new to investing, maybe new to the stock market or new to REITs, or wants more real estate exposure to their portfolio and wants to do it in a very cheap and cost-effective way. That’s the beauty of what we talked about as well. You don’t have to be that weekend landlord that my wife and I spent a lot of time at. With a small amount of money, you could get exposure to some great portfolios of real estate managed by professionals. All you need to do is sit home and collect a dividend check, hopefully. It’s great. That’s what we’re trying to do. Those are our two big services behind Millionacres.
Deidre talked a lot about Mogul and that was more of the crowdfunding piece. With Real Estate Winners, which is what your focus is, that’s more of this beginner investor, which is more for REITs and that sort of thing. Ladies, I want to tell you a little bit more about how to find out more about Millionacres. You know that I’m a huge fan. You can go to BlissfulInvestor.com/millionacres. There is a free gift there waiting for you. It’s the Ten Best Real Estate Investments. Go check it out at that website. Get your free gift and start studying. For me, when I talk about blissful investing, you know that a lot of it has to do with low stress and low-time commitment. That’s what bliss feels like. Everybody can define bliss how they want to. From my perspective, it is a hands-off, high-return thing that I focus on so much. This is another one of those ways to accomplish that. Go to that website and download the report. Matt, are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?
Always. Let’s do it.
Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
First and foremost, decide what kind of real estate investor you want to be. Do you want to be someone who’s hands-on, who likes to get their hands dirty, doesn’t mind dealing with tenants face-to-face and getting involved in real property, really challenging? If it has huge rewards, great. If you’re instead on the blissful side, you’re more of a hands-off and you want to identify some nice trends in the real estate market, decide on that. Maybe REITs or other options in the public markets are probably the places to go. That’s the first thing you do. Decide what kind of real estate investor you want to be. After that, you can find the right path to get started.
What is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?
You touched on it earlier, which is being able to hold on. If we think about the stock market and REITs, we get excited about buying, investing and putting money into work. We get dividend checks. It feels great. What happens when volatility or the inevitable downturn comes? Being able to steel yourself against that and accept the fact that now and then the stock market is going to drop like it did last March 2020. It’s going to drop 20%, 30%. It’s going to drop fast. How you act in those kinds of moments determines how much wealth you’re going to be able to accumulate over time. If you can hold through, even take advantage of some of those downturns, you’re going to come out great. If you’re someone who can’t, panics and sells at those moments, you’re going to do some real disservice to your portfolio and returns. Emotion, I don’t know if it’s a skill or what, but it’s the hardest thing to maintain to be an investor. If you’ve got the right emotion and you can steel against those downturns, you’re going to be very successful.
I often say on this show I love Warren Buffett’s quote, “If you can’t control your emotions, you can’t control your money.” That’s what we talk about with Blissful Investing is learning how to manage your emotions so you can handle those challenging times. Even when the market has dropped and you freaked out, that you don’t live in that place. You’re able to bring yourself back to the bliss equilibrium where you can make rational decisions rather than emotional decisions. What would you say is one daily practice that contributes to your success?
Finding time to go for a walk, get fresh air and do a little exercise. My brain is always so full because I’m always thinking about things, reading about companies or working on a project. I’ve got so many things dancing in my head all the time and the idea of being able to shut it all down for a little while and go for a walk. It’s easier these days with the pandemic because here I am at home with my wife. We have a two-year-old son and being able to go spend a little time with him and clear the head, and then come back to work. A lot of us are stressed out even in non-COVID times. The ability to disconnect for a while, get some fresh air, exercise the brain and the body a little bit and come back to work. If you can do that and fit that in for at least 30 minutes a day, it has made a huge difference to me. It will make a huge difference to your readers as well.
This has been awesome. Thank you for all that you’ve offered in this portion of the show, Matt.
Thanks, Moneeka.
Ladies, we’ve got more coming in EXTRA. We’re going to be talking about the potential growth of investment classes that expanded in 2020 and have continuing potential in 2021. If you are not subscribed to EXTRA but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com and you get the first seven days for free. You can take a look and see if you love it. If you don’t, no obligation at all. Thank you for joining us. 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 next time. Bye.
Important Links
- Mogul
- Millionacres
- Deidre Woollard – Past episode
- Real Estate Winners
- Mid-America Apartment Communities
- Nareit
- Blissfulinvestor.com/millionacres
- The Motley Fool
- Mid-America Apartment Communities Investor Relations
- Market Foolery
- Motley Fool Money
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
An Unclaimed Secret To Investing – Exploring The Power Of Your Body’s Inner Wisdom – With Tarnie Fulloon
How do you use the power of your body’s inner wisdom to make wise decisions when investing in real estate? To answer that, Moneeka brings in Tarnie Fulloon, the creator of Body Centered Medicine®. Tarnie’s system is all about listening to your body so you can find your inner wisdom – that feminine energy system that guides you to make wise decisions. Tarnie and Moneeka discuss how ignoring your body’s inner wisdom generates doubt and fear that cripples you. It makes you too afraid to buy a house for yourself, making you think, “Can I do this as a woman?” In this episode, Tarnie gives you tips on how you can find your body’s inner wisdom so you can make bold and wise decisions when investing in real estate. Listen to this episode and unlock your feminine energy!
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Listen to the podcast here
An Unclaimed Secret To Investing – Exploring The Power Of Your Body’s Inner Wisdom – With Tarnie Fulloon
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am excited to welcome back to our show, Tarnie Fulloon. Tarnie is the creator of Body Centered Medicine, a somatic healing practice that uncovers the messages the physical body is holding about how you think, what you feel, and who you are. Tarnie’s expertise lies in transforming pain and anxiety at a cellular level by uncovering the inner landscape for answers to body pain and symptoms, anxieties, and stuck places one feels in life. She is a healer, mentor, speaker, TEDx presenter, and budding author. She was also an Australian-trained sports medicine physiotherapist for the Australian Olympics 2020. She enjoys partnering with those committed to their healing on all levels, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, to empowering them to be grounded in their body, and lead from the inside out
Tarnie is a close friend of mine. We’ve known each other for years. I’ve had her on the show before. Some of you would know what she’s about, but I want to share with you that it’s been years when we met. I was making a transition in my life about what was going to be my next career. I was looking for my sole purpose and feminine leadership inside of me because I had been in such a male-dominated world that my feminine side had been lost in a lot of ways. Tarnie and I worked together. She brought back blissful Moneeka. That’s why I love Tarnie, her work, and I wanted to share her with you. Welcome back to the show.
Thank you, Moneeka. It’s lovely to be with you again.
Can you talk to us about this unclaimed secret, which is our body wisdom and why you think it’s unclaimed?
Thank you for having me on the show again. It’s fabulous to be with you. It’s unclaimed because most of us live in our heads. Most of us try and think things through. I call it body wisdom, but our inner wisdom lives in our body. We’ve been taught how to operate and think things through to feel it and know it’s challenging. We don’t trust that inner feeling. It’s unclaimed because most of us have self-doubt. we’re self-critical, we don’t listen, and we don’t know how to listen. We haven’t got the skills to listen deeply into the body. As you are doing life, it’s like, “I’ve got to think that through, and I’ve got to work that out now. What if I just took time and felt into it?” How you’ve experienced this, what’s in there, and what’s more deeply in it. It’s very much unclaimed for many of us.
Even those of us that have claimed it in the past sometimes, we lose track of it. That’s what had happened to me as I got off the path and needed someone to bring me back. You did that beautifully and strongly. Ladies, whether you feel like you already had that experience and need it to be more powerful or you don’t have that experience, it has such a big impact on how we make decisions in life and keeping things blissful because then you’re not pushing so hard, you’re more with the flow.
You’re staying open to the information that’s coming often. There’s always information coming, but we don’t keep that little inner radar open or we don’t trust it. It comes but we don’t grab it. We’re unaware of it at all. We are busily externalizing or looking out there. We don’t listen inside.
Could you tell us your story, how your journey began, and how it influenced what you’re doing now?
Inner Wisdom: We’re so busy externalizing and looking out there that we don’t listen to what’s inside of us.
I’m going to start with what I’m doing now. I created Body Centered Medicine. It’s been an evolution from starting out as a sports medicine physiotherapist, doing my Master’s in Psychology and somatic training. Body Centered Medicine is about listening or developing that relationship with our body so I can listen to it. The body reflects everything that’s going on. There’s always pain, anxiety, financial issues, decisions you have to make, relationship stuff, purpose, and work. It all is present in the body. I’ve been working for many years. I’ve been on this body centered exploration journey for many years, but it came out of my own health journey.
That started when I was a child. I had severe stomach aches and a lot of allergies. One thing led to another, I eventually ended up in my twenties in a doctor’s office, not excessively overweight but in a foggy brain and not feeling good. The work I did with starting to clean up my diet at that stage. That was the first step and then starting to explore. That started cleaning up and then I started to get much more interested in the physical body was reflecting.
People were starting to share with me emotional issues or deeper issues. I thought, “There’s something here,” so I then went on to do my Psychology training. It was my exploration of myself first, then starting to notice what was happening with my clients, and then took me to where I am. I’m deeply committed to people finding that in wisdom soul voice which is related to what you brought up, the feminine energy system that we want to activate. Most people that live in our heads don’t have access to that.
I know that you and your husband are successful real estate investors yourselves. I know that you do tap into your inner wisdom for that. Talk a little bit about how you utilize that. If you don’t utilize that or if you haven’t in the past or making investments, what might those consequences have been, give us a picture of what that looks like for your investing.
Don't beat yourself up. Be very kind to yourself. Click To TweetIt was in 2009 or 2008 when the market was depressed, my husband was looking at what real estate was doing. He was aware of it and was very interested. He was looking, it went months, and he was talking about it. One day, I got this feeling. I said, “Why did I come with you and start looking at these properties?” I live in Los Angeles and this was outside of LA. “Why don’t I come with you?” I did. He was talking about everything. There was a house that he wanted to pay $40,000.
The bank said no. They’re offering it at $42,000. The house is now worth $300,000. We didn’t buy that house because he was looking at flipping. I went, “What happens if we buy rental properties?” At that moment, there’s something that came into my thought. I was like, “What if we buy rental properties?” It shifted. We bought six properties quickly because we turned it around. We didn’t have to have a lot of money then. Things were like $80,000. You didn’t have to put a lot down. It was 5 or 6.
We sold one property and we ended up buying three more. One day, I went, “This isn’t feeling right for the direction we’re going where we’re looking. It feels like we’re investing too much. We’re going to be out of pocket.” He started expanding his look. We ended up in Atlanta. We did take a plane flight in November 2020. We quickly flew over there. My intuition was like, “Let’s go there, have a look, and see what we’ve got.” We bought three houses. That’s from following this inner radar. He can do the math. He’s good at working out the logistics, which is not me, but it’s my intuition, and he uses me.
I go into an area, I feel into the area, and get a sense of what it’s like. We bought one house while we were there, but we looked around the area, then we had to come home. We have to buy the other two online. That’s because I’d already felt out the area where I didn’t trust myself. I have to be very kind to myself to not beat myself up about this. My father died when I was young. I was twenty and he left me some money. I invested in real estate in Australia. I bought a house. At that time, it was $300,000. It was expensive but we had a little bit of cash.
Most of our friends didn’t have that cash because we were all young and newly married, but I did. We were 28 when we bought that house and then I got divorced. Instead of buying him out, we sold the house. Now I know I could have taken a loan and bought him out. The $300,000 is now worth $4.5 million. The same old house when we bought the one we were living in, we could have kept it and rented out. We didn’t know. We were thinking. We were following that very logical simple, sell one house, buy the next. We didn’t know about the possibility that you could expand your other options.
What’s true is that all of us make the best decisions that we can with the information that we have. What you’re trying to say here or what I’m getting is we have knowledge. We’re limited by that knowledge unless we have other friends in this industry, doing what we are doing, or wanting to do. We don’t get the advice that might help us to expand. I do think that even if you don’t have the knowledge, if you keep yourself open, in the flow, and connected to your feminine wisdom, you also become very attractive to resources. The conversations may have come to you in those times or not. Maybe that was the best thing for you and the universe was taking care of you.
We don’t know but it’s possible that if you were a little bit more open, a little bit more connected to your feminine, or trusted it. I’m speaking for myself too because I’ve made similar mistakes. I know that knowledge is one thing, but being open to the flow and to the attraction of the resources is also a big part of success. Women have so much more access to that than men because we’re naturally the yin, which is naturally an attractor. When we look at the yin and the yang, the yang is the hunter, and the yin is the attractor. If we allow ourselves to be our natural default selves and we listen, we are the attractor, and things flow and come to us.
When I feel into what you’re saying, I realized I was in a lot of fear. I was getting a divorce, but the fear sits on. That dampens it. The fear of, “Can I do this?” The self-doubt, “I’m not sure.” I realized my fear, “I can’t do that.” I also was going to buy a house myself once I got divorced. I was too afraid to buy a house for myself. It would have been $200,000 or $300,000. Those houses are now $1 million, $2 million, and $3 million. It’s not far from here. Fear stopped me as well. Can I do it as a woman? Am I confident enough?
There’s a love that dampens that feminine natural flow. Much of it is what a picture that society has painted for us that we buy into. For years, things are opening up dramatically, but even now, if you look at the numbers for investing in real estate or investing in general, women are only about 30% to 40% of the investors. Still, many more men invest. It’s because of societal support around that. Not just in our network but also what we talk about. What’s considered interesting. I remember I was having a conversation with a cousin of mine. She and her husband want to buy a house.
They didn’t have a good down payment. We were talking about options and here mom was with us. She says, “Could we talk about something interesting, please?” I have to generalize it but I was horrified like, “Your daughter wants to do something wonderful for herself and her family and that’s not interesting to you.” Some of it is not knowing, not feeling smart enough, and not wanting to engage in something that feels out of your reach or out of your thought process. It’s the way that we have conversations. You hear men in a coffee shop and they’ll be talking about what the stock market is doing or real estate. You have women in a coffee shop and they’ll be talking about the most recent book they read, which is fiction. Not bad but it’s indicative of our focus.
My mother was very clear, “Tarnie, a man is going to look after you. He needs to make the money. He’s the one that’s going to lead.” In my first marriage, I made the money and I was the provider. I provided the house but that’s from my dad. I had the income but I somehow didn’t do that next step. It’s interesting. I hadn’t done the work.
I want to be clear. Talking about books, makeup, and fun stuff is not a bad thing. It keeps us well-rounded, feminine, and it’s great. We need to develop both sides of us. Somehow, women are in this male-dominated world but we are not taking on those male interests. We’re taking on the female interests, but we’re not plugging into the flow of the feminine. We’ve got to go deeper on both sides.
We all need support. We’re not solo. How do I have a little more support around my divorce? I was over here when I got divorced, and everything was in Australia. It might’ve been a little bit different because we all need support. This is not a solo game. That’s why your show is fabulous in creating some support around you. That’s very feminine. My husband did all the figures but he needed my support for us to do the purchases. I needed him to do the figures so I could use my intuition.
Inner Wisdom: It’s very important to take time and slow down the mind. Take a deep breath and literally just find time to stay still.
Could you tell us three things that we can do to awaken, develop, and trust that feminine wisdom?
Slow Down The Mind
The very important one is to take time to slow down. It’s not just sitting down in the chair but slowing down the mind. The way to do that is to start to be aware of your breath in your body. Step number one is to slow down, take a breath, and find some still time. Some quiet. If we all took 30 seconds now to take a breath, sink into the chair, or wherever we are, stop what you’re doing for a minute, feel yourself, feel your breath in your body. As you do that, that starts awakening the sense of being in your body.
Deeper Listening
The second one is to develop deeper listening. As I take a moment to stop, I take my attention inside to a deeper listening inside. As I’m saying this, you might like to follow me. You take your awareness. A lot of us can take our awareness down into the heart but it’s dropping it down into the soft belly even to the lower belly. It’s sinking down or taking your breath and attention down into yourself. You want to develop that ability. What am I hearing? What am I listening inside to? As you develop that, when you get that gut reaction, contraction, or you get a little bit of a sharp jolt, you get a body signal or body reaction, you can feel the signal.
Building Takes Time
The third is building trust takes time. You don’t just trust something. Trust comes with time, practice, and positive reinforcement. By doing building trust every day, taking time to slow down, starting to feel and listen, and then getting a sense of, “Did I get a feeling about that? I could have said something else. I could have done something else. Did I get a feeling about that, and did I follow it?” You do a self-summary each day, or you might do something like, “What happened when I did follow that in guidance?” You’re looking for this inner guidance that lives inside the body.
It’s not just the emotional gut reaction because we can have that and that can belong to an inner child self or a protective self. There are all things that can happen in the body that are emotional. We’re talking about something a little bit deeper. They’re good indicators and they’ve got the information but where that inner wisdom is that deep knowing that lives through the core. They’re the three. Take time to slow down, develop the ability to slow down and breathe, be connected to your body, develop that sense of listening to the deepest self. Keep digging and, “What else is there? Is there something else?” Learning to trust that and doing a daily review of that.
A daily review will help you to feel that success and build the trust. I know that in EXTRA, we’re going to be talking about the actual elements of feminine wisdom and how to use them in real estate. Ladies, here are three tools that we can take forward. We’re going to talk more about how to utilize that feminine wisdom in real estate, specifically in EXTRA. I’m looking forward to that continued conversation, Tarnie.
This is not negating the masculine, the doing, and the thinking. Lots of us have got beautiful minds, well-developed, and we can think things through. I talk about my husband doing the figures but I’ve been in business for many years. I know how to hold things together. When we talk the unclaimed secret often is we’ve obviously got highly developed minds, beautiful hearts, and giving. This is about claiming another self that can help guide you, lead your life, and lead in investments in real estate.
Thank you so much for saying that because I’m hoping that the ladies didn’t get the impression that we’re negating, medializing, and minimizing the masculine energy. As women, we are lucky because we’ve been brought up in this masculine world. We’ve been taught how to do numbers, use our brains, be logical, reasonable, and all of those things. We’ve been taught all that. We have to live that way most of the time in the outside world but we also have the innate feminine.
Look at men, they have been taught to be masculine and their default is masculine. They have to struggle to get any access to the feminine. We get, by default and most is, masculine. We develop that, go to college, read, and do all of these things. We hear the conversations in the coffee shop but we also have this innate default feminine and all of those resources that we have access to that they don’t. If we can marry the two of them within us, we are powerful. Talk about limitless. Women are so powerful because we have access to so many resources easily.
Women should get together because we all need support. Click To TweetI do feel blessed because we have access to both. They do say women need women, and men need women.
I read something where they say, “Behind every successful man is a strong, good woman,” but also, behind every strong woman is a good woman. We need each other in the community.
That supports us in staying in this feminine conversation. We need our girlfriends. We can express emotions to them and that’s a way of accessing this deeper wisdom as well.
We’re going to head into my three rapid-fire questions. Before that, can you tell us a little bit about the free gift you’re offering my ladies?
It’s developing your unclaimed secret. You can get that at TarnieFulloon.com/ReGift.
Tell us about what it is.
It will be a meditation around developing your inner wisdom. It’ll be a meditation around being more body-centered. There’s also an offer for $100 off on either one of my workshops or a session with me. You get a gift certificate as well as you get this meditation instruction on how to develop this unclaimed secret.
Is there a way for them to connect with you or contact you?
You can either email me at [email protected]. On the website TarnieFulloon.com, there’s a little thing up on the right-hand corner on my banner that says Contact Me. You can either contact me through the website or send me a direct email.
If anything is not there, missing, or whatever, you can connect with Tarnie directly.
Call me up and I’m happy to get on the call with you for 10 or 15 minutes. Have a chat, see what you need, and how I might be able to support you. If there are some questions you have around this, I’ll be happy to talk to anyone.
Ladies, let Tarnie know that you came from me. It helps her marketing and everybody so we all stay in the community. Are you ready for three rapid-fire questions?
Yes.
Tell us one super tip on how to get started in real estate investing.
Do your homework. Make sure you find out the cost whether you can afford it. What are your parameters? What’s the maximum amount that you’re willing to spend? If you’re going to buy, rent, or flip, you’ve got to do the homework, the math, and make it financially viable. To me, that is step number one. You might like the area, do this, have all feelings, and ideas but if you don’t do the math and financial, that’s one.
What would you say is one strategy on being successful in real estate investing?
Allow yourself to do the logical stuff and then move into the feeling state like, “Is this something that I want to do? Do I want to invest in this area? Is this going to be a flip or a rental?” It’s listening to the mind but then dropping deeply in and checking in with the feeling body.
What would you say is one daily practice that you personally do that contributes to your success?
Meditate. Do that daily breath connection. I do a movement practice, but something that brings me back into the grounded sense of my being into my body and it allows me to connect to that. I connect to that in and knowing every day.
This conversation has been so lovely. Thank you so much.
Thank you. I always feel privileged to talk to you and be with you. I love our conversations, whether on or off the screen.
Ladies, thank you for joining Tarnie and me for this portion of the show. Stay tuned for EXTRA. We’re going to be talking about the elements of feminine wisdom and how to utilize those in your real estate investing. That’s going to be an exciting conversation. Stay tuned for that if you’re subscribed. If you’re not subscribed but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. It’s free for the first seven days. Check it out. You’ll get this EXTRA as many as you can download in seven days, and then you can either stay subscribed or not. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining me for this portion of the show. I hope you enjoyed it. I super 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 next time. Bye.
Important Links
- Body Centered Medicine
- Show – Tarnie’s previous episode
- TarnieFulloon.com/ReGift
- [email protected]
- Contact Me tab
- RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com
About Tarnie Fulloon
Tarnie Fulloon, transformational mentor, workshop facilitator, writer, and author, partners with professional women so they can make intimate relationships thrive.
For more than 25 years, Tarnie has mentored women and men to heal their intimate partnerships. She guides those who are ready to reignite their relationships by accessing the wisdom and intelligence of their bodies. Her work unleashes the magnificence of full embodiment so intimacy can flourish.
For those with physical pain, often caused by blocks in relational intimacy, Tarnie’s gentle guidance shifts them to deep relief, calm, confident vitality, and joyous aliveness. She shows women the secret of showing up for themselves first so they rekindle the sparks in their intimate partnerships.
Tarnie’s BodyFreedom™ Method helps nurture intimate relationships using her proven embodiment approach. It integrates her training as an Olympic level Sports Medicine Physiotherapist (Australia), her Master’s in Spiritual Psychology (USA), and her certificate in Movement Expression.
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.
Revive Your Dead Leads And Turn Your Trash Into Cash With Chris Craddock – Real Estate for Women
In real estate, sometimes all it takes is to look at the right places to discover the most exciting deals. For Chris Craddock, he took advantage of those dead leads that are mostly neglected and turned them into something profitable. Moneeka Sawyer talks to the mind behind the REI Revive program to discuss how to navigate such deals effectively and yield the most exciting results. Chris also talks about how important it is for an agent to think like an investor in order to perform well in the market and find the right partnerships that truly work. Finally, he shares the most helpful resources on the topic that he believes can up the game of every real estate professional today, especially when bringing back to life all those dying deals.
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Listen to the podcast here
Revive Your Dead Leads And Turn Your Trash Into Cash With Chris Craddock – Real Estate for Women
Real Estate Investing For Women
I am excited to welcome to the show Chris Craddock. He is a nationally certified life coach and has a Doctorate in leadership. He is the host of The Uncommon Real Estate Podcast, a realtor and entrepreneur who runs multiple successful businesses in the Washington DC metro area. His team, The Redux Group, is ranked number twenty in all of Keller Williams and sold over $160 million in volume in 2020. Chris has been married for many years and is the proud father of six beautiful children.
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Chris, how are you? Welcome to the show.
Thanks for bringing me here. I’m so excited to be with you and spend some time with you.
Persistence breaks resistance every day. Click To TweetI’m excited that we’re going to do it on your show too. This is going to be fun, Chris. Thank you. Let’s start by you sharing a little bit about your real estate story with my ladies.
Right out of college, I was a staff with an organization called Young Life. I loved it. It was amazing. I got paid $20,000 a year from Young Life, which was great but anybody in the DC area knows you cannot survive on $20,000 a year.
What is Young Life?
It’s a Christian ministry that works with high school kids. It was life-changing for me and I loved it. I was excited to be able to give back and be a part of it. I still volunteer now. It’s been awesome. With that said, I worked there and then, when my wife got pregnant, I knew I needed to do something to make a little bit more money. I went to the library because before Google, that’s the fountain of all information. I checked out every book they had on real estate investing. I knew nothing. I always say, “Imperfect action trumps perfect inaction any day of the week.” I read these books and did what they told me to do. That’s been a standard piece of my life. I did what they said and knocked on the doors of people in distress. In the next four months, I made twelve times what I made in a year. It was unreal and unbelievable.
What were you doing when you did that?
The Millionaire Real Estate Agent: It’s Not About the Money It’s About Being the Best You Can Be
I found people that were going to foreclosure. I knocked on the door and said, “I’d love to buy your house.” The crazy thing was before the crash, I was able to buy stuff with 5% down. I begged and borrowed to get the 5% and brought me in a business partner. The other cool thing was when I was in college, I worked for a landscaping business mowing lawns. At one point, I was frustrated because I felt like it was poorly run. I offered to buy the business. I bought the business and ended up selling the business right before I graduated and got married. I made a little bit of money on the sale of the business, $40,000.
I flipped the landscaping business over a year. For me, as a college kid, selling it for $40,000 was awesome. I had some money there as well that I was able to use to flip the houses and parlayed that into two more deals. I kept doing ministry. I loved ministry. I stopped flipping for whatever reason. As I had more kids and the money started to disappear faster, I got back to it. During that time, I’d gone back to school. I got a Doctorate in Leadership because I loved leading people. In ministry, I led a lot of people, wherever it was. I started flipping houses again and I read Gary Keller’s MRA book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent.
I saw how you could build a team in a serious amount of money. We looked at it again. I followed the directions, colored by numbers and started doing it. It was December 2014 when we launched that team. It took us a couple of years to grow some million. We got there through building that team, partnering with investors, being an investor myself, and all the other pieces there. That’s a convoluted way to get to where we are now.
It sounds like there’s a big focus on you building a team that then partner with investors. I recommend what most other real estate gurus will not recommend, which is work with an agent. You can buy things off MLS or if you have an agent that has access to off-market deals or whatever. In my business and in many years that I’ve been investing in real estate, my biggest asset has been my real estate agent. Without him, I would not be where I am now. I always recommend working with an agent. Nobody else does that. It sounds like you were doing it. Talk to me a little bit more about what you guys do, why you recommend that, how it works and any advice around that.
As a residential agent that also does investment work, I remember in year 2 to year 3, I did $40 million in volume one year, and then I worked so much harder. I clawed, scraped and got to $43 million that next year. I remember hearing from somebody. His story was the same. Right after that $40 million marks, he got caught. They still went ahead but worked so much harder and got less results. We said, “Here’s the deal, as the leader of the team, as that rainmaker, what you’ve got to do is stop working hard to get one more deal and figure out how you can bring in 5 or 10 more deals.”
I started thinking to myself, I’m like, “What can I do? Where are more deals?” I’m like, “Investors.” The first thing I did was go to other people that are flipping houses saying, “I’ll help you find deals.” You find one person. You help find five flips a year. You help them buy. You help them sell that ten transactions. If you find five people that are doing that, then you’re doing a massive amount of transactions. Let’s be honest, flipping houses, when you buy them and take them down, that’s a cash-intensive business, labor-intensive, and all the other stuff. You could make a lot of money without the liability and without all of the other issues coming with it. You do some of the nice ones and then sell the rest. Frankly, you have to build a massive team in order to do all of them.
Anybody that goes in business has to hit four criteria: happy, hungry, humble, and smart. Click To TweetI started working with those investors and then I thought, “Who else has lots of leads?” There was a massive wholesaling organization in my market. I went to them and said, “What do you guys do with the leads that you don’t buy, fix and flip, and what do you do with the leads that you don’t wholesale?” They said, “We give them to an agent. We tried all these things. We tried to start in a brokerage. We’ve given them this agent. We gave her 1,000 leads in the last 8 months, and she’s closed like six of them. It’s not a big piece of our business. It’s not worth it.”
I said, “Why don’t you give me a shot?” They’re like, “We tried it. We’re going to keep the main thing, the main thing,” which I respect. Keeping the main thing the main thing is a good point, but what I said to him, “Have you ever looked at what Jim Collins says as the “Genius of the AND” in the Good to Great You’re already doing this. You’re already paying for these leads. They’re just dying on a vine. Why don’t you give me a crack at it? I kept going back and kept saying, “We’re good.” One of the things I’ve learned in life is persistence breaks resistance every day.
Finally, they gave me 150 leads and they said, “Here you go.” I called them all, and 70 of them were already listed or sold to an investor, 30 of them were out of my area, then I had 40 leads left. I thought, “If this other girl got six deals with 1,000 leads, I’m going to need to get six deals with these.” I did everything I could. I put on the best sales that I could ever muster. Somehow, I got six listings out of those other 40 leads. I called up the main guy running their operations. I told him and he’s like, “You got six deals out of that? I scraped up some leads that were five years old because you wouldn’t leave me alone and get you to stop bugging me. I gave you a bunch of old leads, and you got as many deals. I want you to come in. Let’s pull this thing up.”
Since then, we’ve started building it up. I have a class that I teach on this. We see everybody like brand new investors. I have a wholesaler who had five months of working the wholesale. He didn’t wholesale a deal and within 45 days of doing this, he had $10,000 in referral fees coming back to him. I see that and then you see another group that has a lot of business going on. A big organization where we’re seeing them bringing in over $60,000 a month for leads that they’ve already been paying for. Three-quarters of $1 million a year, what they were already paying for that was lying dead in their database somewhere because they couldn’t flip or wholesale it. It’s life-changing for brand new investors that have a massive organization going on.
There are people that come onto my show that can match my energy. I’m completely in awe.
Dead Leads: Stop working hard to get one more deal and figure out how you can bring in 5 or 10 more deals.
Brendon Burchard says that, “The high-performers create energy.”
Why do you think other real estate agents haven’t already worked this market? Why are they not doing the partnership with the investor’s thing?
Agents and investors should go hand-in-hand, but the reality is it’s these two separate worlds where investors think agents are idiots. Let’s be honest, a lot of them are. A lot of agents feel like these investors are mavericks that do whatever they want and don’t understand the rules of the game. Frankly, some of them are. The bottom line is you go anywhere. When I was doing ministry, whenever I do premarital counseling, one of the first things I had to say to people is, “We’ve all got baggage. We’ve all got our own crazy. Can you handle this other person’s personal brand of crazy because we’ve all got it?”
You find the people that we’re going to partner with. They’re all going to have their own baggage and crazy. It’s like, “Can you handle the crazy that this person has?” That’s the way it is. Most people don’t. To me, that’s the crazy part. They’re leaving so much money on the table. Here’s the other thing. Most agents are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and that doesn’t work because when somebody is called an investor and wants to sell to an investor, you can’t send an agent out there and be like, “Do you want to talk to an agent?” Every single person knows 5,000 agents. Why are they going to talk to this agent? Their uncle is a hairdresser and an agent. Everybody is.
The agent has to also understand that these people called an investor for a reason and they don’t want to talk to some agent that’s going to walk out, break it, and open the listing presentation because that doesn’t work. That’s why across the country, all these investors tell me before we start a coaching program, “I tried that. It doesn’t work.” It doesn’t work when you send an agent that doesn’t understand the psychology of a person that is willing to call an investor.
Anybody that calls an investor instead of an agent wants certainty. Click To TweetFrom the investor side, what do you think an investor should ask or look for in an agent that’s going to be investor-friendly?
There are a couple of things. One, if you’re going to work on a program like this, anybody that you ever go in business with has to hit four criteria, happy, hungry, humble and smart. They need to be happy. If they’re not happy, wherever you go, there you are. If you see somebody that’s complaining about splits, commissions, referrals or anything like that, it’s a matter of time before they’re going to complain about you. You want somebody that’s genuinely happy and hungry. If you rip open their chest, they need to have a heart of a lion. If you get somebody that you say no, and they’re like, “It probably wasn’t a good one anyway.” That’s not who you want. You want somebody that is so hungry that you close the door and they’re climbing the window.
Somebody that won’t stop like you call the investor and say, “Send me the leads.” You bug them so much in a nice way that they still like you enough to not tell you, “Stick it somewhere.” They don’t give you 150 old dead leads just to leave them alone. You need to have somebody that’s persistently passionate and hungry, wants to win, humble, willing to sit at other people’s feet, willing to color by numbers, doesn’t think they’ve all got it figured out. If you meet somebody that’s got it figured out, introduced me to that person because I’ve yet to meet that person, and then smart.
It’s not just somebody that gets into Harvard-MIT. It’s somebody that understands EQ as well, emotional intelligence, understands how to read somebody, and how to be personable with somebody. That’s what you’re looking for in an agent. I’m reading a book called Who Not How. It is a business partnership. If you pick the right person to partner with, all the other pieces can be figured out. If you don’t pick the right person, you can give them all the information in the world, and they’re still going to squat on it and waste your whole lot of time and money.
I talk a lot about finding real estate agents that are investors themselves because that’s a big factor too. You want to be in the mind of an investor to serve an investor. You don’t want to be somebody who’s away from it. These are great tips. Thank you so much for that. Tell me about your REI Revive program and how can we find out more about it?
Dead Leads: If you don’t pick the right person to work with, you can give them all the information in the world and still squat on it.
My website, ChrisCraddock.com. You can also follow me on Instagram @CraddRock. I usually try to respond to any direct messages or DMs on Instagram. REI Revive is teaching people how to do what we’ve been doing. We’ve seen massive success. You’ve got to learn how to pick the right agent and how to hand off the leads because most people use the wrong script in handing off the leads. In the second part, you also need to learn how to sort your database because a lot of times, people are worried about cannibalizing their own leads, but they don’t realize that the reality is you had one lead followed up with for two years, but you had about 60 that would have closed with an agent and you would have made a whole heck of a lot more money.
The problem is oftentimes, emotionally, we remember that one deal where if we step back and look at it analytically, we’ll realize that we’re leaving a lot of money on the table for leads that are going to sell with somebody that might as well get paid for it. We teach that. The first half is teaching the investor. The second half is after we’ve taught the investor how to hand off everything and how to pick the right agent, we teach the agent how to close. That’s the whole thing. Agents think they know how to close, but the reality is they do their old tired listing presentation and it doesn’t work. You need to speak to an investor. Somebody that’s called an investor needs to be spoken to differently than somebody that calls a real estate agent.
Chris and I are talking about possibly creating some extra cool stuff for my ladies. Make sure that when you connect with him, you let him know you came from this show so that if we have worked something out that you can take advantage of that. Things are constantly evolving in the world and with our relationships. If you connect with anybody from this show, make sure they know you came from me, and who knows? You might get some fun surprises. ChrisCraddock.com and when you connect with him, say you came from Real Estate Investing For Women with Moneeka. We’ll see where that goes. What I love is that you first talk to and train the investor, and then you help to train the investor’s agent, which is like magic.
People that make the most money are those that solve other people's problems. Click To TweetThat’s the whole thing. You can train one but not the other and it doesn’t work. It requires the investor to understand how to put together their system so that you do it and scale it. It requires the agent to follow the system once they’re in front of the people, everything from the precall before you get there. Even once you’re in front of the people, how to find out why they’re there. I’ll give a sneak peek of this. Anybody that calls an investor instead of an agent wants certainty. There are 1 of 5 reasons they do it. One, they want to avoid a commission. Two, they want to sell fast. Three, maybe they’re a hoarder and they don’t want their neighbors to see pictures or see the sign in the yard or anything else. Four, they feel like their house is too much of a mess to put on the MLS. Five, they don’t want people coming through their house at all hours.
If you can answer those objections, you can sell to anybody. It’s like a doctor. I played rugby in college and destroyed both of my shoulders. Every once in a while, I would go in and get my shoulders checked because I jack them up again. The doctor will do all of these things to find the pain, then once he finds the pain, he does this thing called a crank test where he comes around like this and it’s painful. When he hears me scream, he does it again. He presses the pain point and then he presses it again. He says, “Your shoulder is jacked up again. Here’s your prescription. I want you to do physical therapy. See the orthopedist.” It’s the same thing for us. The agent goes to the seller and finds out what their pain point is. You press it and then you press it again. You then say, “Here’s my prescription. Here’s how I can solve the pain point.” The people that make the most money are the people that solve other people’s problems.
Ladies, connect with Chris. I have never met anybody who will train the investor and then train the investor’s agent. If I’m trained and then I have to go train my agent, I’m still a beginner. I can train a little bit certainly but I train a lot better now after many years when I did my first deal. To be able to do both of those things, that’s magic.
I’m excited about seeing the results that we’ve had with many people from beginners to seasoned vets that have massive businesses. It’s been fun and I love it. For me, having a Doctorate in Leadership, it took a lot to go back and get that done, but I’ve loved helping people. Zig Ziglar says, “You can have everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want in life.” What I’ve found is good leadership is helping people get what they want. That’s the fun part about opening this program and helping people understand like, “You’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars in leads and CRM that you don’t realize are there.”
There’s another story that I love to share. These sawmills were milling wood but they were hardly making a profit at all, which I know a lot of investors are working their butts off, but they’re not making that much money. They’re like, “It’s around the corner.” The crazy thing is somebody got the idea with these sawmills. They’re like, “What if we were to repurpose the byproduct? What if we were to take the sawdust and be able to create candles, burn it, particleboard, all these other things you could do with sawdust?” They started selling the sawdust. They were sometimes making more money on the byproduct than they were on the wood they were milling. The same thing is true here. People are paying tens of thousands of dollars for leads but then the ones that they’re not able to fix and flip, wholesale, creative finance, or whatever they’re doing, they’re throwing it away. They’re leaving it in the CRM and they don’t realize they’re leaving mountains of cash in their CRM.
Do you recommend where people can find these leads? Let’s say they’re beginners. They don’t have the leads that they need to revive. They just need leads. Do you have resources to help people get leads and stuff too?
There are many different places. DM me and I’ll set you up with some classes. I know you’ve got a couple of questions for me that we’re going to jump into as far as some rapid-fire things, but one of them is find people that are going to help you. Find mentors because there’s no reason for you to reinvent the wheel. Find people that know the path and then followed their path. I’ve said this over and over to color by numbers. If you DM me, I’ll give you the names of some of the companies where you can find data and skip trace numbers, but here’s the easiest one. You either have money or you have time. You got to be able to invest one or the other.
If you don’t have either then don’t get into this business because you’re not going to succeed. Have time. We’ve all got 24 hours. When I got my real estate license to start the licensing piece, I got licensed in a week. I chose not to sleep that week. I stayed up late and decided to pay that price. I didn’t watch any Netflix and didn’t do anything. I did my normal job and then stayed up late and knocked out the other stuff. The bottom line is the fact that you don’t have any time is a myth. I’ll say one last thing on this. I ran a marathon a few years back. When I was training and we would have excuses why we wouldn’t train. At that time, George W. Bush was the president. He would run 5 miles every day. At some point, we were like, “If he is making the time to run 5 miles every day and he’s the president, my job is a lot less important than his. If he can figure it out, I can figure it out.”
The same thing is true for you. You decide your priorities. It’s not the lack of resources. It’s the lack of resourcefulness. A long way around, the question that you asked me originally is if you don’t have any money, it’s called driving for dollars. You drive around. You look for the ugliest houses you can find, and then you take a ping, put it in your phone, and put the address. You get 50 to 100 of those houses and then you go to any skip tracing program. You go into the data program. If you text me or DM me, I’ll give you the names of some of them that I recommend. If you go into a program, they’ll give you cell phone numbers, email addresses, everything for the people that live there. Some of them will be good, but then you can spend the next day. You take 1 or 2 hours, and you call through everybody. Your script is simple, “Are you looking to sell your house? If you’ve got the right price for it, I’d like to buy your house.” You offer to buy their house. They’ll say, “What do you want to sell for?”
Here’s another tip. There’s a book called Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss. It’s the best book on negotiating out there, in my opinion. One of the things he talks about is anchoring. You want them to give you the price. You say, “I’m interested in your neighborhood. I’m looking to see what you’d be willing to sell for. Do you have a number in mind that if me or a business partner of mine were able to buy your house that you’d be comfortable selling?” You asked in different ways until they give you a number. You don’t want to give them the number. You want them to give you the number. When they say yes, that’s great.
You get the number. You say, “Let me do my research.” Do your research, see if you can do it, you negotiate the number down, then you got your first house. Some of these other programs will teach you how to wholesale it or fix and flip, creative finance, and all the other stuff. There’s probably more than we can get into in this episode. That’s the easiest way to and the most cost-effective way to get started and find your first deal.
What do you do with them? In your program, what you focus on is building those relationships, but then you lead people to the next place, which is what they are going to do with those houses once they get them. There are a million things you can do with these houses once you’ve got one in a contract.
Dead Leads: If you don’t have either time or money, don’t get into this business because you’re not going to succeed.
There’s a number of programs that I recommend that will teach you how to get those deals. DM me on Instagram and I’ll be happy to put you in touch with some people, then we can go from there. They’ll teach you how to bring in the deals. Let’s say you’re driving for dollars and somebody says, “I’ll sell my house for X dollars,” but you look at it and like, “I can’t buy or fix and flip this. My program teaches you how to partner with an agent who can go list it and get a commission there.
There are some rules about how agents can pay commissions and referral fees. You have to figure that out and everything else. Essentially, if you find somebody that’s willing to sell but they’re not willing to sell for $0.65 or $0.75 on a dollar, then there are other ways to monetize that. Most people aren’t doing that. That’s the whole thing. You got to figure out how you want to make money. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. You find your niche, you dive in and you get it done. I know you have a unique niche that you’re in. If everybody can find their niche, go all in and make it happen, you can make a lot of money.
Chris, remind everybody how they can reach you.
ChrisCraddock.com is the website. On Instagram @CraddRock. I try to respond to every DM. My business page on Facebook is @ChrisCraddock.
Anytime you connect with Chris, make sure you let him know you came from me. Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?
Let’s do it.
Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.
Find somebody that’s doing it well. Spend money, buy them a nice lunch and offer to buy them. I know we’re in the COVID world, so it’s harder to get together. If you want to shorten your learning curve, you find some people that are good and do it. If they’re not in your market and you can’t find them, find somebody you listened to in a podcast, reach out to them and ask their advice. People are so much more generous than you think they are with their time. I’m going to give 1.5 tips. Buy the coaching products. Everybody’s like, “I can find this online.” You can find all of these things online, but you want to find one that’s good, that’s going to walk you step-by-step how to get your first deal. Spend the money. It’s the best money you’ll ever spend if you do it.
Go spend the money and then sit on it. What is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?
There are two pieces, activity and skill. You don’t even have to be that good if you talk to enough people. You don’t want to any secret about it. An awful salesperson who talks to 1,000 people a day is going to outperform a great salesperson that talks to three people a day. My whole thing is activity and skill. Figure out how to talk to more people. At first, if you have no money, you do it by driving for dollars and you call. As you earn money, then you can do more marketing where you’re sending out direct mail, voicemail drops, or all of the other options that you have to reach out to people. Talk to enough people and then skill up. The way you skill up is every single day, you should never have a day that goes by where you’re not doing at least 30 minutes of personal development.
You’re reading, listening to podcasts, listening to audible books, whatever it is. I recommend an hour. I’d usually do about at least an hour a day. If you don’t have that, your business will grow and your life will go to the extent you grow. If you want to grow, you need to bring stuff in to change your mindset and to be able to think bigger. Here’s the other side. I talked about meeting mentors. I have more mentors in my life that I’m never ever met because I’ve read and listened to everything they’ve ever said. Find those people and bring them into your life.
If everybody can find their niche, go all in and make it happen. You can definitely make a lot of money. Click To TweetWhat is one daily practice that contributes to your success, other than reading and personal development? That was a great tip and I love that one.
Here’s the last piece, many of us had these yearly goals that we never hit. I always call this dialing it back to your irreducible minimums. If you want to win the year, you’ve got to win your quarter. If you want to win your quarter, you got to win your month. If you want to win your month, you got to win your week. If you want to win your week, you got to win your day. If you want to win your day, you’ve got to win your morning. Most people wake up in the mornings and play defense. They figure out, “What’s coming at me?” Handle that.
There’s a book called The ONE Thing. The way they define that is what is one thing that if I do this, all other things will become easier or unnecessary. If you figure out what your one thing is that you need to do that day that will move a rock, so that you win your day, so that every single day you do that one thing in the morning because if you get it later in the day, all just gets pushed to later. Do it in the morning. Win your morning, which wins your day, week, month, quarter and year.
I wrote a book many years ago called Choose Bliss. One of the very first after the intro is all about the morning routine. We all have a morning routine but most of us don’t have a morning routine that serves our day. We wake up playing defense instead of playing offense. If you plan it, you do it intentionally, and now you’ve set yourself up for what I call bliss, what you might call success, you’re setting yourself up to win the day. I love that. Thank you for that.
This has been awesome.
Chris, thank you so much for joining me on this show.
Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.
Ladies, thank you for joining Chris and me on the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life you heart most deeply desires.
Important Links
- The Uncommon Real Estate Podcast
- The Redux Group
- The Millionaire Real Estate Agent
- Good to Great
- Who Not How
- REI Revive
- ChrisCraddock.com
- @CraddRock – Instagram
- Never Split The Difference
- @ChrisCraddock – Facebook
- The ONE Thing
- Choose Bliss
About Chris Craddock
Chris Craddock, the Redux Group Team Leader, is a Northern Virginia native and father of six who has been successfully investing in real estate for over a decade.
He is a licensed Realtor® in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. A Nationally Certified Life Coach, Chris is passionate about helping others achieve financial and personal success.
He is known for his relentless pursuit of the best deals for his clients.
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Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet. She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market. Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.
While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.
She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”
Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod, and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.