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Growing A Prosperity Mindset: Overcoming Money Blocks Towards A Prosperous Life With Lillian Bajor

 

Are you earning but only to some extent and not as much as you should be? Are you stressed due to money concerns? In this episode, Moneeka Sawyer welcomes Lillian Bajor, Owner of Prosperity Coaching and Financial Literacy programs, to dive deep into our Prosperity Mindset, helping us find alignment in our prosperity consciousness to thrive and overcome money challenges. They discuss how the messaging we receive can limit us; therefore, we need to train our minds with affirmations, so we can develop prosperous thoughts and grow our mindset. Lillian then discusses the roles of parents in engaging children with financial literacy, building within them a strong financial foundation as they grow up. Immerse yourself in this conversation and learn more tips on how to change our relationship with money as well as the value of learning about real estate. Open your prosperity mindset today!

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Growing A Prosperity Mindset: Overcoming Money Blocks Towards A Prosperous Life With Lillian Bajor

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show our guest Lillian Bajor. She is a personal finance and life coach, minister, and Owner of Prosperity Coaching & Financial Literacy programs. Blending spirituality and money, she helps people overcome their money challenges, blocks, or misconceptions, and open up to prosperity consciousness so they can thrive.

Her comprehensive coaching systems and style stem from overcoming her own financial challenges, plus a strong foundation in business, a solid financial education, as well as in-depth studies and finance through psychology, metaphysics, resilience modalities, body intelligence, and the healing arts. Her company serves the important need for financial literacy. Its mission is to educate and empower women and men with financial confidence and a strong financial foundation. Lillian, thank you for coming to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here, Moneeka.

What’s so funny is I’ve had so many conversations with my audience. Frequently, the conversation of spirituality will come up. There seems to be a pull. People seem to feel like they’re against each other. My spirituality has to be in this box. My money has to be in this box. Money can’t contaminate spirituality, which is so fascinating because as Indians, we believe the opposite. Everything in our world is a part of our spirituality, including our wealth or our money or whatever. I find it fascinating how people here tend to rip those two pieces apart. I think both of them are such a big part of who we are. I love that you combined them also. That’s wonderful.

I’m going to be honest with you. It wasn’t intentional. It was the spirit. I was a minister at the time and I decided that I need to get the whole money conversation because I learned a lot about business but not about money. I was determined to master it because I kept having challenges and seeing challenges in my family. I was so grounded spiritually that when I started working with money, they got married because they too had a hard time with money. I was like, “This is too dry. It’s too boring.” It wasn’t when I was able to come into my spirituality and let that be my come from.

I also love that you talked about you had a lot of business expertise but not a lot of money expertise. I think that is going to be a key piece of this conversation because this is what I find out there. I coached CEOs, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs for 15 to 20 years. One of those things that came up consistently is business and money are not the same things.

Just because you have a brilliant business mind and you make a lot of money, does not mean that you understand money. That’s why many people lose and gain money so fast in their businesses because they love building a business but they don’t understand how money works. It’s fantastic that you understand that those are two separate things and that you got educated on both of those.

Yes. I grew up in a family business. I’ve been working in the family business since I was fourteen after school but it was pleasurable. It was normal and natural. It wasn’t even a chore or anything. It was something me and my sisters did. It was fun. We would hang out. We worked and as I got older, I started working. My father had restaurants. He came to California and he had a wholesale stationery business.

I grew up within the family business and my father was an open book and a very savvy businessman but money was his thing. I ran a whole department, the advertising specialty department of the company. It was a special division, but the money was something he kept his eye on all the time. He didn’t feel at the time that women needed to earn or to know about money. He was from that generation. He didn’t give me the knowledge because he always came from the mindset that women are taken care of. It was something that I later realized that I want this education. I have all this business knowledge, but when it came to money, I didn’t manage my money well. I could spend it but I didn’t manage my money well. I was not financially literate.

That’s a big deal, learning how money works and how to utilize it in the best way in your life. Most people don’t get educated on that, men or women, but less so women than men.

Things are changing now and I’m very grateful and happy about it. I’m sure lots of parents are educating their children and letting them be aware of the whole money conversation. In my generation in the ’50s, women didn’t even work. That was before me, so we’ve come a long way. I was lucky that we had a family business where I received all my business knowledge, but money was a different story back then.

I was born in the ’60s. It was still not something that women were taught at all. I was the oldest of three sisters and I was still very interested in it. I learned a lot from my dad. I would help him write checks and we would talk about bills, taxes, and all of those things that no child wants to learn. Somehow I was interested. It was a way for me to spend time with dad.

However, the other two girls had no knowledge at all. Now, as we’re grown-up women, both my sisters are very smart women, but I’m much more financially adept than the other two because they weren’t interested in the conversation. Some of it is the environment and some of it is an interest. For those ladies that have young children and you want them to be financially literate, it’s important for you to engage them in the conversation because as they grow up, they become more financially literate.

This is another thing that happens. People are like, “You don’t want kids to be thinking about money all the time. Money is not important. Let them be children.” All of those things are true except that money is not important. The reality of life is no money equals homelessness, illness, and all of those other things. Money is a reality in the way that we live. Educating our children, if you want to make it fun or cute or whatever, that’s great. You need to engage them in that conversation because you don’t want to just throw them out into the real world and then have them figure it out. You would like to have them have some foundation around that.

I want to bring up the mindset of people that would think you don’t want children to think about money. Why not? Why would money be that subject that you would put it in a place where it’s like, “Children shouldn’t be exposed to money? Money is not a burden.

It’s not a bad thing.

You teach them to brush their teeth. You teach hygiene, nutrition, exercise, and education. Money is just another part of life. To bring it out of that place where it’s taboo, “Don’t burden children.” That’s what I’m hearing when they say children shouldn’t need to know about money. It’s a part of life.

Children should know about money. Money is not a burden. It is just another part of life. Click To Tweet

I often will give my nephew, my youngest sister’s son, candy money for his birthday. His favorite thing in the whole world is candy. I give him candy money and then we take the candy money, whether it’s $10 or $20, and we go to the candy store. We tell him, “You got this much to spend so you need to figure out what you would like.”

He might spend two hours at the candy store trying to figure out, “I could get this. That’s cool or I could get these three items, they’ll fill my basket more,” or whatever. He’s learning about creating priorities for what’s important to him. He’s learning Math. He adds up every single scent in his head. He’s amazing at Mathematics because of this. He reads all the descriptions on the back so he knows what he’s getting. It’s helping his reading.

He’s learning about money inadvertently. This game has turned into this thing that helped him in school, in Math, reading, and prioritizing when he is trying to do his homework, “What do I prioritize? What’s more important?” If I want to do this game or play the piano, which one is more important? It’s interesting the way that he took a money conversation and turned it into a life-learning lesson. I’m amazingly impressed with that, and the way that it’s changed his outlook on life because his very playful. There’s nothing heavy or burdensome about it, but he’s learning about all of it at the same time.

I think it’s brilliant. It’s learning buying decisions at the age of eight without even knowing that you’re learning something that’s so valuable and important for his life.

Let’s start here by defining prosperity the way that you see it.

This came to me. The prosperity consciousness is being in harmony with the flow of life and being in harmony with our true self. When we’re spiritually aligned, we’re aligned with prosperity. That is the way the universe is. I know you know this. We live in a spiritual universe. We’re not taught that, but we do live in a spiritual universe. Everything is in harmony and balance.

The prosperity consciousness is being in harmony with the flow of life and being in harmony with our true self. When we’re spiritually aligned, we’re aligned with prosperity. Click To Tweet

It’s a perfect ecosystem. We messed with it. We messed it up. We’re experiencing the results of that like oil spills, rainforests, the ozone layer, and all the climate issues we’re having. Before all that, I’m sure when you were young and certainly when I was, things were very much in a lot more harmony and they still are. As humans and spiritual connecting spiritually, it’s being in this consciousness of knowing that you’re taken care of.

It does come from within and I’m speaking of intuition, inspiration, meeting the right people, and being in the right place at the right time, and is lined up with that. That is that prosperity consciousness where your life is in balance and there is fulfillment because there’s alignment to our true nature. We’re being guided from there, and the world is not set up like that because we go to school and everybody was in a cookie-cutter. You’re going to go through life and this is the way it is. Connecting to our natural gifts and talents wasn’t a part of it, but when we move into that consciousness of being inwardly aligned, we’re taken care of and we’re aligned with prosperity.

Talk to me about the prosperity mindset. That’s what prosperity looks like but talk to me about the mindset.

There’s more than one layer. A prosperity mindset is training the mind to think prosperous thoughts. A lot of the languaging and a lot of the messages are limiting us. You can’t do that or you don’t do this. It’s all this language and all this direction of how to live our lives and what to do. A lot of times, we’re being limited but our minds can be trained through affirmations. That’s one step to growing a prosperity mindset.

Another big piece is growth and constantly educating and growing. In our experiences, if we have succeeded in life but we’ve done something good and we’ve had a great day, to give you that and to anchor in what was great about that, and to align with that. How I moved through that day. How I created that. How I participated in that. How did I make it happen? Even though there may have been some bumps and roadblocks in the way that I moved through them, I got to where I needed to be.

That’s part of the prosperity mindset. Another big piece is when there’s a failure and some are bigger than others. I’ve had my fair share when it came to money and that’s why I’m doing the work I do. I was in a lawsuit and I had a bankruptcy. I had all kinds of things. To use those experiences, which can be so difficult to work through and to grow through, but to look at the gain. What is it that I didn’t understand? What did I need to learn? How can I use it for my upliftment? What are the treasures here? I’m big on that.

When I was in school, they called it a golden rung in the ladder and we’re climbing the ladder. It’s like getting a Harvard education. You go to school and you learn all this knowledge, but when you’re out there in the streets, you’re doing it, you’re taking these risks, and it doesn’t work out, then instead of doing a launch and it did not succeed, and then, “I’m never going to do that again.” I did a launch. I didn’t succeed. What did I learn? What can I do differently? Start going into that. That is a prosperity mindset because it’s expanding and it’s looking for upliftment and gain rather than judging or contracting.

What do you think it is that stands in people’s way of experiencing prosperity? I know this idea of contraction is a big piece of that. What causes that?

It’s fear of the unknown. For a lot of people, it stops them and staying in their comfort zone. My life was one where I was kicked out of my comfort zone because of my finance. A lot of it was financial challenges, and that was the impetus of what is pushing me to constantly do the work I’m doing around financial literacy because I’m learning and growing. I am understanding that I need to master this.

For whatever reason, I need to get it. I have business skills. I have a lot and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had a lot of challenges for a reason. My father had a lot of challenges but it’s that fear and thinking that our mind is finite. It’s like a computer. Many of us know this. Whatever you put into a computer is what you’re going to get out. If you need it to put a certain key or a certain letter in there, if you need it to code it a certain way, you are not going to get in there if you don’t have the password.

Think about that. We need to program our minds. The information we’re getting from our minds is what we’ve learned, what we’ve seen, and the messages we’ve received. It’s been from childhood. We don’t even remember half of them. Some of them are inherited beliefs. I’m not going to say it’s junk, but it’s a lot of material that probably doesn’t serve many of us.

This fear comes in. We don’t even know where it’s from, but it contracts us and stops us from experiencing prosperity. The example I would like to share is my father. He was an incredibly savvy businessman. He came to this country in 1956. He did not speak the language. He spoke Hungarian. My mother and my two older sisters were babies.

He had the courage and the bravery to be like, “I’m going to America.” It was because there was communism and all kinds of things in his country. He was a man that wanted to make a lot of money and he felt very limited. They came to America and he became a multimillionaire. In 1980, at that point, he was incredibly wealthy. He invested in real estate and I don’t know the reason behind that. I don’t recall what that was but I worked with him at the time. There was a brand new building that was built in Englewood on Ivy Street.

The warehouse is where his business was and where I worked. There was another piece of building on the lot. He rented it to Milne Truck Lines. It was quite a large block. He owned that. He owned a property in Palm Springs on Camino Real. It was a gorgeous home. He also owned a property up on Sunset Plaza. It was on Rising Glen. It was a gorgeous home. In 1980, he was growing very fast. He factored his business, a portion of the money, probably more than he should have. I know about the factoring because I remember going to the office. I was young. I was in my early twenties, but he was very much of an open book when it came to business. I was familiar with that.

What is factoring for my ladies that don’t know?

Factoring is you sell your invoice and you get paid upfront a certain percentage because there is a guarantee that the money will be paid. You’re getting the money in advance. It’s a way to grow your business and he didn’t know about that. I think that was something that was new. Whereas if you grow your business and it’s your own money and your own cash, you don’t want to be factoring money. I don’t know what to compare it to actually.

It’s preemptively spending. It’s a little bit like a credit card.

However, it was for business growth. It was the expansion that was happening. The business was booming and then there was the recession. The factor pulled everything. He lost everything. It was a difficult part of life because I was there and I remember it. Everything went crashing down. The part that I remember about my father who has passed away since then is he became a millionaire again, but he did learn in a business where before he was a wholesaler of stationery.

He carried all kinds of office supplies that you see in Office Depot and that you see in these office supplies. He had whiteout, he had copy paper, he had the big pens, crypto pens, pentel, and tons of office supplies. That’s what he did but his business was wholesale. He was selling at a very small margin but in very large quantities. That was his business.

What he did after he went bankrupt was decided that everybody would always need a pen. No matter what, people would always need writing instruments. He became a millionaire again and he did writing instruments. That’s all he did. He expanded into advertising specialty products, which is the division I got to run and grew into.

The thing that I want to highlight is real estate. What I was super surprised at is that he lost all of this money in real estate and he contracted. He went into fear. He didn’t educate himself. The thing with my dad is that when it came to real estate, he didn’t do the same thing. He didn’t use the same prosperity mindset because he had an incredible prosperity mindset, but instead of expanding and educating himself about real estate, he contracted. He moved because he lost the house that he was in that he owned at the time.

Prosperity Mindset: He lost all of this money in real estate, and he contracted. He went into fear. He didn’t educate himself.

We moved into a couple of houses down. He lived on the same street for two decades on Rising Glen but he was renting. I remember that the owner wanted to sell the house and he offered it to my father. My father would not buy it. He was afraid. He totally contracted. He went into a scarcity mindset, and he wound up regretting that because he was accustomed to living on top of a hill and the quality of the air up there. It’s the whole lifestyle. He wound up living in Beverly Hills in a beautiful apartment. It’s huge like a condo that he wouldn’t buy. He paid rent for the rest of his life. He was wealthy and he had the money but he didn’t educate himself about real estate.

I have a question about that. I know this is an interesting thing to say on a real estate show, but real estate is not for everybody. There are some people who it is not the right fit for them, and they still build wealth. We know the numbers. Ninety percent of wealthy people in the world own real estate and many of them have become multimillionaires through their real estate investments. Real estate is a huge part of the portfolio of the very wealthy. However, there is the 10% that’s not true. It sounds like your dad was one of those people.

Real estate is a huge part of the portfolio of the very wealthy. Click To Tweet

I’ve never met anybody that’s like that. Real estate is not for everybody. I get that. It is the one thing that we in America have access to that the government completely supports. It’s a no-brainer way to build wealth because of the way the laws work here in the United States, but not everybody wants to get into it. I can see from your dad, he had this huge real estate empire. He lost that empire because he made some noble but questionable decisions in another business that was supporting real estate.

He then decided he didn’t want to do real estate. When we talked about that, he didn’t get educated, and he didn’t get back into real estate. Did he suffer for those decisions? What do you feel was the opportunity cost may be or the consequence of him not going getting into real estate on his second round when he rebuilt?

It was a very substantial loss. He could do the things he did because he was young and he had this enormous amount of energy, enthusiasm, desire, and ambition. At that age, it was different. He had grandchildren by then. My daughter was born in 1980. He’s an older man. There’s a lot more that plays into it and I think it may have chipped at his sense of empowerment over, “I can do anything.” I can’t. That’s not my arena. I don’t have the knowledge.

For some reason, I don’t know what the block was to get the knowledge. In business, it was almost like an intuitive automatic response. This didn’t work. I’m going to do this and made it happen. It was so quick but in real estate and personally, my takeaway was he didn’t have the knowledge, to begin with, to take that kind of risk.

Why go factor and try to grow the business this fast? You are doing great. I think it was spinning out because sometimes the growth is so quick, and not watching the economy and not knowing in. It’s not having enough education on a broader scale. There’s me, my life, and my business. What’s going on with the planet? What’s going on globally? What’s going on in the world? Am I watching the trends? It’s like having a more expansive point of view rather than just, “This is my world. This is what I’m doing.”

For the ladies, I hope you enjoyed that. The reason that I wanted to dive deep into that is because we do see very successful people that have these fear responses to perceived failure. He lost everything in real estate and decided, “I’m not touching that again. I don’t know enough and I don’t want to learn enough. I’m done.” I think that this can happen.

We’ve had so many people on my show who lost everything in 2008 or had huge failures because of bankruptcies, medical bills, and all sorts of stuff, or a child that needed help or had a birth defect. There are many people that have built up these amazing real estate businesses, and then they completely collapsed underneath them. The people that come on my show are usually the people that pick themselves back up and made it work again.

I never get a story on this show of someone that said, “Nope, I’m done,” and experienced a lot of success in a different way. However, there’s a perception in the family, or at least in his daughter that there was a loss there that happened because he wasn’t resilient around that business. I don’t know that I got a full understanding of what happened. There’s no way to know in such a short conversation. What I do want to know and what I do want my ladies to hear is that this happens to the very best of us, and it does not need to be the end.

When you watched your dad and it was the end for him, it has inspired you now to pursue education around that and to help teach others around that so that they don’t make the same mistakes. Even though this mistake didn’t cost your dad his lifestyle or his happiness or necessarily his self-confidence, it cost him something that you are sensitive to, and that you don’t want other people to experience.

A lot of that is not living in fear. You want people to be free from that fear monster so that they can live in all the different kinds of prosperity that we have like financial prosperity, health prosperity, feeling and alignment, and joy. The prosperity of joy, which I call bliss. All of those things are important to people like you and me. Maybe that was a piece of the loss, but it doesn’t sound like it was much bigger than we can pin down in a show.

I wanted people to hear this conversation because they don’t hear it here. I wanted people to understand that I do get it. Sometimes it’s hard and sometimes things fall apart. At that moment, you choose or in that timeframe. It may not be a moment. It may be a moment or a phase of your life, and you choose what are you going to do with that. It’s what you were talking about. Are you going to learn? Are you going to expand? Are you going to grow? Are you going to contract? Is fear going to start controlling your life in a certain way that doesn’t serve you?

I think there are a lot of factors and I do love this conversation because it’s who you are and who I am. We’re the next generation. He’s also of a different generation. He has done a lot. There’s a lot here. We could probably enjoy going much deeper and getting a lot more insight, but it did change his personality. What I love is that it changed me too. When I look at financial literacy, it’s hardcore all-money topics. I go wide on all money topics. I call that financial literacy.

I realize and I think this is part of why I naturally go there. It’s because I also have a background in healing. You want to go wide. You want to understand money because if you’re going to be making money, you’re going to wind up wanting to buy real estate or a condo or something. You’re going to then need to know about other conversations around money, mutual funds, or having investments. It’s this deep and wide knowledge of money. When things happen because they will and they do, you can take it in strides.

Prosperity Mindset: If you’re going to be making money, you’re going to wind up wanting to buy real estate or a condo or something. You’re going to then need to know about other conversations around money.

Also, be resilient. Bliss is about emotional resilience. Emotional resilience happens in partnership with resilience in all areas of your life. Your emotional resilience leads to resilience elsewhere, but that resilience elsewhere has to be a priority. In other words, you can’t just say everything is fine because it’s fine inside of you. That’s the single most important thing. However, if you want your life to work, you need to be resilient in the entire spectrum of what you’re paying attention to or what’s important to you.

The whole idea of being resilient is what bliss is all about. It is being able to come back to this place of balance. Balance isn’t my favorite word. I call it equilibrium. You come back to this place of emotional joy where then you can look out into your world and be resilient in everything else that you’re doing. Even if things are crashing down around you, you can now be resilient and bring them back to a place that serves the joy in your life.

I’m going to bring this up because what I’m hearing you say that I love, but it’s also that inner alignment to prosperity. Here’s what’s evolved for me. It’s the inner alignment with prosperity, regardless of what’s happening on the external. Keep going deeper into that and letting that be well that is nurtured and cultivated. I do the work every day because things are changing constantly. I’m working with people. I’m living in a world. I’m out there. I’m participating fully. I’m realigning always on a deal.

Prosperity Mindset: Keep going deeper into that inner alignment with prosperity and nurture and cultivate that.

Sometimes a couple or more times a day, I’m realigning myself even during this conversation because I’m talking about a lot of loss that I experienced, lived through, and was a part of. There was incredible wealth after that. I was there for the cycle. Thank God that I got to see the wave of it. It came right back. He made it last but he did contract as a personality.

He contracted as a personality. It didn’t feel to me like his confidence because he exuded that, but it did do something. I don’t have the word for that right now. It will probably come up for me. I love that you went onto a deep dive and maybe it will trigger something in the audience and they will all have their own a-ha from it.

I hope so. I know that I was simplifying it a little bit and I didn’t mean to be disrespectful in any way, but I was trying to get there, “What was that thing?” Sometimes we can’t pinpoint it. It’s just that something changed.

For him, what I’ll tell you is he contracted. I didn’t want to say this, but I’m going to say it. He lived like he was immortal. He could do anything. Nothing could hurt him. That’s the way he lived his life. That’s the way he took these huge risks and kept bouncing back. I think that loss chinked his armor and that he’s not immortal.

It made him mortal.

It made him feel mortal. It’s like, “Holy cow. Something can really ouch.” He didn’t show it so I can’t share. He was the kind of guy that didn’t show it.

This conversation has been amazing. I know there was some stuff we didn’t cover and we’re also out of time so we can’t do the three rapid-fire questions, but I love the conversation. I know you. I know our spirits are connected so I wanted to do a deep dive into that and I hope that was okay. Thank you so much for being vulnerable with me and talking through that. I super appreciate that.

It was a pleasure. I enjoyed it too. I’m used to going deep and I like it.

You’ve been amazing. I’m sure my ladies are going to want to know how to get in touch with you. Talk to us a little bit about that. How can my ladies get more?

I would love to connect with whoever would like to find out more about my work and what I do. My website is LillianBajor.com. You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Ladies, Lillian has offered for EXTRA to do a meditation with us that’s about inviting prosperity into your life. She’s going to guide us through that in EXTRA. Stay tuned. If you are subscribed to EXTRA, we got more. If you’re not, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com and you can sign up there. For those of you that are leaving Lillian and me now, thank you so much for joining in this conversation. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember that goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

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The Introvert’s Edge: The Secret Titans Who Can Outsell Almost Anyone With Matthew Pollard

 

Are you interested in sales but afraid to fail as an introvert? Is your belief system holding you back from doing what you’re interested in? Tune in to this episode as Moneeka Sawyer welcomes Matthew Pollard, the author of The Introvert’s Edge, to share how you can get past the belief that you can’t sell as an introvert. Matthew highlights that you are what you are, and although you can’t change your personality, being an introvert is not a disadvantage. Matthew also shares how he prepares his mental space and energy before he enters the stage.

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The Introvert’s Edge: The Secret Titans Who Can Outsell Almost Anyone With Matthew Pollard

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome Matthew Pollard to the show. Matthew is responsible for five multimillion-dollar business success stories all before the age of 30. His humble beginnings, the adversities he faced, and his epic rise to success show that anyone with the right motivation and right strategies can achieve anything they set their minds to.

Forbes calls him the real deal. Global Gurus list him as a Top 30 Sales Professional. Top Sales World Magazine names him a Top 50 Speaker and BigSpeak lists him as an International Top 10 Sales Trainer. He’s also the bestselling author of The Introvert’s Edge book series, which is sold over 75,000 copies and has been translated into 16 languages. That is so impressive. Matthew, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I’m ecstatic to be here. I love your energy. Thank you for bringing us all up.

Thank you. Matthew, I’m going to let you in on a little.

I’m ready.

I’m not super interested in a sales conversation. I’m more interested in a conversation about introverts. Does that sound okay to you?

That’s perfectly fine. As a matter of fact, a lot of the interviews I do are much more centered around the topic of introversion. People always are getting me in and saying, “I’ve got this boss or I’m trying to manage this team,” and there are just so many misconceptions in the world of introversion and extroversion. I believe the topic’s constantly evolving about what we believe is possible for us, so go for your life.

Perfect. Let’s start by you telling us your story. You teased us with that intro. Tell us a little bit, a high-level, two-minute version.

Funnily enough, we were talking about before how quite frequently people will hear somebody articulate, somebody that can get a message across and project extroversion upon them and one of the things that I’m always pushing more introverts to do, which I’m so glad you were excited to share your own fact that you’re introverted as well on this episode.

My focus is trying to get others, what I call titan introverts, to share their introverted story. They are people that are successful but also happen to be introverted. One of the biggest focuses for me is helping people realize that while I hopefully come across as articulate now, I started off with a reading speed of a sixth grader. I was super introverted in late high school and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

I was, by far, the least likely person to be here teaching people how to do it, which is perhaps why people now believe in the fact that I say that it’s possible. When I was in late high school, I had a reading speed of a sixth grader. I got diagnosed with this thing called Irlen Syndrome, which for the people that are watching via video means I put on this funny pair of colored lenses and miraculously I can learn to read.

I couldn’t learn to read like everybody else but I could start the process of learning. Day after day, I hustled to get into the top 20% of my state, which is how I graduated but my family could see I was exhausted. I was at a loss for what I wanted to do and they could see that I wouldn’t have stuck out college if I didn’t know what it was I wanted. We agreed that I was going to take a year off to find myself. I’m sure a lot of people reading have got kids like that.

It wasn’t allowed to sit on the couch and watch Oprah. By the way, Oprah is an introvert as well, for those people that think they can’t do small talk. My family wasn’t rich. I couldn’t travel to Europe and have a great gap year. We all agreed I was going to get a job and I took a job in a real estate agency but I wasn’t the person out selling. I was the guy in the back office doing day-day entry with a look on my face, “Don’t speak to me. I’m here to find myself for the year.”

Anyway, three weeks into that job, I get told that the person that managed that office had a phone call with his boss and they had decided to shut down their premise. I’m out of work and this is Australia at Christmas time. For those people that don’t know Australia, it’s summer and Christmas at the same time. We go on holiday on the 20th of December and we don’t come back until the 15th or 20th of January.

No one’s hiring except for these things called commission-only sales roles. For someone that struggled to talk to his own friend, let alone anyone else, it was super uncomfortable but they were the only jobs I could get. There were three jobs in the paper. I applied for all three. I got three interviews. I then got three job offers and I started at the field. Maybe they saw something in me I didn’t see myself.

I accepted a job doing business-to-business telecommunications door-to-door and my manager quickly put that to rest. He’s like, “Matt, we just hire everyone.” We had this saying, “We throw mud up against the wall and we see what sticks,” which is a great saying until you realize you are the mud. After five days of product training and not a single second of sales training, I get thrown on this road called Sydney Road in Melbourne, Australia. There are 1,000 stores on each side and I get told to go sell.

I didn’t even know what to say. I took a deep breath and walked into my first door. Luckily, I was politely told to leave because shortly after that, I was sworn at and always got told to get a real job, which was always my favorite because this was the only job I could get. Door after door, this kept happening until I got to my 93rd door where I made my first sale. I remember I made about $70 and I was ecstatic for about 45 seconds until I realized I got to do this again tomorrow, the next day, and the next day.

For me, this was a defining moment because a lot of people either quit, which is what 18 of the 20 people in my training group did, or they agreed that this is the way it’s going to be and they grind it out. I’m all for grinding it out but not without a great strategy. I decided that sales had to be a system. I went to look for what that system could be. Remember, I had a reading speed of a sixth grader, so I wasn’t picking up a book, which is why my book being on audiobook was so important to me.

What I did find was YouTube and I typed in sales system and all these videos came up. Long story short, I’d spent sixteen hours a day either applying what I learned out in the field or practicing to go out the next day on the next piece of the system or improving what I didn’t know. On weekends, I’d still spend sixteen hours practicing and day after day, I’d do this but soon, it was like 48 doors before my next sale, then 31, then 28, then 26, and then 19.

Eventually, I got it down to making a sale every three doors. About six weeks in, my manager pulls me aside. I thought I was in trouble because no one even knew who I was. They barely knew my name. I was the quiet guy that handed my paperwork in downstairs and he said, “Matt, we’re blown away by this. We got our national sales report and it turns out you are the number one salesperson in the company.”

This was six weeks later and this was the largest sales and marketing company in the Southern hemisphere. Shortly after that, they promoted me. I don’t why people think that just because you can sell, you can manage. I had no idea how to manage. I was given twenty people. They all quit within 24 hours but I went back to YouTube, learned how to manage, and got promoted seven times. Fast forward shy of a decade, I’d started my own business about twelve months later and I’d been responsible for five multimillion-dollar success stories.

One of the things that I always share with people is, it doesn’t matter how introverted you feel that you are or how much you think the cards are stacked against you. I think that introverts have an edge. I know that you don’t want to focus on sales but I don’t think we have an edge in sales. We have an edge in networking, public speaking, podcast and hosting. The amount of detail you went into before we got onto this show, all of that is very much introverted behavior.

Your story makes me want to cry because it’s my story. I have a learning disability. Trying to get into school, when I was trying to learn to read, it’s the same thing. I couldn’t learn to read, even now. I went to UC Berkeley and got a degree there and I’m a very slow reader. My success has been weird. It doesn’t make any sense. They were scared that I had this disability. I’ve always had a hard time even reaching out on the phone to my friends.

The people that love me understand that Moneeka will not reach out. They have to reach out to me. I graduated during a recession. The only job I could get was a sales position and I was terrible. Within three months, I was the number one salesperson in the state of California. It was a California bank, so that was the entire company. It was the same thing. I was studying sixteen hours a day to figure out how to make this work because it was hard but I had to survive. I wasn’t going to go back and live at home. I love that story.

What’s interesting about what you said though, whenever I share my journey, there are so many introverts that have had similar journeys. Whether they’ve had a reading disability or not, they fell into sales or something horrific happened that pushed them to test the boundaries of their introversion and they discovered it wasn’t a boundary at all. It was an advantage because a planned presentation always outworks somebody that’s winging things eventually.

Introverts are more likely to hold onto that for our dear life because, without it, we’re terrible. If you think back about your sixteen-hour days, I know this for me. My sixteen-hour days felt terrible and I probably wouldn’t wish them on anybody. However, after six weeks, I was the best in the business. After three months, you were the best in the business. You got to benefit from that just like I did for the rest of my life.

For a lot of people, they’re like, “I don’t have the ability to dedicate eight hours practicing. Sure, I can do the eight hours in the office applying what I learned.” You got to remember that we’ve both shared that we went from terrified to sell to the best in the business. A lot of the people that are reading don’t need to be the best in the business. All they need to be is good at sales or good at networking. To do that, it doesn’t take anywhere near as much effort but even if you broke that amount of effort that we did to get to the best in the business over 6 months or 12 months, you’d go from terrible to average to good within weeks to amazing to the best in the business within a year.

People don't need to be the best in the business. All they need to be is good at sales or good at networking. Share on X

Think about how much time you spent learning your functional skills. Think about how much time you spent dedicated to perfecting the art of what you do and how hard it is to constantly be rejected and be told by people that they’re going with someone else or how much time you spend doing proposals because you don’t have time to do this. I promise you, the time you’ll save far outweighs the time you’ll spend within months.

What’s also interesting is, Matthew, I felt like being an introvert was a disease. Even when you say it, that you shared about you being an introvert too, my whole insides cringe. I feel like it’s something we have to pretend that we’re not or hide like, “I’ve got cancer. It’s something that’s going to be with me my entire life and I can’t get around it.” Part of that is just understanding I’m not good at sometimes at being there for my friends because it’s so hard for me to reach out. It hurts my heart and yet, I can’t pull myself out.

There are things about the way that I am and the way that I live that make me feel broken. A lot of that has to do with being an introvert. I know that my readers are going to be like, “You are not an introvert. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” If I’m on a stage or whatever, people will never believe that I’m an introvert. As a matter of fact, I was at Christmas with my family and I said in passing to my mother-in-law, “I’m an introvert.” She looked at me and says, “You are not an introvert. You are lying.”

I’ve been in this family for years and they don’t understand how difficult it is for me socially not to connect. As introverts, we connect well but to connect with lots of different people. Before we even get moving forward on this conversation, why don’t you define introvert and the evolution that word has been through as far as our understanding?

I would highlight that and I think that the word introversion and its definition have got way too complicated. Maybe there’s been too much grant money involved and because of that, we have to make it more complicated to get the next grant. I want to bring it back to bear terms. There are things that are highly sensitive. There are things where somebody can be shy and those aren’t necessarily somebody that’s introverted.

You can be introverted and be highly sensitive and shy but that doesn’t mean that you are. There are extroverts and this must be terrible for somebody to be extroverted and shy but there are people that are extroverted and shy. What I try to do is say, “There is more complexity to this but unless you want to spend the next six months researching it, let’s bring it back to its simplest frame.” That is where you draw your energy from.

For instance, I love speaking from the stage. It terrifies me. It feels like skydiving. I’m so relieved that I did it and it went well. I need to do what I saw you do before a show interview. I need to stop for a second and center myself. I can’t talk to anyone before I go on stage, but I love doing it. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t draw my energy.

I’m very good at networking. It’s why I’ve written a book on it. I love doing it but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take energy from me. It also takes less energy from me than it used to because I’m not anxious anymore. I’m not worried and I also don’t beat myself up about it as much afterward. There are things you can do to take less energy but this is the thing that I want to highlight if you can frame it this way. If I’m hanging out with a group of people at a networking event, if I’m speaking from a stage, regardless of how much energy it takes from me, I’m an introvert if it takes energy from me.

I’m an extrovert if I get off those activities filled and charged. I am excited after I finished a keynote and I’ve got a whole bunch of energy but I’m like a five-year-old that’s over that has stayed up too late. I’ve got all of this energy and then eventually, I’m coming up to a crash. As an introvert, I need to understand that. If you draw energy from being by yourself or being with a small group of friends or close family, you’re an introvert.

If you charge up by being with people all the time and you need people, you are an extrovert. That doesn’t mean that you don’t still want quiet time. You don’t still crave it. In life, we need balance in everything that we do but that is the easiest way to define it. The biggest thing that I struggle with and this is why I founded National Introverts Week, which is the third week of March, is to highlight that introversion is not a disadvantage.

In fact, I believe that introverts are the secret titans that tend to be succeeding everywhere. The problem is we project extroversion upon them. As soon as somebody becomes successful, we, introverts, say, “They are clearly able to succeed because they’ve got that gift of gab. They’ve got that natural ability.” I want you to understand that as I said, Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman are both introverted. If you think that you can’t do small talk, you’re wrong.

 

Zig Ziglar the most well-known sales trainer of all time is also an introvert. Ivan Misner, the person that founded BNI, the world’s largest networking group is an introvert. Pick your discipline if you think you can’t be a great entrepreneur. I interviewed Brian Smith, the guy that founded the billion-dollar brand, Ugg Boots, on my show, The Introvert’s Edge and he talked about his introverted journey to success.

If you think you can’t be emotive, Bill Murray, that guy that did Groundhog Date, whether you love it or hate it, he’s dynamic and unpredictable but also an introvert. We can do all of those things. The thing that I struggle with though, is sometimes when I ask the question and this hurts me to my soul, is when I ask somebody. I spoke at a leadership conference for AA-ISP, which is the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals.

If you can imagine, if you’re a tech company or a major organization, your senior leadership go to this conference. I did a survey of all of them about whether they were introverted or extroverted. I got some introverts and some extroverts but I got some, “I was introverted but don’t worry, I’m extroverted now,” like it was a bad thing that they were introverted.

It drives me nuts because the truth is that you can’t change your personality type. You are what you are and it’s not a disadvantage to be introverted. As a matter of fact, I love telling people I’m an introvert because first thing is when I go to an event and I mention that I’m an introvert, when I talk, everybody gets quiet to hear what I have to say. Extroverts will often look after me. When I go to conferences, I will say things.

I have spoken in Dubai and there were two MCs for that event. They were standing around talking to me and I said, “I apologize, guys. We’re getting to about fifteen minutes before I get on stage. I need to go and have my own time now. As an introvert, I need to bring my energy levels far down and I need to rehearse my script over and over again.” I say script because I script out what I’m going to say before I get into a story because stories are the reticular activating system of our brain.

I love getting into stories because then I find our brains are synchronized and it’s a study out of Princeton. I feel at ease and I see the audience warm to me as well. Stories are great at creating that artificial rapport that we, introverts, are amazing at turning into deeper rapport. By suggesting that I’m an introvert and that I need that fifteen-minute period, what happens is everybody that heard that protects me. I get to go away into my own space and rehearse what I’m going to say, which every speaker should do as opposed to people being upset with me that I’m not communicating with them.

If somebody walks up to talk to me, somebody that heard me will go up and say, “Matt’s happy to speak to you afterward but he is getting ready at the moment. He’s getting his mental space right to get up on stage,” and nobody says, “Matt, we’d prefer you to talk to us. We paid you a ton of money to come and speak but we’d love you to be horrible on stage so we can have a little bit of chit-chat now.”

Understanding that you’re introverted is powerful because quite frequently, some of the most senior people you’ll meet are also introverted. It creates a kinship with those people. With extroverts, they want to give you a bit of an extra go, so there’s no downside to mentioning it. I interviewed the Founder of WP Engine, Jason Cohen, and he said, “I’m in board meetings. I founded the company but all these extroverts will be yelling.”

“The moment I start to speak, everybody goes quiet to hear what the introvert has to say because I struggle to even keep eye contact and they know that. They know how much effort it takes for me. My friends know that I’m introverted, so they’ll reach out to me and they’ll leave me a voicemail message with the information they want me to know about the engagement that they’re hoping that I come to because they understand it.”

I did an article for the Chicago Tribune, where I talked about how to survive Christmas and the number one rule is to let your family know that you’re introverted so that when you disappear for an hour, they don’t think something’s wrong. They know that you’re recharging. Being honest about who you are is by far the most essential rule. If you lie to yourself and say, “I’m extroverted now or I’m supposed to behave more extroverted,” that’s a recipe for disaster. It won’t allow you to get more successful at anything. It also means that you are moving away from what is congruently you, which will lead you to kill your energy.

That is so true. That was so amazing. I find all of those same things. Being in crowds, it’s so interesting. I went through a book tour for my book, Choose Bliss. I was going all the way around the country talking on television and stuff like that. That took a huge amount of energy. It’s an unbelievably fun experience but it does take a huge amount of energy. I’m sure you’ve been through this. You’re on TV for 7 minutes and then you got to sleep for 4 hours to recover type of thing. I remember my PR agent saying, “Moneeka, you’re so good. Don’t memorize your answers. We write down the questions that they’re going to ask you. Just wing it.”

I was like, “You don’t understand. I need to memorize my answer so that I can wing it when I need to. I need to have a foundation right there, ready to catch me, then I can wing it if I need to,” but people just don’t get this whole talking about getting on stage and needing some time. I’m totally going to do that, Matthew. The next time I’m on stage, I’ll say, “I need a few minutes,” because I won’t admit that I’m an introvert and that takes me off my game. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way that I’m built and I want to be on my game when I speak. I’ll do a better job for you.

You can have fun with it too. Sometimes, I’ll say, “I’m going to walk away for fifteen minutes because I need to charge up now. I know I told you I’m an introvert, so I don’t want you to think that I’ve run away and I’m not coming back. I will be back a couple of minutes before but I’m going to go and walk away and have my own space.” They’ll laugh it off. No need to be ashamed of your introversion.

The fact is people always want you to operate at your best. The problem is that if you don’t educate them on what it takes to operate at your best, is that their fault? I don’t think it is. When it comes to being scripted, I wouldn’t suggest that being scripted is a bad thing. I would suggest though that you think about the concept of scripting because I talk about scripting a sale or a networking conversation.

 

I wrote out what I was going to say from the stage. The difference is when you think about scripting, we all hear that telemarketer that calls us at 7:30 at night who sound robotic and we feel that they’re reading. I speak at a bunch of conferences, especially around sales kickoff time and I’ve seen a lot of speakers who are tech kickoffs or medical finance.

I have spoken at a few real estate ones and funnily enough, there are a ton of introverts in real estate as well. What I find is they get up on stage and they’ve got their screen prompters. They’ve got their little paragraphs that they’re going to read and that’s lack of practice. I get people who say, “I don’t want to sound scripted.” I’m like, “I get it. We don’t want to be that tally marketer at 7:30 but let me ask you, what’s your favorite movie?”

I had a client that said it was Leonardo DiCaprio in Gangs of New York. He loved Leonardo DiCaprio. By the way, Leonardo DiCaprio was also an introvert. He said, “I just love Leonardo DiCaprio in that movie. Doesn’t he embody the part? He’s so authentic. He’s amazing in that.” I’m like, “That’s great. Now, remember that he’s reading from a script too. You tell me what’s the difference between that and telemarketing.” He said, “I’m assuming that Leonardo DiCaprio reads it over and over again and eventually, he practices it without the script and he just embodies the part. He becomes the character. He has to be a character actor, so he fits into that part.”

I said, “Great. What’s the difference between that and you speaking from stage?” The difference is this, you haven’t had enough practice, so you haven’t worked out what you’re going to say and then rehearsed it. Secondly, it’s easier for you. He’s pretending to be someone that he’s not. The goal of scripting is not for you to be someone that you’re not. It’s to work out what you want to say to present the best version of yourself.

The goal of scripting is not for you to be someone you're not. It's to work out what you want to say to present the best version of yourself. Share on X

As soon as you realize that, you can lean into it. For me, everything that I said on the concept of introversion, as I was saying it, there would be some people that were reading this and going, “There is no way that this person is introverted because he covered off on twenty facts and pieced them all together, made all those facts stick, and did it in such a comfortable way.” I would never have been able to do that if I didn’t write it out first to memorize it.

Now I did that years ago and I’ve benefited from that forever, since. The whole concept of scripting is to your point now. I have done nearly 200 interviews and when I first started, I would look at these are questions and I’d want people to stick to them. I was always worried they’d ask me a question outside the scope of what I was prepared for.

I tell people, “I’ve done 150 interviews. You better ask me something outside the box or your audience won’t get something new,” so because of that, I’m uncomfortable. It becomes from the synthesis of all of the different answers that I’ve now rehearsed. It’s very hard to take me off script because I have so many of them and I can deliver them all in a natural and authentic.

Let’s get back to what’s more relevant for our ladies around real estate. You talk about networking. In the real estate world, we’re looking for deals, looking to sell deals, looking for vendors and partners, so there’s networking, negotiation, and all of those pieces. I know that you contend that we have an edge as introverts in those situations, so let’s talk a little bit about your approach.

For instance, in networking. I know you talk about this unified message and I loved that by the way. I want to make sure that we get there so we can help the ladies understand how they can lean into their introversion around networking and negotiation rather than backing away from it in fear that they can’t hold up to what’s required.

One thing that I think, especially ladies like to do is be much more authentic and they don’t like pitching. It’s interesting. A lot of men, even if they don’t feel comfortable pitching, they will push themselves through it even if it makes them feel inauthentic. I have a lot of female clients and what I find is, unless they feel like it’s super congruent, they won’t feel comfortable doing it.

They always feel that networking is the epitome of used car sales. They go in and somebody asks them what they do. If they’re advanced, they’ll know how to do an elevator pitch, which is, “I do this for this group of people, even if they have this common objection,” which feels slimy and salesy. An example of that is I’m a sales and marketing coach that works with introverted professionals, even if they think that they can’t sell.

That sounds salesy. It’s, “Great to meet you. I’m trying to get a deal. This is what I do. I’d love to work with you because I’m trying to buy a new car. If you worked with me, I think that I would be able to afford the deposit for that.” It doesn’t come across well. It’s a horrible tacky way of doing it. People move away from that and they’re like, “I won’t say that. What I’ll say instead, ‘I work in real estate or I specialize with helping people find distressed properties,’ or whatever the statement is.”

That’s the same as me. I’m a sales and marketing trainer and I’ve helped 2,500 or 3,500 small business owners. It’s still salesy. By the way, networking should always be about being interested before you try to be interesting. This strategy works on the basis that you don’t start talking about yourself straight away. Truthfully, if you do that, you’re missing out because the more you know about them, the better off you will be because you’ll have more ammunition to speak to them.

 

When somebody comes to me, I’ll ask them questions and I’ll be interested. People love talking about themselves. The best thing for an introvert is we’re empathetic and great at active listening, so all we need to do is work out what questions to ask.

I always tell people, “If you don’t know who’s going to be in the room, you’ve let yourself down.” When I go to a networking event, the very first thing I do is look at the meetup page or the LinkedIn page event. I’ll always find myself to the people that are going. Even if I look at the event’s Facebook page and see who went last time by who’s tagged, I’ll look at them on LinkedIn and do profile shopping. I’ll look at all the profiles of all the people that are going.

This sounds like it takes a bunch of time. It’s nowhere near as painful though as walking into the room to the first person you speak, finding out they sell insurance, and now, you’re going to be sold insurance for the next twenty minutes. What I like to do is go through and look at all their profiles, then I’ll find 5 or 6 people that interest me. I’ll send them a LinkedIn connection saying, “I saw you went to this event last year or last month or I saw you going to this event,” depending on where you find them. “I’m interested in coming because I’m passionate about X. Do you feel that this is a group that I should come along to?”

If they respond yes, then great. When you get there, they’re going to recognize your face. You are going to recognize theirs. If you’re clever, they’ve told you yes. You can look at their profile, what they’ve posted, what they’re sharing, and what they’re commenting on. It’s pretty easy to come up with conversational topics.

I remember when I was looking for Dell to sponsor an event that I did. I connected with somebody and asked them that very similar statement. I asked if they were going to the event and connected with them and it was one of the senior executives for Dell. I went and quickly checked out to see if he had an Instagram profile. He did and he was ridiculously into Peloton. When I got to the event, he asked me how I was doing. I said, “I’m doing great. I’m annoyed with the weather because I’m a runner. When it’s raining, I can’t go and do my run. I find it so much better for my mental health when I’m out running every day,” then he spoke about Peloton for the next 30 minutes.

By the time he was done, he was like, “Matt, I spent the last 30 minutes talking about Peloton. I haven’t even asked you what you do.” From that moment on, I had the floor. You can do your research before asking great questions but sometimes it’s not as hard as you think. You can find something about them that gets them chatting for twenty minutes and they so appreciate the fact they’re able to talk about themselves. When they get to what it is that I do, I will respond with this, “I’m the Rapid Growth® Guy.”

I say it like I said I’m an accountant or I’m a bookkeeper. Here’s the difference, the Rapid Growth® Guy doesn’t mean anything and what happens is people then lean into that. They’re like, “Hang on a second. What exactly is that?” Now, the reason why that works is because of a few factors. One is called a hook statement. We’re creating interest in intrigue, so you can’t call yourself the Real Estate Lady because that automatically is going to get people to trigger, “They’re obviously in real estate.”

I had somebody call themselves the Data Wizard. They’re like, “What do you think?” I’m like, “You’re in data analytics. I’m pretty sure they’re going to get to that point. They’re not going to lean in and go, “What is that?” When I call myself the Rapid Growth® Guy, I say, “Thanks for asking. I’m the Rapid Growth® Guy.” They lean forward and they’re like, “What is that?” They’re interested but they’ve also talked about themselves for twenty minutes.

I now have complete license to tell them more because they’re going to ask. They’re going to ask because they’re interested and because they feel like they should give value back to me. They say, “What is that?” I respond with, “Thanks for asking. One of the things that I’d love to see more than anything in the world is an amazing introverted service provider with enough talent, skill, and belief in themselves to go and start a business their own.”

“One of the things I hate to see and I find it happens so often, is they end up stuck in this endless hamster wheeler, struggling to find interested people, trying to set themselves apart, trying to make the sale all while feeling like people only care about one thing, price. Do you know anyone like that?” They’ll respond with, “I’m like that.” Of course, they are because I’ve gone to the right networking event. I’ve researched who they are and I’ll respond with, “I’m on a mission to help people like yourself realize that you’re not a second-class citizen. Your path to success is different to that of an extrovert.”

Instead of focusing on your functional skill, which you might find most introverts are usually amazing at, all it takes is focusing on three things outside the scope of your functional skill to create a rapid-growth business that revolves around you, your family, and your life, not the other way around. I’ll say, “Let me give you an example,” and then I’ll tell them a story. The story short circuit the logical mind which means you’re speaking directly to the emotional mind.

 

The logical mind, by the way, is going, “This will work for me. That won’t. I don’t have time for this. I’m going to cut him off.” The emotional mind screams out, “Storytime,” and it listens. We’ve had people on cold calls use stories with C-level executives that logically, when somebody gives an objection using logical reasoning, they get eight seconds before the C-level executive hangs up. We get two and a half minutes before they hang up on average because of the short-circuiting of the logical mind.

When you use it in networking, you can tell a 3 or 4-minute story and people are still engaged. That’ll feel like ten minutes for you but I promise you, people will listen and you show them how you help people in the story. Notice, in the networking spiel, I didn’t even say what I do. I talked about what I love to see and what I hate to see in the mission that I’m on. It’s not about me. I talk about the change I want to see in the world and what I’m passionate about. People love to get behind that. It’s changing the flow of what you do to make it not about yourself.

This is the thing. Introverts should love this because for the first time, you’re going to hear a rule about sales, networking, and public speaking that’s going to feel totally great for you, which is this. In sales, networking, and public speaking, the number one rule in all of these version arenas is it’s not about you. The moment you make it about you, you fail.

The number one rule in all these so-called extroverted arenas is it's not about you. The moment you make it about you, you fail. Share on X

I call myself the Rapid Growth® Guy to create that intrigue that leads into me talking about what I love to see and what I hate to see in the world and the mission that I’m on, the change that I want to make, and then I’ll tell a story about someone else like them who had the problems that they have or that they should have. I should know my niche by now and how I got them to a positive outcome.

They see it as me explaining because they asked, which is why they give me permission to explain. They’re still intrigued because until we get to the story, they don’t get to understand how I can help. Now for a lot of people, they feel like they have to convince and control customers to talk to them or they’re educating clients and they didn’t ask to be educated. This is a totally different model that gets people to lean in and it comes across as you’re not trying to sell. You’re trying to motivate and inspire them to take action on their own.

When you get to the end of telling the story, what I love to do is deliver a moral of the story and then say, “Does that make sense?” As soon as I say, “Does that make sense?” the person always, “That makes total sense. I’m exactly like Wendy. How did you work with Wendy?” You’re like, “It’s not the time to go into that,” and you set a separate meeting because the one thing you should never do in a networking event is sell.

As soon as you sell, everything goes totally wrong because you’ll say, “Thanks for asking.” You’ll start to talk, and next thing you know, somebody will walk up and go, “John, I was dying to see you,” and now you’ve been interrupted, so it’s broken. Plus, they came to networking events not to be sold to but to have people buy their stuff usually.

The moment you start selling at that event, even if they do say, “I want to move forward,” they will resent you for taking up their time and selling them something. By pushing back and saying, “Now’s not a great time for that. We’re all here to network but I’m happy to set up a separate meeting.” All of a sudden, they appreciate you and they’re like, “This person comes from an abundant place.” I have never known anyone to be seen as abundant and not get somebody’s respect.

I love that. That’s amazing, by the way, as you well know. Let’s say for instance, I’m going on a cruise in March where I will be speaking about my book, Choose Bliss. There are going to be 2,500 people there. I cannot research all the people. We do have a Facebook group. A lot of people are not going to log on. There will be people, hopefully, that I run into that I can do research on.

There are going to be an awful lot of networking opportunities where I have no idea who I’m talking to or anything. Let’s talk about that impromptu networking opportunity as an introvert. I’ll tell you, I’m scared to death because people come at me. They’re like, “I love your book,” and all this stuff. That’s great but then, what do I say? I feel like an idiot. I’m not that interesting.

You’re still lucky because a lot of people reading don’t have a book and people aren’t chasing up to them and because of that, you have a natural advantage. I’ll answer your question from your point but I’ll also answer it for those people that are going on a cruise or some event, where perhaps they haven’t done the research at all.

I would prefer, the other one, for my ladies is much more important.

It’s easy to cover both because firstly, I can tell you that usually, when you have 2,500 people at an event, usually, they create an app so that you can know all the different events that are going on and have an attendee list. When you say, “There are 2,500 people, I don’t have the time to do that,” we don’t have to research all 2,500.

I met one of the senior people at IBM who endorsed my book at a conference where I was speaking at the conference but there were like 3,000 people at that event. I got somebody from my team to run through and quickly profile scan all the people that were there and handpick maybe 50 profiles to do a deep dive into and then send a message saying, “I saw you were going to this conference. I’m heading to that conference too. I hope we can squeeze in a time to connect.”

By the time I went to that three-day conference, half of my day was booked out with 30-minute meetings. I went to a conference that was more like a bunch of scheduled meetings. For those people that feel uncomfortable with, the people that are constantly sending in messages saying, “We should catch up for 30 minutes to do a sales call,” that’s not the same as doing what you are doing.

You’re reaching out to them saying, “I’m coming to the same conference you are,” and that highlights that you’re interested in a similar topic. You would just like to meet them for a specific reason and it doesn’t need to be salesy. It’s that you want to get a chance to meet them because their profile looked interesting and network. People go to conferences, by the way, for a chance to network.

You’re not telling somebody, “I didn’t have plans. Stop working and meet with me instead.” You’re saying, “You want a network, so let’s network.” By the way, half the people you reach out to statistically are going to be introverted. They’re going to go a pre-planned meeting as opposed to walking in and not knowing everyone. That’s, by the way, what the person at IBM did. He reached out and said, “We’ll catch up for 30 minutes.”

We caught up for 30 minutes. I find out something that wasn’t on his profile. He was about to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for ISP and because of that, the next thing I knew, he and I are best of friends. He is endorsing my book and he’s also an introvert, by the way. He’s impassioned to drive my books in front of everybody at the organization. Again, just because there are lots of people doesn’t mean you could spend the entire week running into people that were the wrong people.

While it doesn’t feel as time intensive as going through 2,500 profiles, it’s easy to go through a whole bunch of profiles and quickly go, “Yes. No. I’m fully stacked.” You may not be all the right people but you’ll get a few of them. Now, when you go to events and you have done no research whatsoever, my suggestion is to stay true to who are. What do I mean by that? I’ll give you an example.

We’ve picked on insurance salespeople before, so let’s use an insurance example. I worked with a guy who sold insurance. He said, “Matt, networking’s the worst for me. I’m an introverted guy. I do the whole being interested thing but the moment I say that I sell insurance, it’s like I watch their eyes explode and they’re like, “How do I get away from this person I’m about to get a sales pitch?” I said, “What we’ve got to do is stop using the word insurance because if you use the word insurance, people put you in a box. They’re like, ‘I know what that is and that’s one step above-used car sales.'”

By the way, when I used to say I was a sales trainer, people had the same reaction. Especially introverts who I wanted to serve would always give me these reasons for why they couldn’t sell as an introvert. Now I was on the defensive explaining why they could, as opposed to getting them to lean in. I said, “Help me understand though because I’m big on leading with passions. Who are you most passionate about serving?” His response was, “I just like helping everybody.”

I said, “Really, everybody? Help me understand a person that earns $50,000 versus a person that earns $150,000. Which one of those groups would you prefer to serve?” He said “The people that would make $150,000.” I said, “Why?” He said, “They can buy more insurance products.” I’m like, “That’s not passion. That’s more I want to sell you stuff so I can buy a new car.”

Let’s get a little bit deeper for a second. Let’s imagine for a second, there were two choices. One was a person that had grown up poor, studied hard, got a scholarship to Harvard, went to Harvard, worked hard, won dux of the class, won all these awards, and got employed by a large organization. Now he earns $250,000 a year as a C-level executive in a big organization with a big team. As opposed to somebody that dropped out of school, saved up a ton of money, and now they’ve started a business. They’ve got a ton of staff working for them and make about $250,000 a year.

They’re earning the same. Their life trajectories were different. He said, “The small business owner.” I said, “What do you mean obviously? This person studied hard and got into Harvard. What do you mean?” He said, “For me, I feel like they deserve it more.” I’m like, “Talk to me about that for a second.” He said, “I had this grandfather,” and he started telling me this story about his grandfather and how his grandfather saved up and bought a farm.

He looked after all of his staff but then his grandfather got sick. He had to sell the farm to pay for medical treatment and also because he couldn’t work. He said, “I watched my grandfather fade away and die in this tiny little apartment in front of the TV for the last decades of his life.” He said, “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone and I’d love to stop that from happening.” I’m like, “I’m confused. You sell life insurance. How could this possibly have helped like he didn’t die?” I was blown away at how much he knew.

He said, “I’ve discovered these policies that allowed me to put cash into an insurance policy. When you’re high cashflow businesses like farms have to be, you can get a high yield return in these life insurance policies. You then can flip that into actual real investments in the future. If he hadn’t done that from an early year with his high cashflow business, he would’ve had a whole bunch of assets, which would’ve meant he would’ve got a golden retirement.”

I was like, “Why wouldn’t you spend your life articulating how passionate you are about helping these people that create something out of nothing, the hustlers of the world not end up in second-class retirements?” He said, “I would love to do that but I don’t know that I’m always going to go to networking events and find somebody that was interested in that.”

We created this unified message. Now, firstly, he came up with this concept. He wanted to call himself the Financial Cowboy. I was like, “Finance firstly is a commoditized word. We know you are in finance or financial planning, insurance, or something like that. We put you in a commodity. Even if it’s not the commodity you’re selling, it’s the wrong opportunity. The word cowboy attached to it makes me feel like you’re going to grab my money, go away, and spend it on cocaine. It’s not the right fit for me.”

I said, “What if we call you the Hustle Lifeguard instead?” The reason we called him that is the people that start these businesses that have got high cashflow businesses are the hustlers of the world but they prioritize their staff. They’re always looking after their staff and making sure their staff retirement needs are under control but they don’t think about themselves.

A lot of them will say, “My business is my asset,” but most of these businesses never sell. They don’t prioritize their investment needs. I know it was part of your last questions, “What are my property investment strategies and things like that?” The reason I know is because I don’t not prioritize my later life because I’m excited about my business. No matter how excited I am, which I hope people can tell, I love doing what I do.

However, for him, what I said is he should go to networking events and when somebody asks what it is that he does. He should say, “I’m the Hustle Lifeguard,” and when they say, “What is that?” One of the things I love to see more than anything in the world is to talk with these people that start things out of nothing. What he finds more often than not and he hates seeing is they don’t prioritize their retirement even though they had high cashflow businesses and that leads them in second class retirements. He’s explaining that he’s on a mission to help these people and go on and then tell a story.

As soon as he did that, his entire business transformed. His question then was, “Matt, I’m a little bit uncomfortable with that though because when I’m going to networking events, how do I know that the person I’m speaking to is somebody that has a high cashflow business?” I said, “Here’s the thing. If you own who it is you are and who it is that you serve, even if the person you’re speaking to doesn’t do that, they likely will know somebody that does and because of that, they will introduce you.”

In my book, I talk about the benefit of having momentum partners. I say that when you go to networking events, most people in their head say, “What I’m looking for is a prospect.” Prospects are like staying in the hamster wheel. We get a deal, we make our money, and then we have to go hustle for another deal.

That’s not the way out. When you are going networking, I reluctantly will accept a deal when all there is an opportunity for getting a deal in a networking event. When I’m out networking, I’m looking to make sure I never have to go networking again. I do that by recruiting momentum partners and champions. Momentum partners are people that believe in the work that I do and are willing to share it with the world.

For instance, you invited me being on this show because I was on somebody else’s show who recommended my work. That person is a momentum partner of mine because he believes in what I do and he shared it with you and you’re like, “I want to get Matthew on my show.” That meant I got to share my message with his audience and now your audience, then likely, many more audiences because he believes in what I do and he shares it.

Now, while you don’t have an official agreement signed, a good momentum partner, you should also do the same for them because you believe in what they do. Judy Robinett wrote the foreword for my sales book. When she and I met, she called me because she was looking for advice. She read an article I wrote on Entrepreneur. She was looking for some advice on how to close higher speaking fee deals because she found that when she mentioned the price, she didn’t get them. She was charging too little.

I gave her a script to use to get a much higher price. She was so appreciative that I didn’t try and sell her anything. She introduced me to three shows. I then introduced her to three shows and we did that off the cuff for over a year. We both made hundreds of thousands of dollars off clients that came from those podcasts purely because we believed in what each other did.

That is what a momentum partner is. When you go to a networking event, look for those groups of people. When you find them, it doesn’t matter if they’re buying your stuff. They are hugely powerful. Champions are the group of people that have high credibility in your industry or people that allow you to break into other industries. For instance, Ivan Misner came through a momentum partner of mine. I was introduced through a momentum partner to his work.

Many people, when they get introduced to someone like Ivan Misner, try to sell him something. For me, I wouldn’t care if he asked me to pick up his laundry. I would’ve done it. When we got and had a dialog, he became a champion for me. He started recommending and endorsing my work and because of that, it gave my work credibility. The best way to make more money is to have high levels of credibility. You need champions for that and to expand your network. You need momentum partners for that.

The best way to make more money is to have high levels of credibility. You need champions for that. To expand your network, you need momentum partners for that. Share on X

For those people to champion your work, they need to be inspired by your passion and mission and that’s what the networking script does. When I go to an event and I think that the person I’m speaking to may not be the person that I need to sell to or that may not be my best customer, I still stay true to who I am. I stay authentic. I share my passion and mission in the exact same way and 1 of 2 things happens.

One is, they go, “That’s exceptional. Here’s somebody I think you need to meet.” The second thing that happens is more often than not, I’m the first person that they’ve ever met that energizes them when they’re hearing about what somebody does. They’re hearing about passion and mission and don’t feel sold to and because of that, they try and borrow my passion for what they do. Even if I articulate, they’re not my ideal customer. I use the words, “I specialize,” not, “I work exclusively with.”

Specializing is wonderful. People expect somebody that specializes to have better general knowledge than everybody else. They say, “I’m not your niche but I feel that what you said could work for me. I’m an extrovert but I could gravitate to systems and process. I have a product-based company. However, I feel that I need to be utilizing a more solid strategy that leverages my face as the brand anyway because that’s where all brands are going.”

I could choose to disagree. I could choose to say, ” I don’t want to have you as a client or I could feel that they’re the perfect fit for me.” That’s my choice. What I find is by staying true to who I am, it opens up more doors. The moment I start bending myself to every audience or being careful to not tell them what I do until I find out more about whether or not I consult to them, firstly, it’s dishonest and it’s going to make you feel uncomfortable.

Secondly, it always leads to a less successful outcome because the moment you start hedging, then all of a sudden, it’s like coming down to punish you. If I sell two different businesses, I’m going to mention this business to ideal customer for this one and vice versa. Stick to what you are born to do and you will always find you get a better outcome.

Stick to what you are born to do, and you will always get a better outcome. Share on X

You covered so much information there. Thank you so much. I want to be respectful and we need to do EXTRA too. That was amazing, Matthew. Thank you so much for that. You are fantastic. I want more information. I’m sure my ladies do too. Could you tell us how they could reach you, please?

The easiest way to get in touch with me is to go to LinkedIn. Check me out there. There’s a ton of free content I put out there. I find a lot of people buy programs before looking at all the free content. I learned on YouTube. I put a ton of free content out on YouTube as well. Check that out. If you’re interested in creating your own version of the Rapid Growth® Guy or the Hustle Lifeguard, go to MatthewPollard.com/growth. There, you’ll get a template that you can download that shows you the five steps to do that in a more specific way and it’ll only take you about an hour.

It’s surprising that nobody does this stuff and that’s the problem. We tune in to all these shows and read all these books but we don’t take action on it and that’s a great template for you. My publisher hates me when I say this but if you are interested in checking out The Introvert’s Edge, you don’t need to buy my book. Just download the first chapter.

I’ll help you get past the belief that you can sell or network as an introvert but depending on whether you go to TheIntrovertsEdge.com or TheIntrovertsEdgeToNetworking.com, which book do you want. Download the first chapter. Get over the belief that you can’t sell or network. In both books, I give you the exact steps to follow in the first chapter.

In the sales book, if you do nothing more than grab what you say, fit it into the steps that I give you. The first thing you realize some things don’t fit, throw that out. You shouldn’t be saying it to customers or prospects. You’ll then realize there are some gaping holes usually around questions. Maybe we’ll do as a special part of your segment as well for your premium clients but you’ll learn that you probably don’t tell great stories.

You don’t ask the right questions, then you’ll realize that there are some things out of order, which is why you end up finding sales so difficult. If you do nothing more than that, you’ll double your sales in the next 60 days. You can access those free chapters TheIntrovertsEdge.com and TheIntrovertsEdgeToNetworking.com.

I got shivers. Thank you for that. That was amazing. We don’t have time for our three rapid-fire questions but we do have time to do EXTRA, which we’re going to be talking about how to create that unified message. He’s got a template you can download but we’re going to do a quick run-through on exactly how to make that happen. I want some personal advice. You folks will get to see this on mine, which is I am the Blissful Millionaire. I’m excited to have that conversation and use that to break it down. Does that sound fun, Matthew?

That sounds great.

Matthew, thank you so much for all you’ve offered in this portion of the show.

It was my pleasure. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.

Ladies, thank you for joining Matthew and me for this portion of this show. We do have more, so stay tuned. We’re going to be talking about how to create that unified message. That’s going to be on EXTRA. If you’re subscribed, stay tuned. If not, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com and you can tune in to the next conversation.

For those of you that are leaving Matthew and I now, thank you so much for joining us. You know how much I appreciate you and I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

 

Important Links

• Matthew Pollard
• The Introvert’s Edge
• Ugg Boots
• The Introvert’s Edge podcast
• American Association of Inside Sales Professionals
• WP Engine
• Choose Bliss
• Judy Robinett
• Ivan Misner
• LinkedIn – Matthew Pollard
• YouTube – Matthew Pollard
• MatthewPollard.com/growth
• TheIntrovertsEdgeToNetworking.com
• RealEstateInvestingForWomen.ETXRA.com

 

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

Learn how to create a consistent income stream by only working 5 hours a month the Blissful Investor Way.

Grab my FREE guide at http://www.BlissfulInvestor.com

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Avoiding The Common Mistakes Newbies Make In Multifamily With Taylor Loht

 

Newbies in real estate tend to make mistakes in a lot of things. Although mistakes are possible, we can still correct them. What could these mistakes be? In this episode, Moneeka Sawyer welcomes Taylor Loht, host of the Passive Wealth Strategy Show, to discuss the common mistakes in multifamily you should avoid to help you build wealth. Inaction is the most common mistake newbies commit, but when you take action and commit to the process, the result of your efforts can be fruitful. Cultivate discipline in your life and move forward as you build wealth. Want to learn more? Tune up the volume and tune in to this conversation now.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Avoiding The Common Mistakes Newbies Make In Multifamily With Taylor Loht

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show Taylor Loht. I had the pleasure of meeting Taylor. I was on his show. He was such a pleasure to talk to so I wanted to share him with you ladies. Taylor is a multifamily and self-storage real estate investor. He has acquired, partnered on, or had a hand in over $150 million in commercial real estate. He hosts the Passive Wealth Strategy Show, which I was on, which helps listeners escape the Wall Street casino and build wealth on Main Street by investing in real estate while avoiding the common newbie pitfalls. Taylor, it is so good to see you again. Welcome to the show.

It’s great to see you as well. Thanks for having me.

Could you give us a high-level version of what brought you to real estate? Give us your story.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this and trying to be more self-aware of what happened and occurred. In 2015, I had been investing in Wall Street’s stuff for a while and doing pretty well because I got lucky when I started making money and we were in the market. 2015 brought new things. The price of oil fell from $110 or $120 a barrel down to $40 something over the course of that year. It took with it a lot of the stock market. We had a lot of stagnation and that got me questioning. I was like, “Maybe this isn’t the right way to build wealth in the long run.”

At that same time, I so happened to read Rich Dad Poor Dad. All those things factored in together and joined together and got me thinking there’s got to be a better way to build wealth. I started learning about real estate and hit the ground running I suppose. I was going to go get MBA and decided not to do that after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and started investing in real estate. That’s the quick version.

Your story is so similar to mine. I got my degree, thought about getting an MBA, and decided instead to take that money and invest in real estate.

It’s tough to look at the MBA and think between the salary that I’m not earning and the cost to get the MBA. It’s going to cost me $300,000 to $400,000 to do this and then I’m going to have a big pile of debt and a job I don’t think I want to make more money. That didn’t feel right. Robert Kiyosaki showed me that my misgivings about that were right and I had to go another direction.

How long have you been investing in real estate?

I started investing in 2016 as a passive investor with the goal of getting more active in the space, scaling and growing. For me, it’s a little bit of a hockey stick type of thing. I’m a very introverted type of person naturally. You mentioned getting your first degree. My first degree is in Chemical Engineering. I’m a nerd. I didn’t spend my teens and twenties getting out there and socializing. I had friends and stuff, but I wasn’t like a big man on campus.

I had to go learn how to meet people at real estate networking events. I had to learn how to do things like what we’re doing now, doing a show, and speaking to all your awesome readers because this is not the type of thing that I naturally gravitate toward, but to get to where I wanted to go in life, I had to learn how to do these things. I had to learn how to build a level of comfort and confidence doing these things. That took time, but that’s okay as long as you’re working and moving forward then there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’m with you.  What is the biggest newbie mistake real estate investors make? Where do they go wrong?

When we’re talking about people who are new, they say may start going to real estate networking events and trying to figure out what’s out there and all these kinds of things, the biggest mistake is not taking action. Parenthetically thinking that education equals action. Education is great. I’ve spent a lot of money on real estate education more than I ever thought I would, but you have to turn that education into action. This includes me at the beginning because you don’t know exactly what to do when you’re getting started, so you don’t know which direction to go. You’re getting pulled by shiny objects or can’t pick a path and stick to it.

You have to turn that education into action and commit to the process. Share on X

When new real estate investors want to get started, they don’t know where to start. Maybe they go to a networking event, or they hear about a course that’s going great. Maybe they buy it or don’t, but either way, if they buy it, they might not stick to that. That might not hold them down the road. They might go buy the next program and then eventually give up because it doesn’t work. They might try for a month and then they don’t get a deal for a month. It took me years to get my first deal of continually working at it and growing. It’s taking action and committing to the process. Stumbling and falling on your face sometimes is part of the process. It’s something that most of us deal with at the beginning.

It is interesting because one of the real big tenets of this show is to take action. What I shared with one of my guests is to take mindful action. For me, action is about doing something. Education is an action, but you do have to go to the next step. Also, don’t get analysis paralysis. Go to that next step, commit to a strategy, and move forward towards actions toward that strategy. It’s all action, but it’s a matter of not getting stuck in any particular action either because there are other things.

For instance, if you want to do no money-down strategies, you’re looking for lease options and calling distressed sellers. Don’t get so caught up in the phone calls that you don’t close any deals. That’s also getting stuck. What happens is people buy a course and they’re like, “I’m going to learn all of these scripts by heart.” You have to make phone calls. When someone says, “Yes,” you have to follow up. Don’t like freak out and say, “I’m not going to call them back.” There are baby steps in that process. It starts with education, but then you got to keep moving forward.

Speaking of being on the phone with people, you have to get to the point where somebody yells at you and calls you a jerk because you’re trying to do this deal with them, and for whatever reason, it’s going to happen. I got over it. I’ve been yelled out of the phone by people a few times whose property I’m trying to buy, but it gives me pause. I’m a sensitive guy, but you got to make the next calls and move on to the next one and whatever those hurdles are that we have to get over.

I’m never going to poo-poo education. You have to apply it. Maybe you learn about wholesaling and you’re like, “I don’t want to be a real estate wholesaler.” I don’t want to be a real estate wholesaler either. There’s nothing wrong with being a wholesaler, but if that’s not your path, no problem. Find the path that is right for you, commit to it, and move forward.

How do you overcome the key limiting beliefs of new investors?

Do you mean on an individual level like my own limiting beliefs?

Yes.

My opinion is that’s a daily practice. That’s something that we, as individuals, have to work on. I’m realizing that 2015 was a very pivotable year for me. I had that shift in my way that I built wealth, but also, I started training in Brazilian jiujitsu and I still do at the end of 2022. I became a vegetarian in 2015 and I’m still a vegetarian. I’m marrying a vegan in 2023. I’m stuck on that path too. I’m perfectly happy with it.

In this realm, you have to constantly be challenging yourself in taking that next step. If you’d asked me in 2015 when I was brand new at jiujitsu and didn’t know anything, “Are you going to stick with it? Are you going to get to purple belt level?” which I am now, I would’ve said, “I’m not so sure,” because I had those limiting beliefs in my mind. Now, if you asked me if I’m going to keep progressing, absolutely. As long as I don’t get injured and can keep going and training, I’m going to keep pushing forward, but it’s only because I’ve continued to press through all of those various beliefs.

Now, I work with a lot of passive investors. The first couple of phone calls for example that I had with passive investors scared me, but you have to do it. There’s always the first one, whatever it is, like the first offer that you make, the first property you get under contract or the first investor who wires you money. “I have $100,000 of this guy’s money and I have to put that money ahead of my own. That’s scary,” but that first one is what gets you going and starts the fire.

If you’re familiar with this thing going around called 75 Hard and I don’t know if your readers have heard of that, but it’s put out by this guy named Andy Frisella. It’s about cultivating discipline in your own life. There are a few things that you’re required to do every day for 75 days. You’re required to follow a diet. He doesn’t tell you what one to follow. He says, “You got to pick it and stick to it.” You have to exercise twice a day. One of those exercises or workouts has to be outside. You have to drink a gallon of water a day.

There are a few other things you have to do. You have to take a cold shower every day for five minutes. I don’t like cold showers. The rest of the stuff I can handle. I still hate the cold showers. You also can’t drink if you like alcohol. I like whiskey but I’m not drinking it because I’m sticking to the program. If you miss one thing, you got to start back again on day one.

You also have to take a picture of yourself shirtless every day for 75 days. Those pictures of me are never going to see the light of day. My fiancé doesn’t see them. They’re only for me. I tried this program and I made it probably 3 or 4 days. I’m not sure exactly what I missed. Maybe it was a culture shower or something else, but I had a limiting belief when I got started about whether I could accomplish it.

I’m not at the end of the program now. The jury is out. I haven’t completed it, but I’m significantly further than I got last time. I didn’t have this same level of limiting beliefs about whether I could stick to my diet or work out twice a day and one of them outside. It’s hard to fit this stuff into your schedule. That’s a lot of time. The cold showers stink, but I can get it done and just don’t enjoy it.

It comes down to putting one foot in front of the other. If and when you “fail,” or if you don’t meet your own expectations which are most of the time because you didn’t take the right actions. We knew it at the time like you have an email to respond to from somebody or a call from a potential seller and you’re putting off calling them back. You need to take that action. Even if this deal that you’re working on doesn’t go anywhere, you need to have that process in your mind that mentality or mindset of, “I’m going to take the action on whatever this thing is,” and it comes down to cultivating that in your life as much as you can.

I love your whole attitude about possible failure. I like to call it more like trial and error rather than failure because failure feels bad. A lot of people are like, “Try is such a weak word like I’m going to try.” I don’t mean it that way. What I do mean is we set a goal and if we are not able to get to the very end of that goal to reach it, examining along the way with this beginner’s mind or gamer’s mind maybe what was it that I did wrong, was not committed to, or didn’t do right? How can I get better at this? I love the fact that you brought in something so personal because that’s where we practice. In business, we feel like the stakes are so high and they’re not higher than personal development.

For personal development, the results are significantly more impactful in your life but they don’t feel as scary necessarily as in business. I love that you’re practicing this ability to create goals, pursue those goals, reexamine where the errors happened, and pursue them again. There’s no real failure. There’s just evolution and success. I love the way that you did that.

We then can take those skills and move them into our business practices. When we’re on the phone with somebody else or taking somebody else’s money, it’s scarier, but you’ve started to develop that skillset required for having that gamer’s mind. “What is this adventure going to bring? How can I become a better person? How can I do this better?” I love the approach that you explained. We’ve never had anybody talk about this deep personal goal setting journey the way you did.

I’m glad to share what I’ve learned. I’ll be honest. I don’t mean to put myself as somebody who is super disciplined all the time. I’ll give you an example. I got injured in jiujitsu. I broke a couple of ribs or maybe severely dislocated them. I had a pretty bad rib injury. If you get a rib injury, you can’t breathe, pick stuff up, and do jiujitsu. I ended up taking a few months off of not training. When you have a rib injury, you can’t do anything. You can’t lift weights.

Eventually, I started doing some jump rope outside and trying to keep my cardio going, but it was hard. I was sitting around and can’t do my favorite thing, which is exercise in any way. My diet and mindset slipped a bit. I put on a little bit of weight. It’s only 5 or 6 pounds and I got it off now. I see life as a process of learning and continuously developing, and then seeing we’ve stumbled and trying to get ourselves back on track, not all at once, but day by day. “What are the steps that I can take to get myself back on the path where I want to be with whatever our goals in life are?”

That’s how life needs to work in order to be fulfilled and consistently learn, grow, and recognize that we’re not always going to perform to our best expectations. Things are going to come up in life, but when we can recognize that and say, “I’m not performing as well as I can. How can I get myself back on track?” That’s what it takes to grow over the long term and build wealth but grow as a person as well, which is more important.

We can mitigate risk as much as we can, but there’s always risk involved in putting yourself out there. People say that public speaking is one of most people’s most feared activities. You’re more afraid of public speaking than you are of dying. Jerry Seinfeld has a good joke about this. You’d rather be the guy in the casket than the one giving the eulogy. That’s not something that I want to do.

When I was a kid growing up and I had to speak in front of the class, I hated it. I didn’t even get any joy out of that, but to get where I want to be, I have to learn how to work through that. Truthfully, I don’t enjoy it but it’s “easier.” It’s less mentally taxing when you can focus on providing value to the audience. My method when I have to do public speaking is to practice until I’m not worried about what I’m going to say and that’s focused on providing value to the audience. The process is getting over our fears progressively. However, it applies to our real estate investing. It’s just huge. Fear is a limiting belief. I’m dealing with them.

You mentioned that you’re an introvert and that you’ve had to develop skills to have that not be negative. I am an introvert too. Nobody ever believes me when I say that, but I’m not a very outgoing person. I was at a big real estate event down in Southern California and I realized there were so many missed opportunities there because I sat with my friends whom I wanted to connect with. That, to me, is what fills me up. It’s these real conversations with people that I care about and want to get to know more. I’m not the person that’s a good networker so there were so many missed opportunities.

However, it was the thing that made it even possible for me to be there because I decided I was going to meet 2 or 3 new people and the people that I was going there with I didn’t know them well so I could build those relationships deeper. I’m all about deep relationships. I am not the best networker and I do terrible in groups. If I’m in a room of a lot of people, I completely shrivel up. Those are characteristics of an introvert and it has never held me back. I’d love to hear your perspective on that because you’re the same way. We don’t hear a lot of that in this real estate world, right?

That’s true. We don’t hear people talking about it because, in many ways, people perceive it. This is maybe changing society, but people perceive introversion as being antisocial or generally less good at business or an investor because you don’t get energy out of networking with 50 people at a networking event. I don’t particularly enjoy that myself, but if you can focus on what you are good at and sometimes you have to do things that you don’t like to do. That’s true, at least for me.

Sometimes you got to get out there, network, and deal with it in your own way or whatever makes sense for you. For myself, if I am at a real estate networking event, particularly a big conference, after talking and trying to build connections with people, I have to step away for a little while and take 5, 10, 15 minutes, or however long to get myself back centered and trying to regain some energy whatever it is. I got to check out for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll take some time to digitize some business cards or be productive with that time checked away so that I can come back to the event with the energy that I need to have. I’m not going to be there forever. These events are typically 2 days or sometimes 3 days. I can deal with it for that long.

Sometimes you got to get out there, network, and deal with it in your own way or whatever makes sense for you. Share on X

My fiancé and I have known each other for a few years before we went on our first date. We met in jiujitsu. She started not too long after I did. We knew each other at the name level. That’s how I pretty much used to know everybody at jiujitsu. I’ve changed that over time as I’ve worked this muscle of building connections with people and I’ve seen that as a valuable muscle. It’s great to get to know people. Years ago, we went on our first date. She asked me out and we connected. We learned how much we have in common and get to know each other on a deeper level.

It went from there. We’re great and very happy, but at that point, we’d probably known each other for a few years where we’d seen each other 3 or 4 times a week for years, but my natural tendency is not to strike up conversations, especially with women at the gym. That’s not who I am. Again, she asked me out. I wasn’t asking about women at the gym. That’s my natural tendency. I’m not there to meet people. I’m there to exercise and get to know this sport. Now, I see the value in the real estate world when I’m there. That’s how I’ve built a lot of connections with many of my investors.

What I’m getting at is that we can succeed in real estate too. There’s more understanding of that and growth in the culture. There are more knowledge bases and strategies out there available to learn from. There are quite a few very good guides for introverted real estate investors to build connections at real estate networking events that are out there.

I’ve had one gentleman in particular on my show in the past that trains introverts on how to succeed in networking and sales with an angle into real estate investing. His name is Matthew Pollard. I got to recommend checking out his content. I’ve got a few of his books on my phone, but suffice it to say that it can be done for those of us who are introverts. We just have to use strategies that work for us in whatever our particular real estate investing niche is. You can find a way.

One of the things about creating a blissful real estate business is to build that business based on your strengths and who you are rather than trying to fight who you are and try to be something that you’re not and build a business on that because it’s not sustainable. We do grow, but you don’t want it to be so painful that it stops you.

I say frequently on this show, there are 1 million ways to make $1 million dollars in real estate and pick one that’s aligned with your strengths, and it’s not dependent on the things that you’re weak on. If I’m weak in networking, I don’t want to build a business that’s completely dependent on networking. It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t grow that skill, I shouldn’t network, or I shouldn’t push myself, but I don’t want my business to be completely dependent on that until I build some confidence there.

Build a different business, at least to start, and it’s possible. There are so many ways to make money in real estate being an introvert. You don’t have to be what people perceive as what real estate success looks like. I love having this conversation because many of my readers must be introverts and think, “I can’t network,” but you can. It’ll be a skill that you need to develop, but you don’t have to start your business and be completely dependent on that. Pick something else. There are many different strategies.

I totally agree. We can do it. You need to find the route that works for you, build, and learn over time.

 

Taylor, could you tell everybody how they can reach you? I know you’ve got an awesome free gift.

My show, Passive Wealth Strategy Show which you’ve been on, and thank you for coming on, is where we teach our listeners how to escape the Wall Street casino and build wealth on Main Street by investing in real estate. We have new episodes every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. We also have a free video course on red flags in Passive Real Estate Investing. I invest and do multifamily and self-storage syndications and actively raise money for these deals from passive investors.

I get a lot of questions from passive investors about good things to look for in a syndication. We made the video course of seven things that I’ve seen go wrong in many deals across the board. You spend enough time networking and getting to know people one-on-one in private non-recorded conversations, people will tell you so much. You ask them and let them run. They’ll tell you so much about what went wrong with their deals. When you spend several years in the business as I’ve had and hopefully many more, you start to see some trends and things that can go wrong. You can get that course at PassiveRealEstateCourse.com. It’s totally free. My company is NT Capital at NTCapitalGroup.com. You can look us up there as well.

I am intrigued by the idea of the red flags. You said that there are seven, could we do a deep dive for maybe 1 or 2 on what you’ve learned about them in EXTRA? Would that work for you?

That would be great.

We’ll do a deep dive into 1 or 2 red flags that you should be looking for when you’re looking at investing with a syndicator. I want to highlight that Taylor is a syndicator. He is looking for investors. If you like what he has to say, reach out to him regarding that also. Taylor, are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

Let’s go.

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

Know your why. Why are you here? What are you committed to achieving? Not, “I want to go buy real estate. I want to go build cashflow.” Those are great and we’ll get there, but start with the deep reason you’re here. Is it that you want to create a retirement for yourself or fuel your own retirement? Is that you want to send your kids to college? Is that you want to be prepared as your parents get older and have the finances to make sure you can take care of them? Whatever it is for you or you want to travel more.

I’m not here to tell you what your goal should be, I’m here to tell you that you should know what it is because it’s going to help push you through tough times. When you get on the phone with somebody and they don’t want to talk to you telling you how much of a jerk you are, that why is going to help you make the next phone call.

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

It comes down to every day. A lot of people talk about having morning practice in your life. It’s every day thinking about your goals. Honestly, one of the best tools that I got from a coach who I paid a lot of money to give me this tool, but this is a free thing you can find on YouTube. Go look up Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret. It’s awesome. I listen to it all the time over and over again. It comes down to our lives and experiences. Our success is shaped by the thoughts in our heads.

Are we having positive thoughts? Are we having negative thoughts? If we always focus on the bad things, then we’re only going to notice the bad things and the negative. If we focus on the positive, the good things, the opportunity, and what we can go out and achieve, then we’re more likely going to go do it and achieve those things. I recommend looking that up and listening to it.

 

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

For several years, I’ve done intermittent fasting every day. I’ll be honest, it’s come and gone in my life as life gets in the way sometimes. Here and there, I fall off the track, whenever something happens. I’ve been sticking with 16/8, so that’s 16 hours I don’t eat anything, but I drink coffee and water and I only eat meals 8 hours a day. I’m not here to say that’s right for anybody else, but there’s something to it that helps me focus on my goals.

I did a phase where I was eating one meal a day after I get home from jiujitsu. I hadn’t eaten anything for 22 to 23 hours. I go do an hour of jiujitsu, get home, and be so hungry, but the first meal was so good. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that. I’m not doing that right now, but thinking about that every day helps me eat healthily. As I said, I’m a vegetarian, but there’s a lot of crappy vegetarian food out there just because I’m a vegetarian doesn’t mean I only eat vegetables. I don’t all the time, but doing that every day helps me. Plus, I’m in my 30s. I’m getting older.

I also like listening to Tony Robbins. Somebody who’s healthy has 1 million goals. Somebody who’s unhealthy, sick, or has few months left to live, they have one goal. If we can focus on keeping ourselves healthy, we can keep going after those million goals. As I said, I’m in my 30s. My grandfather who I’m told I’m the spitting resemblance of and whom never got to meet died in his 50s. I’m thinking, “If I’m following his track, that means I’m over halfway done. I got to take care of myself.” I’m sticking with it, but that’s super important. It all starts with taking care of your body.

If we can focus on keeping ourselves healthy, we can keep going after those million goals. Share on X

I love that. Thank you for all that you’ve offered on this portion of the show, Taylor.

Thank you for having me.

Ladies, stay tuned. We’re going to be talking about passive investing red flags in EXTRA. If you are subscribed to EXTRA, stay tuned. If you’re not, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com and you can sign up there. For those of you that are leaving Taylor and I, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time and until then, remember, goals without action are dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

 

Important Links

• Passive Wealth Strategy Show
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• 75 Hard
• Matthew Pollard – Past Episode of Passive Wealth Strategy Show
• PassiveRealEstateCourse.com
• NTCapitalGroup.com
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com

 

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

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Why The Right Syndicator Believes In Education With Pili Yarusi – Real Estate Women

 

A syndicator could make or break your real estate career. Many consider them the person in charge of your success. That is why before diving deep into the game, you need to arm yourself with the right syndicator. In this episode, we welcome back to the show Pili Yarusi. Pili is a syndicator herself and is the Cofounder and Operator of Yarusi Holdings LLC. She speaks for the second time on the show with Moneeka Sawyer to share great tips on finding the right syndicator for you. Pili takes us across her journey and offers insights on the importance of education and taking mindful action. At the end of the day, this is your investing journey. You need to protect it as much as you can. Begin by choosing the right people who can help you towards success. Join Pili as she guides you how.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Why The Right Syndicator Believes In Education With Pili Yarusi – Real Estate Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome back to our show, Pili Yarusi. I had her on the show a couple of years ago. We had an amazing conversation. You should go back, look her up, and check out that one. I’m so excited to have the next conversation and share with you all the ways that she’s grown and all the new things that she has to bring to the conversation. I’m super excited about this conversation.

Before we head into that, let me reintroduce you to Pili. Pili is a loving mom and wife whose goal is to lead with Aloha by example. Pili is a Cofounder and Operator of Yarusi Holdings LLC with her husband Jason. Yarusi Holdings is a multifamily investment firm that repositions underperforming properties through operational efficiencies, rebranding and value add renovations.

Pili and Jason have managed the successful and profitable exit of these multifamily properties. The Yarusis have an active real estate portfolio of over $100 million. She co-hosts Multifamily Live, The Jason and Pili Project, MOM – Moms of Multifamily and MORE – Moms of Real Estate. All can be found on Facebook, YouTube and anywhere you tune in to shows.

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Pili, welcome back to the show. How are you?

I’m so good. Thank you so much for having me back on. That was so many moons ago. We were giggling about how amazing it is that we laid the foundations for the people that we become with the things that we read and the things that we do years ago.

Through COVID, you moved locations. You were active on Clubhouse. I’ve been watching all your events on social media. It has been amazing to watch you grow and then to hear in your bio all the numbers and how things are so different than they were years ago. Congratulations. You’ve done an amazing job.

Thank you so much. It was interesting to hear you read some of our old numbers when we were starting, like our triple-digit units. You said we had 100 and something units.

Ladies, we were reading over her bio first. It was the old bio from years ago. It was 426 units and 100 and something in direct management. Look at those new numbers.

We’re at $200 million in assets in direct management and over 2,000 units. We took down our first building in 2017 and here it is. It’s almost 2023. It’s been an amazing ride. It’s been so much fun.

Take us through your journey a little bit. You’re a syndicator. We have a lot of syndicators that come on this show. I’d like to hear about your journey. For me, one of the things that I want to chat about on this show is I feel like my ladies have heard a lot about syndication. We’ve highlighted some amazing syndicators like yourself. Some are amazing and some, I don’t know enough about to say.

My ladies know that the syndicator or the person in charge is the single most important indicator of success. The ladies have had a little bit of a challenge as far as making a move toward investing in these syndications. I’m not sure if you’ve dealt with that, what your experiences have been around that and what advice you can give the ladies. That’s where I wanted to head. Let’s start by reminding us of your story and telling us about the journey over the last few years.

I want to answer both questions at the same time. I’m going to start with something that you and your ladies can think about. For a syndicator, my most important job and this is per the SEC Regulations or the Securities and Exchange Commission, I need to make sure you’re educated. That’s my biggest concern. My second biggest concern is that I need to make sure that you know me and that I know you.

It doesn’t surprise me, honestly, that it’s such a big leap. Number one, you need to get educated about this new asset class. It’s something that you keep on hearing about but haven’t dove into because it takes a little bit of education to dive into correctly. We talk about passive investing all the time. A true passive investor knows what they’re getting into first and understands it.

When it comes to real estate syndication and going in with a syndicator like myself, I want you to know me. I want you to have access to me. I want you to know that I am going to take care of your investment as far and as much as I can. Those are some of the things that I want you to chew on as I’m going through my story.

I’ll save you me growing up in Hawaii and all that stuff for a later date. Maybe we can have tea one day and talk about that. My real estate journey has honestly been one of complete growth and change. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode that I had with you. I might have been pregnant with one of my children. I’ve been either pregnant without or with a small child for this entire growth period.

Jason and I got together at the end of 2012 into 2013. We decided we wanted a family. We had our first child in 2014. We also got into real estate in 2013, flipping and wholesaling homes. We started doing small rentals and had a construction company. He still had his brewery and I was a real estate agent so a lot was going on plus growing our family.

When multifamily syndication hit us, it hit Jason first. I remember him talking to me about it. I was pregnant with our second child. We still had all these businesses. We were growing. We were prospering but we had so much to juggle. I told him no. It goes back to what you were saying. You and a lot of your ladies haven’t taken the jump into real estate syndication. I said no. I was like, “We have so much going on. Why would we start another business?” We were talking about getting into the active side.

That’s key. There’s the active side and then there’s the passive side. You were looking at going into the active side.

I wasn’t educated enough to even understand that there was a passive side. I didn’t even know this at that time. I was like, “I am pregnant. We have all these things happening.” It was what I said before. It was education that got me there. We jumped in with a mentor instead of how we jumped into flipping and wholesaling, which was like, “Let’s watch HGTV. We have a construction company so we can flip a house.” That is another story for another day.

For multifamily, we got a mentor. We educated ourselves. We ended up taking down our first multifamily at the beginning of 2017. It was a 94-unit in Kentucky. Let’s flash forward a couple of years to 2013. We’re at $200 million and 2,000 units. My biggest concern is to educate. It’s not small amounts of money. It’s not $1,000 or $5,000. Most minimums start at $50,000. Some are $25,000 but most are at $50,000. That’s not something most people have in their back pockets. I want you to be comfortable. I need you to be comfortable. If you’re not comfortable jumping into the syndication, then don’t. Don’t jump into one until you feel comfortable enough.

Don't jump into a syndication until you feel comfortable enough. Share on X

We talked a little bit about real estate in general. I believe real estate is the best asset to jump into. I’m going to come back to what I said in the beginning. As far as much as you know the person that’s running it, do they have a background of success? Do they have other investors that you can talk to? Do you have their cell phone number? Can you get a hold of them if you need to? If you don’t understand them or understand something, can you get a hold of them?

It comes down to being comfortable in what you’re investing in because this is your hard-earned money. We like to talk about passive investing. You want to make money with your money but first, you’ve worked hard for that money. Let’s make sure that the people that you’re investing with are also going to work hard to make money with your money.

I’ll be honest. I have invested with a few of the different syndicators that, over time, I’ve gotten to know. They’ve been on the show a few times. You’ve sent me a few things. You know this because my answer to you was, “I am finishing up a construction project. I need to stay liquid.” This has been my story for the last couple of years and it’s very frustrating.

When you’re in construction, you do need to have quite a bit of liquidity. This is our first project in this company. We started the company together. This is my first project together with my partner. Liquidity was a hugely important deal for me and continues to be. I was talking to my partner. I probably shouldn’t say this here but we’re all friends. My partner and I were saying, “How much are we in cash?” Over 10 years, because it’s been a 10-year project from when we bought the property to when we got the permits to when we’re finishing the build, we are in for $1 million. That’s personal cash for each of us.

I’ve sold properties. I’ve had to make things happen. That’s in addition to the loan that we owe. In the end, we are going to do fine but we’re not going to make a killing. One year’s income is what we’re making on the back end of this. We missed the boat as far as when we’re selling. We didn’t get rich on this project but I learned a lot. One of the things that I learned was liquidity was key. If we had not finished it, we would’ve ended up with a lot of builders, especially during COVID. For me, there was a liquidity thing.

I will say that it’s a bit of a shield because I don’t feel yet that I’m educated well enough to make those decisions about what kind of syndications I want to go into. Some things came up so we did end up putting it into three. I’ve diversified. I’ve got 1 mobile home park, 1 multifamily and 1 storage thing that I’ve invested in. That was early on. That was before I met you. I then stopped.

I made good decisions. The people that I’m investing with are good and it is because I know them. I trusted them with my money. As I look, “What am I going to do when liquidity isn’t this big deal to me? I want to invest. Where am I going to go? How am I going to go do this?” We’ve had some people come on the show to educate us but for some reason, I’m feeling like it’s not deep enough. Talk to me a little bit about the kind of education that you share with your people to make them comfortable with taking that leap. You’re right. $50,000 and $100,000 is a lot of money.

We educate on a couple of different levels. 7 Figure Multifamily is our active program. I have some investors that have jumped into that program with the sole purpose of learning how to do it from an asset manager’s side or a capital raiser’s side. They’re learning how to do it from that side so they understand where they can put their capital and how it’s being put to use.

As an active investor, this is what I do day in and day out. This is my job. I’ve created a job. I also passively invest but this is my work. This is what I love to do. As a passive investor, you could go that deep. As you continue your journey, you can learn over time by talking to the syndicators that you talk with. We should be open books. There’s that level.

We also educate on the level of a passive investor. People and other syndicators have come on here to discuss basic syndication techniques but to honestly go deeper, it’s the phone call. It’s finding a syndicator that will talk you through the process and understand your needs and talk you through them. For instance, if one of you came to me and started talking to me about what you needed and I figured out that it wasn’t syndication, I’m going to tell you that.

 

If you tell me that you want a quick return on your money, I am not your lady. I don’t do quick returns on your money but I’m not going to force you or help you to understand that this is the way to go. I’ll probably introduce you to a house flipper or private money lending. That’s also good. It comes to being comfortable. You want to be comfortable. You don’t want to make a mistake. Unfortunately, it’s investing.

You’ve run through the gamut of your project. In this ten-year project, you’re not going to make a killing. A lot of it’s based on timing. Jason and I could slap ourselves. We wish we got in in 2013. We got in in 2017, a few years later. We’ve still done well. We’ve had ten successful exits. We’ve had dozens of investors who are happy with how we’ve performed. Can I promise that in the future? Historically, Jason and I have done well. I don’t have a crystal ball but we are educated and open.

Most of my investors, if not all, because I call them with my cell phone, have my cell phone number. They can call me if they need to. They can let me know what troubles they’re having or if they have a question about something that’s on their K-1 or if they have a question about what we’re doing or if they want to go deeper. They deserve to. Their $50,000 tells me that they deserve to have my cell phone number and to call me if needed.

I’m not sure how other syndicators run their businesses but that’s how we run ours. I’m not going to say you because I don’t want to talk to everyone but for me, being comfortable and educated was the key to my growth. When you started talking about the old episode we did together, you mentioned all these books that I had quoted and the things that I was studying. Those were the foundations of the woman that I am.

You mentioned the book, 12 Week Year and Miracle Morning. I haven’t read those books for a while. I should probably revisit them. Those are my foundation. Those are part of why I succeed. The reason I’m so good at what I do is because of the foundation and the education I laid down for myself. With investing in any real estate, you should educate yourself. That’s what may be holding some people back. It’s true education. It’s that comfortable I know what I’m getting into education, not I’m pressing a button on my Robinhood app and hoping for the best.

Hope is not a good investing strategy. There are a couple of things that come up for me as you were talking. I love that we can have a real conversation live. Thank you. You’re warming my heart. I love this.

Thank you.

Two things come up for me. The first one is I’m so afraid of calling you and saying, “Give me some information.” I get that information and then I’m sleeping on it and I’ve got another question. I’m one of those people that will ask you questions until you feel like you’ve been buried. I will keep asking questions. I will also say this. I have never in my entire life lost a dime in real estate. Every single deal has been successful but I will ask into the ground. Yay for me on one level but people that do business with me are like, “Another question?”

Even I’ll say it on this show. You have to take action. I’m fully aware of that. Business people who know me know have seen my portfolio and my life. They know that I’m an action taker but I will not take action until I feel safe and comfortable. If you got a phone call from me every day for ten days, wouldn’t that be frustrating for you? I know my ladies are thinking the same things.

I’m going to give you a quote from Tony Robbins. “Success leaves clues.” There’s a reason why you’re so successful. It is because you ask the right questions. The other thing I’m going to say is that’s why we have email. You don’t have to call me. You can email me all your questions. I’m going to go back to the price point. $50,000 is the minimum. I have people who invest upwards of $500,000. I have one investor that brought all the capital to one of my deals. That was upwards of $1 million. They will ask questions.

Whether or not I am nose deep in kiddo stuff and my kiddos deserve all my time too but if you have a question for me, you are the most important person. Your capital is your life. You worked hard for that. Who am I to get irritated because you want to know what a K-1 is, what this line means on that K-1 or why I am painting the wall gray instead of white? Who knows what your question is going to be?

This is not said any place in the SEC but once upon a time, I was a real estate agent. I am inbred with this idea of fiduciary duty. I have a fiduciary duty towards you even though it’s not set in stone and it’s not written anywhere. I can’t promise you profit. I can’t promise you that I’m going to be there for you every waking hour but if you have a question, let’s get it answered.

I’m going to go back to there’s a reason why you’re successful. It’s because you asked the right questions. You mentioned taking action. There is taking action but we should rephrase that into taking mindful action or educated action. It’s the uneducated action that gets us into trouble. That split-second moment of putting all your money into one pot sometimes works and people make millions of dollars.

 

There are those times and it happens more often than not that they don’t because they invested in the wrong thing or with the wrong person or at the wrong time. It’s taking mindful action and making sure you’re pressing the buttons for investments that make sense for you and the numbers make sense. I believe in investing in people, number one.

You said a couple of things that I want to go back to. I love this idea of mindful action. The action does not necessarily mean jumping in. Doing your education is also action. Reading this show is also action. Taking action towards your goals does not mean immediately jumping into something without feeling enough confidence around it to experience success.

You know this at the end of the show. I say, “Goals without action are just dreams.” It’s true but there are lots of different ways that you can take action. I love the way that you reframe that because that’s exactly what I mean. We do need to take action but it needs to be mindful action. That starting action can be education as long as you don’t get into analysis paralysis, which is a fine line.

There is a fine line there. You should know better that action does not necessarily mean taking that jump. Although so much of social media and everything that’s on there is like “Go. Do. Hustle.” It’s taking that time to analyze not only the deal. The deal needs to work and the numbers have to be beautiful but you need to know all the different ways that the deal might not work.

This is more important. Analyzing the person that you’re investing in and with is of the utmost importance. You can go analysis paralysis on this as much as you want or maybe not that much but enough. You should have a good relationship with the people that you are investing with. That’s why I love working with new investors. I want to make sure that if a new investor’s going to invest, they invest with me. I know that I can do it. I have that confidence.

You should have a good relationship with the people you are investing with. Share on X

I know I’m a good fiduciary. I will make sure that you know me and my husband. If you have questions, you’re not going to feel bad. If you’re reading this and you want to jump into syndication and ask a million questions, I am not going to make you feel bad. Ask all of the questions. That is what I’m here for.

One of the things that you said that I want to also highlight a little bit is, “You’ve had success because you asked the right questions.” I didn’t ask the right questions in the beginning. That’s the other piece. I know a lot. I’ve been very blessed with this show. This show has educated me probably more than it’s educated any of you because I’m having every single conversation. I’m studying every single guest. It has been phenomenal for me. I’ve got a lot of education that way.

Over time, there’s been an evolution of, “This question matters and this one doesn’t.” I still ask goofy questions. I understand that it’s okay because you don’t get to the right questions until you start asking. Don’t ever feel, “Since I don’t know what the right questions are, I’m going to sound stupid. I don’t know.” It’s okay because you got to start somewhere. If you never start, you’re never going to reach success. That’s the truth. You have to take the first step. The first step is to start asking questions. Would you agree with me on that?

I agree. That’s why your ladies are with you. Ladies, that’s why you trust and you are with Moneeka. It’s because you know that she’ll help guide you through some of these questions. This is why you go with indicators that you trust because they’ll help guide you through this time and the questions that you have. With our first multifamily mentor, we still ask him questions because he continues to level himself up to a level that we’re reaching for. We can ask those questions that he is dealing with at that level when we get there.

When we took down our first building, we could not figure out how to do this one thing. We went to him. It was one question to him that would’ve taken us a week to figure out on our own asking different types of questions. This is why you go to those who know those things that you need to know. That’s why you listen to podcasts.

We probably created our podcast for similar reasons. I’ve learned so much from having a podcast and from other people that I’ve brought on. It’s been phenomenal. It’s listening to podcasts, talking to other women and talking to other people in the industry. Reach out to them. The reason why people go on podcasts is to have people reach out to them. To anyone who’s reading this, reach out to me. Let me know if you have any questions. I will answer any of them to the best of my abilities.

 

What a great reminder. People don’t come to my show because they like having conversations with me.

I do.

There are a lot of people with whom we become friends because of this show. We’re like, “That was a great conversation,” and we stay in touch, like us. Some people do come back because they want to talk to me and I want to talk to them. The reality is that the reason that people come on these shows is that they want you to reach out to them. You’re not imposing by emailing them, calling them or telling them you’re interested. Even if you decide at that moment that it’s not the right time to invest with them, they are happy for the opportunity to have the conversation. I had a conversation with another friend of mine, Maureen McCann. Do you know Maureen?

I know of her.

She’s a turnkey person. She’s been on this show about five times. We did a whole session because she talks about 52% returns and some cool stuff.

That’s how we got into multifamily. It was turnkey. That is a whole other story.

At one point, I was calling her and was like, “Are you seeing results? Are my ladies calling you?” I trust her so much. I was like, “I want my ladies to connect with her because she would educate them.” She’s a lot like you in that way. She’s education first. She said, “Don’t be so concerned with what I’m getting out of this show. The reality is as I build these relationships, it may be ten years down the line when someone finally thinks, “I’m ready for that.” I loved that Maureen supported me in this way. Maybe I’ll connect with her again.

You don’t have to invest right away. Don’t feel any pressure that if you’re calling somebody that it’s like, “I feel committed, obligated and all of that stuff.” They would hope that if you connect with them that you would consider them when you’re investing but it’s not an obligatory thing. You get to ask questions. They’re in the business and on this show because they want to connect with you. That means emails and phone calls. All of those things are good. They’re not just okay. They’re good. You are not imposing yourself on them by making those connections.

If this is on video, I’m bouncing on my seat. I’m so excited because what your friend Maureen said is so true. I want to have a conversation with you not just for the now. If it’s for the now, then that is great but I’m talking future. The shortest time we’ve had an investment was 18 months to 7 years. Our investments are long-term investments and so are my relationships. I want them to be long-term. Since our investments are so long-term, I want to have a relationship with you. I need to because we’re going to be in this for the long run.

You are going to be a passive investor but it doesn’t stop there. You don’t get the mailbox money or you do but I expect you as one of my passive investors to read my emails. I want you to know what’s happening. I want you to be educated on what’s happening within the market. I want you to know all the things that I know and everything that I’m sharing with you.

If you go onto my website, you’re going to get my information on how to invest. We call it Becoming Independently Wealthy With Apartment Buildings. It is a very long title. I might shorten it. That’s going to be some emails that you’re going to get and some more education coming from myself and my husband. The great thing is you’re going to be invited to go into my investor portal. You have no obligation to do so but that’s more information. You get to see what an investor portal looks like. You’ll get to schedule a 50-minute call with me.

This is usually what scares people the most and why they don’t call. It is because you think when I pick up the phone, I’m going to be like, “Give me your money.” If I even talk about money, it’s probably going to be because you mentioned it first. I don’t want to know about money. I don’t even want to know how much money you make. I want to know you because I don’t know what’s going to happen for you and with you tomorrow, 5 years from now or 10 years from now when something good happens or if you have something great financially happen to you or you get into a new job and grow.

I’m working with someone who has $10,000 in savings sitting there. He’s growing his wealth. I’m working with him and helping him to grow that financial stability. I help him create a budget and create a system or a foundation. I give him books to read to grow from. I still want to know him 10 or 20 years from now when he’s invested in syndications and invested in other investments to create legacy wealth. I want to have these legacy relationships. It’s not a one-time phone call. This is me wanting to get to know you. I will never ever talk money unless you want to.

I have one other question and I’ve never asked a syndicator this. Let’s talk a little bit about exits. When you’re in syndications, some of the things that happen is they have this plan. They’re going to do a value add, a new build or whatever it is. They give you all the numbers of what this is going to work out and then what are they going to rent it at.

If they’re doing a value add, they’re having to cycle people out as leases come up. There’s a whole process. They’ll say, “When the project is done, we’ll refinance it. We’ll pay off your thing. You make a certain amount of money. Either you’ll make income on the rents over the long-term or if or when we sell it, then you make that capital.” There are lots of different ways that you earn money, which is how they come up with their final IRR, Internal Rate Revenue.

These are the exit strategies or the possible exit strategies that we hear a lot about. What if things go bad? Let’s talk a little bit about how that works. One of the things that I want to preface this with is one of the things that I know. If you’re with a good syndicator with a good project in a good location, as long as you can get the time to be right, the project will recover even through a bad time or a slump. You have to be okay with, “The timeline on this project is 2 to 7 years.”

Maybe they said 2 years, 3 years or 5 years. You got to understand that their biggest obligation to you is to make money for you. If that means that it’s going to take a little bit longer than the 2 years, 5 years or whatever it is, then sometimes, they need to do that to hold it long enough so that they don’t see a loss.

You’re still going to make money on the rent but it may not be the payoff as fast as you would want. That’s the one thing that I have always had in the back of my mind when I go into syndication. This is what we’re shooting for. It’s not the best case. It’s also not the worst case. It’s to allow for the time to be right. I’d like you to talk about the way that you look at exits and what happens if things go bad.

It all starts with underwriting. You already said it too. It’s best case, worst case and base case. The numbers that we put out to our investors are usually very much the base case. We normally don’t even put out the best-case scenario because we never want to overpromise. There are ways that we can make more money on the property. There are ways that we know how to advance the property further than how we put it out there. We normally don’t put it all out there because a lot of the time, when we exit a property, we still want to leave meat on the bone for the next owner. We can take it to those places.

What happens when a property goes sour? This hasn’t happened to us yet. It goes back to underwriting. You have to make sure that the numbers are solid. There are a lot of things that we can’t control but we want to control them as much as possible. You said our number one goal is to make money for our investors. That is true but there are numbers 1.2 and 1.3.

Our other goal is to make the best place possible for our tenants to live. I know that has nothing to do with your question but we are education first and tenant first. If we have happy tenants in a good community, then our investors thrive too. If our tenants are thriving, our investors are thriving. Number three is communication. A syndicator needs to communicate with you when things are going bad and good so that when things are starting to go south, it’s not a surprise. This is why multifamily is such a great investment. It’s a span of 2, 5 or 7.

If we have happy tenants in a good community, then our investors thrive, too. If our tenants are thriving, our investors are thriving. Share on X

I used to tell people we stop at 7 but we do underwrite for 10 years. This is why multifamily is such a great asset. It is because it’s supposed to stand the test of time. Maybe rents go down. Maybe we have a fire. Maybe something happens that is out of our control. That’s key. When something like that happens, that’s why we’re given this time to figure it out and bring it back up. We figure out how to rectify the situation and bring it back out but it’s those things that we can’t control.

It is the things that we can control that you want to make sure that the syndicator has a handle on. They can control the numbers that they enter into their property. That’s why we underwrite and keep on underwriting. That’s why we do worst case, best case and base case because we want to make sure that we are not surprised by the numbers.

If the worst-case situation should happen, we want to already know ahead of it. If we get the best case, that’s great. We already know ahead of it. We want to make sure we have a handle on all of these things. It’s your property management team. We do not actively property manage the asset. We manage the property managers. We are the asset managers. We look over everything and make sure everything works.

You want to make sure that you know who the asset manager is on the syndication. Don’t just invest or talk to the syndicator. The asset manager is your key person on the deal. You want to make sure you have his number if something goes wrong. You want to make sure that you know that he or she is doing the right thing. That is the person that is the puppeteer for the entire deal.

Once you go through acquisitions, you have people that come in. Maybe they’re part of the asset management team or acquisitions. Maybe they helped underwrite. Maybe they did due diligence on the deal. These are various ways you can get into a deal and they brought capital to a deal. Whoever is the asset manager, once the acquisition happens and the sale happens, that person or that team takes it over. That is the person or team that is making you money.

Is that you with your projects?

That’s me and my husband. My husband is the key asset manager in our team.

You are the asset manager as well as the syndicator. Is that true?

Yes. Syndication 101 is the pooling of investors’ funds. I am a syndicator because that is what I’m doing within the asset. That is how I’m funding the asset. It’s with the syndication. The asset manager is part of the syndication. He or she isn’t even part of the syndication. She’s part of the business plan. When you take over a multifamily building, you’re creating a business. It’s business within itself.

The main manager is the asset manager. That is your key person. That is the person you want to talk to. This is the person that you want to make sure you know, like and trust with your $50,000, $500,000 or whatever it is because this is the person that’s going to be managing those funds and all the other managers.

 

I hadn’t heard that distinction before so thank you.

You’re welcome. There are two ways I could take this conversation. One of the reasons why you might not hear that term before is that a lot of syndicators out there don’t do the asset management part. They raise the funds. They’re part of the business plan but they don’t have the decision-making. You want to make sure that you know the prime decision-makers in the deal.

When a deal goes sour and I’ve heard of a few, all I can say is the things that go wrong are usually because they didn’t have their numbers right in the beginning and they weren’t communicating with everyone. There’s that saying, “Do and ask forgiveness later.” It’s the opposite with syndication. You want to make sure that the people that you are working with because limited partners are still partners. They know what’s happening with their money and what’s happening with the asset in good times and in bad.

I haven’t heard of anything that’s fallen apart but those that I have heard that have gone slightly more toward the sour end could be solved with communication and making sure that you have your numbers right from the beginning. That’s why each building that we’ve gone into has had its business plan. We follow that business plan and pivot when needed. That’s why we’ve had ten successful exits. It is because we have a foundation of education of people first that the numbers have to work. That’s always the caveat. We invest in people but the numbers have to work. We run the numbers religiously. We keep on running the numbers inside of the deal because markets fluctuate.

Pandemics happen.

Craziness happens. The thing is multifamily has pulled through the entire time. Will it go down? Will it go up? I don’t have a crystal ball. That’s why education is necessary so that if you are investing your $50,000 into, let’s say, syndication, you know that that money has the possibility of making money but also has the possibility of not. One of our biggest concerns is the return on capital. We want to make sure that we make money on your money but we want to also make sure we return that capital. You don’t want to lose money. That should be the number one rule in syndication school.

You don't want to lose money. That should be the number one rule in syndication school. Share on X

One of the things you said also highlights the value I have when looking at a syndicator. Do they have mentors themselves? Your syndicator has the experience and work ethic. They’ve got all their resources. One of those things that are going to ensure success is that they’ve got people that they can go to when they have a question because they’re at their level. Maybe they’ve been in it for 5 years, 10 years or 20 years. Other syndicators have been in there longer. There are always new adventures that happen in real estate. Hopefully, it’s not too many adventures. You don’t like adventures in real estate but they happen.

They do happen even though you don’t want them to.

That’s right. We don’t want adventurous investing. It’s good to have people that you can go to. You’re going to the syndicator and the syndicator should have someone to go to that has been through the cycles that can then mentor them if they hit bumps in the road.

We have our mentors. We also have a group. Within 7 Figure Multifamily, this came out of a group that I was originally with, 7 Figure Flipping. Those were my mentors in the flipping and wholesaling industry. When Jason and I broke off and did multifamily, I kept in contact with those mentors. Every so often, I would let them know about a deal that I had. I would let them know, “We should partner up.” Jason and I had already created our mentorship program at that time but I saw this way to uplift everyone.

The great thing is having this amazing relationship not only with my mentors in multifamily but I get to also watch and be a part of this family within 7 Figures and get to ask them questions. They’re other investors who either have gone through the things that I’m going through or are going through it. I can talk with them and learn from them.

It’s also learning from your peers, not only from those that have come before you but from those who are going through it. They might have answers to the questions that you don’t know even to ask. That’s what good mentorship provides for you. It provides someone to go to whom you can ask them any question and they will answer with no ifs and buts because they’re there for you. They’re there to mentor you and help guide you as you step up into your future.

As always, we could talk forever but I want to be respectful of your time. Before we end this show, could you tell everybody how they can reach you? Ladies, take notes.

The best place to get to go to is my website, www.YarusiHoldings.com. It’s easy. When you open up the email, there’s going to be a button you can click to get more educated. You can click on the button and learn more about me and my team.

She’s also got that free report there for you. You can download that to get a little bit more education. This conversation has, as always with you, been so yummy. Thank you.

This has been amazing. It was great to catch up. I cannot wait to have you on my podcast. We will extend this conversation into more of what you’re doing.

That sounds awesome. Thank you so much. Ladies, thank you so much for joining Pili and me for this show. Wasn’t it awesome? I love it when you get to overhear a couple of girls chatting. It’s so important to me that you feel comfortable and blissful in making your choices. That’s what this show is all about. I feel like Pili modeled that in so many ways. Thank you for joining the two of us. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams, so get out there, take mindful action, and create the life that your heart most deeply desires. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

 

Important Links

• Yarusi Holdings LLC
• Multifamily Live
• The Jason and Pili Project – Instagram
• Last Episode – Create a Strong Foundation with Pilialoha “Pili” Yarusi
• 7 Figure Multifamily
• 12 Week Year
• Miracle Morning

 

About Pili Yarusi

Pili Yarusi loves to help people and “Lead with Aloha”.

She is a founder and Investor Education and Relations Director for Yarusi Holdings, a multifamily investment firm that has acquired over 2000 units valued at $180 Million since 2016. The firm repositions properties through operational efficiencies, moderate to extensive renovations, and complete rebranding.

Pili is a co-founder and coach at 7 Figure Multifamily – focusing on Real Estate Syndication and Multifamily Investing and trains others on the success formula for buying apartment buildings at www.7FigureMultifamily.com.

Pili is a co-host of The Multifamily Live Podcast providing actionable content and tools to build and strengthen your multifamily business.

She is also the co-host of The Jason and Pili Guide to Real Estate Investing – a fun and interactive YouTube channel that features all the great things that she and Jason are working on.

She and her husband Jason have three awesome children, Luke, Lily, and Leo, and an English Bulldog, Jill.

 

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

Learn how to create a consistent income stream by only working 5 hours a month the Blissful Investor Way.

Grab my FREE guide at http://www.BlissfulInvestor.com

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REI Tax Strategies: How To Cut Your Taxes By 50%, Keep Your Earned Money, And More With Lorraine And Jim Conaway

 

Taxes are inevitable, especially as an entrepreneur and investor. But it doesn’t have to be so difficult and painful to deal with; with the right strategies, you can even cut your taxes by up to 50%. Today we have Lorraine and Jim Conaway to share with us the different REI strategies for reducing your taxable income, keeping the money you earn, and more. Lorraine and Jim share their financial experience and how they have helped many clients with their tax strategies and saved them a lot of pain. They also share their journey in the industry—the ups and downs—and how, through the years, they have discovered what really matters to them. Don’t miss the opportunity to start controlling your finances smartly. Tune in now!

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

REI Tax Strategies: How To Cut Your Taxes By 50%, Keep Your Earned Money, And More With Lorraine And Jim Conaway

Real Estate Investing For Women

Using their extensive experience, knowledge, and success in the world of tech strategies, real estate investing, and other wealth vehicles, Jim and Lorraine used their straightforward, big-hearted style to guide thousands to ignite their unique wealth formula. With decades of success, in designing and implementing customized wealth solutions, they appreciate that success is truly about education support and the art of supercharging your unique style of wealth accumulation. —Jim and Lorraine, welcome to the show again. How are you?We’re doing great. How are you, Moneeka?

I’m so glad to have you guys here.

Moneeka, you were doing such a great thing for your entire community. I tuned in to a couple of your shows, and they’re so informative. They’re very educational and they’re there to help your community. That’s just really good that you’re doing that for women. I love it.

Thank you, Lorraine. Every once in a while, I’ll be like, “I don’t feel like recording now.” Recording is my favorite thing to do, just so you know. When I have those moments, I’m like, “I want to see my ladies,” so I get out there and I do it. It really is fun for me. Thank you for that. Lorraine. You and Jim are two of my favorite people in the world, but Jim, I do like Lorraine better. I want you to know that.

I’m used to people feeling me that way.

You probably feel that way, too. I think so.

When somebody likes the bad dad joke-type approach, then I become the favorite.

I think my husband prefers you, but I’m a fan of Lorraine. Lorraine is a friend of mine. I feel like we’re really close friends. I love you, guys. I recommend you frequently to my ladies. One of the things that have come back several times is, did you know they’re being sued or did you know they’re being investigated? My ladies, through my direction, have been taught you have to do your due diligence. I can only recommend so much, and then you have to do your due diligence. I have to confess, I’m proud of them for coming back to me with that. They helped me to find other people that I might have on my show who do have issues that I didn’t know about.

It’s a great community thing that we all keep our eyes on the ball for each other and people keep me informed. The issue here for me is that I know you and your integrity. I personally do business with you and I love you, guys, personally. I know that in this particular case, interesting, bad things happen to really good people. I would like you to help us to understand what happened so my ladies know the story the same way that I do.

I wanted to share the story because it is the actual of what happened. Jim and I were very excited to be faculty for a New York Bestselling Author way back in ‘08. We still have that amazing relationship now. What happened is we were financial planners at that time, and we personally have been real estate investors. In 2023, we will be 29 years that we’ve been real estate investors. Back then, we were real estate investors and we were financial planners, and we came across turnkey real estate. We went out and visited these turnkey providers, and they said, “If you allocate part of the portfolio to real estate, which we love real estate, and I’m sure your community does, too, you can also get a referral fee and expand our business model.”

We said yes. We had so many people that the vendors couldn’t keep up, so we expanded to new vendors providing turnkey real estate. One vendor couldn’t scale up, even though he said, “I can do it.” We flooded him with clients. It took one client, a niece from Germany who visited her aunt, and said, “What? Your property is not rehabbed. It’s not finished. We are going to sue the vendor.” They sued the real estate developer. What was really sad is they sued title, escrow, us, and everybody. It was like, “We got included in that, and we didn’t get paid. We weren’t the developer.”

It came out because we were securities licensed at that time. It triggered an examination from FINRA. That’s how this whole bad news came on the internet because we were securities licensed. It did get closed and the developer had to buy the properties back. It’s all public record. Jim, do you want to explain what FINRA is and that whole sanction?

FINRA stands for Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. I’m going to read this quick little paragraph from the document, the final agreement that we came to.

It’s from our attorney, FINRA, and us, where we all signed.

James and Lorraine Conaway failed to timely and completely disclose the scope of the real estate related outside business activities. In other words, outside business activity is that activity, which is not directly regulated by FINRA or any securities real estate, to their FINRA-registered firm. They also provided their firm with inaccurate information about the outside business activities in response to an investigation of them. As a result, they violated FINRA rules 3270 and 2010. Now, if that doesn’t sound a little innocuous, I don’t know what does. Basically, what they’re saying is that, not that we didn’t disclose things, but we didn’t disclose them adequately enough.

The issue boils down to, further in the letter, the Conaways at the Conways’ direction, Tycon, the company that we used to be associated with. It attempted on an ongoing basis to track the progress of rehab on the client’s properties and coordinate with GK to confirm the scheduled rehab work was being done as agreed. It monitors the client’s rental properties that were not performing or underperforming and directs GK to address client grievances. As you can tell, we were accused of having done a good thing.

When you Google our name, there are lots of attorneys who would love to be able to sue us for all kinds of strange things, so they exaggerate these things or word them in very aggressive fashions. The sanctions boiled down to a nine-month suspension of our securities licensure after we had already surrendered our license, and a $10,000 penalty or fine if we chose to reenter the securities industry. That’s it.

The bad thing that we did was try to help clients who were delayed in the rehab of their property. I have to tell you that’s very heartbreaking for us being in the financial industry for over a quarter of a century and having a sterling record. Even multiple decades of having audits and coming out spectacular on our audits and then having this one incident with this one client on this property triggered this whole thing. That’s what happened.

It's heartbreaking to be in the financial industry for over a quarter of a century and have a sterling record, only to have one incident with one client destroy your reputation. Share on X

By the way, further into the document, they actually identified five transactions that were inadequately disclosed. One of those transactions was with a principal of our own firm. With that said, the lesson that I would like for people to take from this is when you are an entrepreneur and you have any level of success, you get a target painted on your back.

Jim, please complete the thought and I’ve got something to contribute there.

Once you’re under pressure and have an issue arise, you’ve got to be resilient and figure out how to pivot. That’s where the tax thing came from.

The one thing that I want to contribute quickly here is I love what you said there, Jim, about success breeds success. It also breeds jealousy and many other things that are not as awesome as we would like. We’ve had people on my show several times talking about protecting yourself, creating entities, and doing all of those things because these things happen. My outlook on life is bliss. I like to believe that everybody’s got the best intention in mind.

Some people, for whatever reason, either they’re desperate or something happens, they express their anger in this way. I know a lot of people that have really good business practices, and this happens, too. That’s why we recommend, ladies, that you protect yourself. This happened to you, guys. Thank you so much for being so transparent about exactly what happened.

It is what it is. People who do business with us should know we don’t handle and touch people’s money. We never have and never will. That’s not us. Just a fun little factoid, if anybody wants to know. One of the people who used to sit on the board of directors for FINRA was a guy by the name of Madoff. Do you remember him? Just saying. These guys are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

 

The other thing is that in the financial industry regulated by FINRA, they are not under the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution says you are innocent until you are proven guilty. In this format, you are guilty until you are proven innocent. It’s a different world.

It is so different. Please understand that if somebody is securities licensed, every email they send is read by Big Brother. They have to get permission to do things like that. When Lorraine and I were confronted with this whole issue back in 2015 and 2016, we really sat down and took a look at it and said, “This is a set of headaches we don’t need and want.” It has been an absolute shift. We now have constitutional rights. What an amazing experience that is.

You guys know that I released all of my licenses. I had a life insurance license and a real estate license. I was regulated by everybody, too. I just let them go because it turned out to be too many more disclosures, especially in California. I was having to sign over my left arm to talk to anybody about a property. I really do get it. I’ve let go of all of mine, too. It’s released so much pressure from my life, too. Not because I want to be dishonest, none of us want to be dishonest, but I do want to have some rights and be treated with respect.

What’s interesting I want to say and share with whoever’s reading this is that Jim and I have been very blessed. We have been asked to be on several stages, continue to be faculty, and speak in many different places. With these joint venture relationships, we have disclosed what we have done here now. The response is, “I know you, guys. The person who referred you to me, I’ve known them forever. I am so grateful that you were honest in sharing with me the disclosure that in itself is all I need.” We just keep having doors open to us, and we’re grateful for that.

I am, too, because otherwise, I wouldn’t have met you.

That’s true.

Why don’t you talk about what happened that allowed us to pivot to where we are now?

Jim and I were real estate investors and business owners. We have had employees ever since the mid-’90s, and we are taxpayers as well. First of all, when we first went independent in the ‘90s, we worked like this with the CPA for ten years, and our eyes were like, “There’s so much money in the tax return.” In our own situation, we were learning, “If you have your entity structuring, you do this and that. There are all these opportunities.” We then got certified in charitable planning back in 2001.

 

It just goes to show that you were right. I’m certifiable.

It’s one of your better qualities.

We started back in 2001 focusing on the tax strategy. In 2016, we purchased a tax firm coincidentally before this whole thing happened. It was the end of 2015 when we were in negotiations. We closed escrow in 2016 in the first quarter, and then in the second quarter, this FINRA thing happened. What was interesting is that whenever people have challenges, you have a lot of real estate investors and you have entrepreneurs. When you have challenges, it really tests you. You find out a lot about yourself. Our income was, at that time, seven figures, and it got cut off in one day.

The broker-dealer said, “No, because you’re suspended.” When you have that kind of income and you have a whole staff of over a dozen people working for you, and there’s zero income coming in, you learn so much. At that time, we had bought a tax firm, and it was a small little one. Our clients were so faithful to us. They said, “Are you okay?”

That was very touching the way the clients reacted to us. The vast majority of our clients were more concerned about our welfare than their own business because they knew their business was in good shape.

We started rebuilding. We have always helped people but it was more targeted in tax strategy because that’s where we had a lot of pain personally. A lot of our clients had a lot of pain because they were way overpaying taxes. Nothing bad about accountants and CPAs and enrolled agents, they’re taught, “Let’s prepare taxes.” They get very busy with, “Give me the documents in February and March. Let me prepare the return and here is what you owe.”

 

For us, we have a team of tax preparers, and it’s a great marriage between the tax preparer and us who focus on the tax strategy. In addition to that, the implementation is heavy. You see those dollars and it’s exciting for us to see people save. Jim was working with somebody, and the actual savings is $148,000. Guess what he is doing with the money?

Investing.

Buying real estate.

Here’s the fun part, not only is he buying real estate, but he’s getting additional tax reductions for the real estate he’s buying from with the tax savings he’s got. He’s getting additional tax savings.

It compounds. We talked about compounding and making interest. We also talk about compounding this way. One of our favorite words.

One of the analogies I like to give people is I don’t want people to think that their tax guy is doing a bad job just because they don’t have a strategy. We have to understand that most tax people are defense players. Think soccer analogy. Your tax preparer is the goalie. Think about their language. “I need to be able to defend this. Can we justify that tax deduction?” They think very defensively. Our job is to come up with those strategies to score goals on the other end of the field and work together as Loraine suggested. That’s where the magic happens.

None of these strategies are illegal. It’s all written in the IRS code. I think people get scared, too. Why doesn’t my CPA know about this? It’s because they’re not spending their time studying all those things. The IRS code is huge. It’s enough to keep up with what’s changed each year. There’s trust code, corporate code, and real estate code. There’s so much code. Most of them will specialize, which is why usually I’ll recommend go to somebody that understands real estate. A strategist can be a little broader and look at all of those things because they’re not actually preparing the taxes.

The one thing that you should know is that back in the day, we used to do things longhand. Now, we have software systems because one of the things that you said is brilliant. Everything we do is ultimately put into a written document. In that written document, we have the description of what the tax deduction is. We have the rules of what you have to do to justify it and we have the code sections so that the people who do business with us get a very robust document showing them exactly how it all works.

Mine was 97 pages long.

Sorry about that.

No. It’s true. It’s so deep, which is why you got buy-in from my husband because he wants to know all of it.

It does give people peace of mind that included in the strategy is the IRS code. All of that is wonderful, and it all looks great on paper but it is the implementation. One strategy may be putting your kids on payroll if you have a business or you have a real estate business. You have to know what is the job description, how much are they getting paid, how many hours, and what’s realistic. Having all of those details is so important. Those are the things that we work with people on, updating their minutes, making sure the resolution is completed in their corporate documents, those type of things.

A plan may look great on paper, but it’s the implementation of the strategy that determines if it’s actually effective. All those little details are important. Share on X

That’s pretty comprehensive. Who else does that? That’s amazing.

One of the things that’s exciting for us is being able to say the phrase tax-free. It truly is. One of the things that we’ve learned is there are several different techniques for people to get profits tax-free, and we mean without tax.

Is this the piece that you were talking about, Jim, getting tax-free money in your business?

Yes.

Thank you for the tease. We’re going to talk about that in EXTRA.

That’s good.

It’s part of the conversation for sure. The thing that’s really amazing to me, and one of my deep motivations in life is the enlightenment that people have once they understand what can be done. It’s like being set free. It’s like, “I can earn the money and keep it legally?” Yes. You don’t have to feel like you’re paying for that next destroyer all by yourself. It’s true.

There is hope for people to be enlightened about what can be done with taxes and banks and that they can earn the money and keep it legally, too. Share on X

Is that your outside voice?

That’s why a lot of taxpayers feel this. A lot of taxpayers feel like, “If I could just tell the government what to do with the money, I’d be happy to send it to them.” You can’t do that.

That’s right. One of the things that have been a theme of conversation that I’ve been having on this show is this idea. We just had Chris Larsen. I just did a webinar with him.

I saw it.

It was so nice to have you there, Lorraine. Thank you. He does this whole concept of make, keep, and grow. A lot of people focus on the make and the grow. The thing that they don’t really get their heads around or understand the importance of is that keep piece allows the grow piece to happen so much faster. There are a few reasons for that. First of all, compounding. The more that you keep earlier in life, the faster it’ll compound and become more later in life or in a couple of years. There’s also the compounding factor of what you guys were talking about where you’ve got $128,000 savings in your taxes. Instead of spending that on a boat, car, fun, or vacation, they bought another piece of investment property. That compounds it.

Keeping piece, which is what we’re talking about here, is critical to fast growth. You’re going to grow if you’re doing the right things, but fast growth happens when you focus on that middle piece. We all love it. It’s sexy to talk about making. It’s sexier to talk about growing. We love money. Keeping piece is not as sexy, but I would say it’s even more vital than the growth piece.

As a matter of fact, in part of the report that we produce, we do the projection of what the tax savings is worth, we use a really low number. We only use 6% compounding. The gentleman that she was referring to had a goal of being independent in ten years.

One of the things that I noticed from his chart, which I thought was great, is he showed the sale after 6 years of the syndication on the properties putting in $100,000. Chris Larsen, right?

In my webinar, that’s right.

What happened is that doing the investing and then having the growth and net positive cashflow being reinvested. One of the components that were missing on that spreadsheet was the tax savings. I understand that’s not his line of work.

I also think that he doesn’t want to keep it so complicated that people’s eyes glaze over. There were already some concepts in there that people were like, “Huh?” There’s definitely a learning curve on some of this stuff, but you’re right. I know that Chris knows about it. He talks about tax savings all the time.

He mentioned it. It can get too complicated. If you’re not used to looking at spreadsheets like that, it’s overwhelming. I get it.

Did you read what he said, though? He said, “What if you’re making $500,000 a year and pay $100,000 in tax?” How many people that make $500,000 a year only pay 20%?

Most entrepreneurs should. Our rule of thumb is 15% state and federal tax combined if they’re self-employed.

The rule of thumb for entrepreneurs on taxes is 15% state and federal taxes combined. Share on X

That is the huge tax benefit of working with a strategist because most people who make $500,000 a year, especially in W-2, which is what he was talking about, he does recommend starting a real estate investing business or something so that we can take more benefits. If you make $500,000 a year in California, I don’t know the rest of the country, you’re paying close to 50%.

Thirteen percent income tax rate in the state of California. We are now number one highest to income tax state in the union.

Congratulations to us. David and I are in there, but we never want to get there. I’m just saying. It was so interesting as Chris was talking. I was like, “What? $100,000 in taxes? I know what you mean.” I don’t know if people catch this. He’s talking about a 20% rate. You’re talking about a 15% rate state and federal. What a savings that is. People don’t know how to get there, and they don’t think it’s legal.

Here’s what they say. They say, “Isn’t that a red flag or an audit?” If you’ve got the documentation and homework, and everything is ready to go, and the IRS comes knocking, you show it to them. That’s like, “Next.”

You have a lot of real estate investors. I don’t care if they’re W-2 or if they’re not. Real estate is such a beautiful investment because the income from real estate isn’t subject to FUTA and FICA. No self-employment tax. It’s federal and state. There’s this beautiful thing called depreciation on investment real estate. If your cashflow is $50,000 a year and your depreciation is $30,000 a year, then you’re only paying tax on $20,000. Thirty thousand dollars of it is tax-free. You have the opportunity of having tax-free income on real estate regardless of your status. That’s a good thing. That’s just the IRS that came up with the rules.

There are a couple of different types of tax that people should be aware of. There’s income tax, like W-2 type income tax. There’s investment income tax. There’s capital gains tax. There’s also estate tax. Our practice is primarily on income tax related, so your tax returns stuff. That comes into those three categories. Knowing how to move the investments around so that taxable income falls into various categories is very important. That’s part of the skillset. In other words, it’s not just some tax thing investment. It’s how you report your income. How you play the game can have a huge impact.

You were going to say something, Moneeka?

I was going to give you guys a recommendation, but I don’t want to cut off this conversation. I will do it at the end. People are thinking about their 2022 taxes. It’s tax season. Is there anything you want to share about what’s coming up for us?

Here’s what I would tell people to do. Sit down with a pad of paper. If you spent money and you could remember it now, it was a significant enough amount of money that you should be able to write it out. When you go to do your taxes, you should be asking not, “Is it tax deductible,” but, “How can I make it tax deductible?” It’s a different mindset. If your mindset is to spend money tax deductible before you do your tax calculations, that in and of itself could be a huge boon.

I love that mindset piece, Jim. I have to tell you a funny joke. My organizer was sitting and doing my filing. She’s looking at all my real estate stuff and says, “I’m learning so much just from doing your paperwork.” My organizer in San Jose did the same thing. She started investing in real estate because she was doing my filing. It was interesting. I love that. She’s like, “I’m learning so much. I heard this joke and I didn’t know anything about what it meant until I met you. There was a teacher and she’s doing tutoring. She bought sticky pads, and she used the sticky pad. She only used 50% of the sticky pad for her students. Can I write this off? I used 50% for personal. I don’t know. Should I write this off? Is that legal? There’s a rich billionaire who’s got his yacht and he tells his tax consultant, ‘Write off the ocean. It’s part of my business.’” I don’t think the billionaire should be writing off the ocean just for clarity, but it’s such a different mindset. How can I write this off? How can I make it write-offable as opposed to, “Should I do that?” 

I do have something to share with you. This is a fun conversation I get to have. Now, please understand, I have had 100% agreement on this factoid. I’ve talked with absolute liberals, conservatives, and teachers. You name the political spectrum, I talked to them about our favorite ex-president with the comeover. Donald Trump reportedly spends $60,000 a year for that hairstyle. Let me ask you a question. Do you think there’s any way in God’s creation he’s not taking tax deductions for that $60,000 to a person? Everybody absolutely trusts Donald Trump to know the tax code and know how to get that tax deductively. If he takes a tax deduction for a bad hairstyle, what can you take a tax deduction for? Just saying.

That’s really something to think about. I’m thinking, “I’m on TV. Should I write off my hairstylist?” I don’t know. I won’t do it. There are a lot of these things that come up that we don’t know we can take unless you are one of those privileged people that lives and goes socializes in a community where these things are talked about like it doesn’t matter. It’s a regular conversation like the rest of us might talk about the weather. There are people that live with that kind of privilege. Donald Trump is one of them. The rest of us, not so much. We’ve got to be in on these kinds of conversations and seek them out.

One of the things I wanted to let everybody know is that we do have a process where we can help people do an assessment. What we do is we get a secure Dropbox. We send people a secure Dropbox, a simple questionnaire, and we take the last year tax return, put it into our software, and then we look and analyze on what are the things that they’re doing and what are they missing, and then we create that report. We did that for you, Moneeka.

There’s not a charge to go through that process. We create the report, and then we look at, “Here are some opportunities that you may be missing, and here’s an estimate of what tax could be saved.” At that point, if people want to move forward, then we’ll discuss how we can implement and help them. If not, that’s okay. At least they got an idea of where they are.

 

Lorraine and Jim did that whole breakdown for me, too. I sent my stuff in. It was really informative and saved us quite a lot of money on our own tax returns. We still have lots of questions, but they’re always so patient with us on that stuff. Thank you guys for that. I want my ladies to be able to take advantage of this, too. Ladies, all you need to do is go to BlissfulInvestor.com/TaxStrategy. There, you’ll get to sign up for this strategy session. Jim and Lorraine normally charge $497 for this because it takes their time and all of that stuff, but because you ladies are all blissful investors, you can get it for $297. Go to that link to get the discount. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I love it.

We are going to be talking about how to get free money on your taxes or free income from your business. That’s going to be in EXTRA. I’m super excited about that. Did you guys want to say anything else before we close?

We are so much looking forward to dealing with some of your lucky ladies and getting them to their lowest possible tax. I love the financial freedom that paying the right amount of tax provides for people.

I want to say thank you, Moneeka, for having us on your show, taking the time, and having us explain what’s on the internet because our heart is really in helping people. When I heard your last speaker speak, Chris, he made a comment about asking, “Are the people that you work with, what is their net worth? Are they seven-figure? Are they eight-figure? Are they successful? Where are they?” I thought, “Thank goodness he asked that.” I was so happy he did because that’s an important question, and that’s where Jim and I are. We do practice what we preach. This is our ministry. We’re financially independent, and we choose to do our calling to help and educate people.

I know that about you guys, and I’m so glad. The other thing is my people will find it on the internet and they don’t want to talk about it. They’re skittish about it. They’re embarrassed about it. I just love that you guys are so willing to share the real story. To me, part of integrity is being transparent. I really appreciate that about you guys. Before we sign off, I want to say one of the big reasons why I first got connected with these amazing people years ago was I was at a seminar, and someone said that she retired.

She had some assets and didn’t know what she was going to do. She put together a plan with her strategist and retired in five years. I was like, “Who was your strategist?” She did not have the equity that I did. She hadn’t been spending that much time. She’s like, “You’ve got to meet Lorraine and Jim.” I was like, “I love them.” I know I hear it over and over again. Part of what I love about you guys is you look at the strategy, but you are not like most financial strategists that only look at stocks, bonds, life insurance, or whatever it is that people are talking about. You include in the strategy, real estate and tax.

I said this to Lorraine, “Where have you been all of my life? I needed you.” That’s why I’ve been referring and referring. I hope that people feel much more comfortable now with that referral, and will start moving towards working with you guys because I know you guys have done magic for so many people. I’m so very grateful that you’re out there doing this even though you don’t have to.

Thank you and thank you for educating all of your people and all the work that you do. It really is such a great community and education, and you do it from your heart. I can see that.

Thanks, guys. Ladies, stay tuned. This has been amazing, hasn’t it? I need that more. We’re going to be talking about it in EXTRA. If you’re subscribed to EXTRA, please stay tuned, there’s more. If you’re not, but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com, and you can sign up there. For those of you that are leaving Jim, Lorraine, and I now, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. We appreciate you, and I can’t wait to see you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

 

Important Links

• Jim and Lorraine Conaway – LinkedIn
• Chris Larsen – Previous Episode
• BlissfulInvestor.com/TaxStrategy
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Lorraine & Jim Conaway

C&C Wealth Strategies is an income and wealth preservation firm that uses a systematic approach teamed with tax and legal advisors* to work toward customized results. Jim and Lorraine Conaway established Conaway & Conaway in 1996 to plan for better futures. C&C focuses on offering ROTH conversions, rollovers, pension maximization, income and portfolio analysis. Jim and Lorraine guide C&C by their moral obligations which suite to always put their clients’ financial lives in as the forefront of the business. Jim, Lorraine, the advisors, and the staff are continuously educating themselves on different ways to help clients work toward their financial goals. It is through a cognizant design of support and education where we establish lifelong relationships with clients and their families.