0

The Secrets To Dating Money And Having A Friends-With-Benefits Relationship With It With Olympia Hostler – Real Estate Women

 

Having a good relationship with money is like finding a date. You have to overcome the fear factor and actually start dating it. You need to cozy up to it until you form a friends-with-benefits relationship with it. How exactly does this apply to the world of real estate? Well, for one thing, it helps that a lot (like a lot) of the people who know anything about money have been involved in real estate in one way or another. Moneeka Sawyer is excited to unpack this topic with Olympia Hostler, an award-winning business consultant and speaker who is known as the “Queen of Wealth.” Take a moment to listen to their conversation as Olympia reveals the secrets towards achieving time and financial freedom in the shortest time possible. 

—

Listen to the podcast here

 

The Secrets To Dating Money And Having A Friends-With-Benefits Relationship With It With Olympia Hostler – Real Estate Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome to the show, Olympia Hostler. She loves working in playing in the realm of millions and billions. She is an award-winning business consultant and speaker of Fortune 500 companies. She’s a partner and a leader of the highest natural national securities program worth billions of dollars. By the age of 33, she was a corporate executive leading multimillion-dollar programs making more than $50 million in sales, facilitating sales for more than $10 billion, and leading teams of up to 100 people. As the Queen of Wealth, Olympia unshackles business owner’s freedom to scale their companies and fast forward their success without working harder or longer on their fastest path to freedom of time and money. Olympia, welcome to the show.  

I’m excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. 

This conversation is going to be fun. Let’s start by giving a version of your story. Tell us about yourself. 

I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I started out as a corporate executive at 33. That’s where we’re going to start our chronology. I quickly realized that Corporate America was not for me. I went off and started my own business consulting company. I’ve been doing that for over 25 years. I’ve helped all kinds of businesses, products, services and real estate. I’ve been in real estate for over twenty years as a licensed broker. I’ve had a partnership with CBS Television in New York for real estate. 

Tell us more about that. 

When we get our unconscious and subconscious mind on board, there are no limits. Freedom is all around us. Everything we do is free. Share on X

That was super fun. We did a groundbreaking state-of-the-art joint venture partnership and also a website. We spent $1.5 million on the website alone, creating these new searching technologies. We were the first to implement VOW or Virtual Office Website, which is collecting all of the other listings from the other brokerage houses and putting those into our website. We also created the first real estate television show in New York. That’s what we did. It was a lot of fun doing it. 

Have you ever noticed that anybody who knows anything about money has been involved in real estate in some way? 

Yes, I have. It’s a training ground. 

I read on Instagram that 90% of the millionaires got that way through real estate. It’s the original get-rich strategy. I love your topic. This whole thing of money as friends with benefits. I want my money to be friends with benefits. Tell me more. 

To have friends with benefits relationship, first of all, we need to start cozying up to it. We need to stop being afraid of it if there is a fear factor, which many people have, and start dating it. To do that, we need to get rid of the obstacles that are in our way. Those obstacles typically come in the form of mindset, heart set, and body set money blocks, as I call them. These blocks are programmed in from our experiences in life, from the people we’ve hung around when we were younger, our parents. 

There are all of these blocks have been created. Whether we have created them ourselves or our parents and other well-meaning loved ones, it was their blocks and then we adopted them. The key to having that awesome relationship, friends with benefits, is we have to get rid of that stuff. If you think about it, if you wanted to date people, you have to get over your fear of dating, but you also need to get out of the house. You need to get out and start doing some things. Addressing those core blockages, clearing them, and resetting them is going to be beneficial in your entire life, not just with money. 

Talk to me about unshackling. You can have the business that you want without working longer or harder. 

This is super fun. We started talking about the shackles with our favorite question. The shackles are the ones that we put on ourselves. How are we going to unshackle ourselves? One of the best ways to do it with a business, in particular, and the real estate business is a great example. We have to be able to know what our big worldly why is. Why are you doing what you’re doing? That is what will drive you. Why are you doing it for the world if you’re doing it for the world? There’s a second why that I’ve created called my self-care why. Why are you doing it for yourself? You might know it, but if you’re not in touch and connected with it, then it’s a hard road to unshackle yourself because you’re always wondering, “What’s the point of this? What’s the point of that?” If you’re not consciously thinking that, you are definitely unconsciously thinking that. It will drive you so you’ll never work another day in your life. It’ll be fun and play, and who doesn’t want that? 

You ask a good question which is, what’s more important, time, freedom or money? From my perspective, the freedom of time and money is a thing that I’m reaching for, but I like how you distinguish them separately. Tell me about that. 

We all know that there are different types of resources. Some are non-renewable. They have a finite amount, and that would be time. Money is a renewable resource. You can always get more money. You can never get more time. Freedom spans both. Freedom is very subjective. One person’s freedom is not another person’s freedom. That one can go either way. Freedom has the potential to always be there. In that regard, it is renewable because it’s always there. Whether you’re tapping into it or not, that’s up to you. 

I would define freedom as time and money. Having enough time and money to do what I want, where I want and with whom I want. 

That’s how I define it. Many people will go around and say, “I want freedom.” If they haven’t defined what it is, then you haven’t given your unconscious mind the target. We were speaking earlier about neuro-linguistic programming. When we get our unconscious mind and our subconscious mind on board, there are no limits. Freedom is all around us. Everything we do is free. 

We’re talking about this relationship with money. One of the things that happen with investors is they have a house. They want to rent it out. They’re like, “What should I ask for the house?” They list it and put up this beautiful ad. They list the price that they think is right in the market and people are not knocking on the doors. The very first thing that they say is, “I priced it too high,” which is not the first place that we should be going. The first place we should be going is if you want to think about it, “What is it that I’m saying in my ad that’s not attracting the right person for that house,” and not, “Is this too high?” Price is only one factor when you’re renting out a house. Could you talk to us about this relationship with premium pricing? 

 

To talk about premium pricing, we need to understand pricing’s place in the marketplace. My commercial real estate broker, the first one I ever had who I worked underneath, told me, “Olympia, I can make any deal happen. It’s a matter of price, terms and time.” It’s one of those three. If your price is right, the other two can float. When you’re not getting the traffic that you want, I wouldn’t go first to price. If you’ve done your research and you know you’re in the money, then stick to your guns. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe you haven’t painted it. Maybe it needs a fresh coat of paint. Maybe something’s happened in the neighborhood and you need to do a little research and know what that is. I would look at many other places before I would look at the price. I would say stick to your guns on the price. 

With commercial real estate, it was price, terms and time. In residential, that whole heart set piece is a big distinguisher on how we view a home. When I’m looking at something and people aren’t knocking on my door, I don’t immediately go to my is too high because I know, based on what the market conditions are, that I’m not. I’ve done that research. I’m not evoking an emotional response in the people that are looking to buy a home. A lot of people will say, “I need a three-bedroom, two-bath, this many square feet, this close to my work, this kind of school.” They have all their statistics. The reality is that there might be five houses on the market that meet the criteria. What was different?  

It could be some of those things that don’t get checked off that’s on their list. The biggest thing is, are they having an emotional response to your home that you’re providing for them? For me, yes, maybe it needs a coat of paint, but that’s all external to the real indicator which is, are they emotionally attached? How can you get them there? Your premium pricing isn’t about pricing. It’s about their emotional attachment to the product that you’re providing. Would you agree with me on that? 

I agree with you. If you can appeal to their five senses when they walk in the door, this was something I used to do when I do open houses. I would always bake chocolate chip cookies. No wonder I was so awesome at sales for real estate. People come in and they automatically get that emotional response. They’re like, “I like it already.” They haven’t even opened their eyes necessarily. If you can appeal to the senses, that’s going to go right to the emotions. 

I used to do the cookies thing too until everybody started doing cookies. I don’t know who started teaching that. I was doing it long before. That was by mistake. One time, I brought brand new cookies from Mrs. Fields. They are home-cooked cookies. I brought them in and served them, but they were fairly fresh. I hadn’t baked them there. People were like, “I love the smell of cookies.” I then started baking them. People then started teaching this. I’m like, “Now everybody’s doing it.” Now I bring stargazer lilies or fragrant candles or something. I might have a fire in the fireplace. It’s like touching their senses and some different ways that are a little bit unexpected and make them feel something new. Talk to us about detoxing money blocks. What happens? What do you give up if you won’t do it? 

The price you pay for not detoxing your money blocks is a high price because these money blocks are also driving the show for every other area of your life. The program that creates the money blocks is also creating blocks in relationships, spirituality, personal growth, health, all of those areas of life. You’re going to have some glitches in more than just your money. Why not take care of the money piece, get squared away, get a clearing done, get a reset done. Once you’ve reset these programs, they are running in the background just like they are now. Now, they’re running in the background. They’re running amuck, but you don’t think about it. You don’t have to give affirmations. It’s just happening. Once you change it to a more positive, healthy program, it’s as if you flip the switch, then you don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to say one million affirmations. It’s running now. You have your new normal. 

How do you do the detox? I know that we’re not supposed to talk about processes but I’m curious.  

I use neuro-linguistic programming. I use trauma recovery techniques because I treat money like a trauma. I’m training from another business that I own in trauma recovery and helping people recover from abuses, accidents, surgeries and pain. I’m using brain science and resetting the nervous system of the body from being in a fight-flight-freeze response. I’m doing that. At the same time, I was changing the program using neuro-linguistic programming. We’re resetting false beliefs and limiting decisions. Stuck emotions is a huge one, conflicting parts, and strategies that have gone amuck. It depends on what’s happening with the person, which technique we’re going to use. Almost always, everyone is going to need a roto-rooter job on the top five stuck emotions. 

What are the top five stuck emotions? 

If you don’t have the money you want, you don’t even have to look at the symptoms. You have money blocks, period. Share on X

It’s anger, sadness, fear, hurt and guilt. Those are the top five. I was working with a client on this. We’ve gone through those, and those are just the top five. We then go into the next layer. The next layer is usually some flavor of abandonment, rejection, shame, and those types of things. The top five have to be cleared in order to get to the others because the others are like a house of cards. They’re based on those other five. Typically, those are relationships. You knock those legs out and then you are left with these, then those will clear much easier. 

Many of the ladies that are reading this are saying to themselves, “I’ve done a lot of work on this. I don’t have those money blocks.” Our money blocks are like blind spots. Even if I look at myself, and as you’re talking, I’m thinking, “I’ve made multiple millions of dollars. I’m a very successful businesswoman. I’m proud of that.” I have hit a plateau in my life. It’s such an interesting thing. There’s the next level for me. I’m trying to figure out how to get there. I realized that I’ve dealt with a lot of my money blocks, but there’s more to go because otherwise, I wouldn’t be at a plateau. What prevents us from seeing those blind spots? Help us to be motivated to look at that because it can be a little bit scary, overwhelming or even intimidating. 

It could be a blind spot because we are not consciously aware of it, or we have been consciously aware of it and we don’t want to go through the pain, the challenge or the hardship to clear it. We sweep it under the rug. It doesn’t matter which scenario is active. It’s the same way to clear it. What happens is the blind spots are there to protect us. It’s our nervous system that has activated our fight-flight-freeze response, which causes a lot of things to happen in our mindset, body set and heart set. Things like pumping our body with adrenaline and cortisol. It feels like you’ve got your finger in a socket 24/7. You’re pumped up because your mind, body and heart think that you’re going to be chased by a saber-toothed tiger. 

It’s the reptilian part of our brain. It’s right about here. It’s called the amygdala. Welcome to your amygdala. It only knows the input from these five senses. It will determine, “Am I safe or am I in danger?” It can create a blind spot if you’re in danger. It’s doing that to protect you. What it seems like is self-sabotaging. The key is to go into and calm the nervous system. Once you do that, then we can work on taking these patterns away. If you think about it, if you’re running from a saber-toothed tiger and somebody says, “Moneeka, I’d love to give you a hug. Could you please stop? I want to give you $1 million.” You’re going to go, “No, thank you. I have a tiger chasing me at the moment. I’ve got to keep going. Give me your number. I’ll get back to you.” I’m simplifying it but that is what it is. 

How do we notice them? How do we know they’re there? 

You have to look more at symptoms for that like, “Am I having a heart attack? Let’s go through the checklist.” I have a whole checklist called, “You might be a money blocker if,” and then all of these things. There’s the checklist, “You might be a money blocker if you are not doing all of these other things.” It’s all kinds of things. As you said, you’re at a plateau. That’s a sign. That’s a symptom. If you’re at a plateau, there’s a money block happening. Do you wake up to do work and you’re resisting? Any resistance toward money or money-making or having fun is a money block. There are many of them. If you don’t have the money you want, you don’t even have to look at the symptoms. You got money blocks. That’s the shortcut. 

Tell us how about how we can rewrite our story with money so that it is a love story with a very happy ending? 

It’s so nice because all we need to do is to understand a couple of things. One is, how you do money is a seven-step process. We need to make sure that we go back to the beginning and change it there, then that ripples through, because the love story or the horror story, as some people have. Whatever your story is or the oh-ho-hum story is related and directly coming from step number one. Most people think, “I can change my thoughts.” I’m going to say good luck with that because that doesn’t work. Thoughts are the 5th of 7 steps of how you do money. Steps 1, 2, 3, 4 all feed into 5. If you’re trying to change it here at 5, which is a conscious mind activity, what happened to 1 to 4? They didn’t change. They’re going to always keep producing a number 5. You’re always going to have those blocks.  

You need to go back to the very beginning, which are these things we’ve talked about, the false beliefs, limiting decisions, stuck emotions, conflicting parts. Strategies are another fun one, the process of how you do things. To go back and change them at the beginning, that will ripple through. It will automatically change your story. You will find yourself saying things or doing things or feeling things differently. I’m working with one client and she’s tripled her income in six months. It’s like she got this superpower persona because we’ve been working on this at the ground level. It’s rippling through. The things she used to do that didn’t make money, she doesn’t do those anymore. She’s like, “I’m doing this. I’m doing that.” A new business I’m branding into is called Business Titans. She’s saying, “I’m a tiny Titan.” She only wants to play with other Titans. She’s like, “I’m not playing in the kiddie pool anymore.” It has this whole ramification and you will have that happy ending and the love story. 

This is also true with relationships. This whole thing about you can see what’s going on in your mind, by what showing up in your life. It’s like your mind is a movie projector and it’s got a reel in there. Your life is the screen. Whatever the story is in the movie reel, whatever that story arc is, whatever those characters are, they are in the movie reel and they’re showing up in your life. You know if you’ve got a story you like in your head based on what’s happening in your life. It’s not an immediate translation. There’s momentum and things take a little time to change. Someone’s got to get in there and change the reel. 

It’s interesting because I think that we forget to see that those symptoms are outside of us. They are glaring right in our face with big bright lights on a big white screen showing us what’s going on inside. If you’re only going to play with Titans and you’re noticing that your best friend is a cat lady, no offense to cat ladies, maybe the reel inside your head is different than what you think you want. This is true with relationships. That’s how I started this whole conversation. The relationships that show up for you, whether it’s your relationship with money, a guy or your children. Most relationships are being dictated by the reel that’s in your head. 

The reel that’s in your head has a starting point where this whole process started. It’s the beginning of the movie. The beginning of the movie changes the trajectory. Every movie does not start the same way and the same story. How many times does Hollywood tell a love story? Boy meets girl, girl falls in love with the boy, boy and girl get married, and they live happily ever after. It’s the same story, but there are different beginning and different characters. That beginning is what launches us into where we’re going to go. I see that in relationships, in our health and with our money. 

One of the newest realizations that people are having is that collaboration, which is relationships. It’s a fancy word, relationship, but collaborations in business are the new juicy carrot. In collaborations, you can get a lot more done in a lot less time, with a lot less money, and you can have more fun. You’re going to leverage lots of resources. You can potentially make more money as well, depending on how you’re leveraging those relationships into a collaboration. 

I love that in business, we’re moving more towards collaboration rather than, “If I win, you have to lose,” which is the old way of doing business. A lot of the big business titans from the old world still built their businesses that way, but the new generation of businesses are realizing that collaboration is the key. I love it because we’re leading the world in that. You see it even in our small businesses. Collaboration with your tenant, vendors, sales, real estate agent, and all of those things. The better those relationships, the better the business is. 

The business is all about relationships. You are not going to have a great business unless you have great relationships. That’s according to Olympia Hostler. That’s what I believe. 

Let’s talk about what we’re going to be continuing on with EXTRA. In EXTRA, we would talk about how I can avoid being sucked into the busyness and distraction vortex to start supercharging my success. I’m excited about having that conversation in EXTRA. Could you tell us how the ladies can reach you? 

I am so available at [email protected]. My phone number is (917) 288-7477. Do you want me to talk about the quiz now? 

Tell us about the free gift. 

The free gift is a quiz. Who doesn’t love a quiz? They are so much fun. You get to take this quiz at MyMoneyBlocks.com. Within two minutes you’re going to know your relationship with money and what’s standing in your way. Have fun. 

Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions? 

I’m ready. Let’s go. 

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

I’m going to address this as investing in a business. A super tip is to treat your time like it’s money. Think about your time as I call them money blocks. How are you going to spend and invest your time? Treat it like it’s money. 

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

That would be to make sure that you know with as much certainty as you can what your ROI is going to be or can be. Weigh that against your risks because all of life is a risk–reward. Whether it’s business, real estate or relationships. It doesn’t matter what it is. Make sure that that ROI is what you think it’s going to be. Within your risk tolerance, whatever that is, that might change, but it’s within what it is now. 

What is one daily practice that contributes to your personal success? 

 

Every morning, when I go in the shower, I sing a James Brown song. I dance and get the whole thing going. If for some reason, I haven’t done that, which is rare like if I’m in a super hurry, I miss it. I have different energy for the whole day. 

This has been so much fun. Thank you for joining us for this portion of the show. 

You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. I had a blast. 

I can’t wait to talk about how to get out of the distraction and busyness vortex and supercharge our business. Ladies, if you are not subscribed to EXTRA but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. The first seven days are free. You can get this EXTRA. You can get a bunch of others, and then you can decide if it’s for you. Go check it out. For those of you that are leaving Olympia and me, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. We look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. 

 

Important Links

• Olympia Hostler 
• Business Titans 
• [email protected] 
• MyMoneyBlocks.com 
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com 

 

About Olympia Hostler

Olympia works with 6 and 7 Figure plateaued business owners who are overworked and want more. She helps them radically 2X their income, fun and freedom.

Olympia loves working and playing in the realms of millions and billions. She is an award-winning business consultant and speaker, a Fortune 500 companies’ partner, and a leader of the highest national security programs worth billions of dollars.

By the age of 33, she was a corporate executive leading multi-billion dollar programs – making more than $50 Million in sales, facilitating sales of more than $10 Billion and leading teams of up to 100 people.

As The Queen Of Wealth, Olympia liberates business owners’ freedom to scale their companies and fast forward their success without working harder or longer on their fastest path to freedom of time & money!

Since she earned her MBA in Finance, she specializes in business growth strategy that fast tracks success while also having a joyful and meaningful life. Olympia works with high-achieving business owners who seek success and wealth to make a difference for themselves and humanity.

 

• Here’s How »

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram

______________________________________

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

To see this program in video:

Search on Roku for Real Estate Investing 4 Women or go to this link: https://blissfulinvestor.com/biroku

On YouTube go to Real Estate Investing for Women

0

Knowing Your Numbers And Keeping Track Of Them With Melissa McRay-Johnson – Real Estate Women

 

When you know your numbers, you can map the business deal in your head, and you’re able to make smart business decisions on where to spend your money. Joining Moneeka Sawyer in today’s episode is Melissa McRay-Johnson, the Founder of E3 Coaching, LLC. Melissa further explains the importance of knowing your numbers and keeping track of everything to your success. Are your numbers going where you expect them to go? Tune in and learn from this discussion on how you can stay on top of your business.

—

Listen to the podcast here

 

Knowing Your Numbers And Keeping Track Of Them With Melissa McRay-Johnson – Real Estate Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome to the show, Melissa Johnson. Melissa has been flipping houses in San Antonio, Texas since 2003, growing and expanding the business into a thriving real estate investment operation. With over 1,000 houses flipped, she has also built a portfolio of rental properties and real estate notes while raising five children. She provides coaching support and education for other high-level real estate investors nationwide. As a Co-founder of the San Antonio InvestHer meetup group and an active member of the Forbes Council on Real Estate and the National Association of Women Business Owners, she is dedicated to the success and empowerment of women in business. Melissa, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I’m excited.

This is going to be a great conversation. This is a marketing conversation, right?

Yes. I love marketing.

I’m excited to have someone on the show that’s an active investor who is also going to be talking about marketing. There is a lot of crossover, but most of the time I have a marketing person on the show, they’re not an investor. I’m super excited about what you have to offer to my audience. Could you give me a high-level story about how you got into doing what you’re doing?

 

Back in 2003, real estate was not on my radar at all. I was always interested in real estate, but I thought maybe an agent. I didn’t follow through with that at the time. I was working for a defense contractor and my husband at the time, his father was investing in real estate. We spent a lot of time with him and it seemed like he was having this great time all the time, traveling in his RV, taking time off and getting all these doors, rental properties and stuff. I’m like, “That’s pretty cool.” We talked about it and said, “Why don’t we try it? This could be something good for us.” It sounds fun. It’d be great to be our own boss and get out of the cubicle life. We started down that road pretty simply at first, doing it part-time while we were working. Eventually, my husband ended up getting laid off because we worked for the government and there were issues with contracts and stuff like that. It’s two weeks before our wedding, so I wasn’t freaked out at all. I was.

We rolled with it and we thought, “Maybe this is a push, we needed to do this full-time.” He went full-time. I stayed at the job for about six more months was about all I could handle. Before the jealousy, “This isn’t fair. I don’t want to be sitting at this desk, you’re out running, having fun and I’m here. It’s miserable.” I then quit. I have pretty much been doing that ever since doing different exit strategies. I have been rehabbing for many years, I’m building a portfolio again of the rental properties. I love notes, creating notes. The last few years I have been more focused on wholesaling because it has seemed to fit well with the way the market was going and stuff like that. A little bit of everything I’ve done throughout the years. I’m still real estate investing, but I am also moved into more of a coaching and mentoring space, which I’m enjoying. That was born out of this whole COVID thing. Time to reevaluate life, “What do I want to do?” I got divorced. That was a rough thing to go through. It was a time to reevaluate everything. Things are looking good now.

Tell me, what do you mean by you create notes?

I know a lot of people having rental properties and things like that, but I love doing seller financing and creating notes from that. It’s a great way for you to get passive income without all the headaches of the rental properties. With rentals, you’ve always got to worry about maintenance and there are taxes. Those calls, “Something is broken,” and the big-ticket things that have to be done. Maintaining all that stuff is a lot. What we found was that by creating notes, you’re still getting that passive income, except you’re making money now in a cool way because you’re collecting interest. You’re not on the hook for taxes or insurance. I hold back escrow for those things. That strategy has been nice, but I do have rentals too because it’s good to have a balanced portfolio, rentals for the depreciation, things like that. The notes for creating that long-term stuff. What I liked doing is creating these notes, buying a property on a very short-term note for me, and then selling it on a 30-year note to an end buyer. Once my short-term notes paid off, it’s all gravy after that.

Take the time to reevaluate your life. Share on X

When you purchase it, you have the seller that’s selling it to you, carry back the note?

No. I get my own financing and what I do is it’s called a wrap. It’s a wraparound mortgage. I’ve got a very short again, like a five-year note for that property. I’ll buy it. I’ll fix it up and then, be into it for X amount of dollars. I turn around and sell it for full retail to an end buyer, charge more interest than what I’m paying so that my payment is always covered every month. I don’t make a whole lot initially, but after that five-year period, then it’s free and clear. It’s checks in the mail every month.

I’m sorry to delve in. We weren’t planning on talking about this, but it’s so cool.

It’s one of my favorite exit strategies.

Let’s say for instance, you purchase it, you get financing and you’re going to pay it off in five years. Let’s say for the sake of argument, you might get a loan for 3% or 3.5%, then you’re going to sell that on a 30-year note. I know that this is not your number, as you can tell me if I’m correct or not, but something closer to 7% or 8%. If you’re selling that note at 7% or 8%, does that cover the payment of your shorter-term note upfront?

That’s what I always want to make sure that is happening, but yes. I’m buying at a such a deep discount. I’m into the property for so much less than what it’s selling for. I make sure when I run all the numbers when I run out of the scenario, I want to make sure that payment is covered because I’m collecting a down payment too from those end buyers also. That’s putting cash in my pocket too, which is nice. Their mortgage is always covering mine as a minimum. Sometimes there’s more. I make more, but I never pay less if that makes sense. I know in my mind I can run the numbers ahead of time to see I can map it all out. That’s part of the deal analysis, buying these things to make sure that, “If I buy this property for this much into it, I know my interest rate is this much. I want to finance it for this long and it’s going to sell for this much at this interest rate for this amount of time.” I can check all those numbers ahead of time before I even buy the house to make sure.

How much down payment do you usually take? Is it a percentage or is it what they can afford? How do you determine that?

It’s what they can afford. There are a lot of different ways of doing it. I don’t do super-expensive houses. I’m trying to do those deals in certain areas where it’s hardworking middle-class people. They want to own a home. Maybe their credit is not that great, or they can’t get a loan from a bank traditionally. Although I always tell them if you’re able to qualify down the road, feel free, go refinance. They can refinance at any time through a bank and get a lower interest rate when their credit improves or whatever and then I get cashed out. It’s a win-win either way. That’s the approach there.

 

How do you get the houses? Do you get them through auction or do you have a strategy around that?

All of my marketing is all direct to sellers. I don’t buy off the MLS. I don’t buy from other wholesalers. I’m not buying at auctions or anything like that. It’s strictly direct from sellers.

That gets to the marketing piece. The conversation has been fascinating so far just about to get better. Talk to us a little bit about marketing for investors and what that looks like.

It looks amazing. I love marketing. I love it because it’s creative. You can be creative with your marketing. It’s fun to try, test, and measure new things. That’s always a cool thing to do. I like being very focused on marketing. Some people will do direct mail and they’re like blasting stuff out all over the place. I did that for a while and that shotgun approach works sometimes, but I’ve learned over the years, how to be more focused with things and how to tighten things up. I like stuff simple, efficient and very clear. That works in all aspects of my business, especially with marketing. What I’ve done is chosen certain marketing channels to do and then tracking all of those things.

Marketing is cool because there are many aspects to it. You can launch a campaign and maybe you get nothing. You can launch another campaign and it rocks. It’s like, “What worked? What didn’t work? What am I measuring? Do I need to change my message?” There are many different pieces to it. If something is not hitting, it’s like, “Am I not hitting the right people? Is there something wrong with my message?” A lot of different things play into that. It’s very important when you’re doing marketing to pick those few things and make sure you’re tracking them to see how they’re working because marketing is where we spend most of our money. Without marketing, you get no leads. You have no deals and then you have no business. Marketing is critical.

Tell me a little bit about the specifics. Where do you market or how do you do that marketing? Give me a little bit more detail on that.

I’ve done a lot of things over the years and what I’ve noticed is that things come and go. Something that works ten years ago isn’t going to work now necessarily but it could come back. I tell clients this all the time, like with direct mail. It was good for a while and then, it wasn’t so great. Now, it’s making a comeback again. We used to do billboards and Yellow Page ads. Yellow Page ads were kicking back in the day. We get a lot of deals out of this.

For people who are like, “What’s the Yellow Pages?”

“Isn’t that online?” These are like the straight-up phone book where you just turn the pages. That was a very effective marketing technique back then. Not so much anymore. I love online marketing. That’s been a big one for us. I’m back to direct mail again. Those are the two biggest places that I like to spend my time and referrals. I love referrals. Once you’ve been doing this for so long, because I’ve been doing this for many years now, so you build a reputation over that time. The great thing about that is you’ve sold a lot of houses in that amount of time. That’s a lot of people you’ve reached that are right for referrals. The last couple of deals that we’ve got have been strictly from referrals, not from any specific marketing that we’ve done, from them having a great experience. We were very conscious about the experience that we give the sellers.

When you're first getting started, always start simple. Share on X

We make sure we communicate with them all the time and things like that. When you get that good experience, you get a good referral. If I get a referral, I’ll film $500 as a thank you. They’re not going into it with the expectation. They’re going to get anything, but it’s a great place to get more deals is through your referrals. Referrals, online, and direct mail. I like to play with all those three things together. Even when I’m doing a direct mail campaign, I’ve always got links to the website and things like that in there and vice versa. With the website, I’m always trying to provide information, good content, and things like that. It all works together. I’ll use those things from the website and the direct mail too. I’ll pull a testimonial. If I’m hitting probates, I’ll pull a testimonial from probate and put it in the mail piece. It all works well when you use them all together.

Talk to me a little bit more about online marketing. You have a website. Tell me a little bit more about how the whole thing works.

Nowadays, you have to have an online presence. It’s tough to have a business when you don’t have an online presence because that’s where everybody goes now. They don’t go to the Yellow Pages anymore. If they want to know about you, they’re going to search online. That’s the first place people go when they have a problem that they need to solve, they’re going to go online. If you are present there, you’re already a step ahead of people that don’t have a website or a web presence. It’s important to have that there. It’s important to have a very easy-to-use website that people know what’s happening. They know the steps of the process. It’s very easy for them to contact you. We get a lot of leads online. You can do it organically or you can throw money at it. If you’re doing AdWords or PPC, you can do things like that to help boost. Also, social media marketing, Facebook ads and we’ve done it in the past. You just got to be online.

The thing is your whole online strategy is to have a website and drive traffic. How do you analyze your marketing and pivot? You analyze it. You need to look at some stuff. Tell us how you do it and what’s important to analyze?

I’m old-fashioned, I guess. I have this spreadsheet that I use to track my marketing and I use it with my CRM system. What I’m tracking are all my leads to come in. I want to know what leads came in. What source channel did they come from? Was it from a direct mail campaign? Was it from a website? Was it a referral? Was it a realtor lead or something? Was it from networking? Was it a wholesaler lead? Whatever that is, I have it all broken up that way. I want to know what leads are coming in and then which leads are good leads. You think it’s a lead because you got a phone call, but what if it’s spam or if it’s a, “Take me off your list?” That’s not a lead.

Those numbers can get skewed very quickly. It’s like, “I got 57 leads or whatever,” but half of those were spam or junk. It’s important to know if they’re good leads or not. From that then, I’m tracking, I want to know, “What did I spend? What was my cost per lead? What was my cost per deal? What were my conversion rates?” We got these many leads. We got these many appointments. How many of those appointments turned into actual contracts? How many of those contracts turn into closed deals? What do we spend for all those? I’m also tracking profit on those too because I want to know what’s my profitability for each of those marketing channels. That gives me a better picture of the ROI.

Fallout too, you want to track your attrition rates too because some marketing channels have a higher fallout than others. I get a lot of data from that. I’m able to make smart business decisions on where to spend my marketing dollars. “Do I need to spend more here because it’s working? Do I need to cut back somewhere?” That’s what I’m tracking and why that’s important. What I use that for is to make smart decisions about where I’m spending that money.

 

Talk to me a little bit about crafting the message that you’re getting out there and how you do it for the different channels, whether you’re online, you’re doing a mailer or whatever.

What I do is I like to think about the person that’s going to get these pieces of mail. You should always have in mind who you’re talking to and this is with any marketing, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. I find that people aren’t taking that in and bringing that into the real estate world. You hear about it when people are doing every other marketing, but why aren’t you building a persona for your real estate business? What I started doing was that very thing, figuring out, “Who am I talking to?” Crafting a message that speaks directly to them. I just wrapped up a probate mailing and it was finishing up. It’s a drip campaign of messages that are very specifically tailored to people that are in that situation.

Once you figure out what other pain points are and things like that, if you craft a message that resonates with them, the odds are higher that they’re going to contact you or at least be in front of mind when they are ready to make that decision. Sometimes people don’t always make a decision right away. We know from research that it takes 6 to 7 touches with a direct mail campaign before somebody is going to reach out to you. It’s going in with a consistent message that builds on top of the message before that until it ends in a point where, “What are you going to do if you don’t sell this house? Let’s think about that.” Having a good message that’s specific to what they’re saying and telling them how you’re going to solve their problem too in a very simple way. Keeping it very simple and not overloading them with too much information.

You mentioned a drip campaign, define that for my ladies, for anybody who doesn’t know that marketing term.

It’s a regularly scheduled campaign. We know we’re going to hit them with this mail piece first because this is like, “This is who I am and if I can help you,” it’s like an introductory thing. Four weeks later comes the next message. A little bit different and talking about something else but still related to their situation and then four weeks after that. That’s what a drip campaign is. It’s that having a very systematized setup way of releasing those pieces out to people.

Thank you for that. Tell us about the websites. What should we have on the website in order to bring in the leads that we’re looking for?

You want to have a website and not just a landing page. A landing page could work too, but having a full-on website where you can separate the information out a little bit for them. What I found is keeping it clean, keeping it simple. A very clear call to action, you want to have on your website. Anywhere they go on that website, you want to make sure that there’s a spot for them to contact you. You don’t know what they’re going to be scrolling through and see and say, “I relate to that. I understand that,” or, “That makes me want to do something.” The buttons right there for them to contact you. You want to make sure that you’re doing that. You want to make sure you’ve got the forms to capture their information. You also want to make sure that the most pertinent information is above the fold.

What that means is you don’t want them to scroll past. When you go to a website, whatever’s pops up on the site before you even start scrolling down, that’s above the fold. You want to make sure you capture their attention right there. You want to have that call to action big up there. You want to have a form for them to fill out, to submit their name and information. I don’t recommend putting any other social links up there because you want them to stay on your site. You don’t want them bouncing off somewhere else to your YouTube channel right there and then. That’s not good. If you can have a video above the fold, that helps with rankings. There are a lot of things you can do with SEO and stuff to get your website to rank. The video is important. If you can have a well-done video, it doesn’t have to be professional or anything like that, but some video that talks about who you are and what you’re doing and how you’re helping people. That’s a great thing to have on there.

Anything else people should keep in mind?

For their website?

Yes.

I would say if you can have testimonials on your website because that’s very important. People can see, “Here are some real people that you’ve helped,” so that’s good. Anything you can do to have credibility, especially now, there are so many fly-by-night people out there doing stuff. The more you can show that you’re a legitimate business, you know, and that you’ve got some credibility, so maybe a Better Business Bureau symbol. I forget what they call it. If you get registered with the Better Business Bureau, then you can use that on your marketing pieces. That’s been good for us just being able to say, “We’re A-plus ranked on Better Business Bureau.” Having a Google business page is good also. It helps you with your ranking and shows people where you’re at. When you google something like, “I need to sell my house,” and wherever you’re at you’ll pop up there on the map or on the sidebar or whatever. Those are good to have too.

Do you have any other marketing super tips?

Track everything. I can’t stress that enough because sometimes you think things are working, but when you drill down and start digging into that stuff, things that you thought were working might not be working as well or could be working better. Make sure that you track. Find some system to track everything that you’re doing for marketing.

Do something every day that helps you move forward. Share on X

Melissa, tell everybody how they can reach you.

I have a new website that launched not too long ago. It’s TheMelissaJohnson.com. On there, there’s information about me. If anyone wants to reach out about coaching, I have a podcast that I’ve launched. That’s up there. There are going to be some more resources and freebie, things that I’m working on putting up too. There are lots of info there. All my social links are on that website also.

Thank you, Melissa. That was awesome.

Thank you.

Ladies, before we go into our three rapid-fire questions, I want to let you know that Melissa and I do have an EXTRA plan. What she wants to share with you is how to build a business that fits your lifestyle. Most flippers that you hear from their businesses own them. She’s managed to do this by having five kids and all this other stuff. She’s figured out the whole building a business that you own rather than it owning you. We’re going to be talking a little bit more in-depth about that in EXTRA. I’m excited about that. Melissa, tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

When you’re first getting started, I always say start simple. There’s no need to go out and try to master every single exit strategy. I always recommend, pick a few marketing techniques. Pick a couple of exit strategies that you might want to do. Keep it very simple getting started because there’s so much out there and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Keep it simple. That gives you the opportunity too to master what you’re doing. Cheap, low-cost marketing, become the master of that, and then build on top of that as you grow.

What would you say is a strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

Track everything.

We didn’t get that message at all on the show.

When I say track everything, treat it like a business. Make sure that you are treating it as a business because it is. Many people are just doing stuff and they’re not tracking anything. Document those systems and processes. I can’t say enough how important that is to do, because even if it’s just you, you need to know what’s going on at all times. You can’t delegate something that you haven’t documented already. Get it out of your head, document, track and measure everything.

Melissa, what would you say is one daily practice that contributes to your personal success?

For me, it’s making sure that I do something that moves my business forward every day. Maybe I do that thing first thing in the morning, maybe it’s late at night but I always make sure that there’s one thing on that list that I’m doing that is something that’s going to move the needle forward. Not being in the weeds but move the business forward.

Melissa, this has been amazing so far. I’m so excited about EXTRA. Thank you for what you’ve shared so far.

You’re welcome. It was so fun.

Ladies, thank you for joining Melissa and I for this portion of the show. We’re going to be talking about how to create that business that gives you the lifestyle you want. I’m super excited. If you subscribe, stay tuned, if you’re not but would like to be, you can do that at RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. The first day of seven days is free. You can check out this EXTRA and as many others as you can download in seven days and see if it’s for you. For those of you that are leaving Melissa and I now, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

 

Important Links

• InvestHer – Facebook
• TheMelissaJohnson.com
• Podcast – Melissa Johnson’s Podcast
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Melissa McRay-Johnson

Melissa Johnson has been flipping houses in San Antonio, TX since 2003, growing and expanding the business into a thriving real estate investment operation. With over 1000 houses flipped, she has also built a portfolio of rental properties and real estate notes while raising five children.

She provides coaching, support, and education for other high-level real estate investors and business owners nationwide. As co-founder of the San Antonio InvestHer meetup group and an active member of the Forbes Real Estate Council, and the National Association of Women Business Owners, she is dedicated to the success and empowerment of women in business.

Melissa also recently launched the E3 Podcast on iTunes where she highlights everyday women and the struggles, lessons, and wisdom they encounter as entrepreneurs.

 

• Here’s How »

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram

______________________________________

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

To see this program in video:

Search on Roku for Real Estate Investing 4 Women or go to this link: https://blissfulinvestor.com/biroku

On YouTube go to Real Estate Investing for Women

0

Creating Passive Income Through Turnkey Real Estate With Leah Collich 

 

Real estate has been proven to be one of the best long-term investments and best ways to increase passive income to live your dream life. Moneeka Sawyer interviews real estate investor and investment counselor Leah Collich to ask about her journey of becoming a real estate investor and eventually being Real Wealth Network‘s investment counselor. She explains how turnkey property investment works and how she and her husband ended up doing it. So if you want to venture into this type of real estate investing, listen to the conversation and be more familiar with it.

—

Listen to the podcast here

 

Creating Passive Income Through Turnkey Real Estate With Leah Collich

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome to the show Leah Collich. She is a native Texan and is a spouse of an active-duty Army officer. The army has afforded them the opportunity to see the world and live in Asia, Europe, South America and all across the United States. Their life abroad led them to realize a passion for travel and adventure. They quickly discovered that real estate investing was one of the best ways to boost their passive income so they could continue this lifestyle after the military. Her professional background is in communications and after working as a government consultant for many years, she now works full-time in real estate, passively managing her portfolio of rentals and as an Investment Counselor for Real Wealth Network with Kathy Fettke. Every week, she speaks with dozens of investors about how they can make their real estate investment goals a reality through the purchase of turnkey investments. Leah, welcome to the show.

Moneeka, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

I’m excited too. We’ve loved hearing from Kathy in the past. I wanted to introduce my ladies to the team. Ladies, Leah is one of the counselors for Real Wealth Network, which many of you have already checked out. Some of you have already talked to Leah and because of the synergy with the two companies, Leah’s now our designated blissful coach. I wanted to introduce you ladies to her and we’ll talk a little bit more about that later but in the meantime, Leah, could you tell us about your real estate story?

I’m pleased with this collaboration and being able to connect with you and your readers. I think a lot of understanding my background and where I come from feeds into the mission of real wealth. I’d love to share that with you. I’m a regular person. I know filling in some of the information and preparation for this show, we call it expert session. I found myself going, “I get that a lot even on calls. When I talk to investors, people assume that I’m some expert or that I know everything there is to know about real estate.” I always tell them, “I’m a regular person. The only difference between me and you is time and action at this point.” My story starts off as a lot of beginner investors.

I happened into real estate on accident. In 2010 during the middle of the last housing recession, I had just gotten married. My husband was starting his career in the military. We were stationed in a small tiny town in Southern Alabama. We were smart enough to do some basic math when we were house hunting. We found this brand new construction townhome and we looked at the numbers and said, “We can rent this townhome for $950 a month or we can buy it for $750 a month.” My dad had had a rental property growing up. There was nobody in my corner telling me like, “Don’t do that. Bad idea.” The math made sense. We bought this brand new construction townhome knowing we would be there short-term, knowing that we would keep it after we left, turned it into a rental and it would make us some money.

That’s what we did. This was in 2010 when there was a home buyer credit. You got a check, we got a $15,000 or $10,000 home buyers credit to buy this cashflowing investment. Fast forward, maybe seven years or so, we were subscribing to the traditional way of preparing for retirement. We were doing everything right. We were saving, not maxing out credit cards, opening up 401(k) accounts, IRAs and maxing them out every year, trying to be as diligent as possible to be sure that we were prepared for retirement. It was when my husband got close to his halfway point in his military career that we were like, “In another 10 to 12 years, we could maybe retire, you’d get a pension.” We looked at these retirement accounts and we went, “We can’t touch that money until we’re 59.5. That doesn’t help us retire early.”

We started looking for opportunities in our life of, “Where can we create income that we can live on?” That rental had been cashflowing all along and rented nonstop. We got inspired to replicate that but be a little bit more intentional with it with the purchases ongoing. We flipped a house that we lived in, freed up a bunch of cash as we moved to Europe and said, “We’re going to get this cash reinvested and we’re going to focus on cashflowing markets.” We had a comfort level with that first market that we bought in. We went back to that same market. We bought a foreclosure from Europe, we’re overseeing a renovation. We’re on the phone with general contractors late at night. We’re trying to hustle and get this great deal going.

It was a lot of work but it was a success story. We were so pleased with ourselves but we did at the end in our reflection on how it went go, “What could we have done better in that scenario?” One, it wasn’t super passive. We were both working full-time. It was a lot to take on as an investment strategy. Two, we didn’t improve the value of that home enough to justify a cash-out refinance. We were a little bit under leveraged in this property. We started seeing that if we want to scale that extra cash that’s stuck in that asset, if we did that over and over again, we’re limiting our ability to scale and expand.

Sometimes, the only difference between a successful person and those who are not is time and action. Click To Tweet

We thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a company or someone who could do the rehab for us, we could come in with the capital, put our money to work passively, have maximum leverage and move on to the next one.” That’s how we found Real Wealth Network. Living from Europe, we’re looking for opportunities to connect in new markets with opportunities that we could put that income to work passively. We scaled quickly in that year. Now we’re diversified in about five different markets and that’s how I got to this idea of passive income but turnkey because it allows me to continue to pursue passion, interest and use my time in those ways instead of on the asset itself.

I have ads running for you, this is the true blissful path. That’s the way that I’ve done things too is I always want things to be like little time and energy commitment. For me, I’m more of an appreciation person. I’m moving from an appreciation market to more of cashflowing markets and that happens. We evolve in life to what it is that we’re needing as did you, you went through an evolution. Ladies, that’s one of the things to keep in mind is whatever strategy you are trying or doing. I don’t like to say try because real estate is not a try-thing. You got to commit and give it some time. Whatever you’re doing in this stage of your life could be different than what you’re doing in the next stage of your life. You’re not married to this strategy but you could get married if you fall in love. I’m trying to use definitively one of those places where we can fall in love because the benefits are great.

I find that it does embolden you when you experienced mastery that might be too strong of a term even but when you’ve experienced success in one avenue, I feel like it can embolden you to take risks in new areas and try out some different strategies. It doesn’t have to be an exclusive strategy. We’re always looking for deals elsewhere. I certainly have an appetite for flipping and doing some of that more active approach but it’s been such a journey for me and something that I’m grateful now to get to share and encourage other people on how they can do the same and how this is a viable strategy for creating retirement, creating freedom, or even diversifying. It doesn’t have even to be that grand of a plan. It can be a simple diversification measure as well.

Do you feel like you’ve replaced your income? Could you go have that lifestyle with what’s coming in with cashflow?

We’re getting close to having choices.

I love that you say that. It’s not retirement, it’s having choices.

We started realizing our whole career we’ve spent away from family and we’ve had a wonderful adventure. It’s been so rich but at the end of this career, we were inspired. Our why was the ability to have the choice to go where we want to go. We don’t have to go and follow a job in a specific city. We can choose to go back with family or abroad but having those options, to me is worth so much and you discover that you enjoy it. These ideas that you had of paying down loans, it evolves and suddenly, you’re moving in a different direction. We’re continuing to have a lot of fun with it. Retirement keeps getting kicked further down the road by choice.

I know what you mean because we could retire too. David loves what he’s doing and I love what I’m doing. Why would you retire when you love what you’re doing? Ladies, read me talk about retirement all the time and it’s not the right word. I love your choice of where it’s better, where we have a choice. We can now make decisions based on what we want to be doing with our time, life, energy and money as opposed to what we need to be doing to pay the bills. I love the way that you put that.

Passive Income Through Turnkey: When you’ve experienced success in one avenue, it can embolden you to take risks in new areas and try out different strategies.

Finding people like Kathy has been instrumental to that for me. That’s what Real Wealth is passionate about is about. It’s not chasing this idea of that society puts on us of what is successful but what is real wealth to you? It is freedom, a choice and being able to live life on your own terms. That resonated with us so much and little did I know that one day I would join the Real Wealth team and get to share in that mission of spreading that dream with others.

Why did you choose to do that?

My background is in communications. I did a lot of adult curriculum development. That instructional and teaching background is my speed and then the opportunity to marry that with this personal passion that we developed of investments, I find it super exciting. What we do at Real Wealth is providing a lot of emphasis on education and teaching people the fundamentals because the fact of the matter is the reason more aren’t investing in real estate is there’s a significant learning curve and it’s intimidating. In our minds, we’re thinking of these mega moguls that have invested in real estate.

We think that’s where we have to be and that we self eliminate. We choose to pursue other options that are maybe easier. In Real Wealth, we break that barrier of like, “Ask questions. Let’s be curious and learn together. We don’t have to be an expert about it.” The second part of that is offering a tactical means by which you can take action and turnkey offers you the ability to connect with people in markets that are experts there in that market boots on the ground who understand the market dynamics and who can help you find a product there and that long-term buy and hold investment.

How does this work for people once they’re in the system, they joined and everything, what happens?

We aggregate a lot of data on what makes a good market for real estate investors. We’re looking for job growth, population growth, strong diversified economies but yet we want them to be affordable markets where we can come in as levered buyers and have good solid cashflow. We want landlord-friendly laws. We let all of this data point us to those markets. We’re interested in about fifteen different markets and that’s not an all-inclusive list. There can be great things about many different markets but once we found those fifteen markets, we go out and look for a team there locally that specializes in finding those deals and in rehabbing those properties or in some cases, building new construction homes. In addition to that, they have professional property management again so that you get connected to that deal.

If that were it, that would be too easy because it’s overwhelming. Fifteen markets is a lot to choose from. It still doesn’t make it tangible. That’s where an investment counselor helps. We’re experienced in these markets, myself and there are three others. We know these markets, these teams and general investing strategy. We get on the phone with an investor who’s ready to pursue that. Through a conversation, we talk, what is their search criteria? What are your goals? What is it that you’re looking to do? That can guide us to a market that’s maybe the best fit for an investor. I’m sure you’ve heard before some people want to drill it down and go, “What’s the best market?”

The answer to that is always, “It depends. What are you looking for? How much capital are we working with? Are you looking to create maximum cashflow or the greatest return over a longer period of time?” What is the priority? Through a conversation, we help you refine what it is that you’re looking for and refine what your buy box is. What can help you get to those goals that you have sooner? We can make those referrals and connections to these companies and those markets that can help you identify the property.

Turnkey allows investors to continue to pursue passion and interest. Click To Tweet

You introduce to a company in the market. Are you hands-off after that or what happens?

What makes us different is that we maintain a relationship with our investors. It truly is a network. The strength of the network is in our investors. It’s providing that full circle or full feedback loop if for a lot of people, this is their first time going through a transaction like this. We, Real Wealth Network, remain involved and offering you that strategic guidance. We’ve put together some great checklists that help you with due diligence and how things you should be looking for when you’re screening property and getting home inspections, appraisals and offering you some of those good tips to guide you along the process. We love getting feedback from our investors on how it’s going.

We touch base and maintain that relationship beyond acquisition but into the management phase where the proof is in the sauce, that long-term hold of the property. How’s it doing? Did it do what we hoped it would? At the end of the day, you can’t make guarantees about how someone’s experience can be? How past performance can’t guarantee that, but it can be a good indicator to be able to point to 100 or 300 sales in a specific market and the track record of the property management team that has managed those homes for this period of time. That can give a lot of people the confidence that they need beyond taking a shot in the dark, in a market that they’re unfamiliar with where they don’t know anybody. It’s a lot of the benefit that you get when you’re a part of Real Wealth.

What happens if something does go wrong with the management company? This has been my biggest fear of going outside of the California market. I’ve kept all of my assets close within 50 miles so I can get there. If you’re out of state then you can’t do that. What happens if there’s something that goes wrong for instance with a management company or the house or something like that?

Think of it as a risk. That is a risk tolerance that is beyond some people, that idea of not being able to go there. Due diligence is extremely important and not just taking what we say and going with it regardless. We always say, “Trust what we say,” but verify it. Make sure that this is something you’re comfortable with. I tell everybody, we have a property manager here that is proven that we have some leverage with because we’ve worked with for many years but at the end of the day, you need to make sure that they meet your criteria because even within something like property management, there’s a personal preference. You can talk to five different people about the same property manager and you’ll get five different takes on some of the nuances of how they do business and whether they love them or whether they’re okay.

The important part and what we put a lot of emphasis on is you own this process. I do interview a couple of property managers who have a backup plan. When I’ve had situations like that personally, where something has not gone well and a property management experience wasn’t the best, it’s something that you can focus a little bit of energy into. I was quickly able to identify another property manager that could meet my expectations a little bit better. We at Real Wealth are here to help guide you through that process and lead you through that process of evaluating. Sometimes, it’s hard to know what is a typical experience or what is something that is a normal risk of owning real estate. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater yet and dump your property manager. This might be a problematic tenant and you need to ally with the property management company and get beside them in the real issue.

Do you give references for property management companies? How do people find who to interview?

We provide the reference for the specific property manager there in that market. That’s the reference that we offer but then you can go online and find other property managers on your own. We do encourage you to do that to make sure that they’re who you want to work with.

Passive Income Through Turnkey: Make decisions based on what we want to be doing with our life, energy, and money, as opposed to what we need to be doing to pay the bills.

Do you offer the opportunity to talk with other network members that have used that property manager as a reference? How might that work?

COVID has put a little bit of a damper on our normal processes for that. We had live events every month before March 2020. That was an opportunity for investors to all get in the same room, share their experiences, talk about the pros and cons of different areas and that was hugely beneficial when we did that so regularly. Now that we’ve gone virtual, that looks a little bit different. We do though have the ability to connect you with some people there locally in the market who have bought there over a period of time and who can give you some insight into their experiences with property management.

That would be my big thing is to get the references and get some validation around that decision. Tell us a little bit about, how you fit into my Blissful community? I’m excited about this collaboration. Let’s talk about how it happened and what my ladies can expect?

Kathy and you share a lot of synergies in your approach to this. You’ve got a similar abundant mindset that Kathy and Rich Fettke both have. This was an opportunity for us to provide a woman to woman connection in real estate where we can help your investors who are curious about the turnkey model, curious about a more passive approach to real estate investing so we can have that warm handover. We’ve set up a website for our blissful friends who are interested in turnkey where you create a profile on Real Wealth Network and then you’ll automatically be linked to me as your investment counselor. Once you’re logged in and created that account, you’ll have access to all of the free educational resources. You can start educating and you can look at all the market data that we’ve aggregated. You’ll have the ability to look at the teams that we work with. You’ve got access to me as your investment counselor to help you navigate the process, streamline it and hopefully get you going.

Nothing happens until we take action. We can think about it all day long.

I had a blissful investor come and we had a great strategy session. She was contemplating lots of different investment strategies, some more active some more passive but recognizing that there was a place in her investment strategy for a passive approach. We got her connected with the team that works in the market that she was most interested in. It’s that power of networking. It’s working for her already.

It has been interesting because my ladies email me and I love that. Several of them had connected with Real Wealth and a couple got to talk with you and a couple of the guys. Ladies, every single person on their team is unbelievable. I know that all of your coaches are awesome but I did feel that like, “We’re a ladies’ group and we want to talk to a lady.” It was cute when you called me and said, “Would you like your ladies to talk to Leah?” I was bouncing around excited about that. As women stay in the community, we think a little bit differently than men do and our priorities feel a little bit different. It is nice to talk to another woman about this stuff. I’m honored that you’re going to be working with my ladies.

It’s a topic that I know you’re passionate about but I feel financial literacy, engagement hasn’t been instilled in women like it has in men. Because of that, subconsciously, we’re more prone to take the back seat and to let somebody else lead that. I love and am inspired by women who recognize that that doesn’t have to be true and that there is a place for you to engage. If it’s easier to come to that place by engaging with another woman who’s already done it then let’s do that so that we can empower more people to do the same.

Nothing happens till we take action. Click To Tweet

Women are better suited to real estate. We love to nest, love our homes and love creating beautiful spaces. It’s intuitively and naturally one of our powerhouses is this ability to create a home and that’s what real estate is all about. Being able to do that, we can look at the numbers, creating space, to do your research but we get good gut feelings or inspirations about where to where to invest. It can be confusing. Once you look at the numbers, you then can use your intuitive sense, “Three different markets work. Where do we want to start?” Also, neighborhoods and all of that stuff. We are inherently better suited for this business. It seems sad that we’re not as involved as we could be and not benefiting from the amazing cashflow, appreciation and wealth that can be built through this industry.

There’s a lot of pressure too in this space to marry this idea of being a real estate investor and entrepreneur. I’ve had to tell people before and had to slow people down sometimes, I’m like, “You don’t have to make this a business. You don’t have to go and employ people.” I get some people who right out of the gate want to talk about entity formation and the tax structure for their entity formation. I’m like, “You don’t even have a house yet. Let’s slow down. Let’s learn some correlations of cashflow and appreciation. Let’s study some proformas and look at the basic math before we start blowing this up to be some gigantic entrepreneurial idea.” Real estate can be a diversification strategy. It can be passive. It can be a little side hustle hobby that you enjoy doing and it gives you that feeling of power or validation if that’s what you’re searching for. It can be that and it can be small. It doesn’t have to be huge.

It’s interesting because real estate was always my side hustle. I was in corporate, I ran my own businesses and real estate was that thing that I didn’t pay attention to. As a matter of fact, if I had paid attention to it, I can’t even imagine where I would be now. I pay no attention to it and suddenly, I’m worth millions of dollars. There were hard times. 2001 and 2008 was a hard time but through most of it, I haven’t had to think about it and I love that. It’s the side hustle without the hustle. Much of that is what turnkey is all about. It’s about the side creating the side hustle without the hustle.

The opposite of the hustle like people in the blissful business. I do agree with you, people get caught up in what everybody is out there talking about like the entity structuring, taxes and the, “You should be flipping as they do want to HGTV. You can make all of this money. You should have 1,000 doors.” No. You do what’s right for you. I only have 6 or 7 doors because I don’t like lots of doors. I’m in an appreciation market because that’s what I know for now and I’m making a transition cause I want to make a difference. That’s working in my life. You don’t have to do all of those things and all the gurus are telling you to do. You do what’s right for you.

It is prevalent in this space and I’ve always tried to resist against it and own my experience for it being my experience. We all have our scales of risk and reward of what’s right and wrong. It’s up to us to zero our scales and determine, “For me, where’s the risk and the reward here? Where’s that balance?” What we don’t want to do is allow somebody else who’s in a completely different phase, space balance our own scales. Being okay with your process looking a little bit different. If it’s not turnkey, that’s great. Do whatever it is. That’s probably the one thing that I would say is the rule you got to take action somewhere. I’ve heard you say this before, “Goals remain undefined. It’s a dream. It’s not ever going to happen. We’ve got to give ourselves some concrete tactical steps and create a timeline for ourselves so that we step into that.”

The other piece about this and I know that this is true with a lot of us women because we do feel intimidated. We haven’t necessarily had the network or educational support and all of this stuff. You want to know your stuff. You want to get educated. You want to make sure that you’re doing the right thing. You don’t want to look stupid. You don’t want to have lost money. This is what I say to that, everybody in business loses money. Don’t be afraid of it but it also isn’t something that you have to do either. You can make good decisions consistently. I’ve never lost money ever on a real estate project. That’s been many years.

Not everybody has that same track record and it’s okay. When I say that I haven’t lost money, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t had a lot of fear. In 2008, I lost 50% of the value of all my properties, I was underwater on every single one but I didn’t sell, so I didn’t lose money. Let’s all keep that in perspective. That’s what I’m trying to say is that keeping it all in perspective and understanding that you’re going to have to learn along the way. You can do as much research as you want. You can look at as many videos. You can talk to as many people. You can listen to as many podcasts but nothing happens with your wealth or your education until you start doing something because you’ll learn a lot being in there.

I see it all the time. The analysis paralysis. It’s putting a lot of pressure on yourself to know everything. I was talking about this with my husband. I’m like, “Everybody wants to step up to the plate and they want to first swing knock it out of the park.” That would be epic. That would be awesome. I’d rather be the person who is confident who understands it but I’m okay with a base hit. Like I’m going to load up those bases. The better I get at loading the bases, the more my confidence builds. At some point, I’m going to knock it out of the park. When I do, the bases are loaded. That takes the pressure off me to make sure that everything is nailed and that there wasn’t a single thing. Part of what I always try to do is reflect on a situation and look at it, even when I thought it went great, like, “Let’s look at it. What could we have done better next time?” That’s how we wound up in the turnkey space. Evaluating going, “That was good. Nice job,” but how could we refine this? The next time it’d be even better? That’s a sweet spot to stay in.

Passive Income Through Turnkey: There’s a lot of pressure in this space to marry this idea of being a real estate investor and being a real estate entrepreneur.

We are going to move towards the end of this show but before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about Extra because you’ve got some yummy, exciting stuff to offer my ladies. Tell us a little bit about what you’re going to cover in Extra?

The seven steps for new investors is what we’re going to cover. It’s going to be tactical, if I’m getting started, what are the next seven steps for me to do? Starting from let’s think about goal setting down to, “Let’s refine my buy box so that I can take informed action.” We’ll talk a little bit about what those next seven steps are.

I love that. I can’t wait. I love it when we get a breakdown like that, specific steps that we can take. I’m excited about that. Tell us where we can reach you.

We have create a website on RealWealth.com for the Blissful Investor. You can go to RealWealth.com/Blissful. If you create a login there, we’ve already set it up on the backend so that you’re immediately linked to me as your investment counselor. You can click around once you’re on there. You’ll see It’s very easy to connect with me once you’re logged into your account. We can set up an initial strategy session and get you going.

I know lots of ladies are already in the network and enjoying the benefits. Go check it out and join. It’s free to join. Leah, are you ready for three rapid-fire questions?

I’m ready.

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

Aside from watching our Seven Steps for New Investors, I tell everybody financing is the gas in the tank. We can know where we want to go. We can know that it’s a great place but until we know that we have gas in our tank to take us there, we’re not going anywhere. I always tell beginners, “The first thing you should do is understand your borrowing potential and talk to a qualified lender who specializes in investment loans.”

Women are better suited to real estate. They have the power to create a home. Click To Tweet

What would you say is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

We already talked about this a little bit but I think for me, it’s staying curious. This is something that Kathy Fettke does so well. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I think that could be maybe the flaw of the other genders that there’s sometimes a pride that we have of not wanting to admit when we don’t know something when the reality is, it’s a very good question and there are lots of other people in the room who don’t know it either. Staying curious and not being intimidated to ask for additional information. I see this a lot in our space, people assume that if someone is trying to sell them something that they’re trying to deceive them or trick them into something. I say, “They are humans too and they’re a real estate investor, be curious about their experience, leverage their experience in that market, ask questions.” That has been instrumental to my success.

I was having a conversation with another investor and I ask a lot of questions. He’s doing something that I’ve never done and will never do. It’s a type of construction because I’m doing construction. I am constantly asking questions. At one point, I said to him, “I get that I ask a lot of questions. You can shut me down.” He’s like, “You can send me an email and see when it gets stopped.” It’s so much fun to be involved with someone who’s interested rather than someone that thinks I’m smart and they’re going to follow my instructions. “You’re going to go places because you care enough to figure it out.” I wanted to share that with ladies so that you know people love you asking questions and if it is too much, they’ll say, “I don’t have any answer. Talk to somebody else. That’s too many questions.” You get to there, that’s a good place because that means that you’ve dug deep. Questions are a good thing. They’re good for your business, self-esteem, success and relationships. Leah, tell us one daily practice that you would say contributes to your personal success.

It’s important to reinforce what you want to be replicated. This is true in many different aspects of life, relationships, finances, with children. Focus your energy on what went right and what you want to see happen again. The example that comes to my mind related to real estate is we have a friend who’s wanting to get into real estate for a long time and has talked about it for a very long time and got a property. It’s not going perfect but it’s typical real estate investment problems, the maintenance and phone call. That kind of stuff. He’s chosen to focus on the negatives of that and focus on, “It’s another call. It’s another problem.”

We always try to say, “Let’s make sure that we’re reinforcing all the good things that happened that month.” You got a tenant with no vacancy, you got top market rent for that property. You’re cashflowing well every month. It’s not ideal to have to go and fix this item but let’s reinforce all of the things that went right and that is going right because that’s what we want to replicate in our life. If we focus on all the negatives and on all the things that didn’t go excellent, those can sometimes be an inhibitor to our future progress.

This has been so good. Leah, thank you for all you’ve shared so far.

I’m happy to be here and looking forward to connecting with you ladies.

Ladies, stay tuned for Extra. We’re going to be talking about the seven steps for new investors. If you are already subscribed to Extra, you’re going to get that on whatever device you’re reading to this show. If you are not subscribed to Extra but would like to be go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get the first seven days for free, so you can check it out. If you love it, you stay. If you don’t, at least you got a lot of good content. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining Leah and I for this portion of the show. I appreciate you and I look forward to seeing you next time. 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 next time. Bye.

Important Links

• Real Wealth Network
• RealWealth.com/Blissful
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join the Real Estate Investing for Women Community today:>

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook

——————————————————

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

To see this program in the video:

Search on Roku for Real Estate Investing 4 Women or go to this link: https://blissfulinvestor.com/biroku

On YouTube go to Real Estate Investing for Women

0

How To Invest In Real Estate Right Now Even If You Have Little Or No Money With Mike Wolf

 

We are about to witness what could be the biggest wealth transfer history has ever seen. As COVID-19 takes its ultimate toll despite the palliative measures the government has taken, real estate is going to undergo a radical revolution that might just be your opportunity to get the real estate career of your dreams running. Are you ready to take part in this massive upheaval? If it’s money you’re worried about, you’ll be glad you tuned in to the show right now. Mike Wolf is here with Moneeka Sawyer to teach you how you can start investing in real estate right now even if you have little or no money. An investor who has over 30 years of experience, Mike is as knowledgeable in the field of distressed properties as he is generous in sharing his best practices to budding investors like you. Stick to the end for another generous gift from him that will surely start your year right!

—

Listen to the podcast here

 

How To Invest In Real Estate Right Now Even If You Have Little Or No Money With Mike Wolf

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome to the show, Mike Wolf. He has been investing in real estate for many years. He is also an international speaker, mentor, philanthropist and world traveler. Mike has been featured on all the major TV networks, radio and print publications. He specializes in helping people create passive income so they can enjoy not just financial freedom but time freedom as well. Mike, welcome to the show.

It’s good to see you. How have you been?

I’ve been good. I’m glad we’re finally doing this. Tell us a little bit about your story. How did you get started?

It’s interesting because I get a lot of people that say, “Of course, you can do this, Mike.” They think I came out of the womb knowing how to do real estate. Nothing could be further from the truth. I got into this business totally by mistake. If we go way back in the middle grade twelve, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. My parents were always talking about doctors, lawyers, that’s all I ever heard. I’m terrified of blood so doctor was off the table right from the get-go. That wasn’t going to happen. Lawyers, you see shows on TV and they always have the fancy offices. I thought that was cool.

I went to a university and got my first degree. With that came a whole bunch of student loans. I decided before I go back and get my second degree, I’m going to get these paid off. I got a job at the phone company because my friend’s mother was a manager there. While I was there, I bought my first home to live in. Shortly after I bought that, my mortgage broker calls me up and says, “Mike, you’re making good money. Your credit is good. I can get you another mortgage if you want to buy another home.” I thought to myself, “Why do I don’t want another home?” He said, “You buy another property. You put tenants in there. They pay down your mortgage and 25 years from now, your home is paid off and that’s your retirement.” I go, “That makes sense.”

I bought a second property and put tenants in there, and two years later the market took off. I was still at the phone company at this time. I’m sitting on all this equity. I remember thinking to myself, “In the last two years, I made this much going into my job, which I don’t like that much. I made this much in real estate and I don’t even know what I’m doing in real estate. If I could do that by mistake, what would happen if I learned how to do this on purpose?” I wish I could say it was smooth sailing after that. I quit my job. I told my parents I’m not going to become a lawyer. My mom was still trying to get me to be a lawyer to this day but that’s all right.

I burnt all my bridges, which I don’t recommend people do. On the next deal, I managed to lose almost everything that I made. On the first one, it was meant to be long-term. That was my 25-year retirement plan. On the next one, I quit my job. I couldn’t wait two years for my next paycheck. I did things very haphazardly. I lost most of what I made. It was a very humbling lesson because back then, I was in my mid-twenties. I’m very cocky at that point because I thought I knew everything there was to know about real estate because I got this paycheck that was pretty sizeable especially back in those days.

Luckily, when I hit rock bottom after messing up, I was much humbler. Instead of being a know-it-all, I became a learn-it-all. I started to seek out and found a mentor. I started to read books on investing. I started to learn how to do this stuff as opposed to winging it. If I haven’t gotten humbler and looked for help, I’d be here maybe talking about real estate law not as an investor, but as a lawyer. I’m very grateful that I had my lessons early on.

It’s funny how many people who’ve been on this show started in real estate by accident. Ladies, I want you to know that. That’s how intuitive this is. In a lot of cases, getting started can happen. I love what you said about finding a mentor to grow and scale, and turn it into a business. I never turned it into a full-time business where it had to pay the bills until now. I’m in that transition, but now I’ve got a huge amount of equity to work with. There are different ways to do that. Could you talk to us a little bit about the last recession? I know that you have some ideas about what’s going to happen in the market and what’s coming up. I’d love to hear a little bit about that and your company that you called Foreclosure Fixers. That was what attracted me to this conversation.

Back during the last recession, a lot of people lost their shirt, unfortunately. I’m talking about investors now. Everybody was affected by it in some way, shape or form. I don’t like the term real estate investor. I prefer the term problem solver because that’s what we do. When people put their home on the market, there’s always a story behind it. Nobody wakes up one day and randomly says, “I think we’ll toss a for sale sign in the lawn.” There’s always a story behind it. Either they’re moving up, moving down, being transferred, or getting divorced. There’s always something behind that. The more problems we know how to solve and the more people we can help, the more we get paid. In this business, the best way to do it is win-win.

The best way to do real estate is win-win. Share on X

Every time you do a transaction, the person on the other end of that deal should also be benefiting. The goal should not be to look for some little old lady who has no idea of the value of her home, steal it out from under her, and leave her homeless. That’s not the goal of this. Back in the last recession, you’ve probably seen those postcards, “We buy homes, we buy ugly homes, we’ll pay cash for your home.” During the last recession, I went at it from a much different angle. I hired an attorney to learn the foreclosure laws inside and out. I sent out marketing materials that said, “We can help stop the foreclosure.” That was what the Foreclosure Fixers business was all about. There were two different types of people that would call me.

The type one person is sometimes bad things happen to good people. I can’t think of a time where there are more bad things happening to good people right now with COVID. Back in those days, a lot of people were losing their homes. A lot of people would have never dreamed of not missing their payments but sometimes things happen. Those type of people quite often lost their job, but then they found another job. Maybe they couldn’t get caught up on all the arrears. They may have been behind $5,000, $10,000, $20,000. They couldn’t get caught up on it, but now they can afford the monthly payments again. For people like that, quite often I would go in and I’d help stop the foreclosure. I’d loan them the money to pay off the arrears and they would pay me back with some interest. I’d help them stay in their home.

There’s the second type of person. Those are people that like to keep up with the Joneses. They like to quite often live way beyond their means. I remember when I used to do my own property management. Never do that, by the way. My tenants always had nicer TVs, better stereos. They had better everything than me. My book collection was a lot better than theirs but everything else that they had, all the material things are always better. There are lots of people that like to live way beyond their means. People like that, if you loan the money, you’re never going to see that money again. It’s going to disappear. For people like that, I give them what I call a soft landing. What I mean by that is instead of stealing their home out from under them and getting that home run, I’d always make sure that they had the money for damage deposit, several months’ rent, and money for food. I put them in a much better position than if they lost the home to the bank.

Sometimes I do a joint venture with them. I’d say, “You’re going to lose your home to the bank but why don’t we fix it up? Put it on the MLS. I know you don’t have the money to fix it. I’ll put up the cash to fix it. When we sell it, I’ll get some of the profits since I’m putting up some money but you’ll walk away with something instead of nothing.” I always looked for what was the best solution for that person on the other end of the table from me. I want to make sure that they’re in a better spot. What was interesting is that I wouldn’t get the home run. I leave some money on the table for the other person, but if they lost their job, they probably know five other people that they used to work with that lost their job too.

They start sending me their friends, and their friends would send me their friends. I never had to look for clients. Instead of getting that one home run, I always have more clients coming down the pipeline and we managed to help a whole lot of people. One of the reasons I’m so passionate about what I do is that when you help people with their financial problems, it’s like the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole bunch of things below the surface. If they’re struggling financially, it’s almost guaranteed the relationships are there. There’s fighting going on. They’re probably stressed and depressed. Their health isn’t good. You’re fixing a whole bunch of different things. It’s not just the money thing that you’re fixing.

I remember I had one lady back in my Foreclosure Fixer days. She called me after I’d given her the soft landing. She said, “Mike, the day that I got your marketing materials, I was thinking of killing myself that day.” I don’t take very lightly the stuff that I knew. It’s not just about flipping homes. It’s about helping other people and getting paid for it. That’s why I love this business. After many years, I still wake up excited to be in this industry and that’s why.

This completely reminds me why I was excited to share you with my ladies. I heard the story the first time and this time it still chokes me up. It’s so good because I do think many people that teach about real estate investing want every last nickel that they can get. I like you, Mike. I want everybody to win. I’m focusing a lot on construction. When I buy a property that I’m going to tear down and build something else, I want to make sure that they’re getting paid market value. If they’re not getting paid market value, they’re not happy. The numbers have to work for me too, but I’m not going in there trying to low-ball them like all the other contractors are. What that means is that my profits are a little bit less but they’re getting taken care of, I feel good about what I’m doing. I still make quite a lot of money. My margins are a little bit lower. You can still make good money by being good out there. You can be kind. You don’t have to nickel and dime people. I hate to say this but I feel like it’s ripping them off.

We’re still reliant on our teams. When you have their back, they’ve got your back. I did a TED Talk and that’s one of the things I talked about, happiness and fulfillment. You can’t put a value on that. Going to bed at the end of the day and being able to sleep well and knowing that you helped somebody, that’s a much different feeling than, “I got this big paycheck. I wonder if that guy is homeless now. I made a lot of money but my team is struggling.” I think when everybody wins, you get in the flow and everything falls into place almost by magic.

It’s more gratifying. I talk so much on my show about bliss, and bliss isn’t about money. Bliss is about how you feel. When you’re in the business of making money so that you can create wealth, so that you can live the lifestyle, there’s still a disconnect. If you’re building a business that also makes you feel good and you feel good about what you’re able to do with your life, now you’ve got a full picture. You feel good in your business, you feel good in your life. It’s all working. If you have this disconnect where one is outside of yourself, it’s all about the money. There’s no gratification other than the money in that business. It’s not going to support and carry into the rest of your life. It will give you the financial means. When we talk about bliss, it’s about the support of your life and all aspects of your life.

When you do things right, you get this balance and your team will stand up for you. They’ll go above and beyond. This is a people business. I think it was Zig Ziglar that said, “How you show up in one thing is how you show up in everything.” Whether it’s the Uber driver or the server at the restaurant, every single person, it’s important to make that other person happy no matter what that is. Your teams, more than anybody, the people on the other end of that transaction. Everybody should walk away happy and wanting to keep doing it over and over again as opposed to, “I made an extra few thousand dollars on this paycheck, but that guy’s never going to work for me again. This guy’s still working for me but he hates me. The first chance he gets to jump ship and go somewhere else, he’s going to do that.” This is definitely a people business. The better you treat people along the way, the easier it’s going to be for you too. It all fits together. It’s like a puzzle. You have to take care of everybody along the way that helps you to get to the point that where you want to be.

 

I know we’re going to do a deep dive in Extra a lot more about the economy and what to expect. I’m excited about that conversation, but can you give us a high level of what we’re foreseeing and also what strategies might work in the coming months or years given our economy?

We’re definitely heading into some interesting times. If I had to sum up the highest level of what we’re going to see, it is probably going to be the greatest transfer of wealth in history. When I say transfer, the money is not disappearing. It’s not going into thin air. I think of those snow globes, those things you shake up and the little snowflakes fall from the top to the bottom. Imagine those are $100 bills instead of snowflakes, that money is falling from the top. We’re seeing a lot of people that were in an enviable position. Imagine you owned an office space in downtown Manhattan. In 2019, that was like you’re on cloud nine. These days, you’ve got a lot of headaches. There are a lot of people not going to offices. A lot of things shut down. A lot of businesses are never going to go back to how they used to do business.

That money is trickling down somewhere and it might as well be you who gets it. The way to get that is to educate yourself and take these downtimes. There are a lot of places that are unfortunately, back in lockdown again. There are stay at home orders at some places. How are you using that time is going to dictate how things look for you a year from now and five years from now. If you take the time to educate yourself, that transfer of wealth could be transferred down to you. In terms of what opportunities, we have this big moratorium on foreclosures and I’m glad. I’d hate to see banks throwing people out on the streets in the middle of a pandemic.

That would not be good. That’d be horrible but that’s not going to last forever. The government is sending out stimulus checks. That’s not going to last forever. What we’re going to see, and one of my favorite strategies for many years has been tax deeds. What a tax deed is when people haven’t paid their property taxes in a number of years, the county forecloses on them. The county needs that money to keep its schools, hospitals and the police force open. Eventually, they put these homes up on the auction block after 2, 3, 4 years of nonpayment. My favorite auction takes place in Houston, Texas and it’s been shut down now for a good 8, 9 months. Normally, on any given month, there are usually 500 to 1,000 homes that change hands.

You multiply 9 months times 500, that’s a lot of homes that are backlog that never went up on the auction block yet. You added that to the fact that there are a whole bunch of homes that would have been foreclosed on in addition to those, and they haven’t been foreclosed on yet. What we’re going to see is a whole lot of opportunity for people that know how to do that strategy properly. Don’t attempt that strategy if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s very lucrative if you know what you’re doing and you will lose your shirt if you don’t. If you know how to do that, there are lots of opportunities there. One of my favorite strategies if I was starting out, we’re getting a whole lot of people in preforeclosure.

That’s not yet but that’s coming down the pipeline. Every month when we look at that auction and most of the auctions across the country, they publish a list somehow. Some of them are online. Some of it’s printed. Some you have to subscribe to. They all publish a list of all the homes that are going for auction. Most people that go to those auctions take a look at the list, do their due diligence, show up at the auction and win whatever they win. For me, when I see that list, that’s a list of people that are in trouble. That’s a list of people that need help. They are three weeks to a month away from losing their home usually over a very small amount of money.

One of my students picked up a home for $7,200. Somebody lost their home over $7,200. That’s a list of people in trouble. Those are the people that I would send my Foreclosure Fixers flyer to and try to help them, try to give them a soft landing, help them stay in their home, stop the foreclosure. I’m going to try to come up with a solution for them before it ever makes it to the auction. Not everybody is going to reply to your marketing. There will be a lot of people that unfortunately, their home will struggle on the auction block. I call this a trifecta. The first thing I’m going to do is try to help them before it goes to auction. That’s number one. Number two is I’m going to go to the auction. In my case, I have a team that goes to the auction for me and my students.

I don’t go myself anymore, but I’m going to try and pick up those properties for pennies on the dollar. The third part of the trifecta is a very little known strategy called overages. What that is, when a home goes up for auction, if the opening bid is $5,000 and let’s say it sells for $50,000, that first $5,000 belongs to the county fair and square. The additional $45,000 belongs to the previous homeowner. Few homeowners have any clue this money is owed to them. The county makes little attempt to track down these people and get them this money because after there’s a statute of limitations and certain amounts of time, that becomes their slush fund. They can do whatever they want with it. Imagine you lost your home over $5,000.

That was the only thing stopping you from saving your home, $5,000. Somebody approaches you and says, “I know somebody owes you $45,000. If you’re willing to split that with me, I’m willing to get you this money. You don’t pay me unless I’m successful,” and you can negotiate with them. He might take 20%, 30%, 40%, whatever it is that you negotiate, but you’ve helped somebody who probably lost their home over that small amount of money. They are either moving in with relatives or homeless. They are in a bad spot. You reunited them with a pretty big chunk of cash. There are billions and billions of dollars owed to people all across the country. The great thing about these strategies is this last one requires almost no money.

For those people who are thinking, “I’d love to get into real estate but I’ve got no cash.” That one requires very little money or no money. You might have to pay to get the list. There might be some minor expenses here and there, but for the most part, you can do it with almost zero. Going to auction, I’ve had students pick up properties for $7,000, $8,000, $9,000. You need a little bit of money but it doesn’t have to be your money. The first part, giving people a soft landing or if you find somebody who has a bad position in pre-foreclosure, you can do something called wholesaling. You don’t have to have a whole bunch of cash. You put the home under contract. You contact somebody like myself or you and say, “I found this good deal on a property. I don’t have the cash to do it but I will assign that contract to you.”

When everybody wins, everything falls into place as if by magic. Share on X

What you’re doing is if you’ve found a good deal and you said, “Mike, I found this deal that you’re going to make $100,000 on. I’ll sign it to you for $20,000.” I’ll trade $20,000 and make $100,000 all day long. I know you would too. For people thinking, “I can’t get into real estate because I’ve got no money,” there are many different strategies that you can do that require a little or no cash, and you can go help somebody else on the other end of that transaction and create a win-win.

I love your compassion for people. All three of those strategies I was like, “I want to do that.” That was amazing.

That’s the tip of the iceberg. I got so many more in this program. I can talk for days.

Tell us about the program. Ladies, I’m excited about this. I wanted to share, he’s got a three-day seminar. It’s called Mike’s Wealth Mastery. Tell us a little bit about that and what you cover.

Let me tell you how it all started. Before COVID, I was pretty much retired. I would do 1 or 2 live events a year. They’d be 3 or 4 days long. I take people to Houston, Texas. We’d spend four days. I show them how to do tax deeds inside and out. I’d give them my teams. They don’t have to keep going back to Texas. After the four days, I’d hop on a flight. I’m usually very nomadic when borders are open and airplanes are flying. When COVID hit, it grounded me. I went back to Canada where I’m from because that’s where my grandkids and my daughter are. I spent seven months there. While I was there, I got talked into it. When I first got back, I was sleeping in every day, taking it easy, watching Netflix like everybody else. The phone started to ring and lots of podcasts, summits, radio shows, and people wanted to know what’s happening with the economy. What’s happening with real estate? I could tell there are a lot of people that are very worried about what’s coming up.

A friend of mine does a three-day summit. She brought me on as a guest speaker. I was supposed to speak for 45 minutes. She teaches wealth but not the real estate side of things. It was supposed to be 45 minutes. There are so many questions. I ended up speaking for two hours. She said, “Can you do a special event for my people in the afternoon?” I go, “Sure, no problem.” I did that and then she said, “Why don’t we do a three-day for my people.” I go, “Okay, fine.” The next thing, now I’m doing a year-long group coaching program. COVID is doing weird things. I went from retired to never having worked this hard in a long time, but I’m loving it. This three-day event that’s coming up, when I first heard they were shutting down the global economy, I’m going, “This is going to be a nightmare. There’s going to be a lot of people in trouble.”

I started thinking, “I’m going to set up my Foreclosure Fixers again because there could be so many people needing that.” The universe kept putting all this stuff on my plate that made it very obvious that I needed to make this bigger. I might be able to set up Foreclosure Fixers and help 50 or 100 families. When I started to get on all these podcasts and summits, I realized what if I were to do a training and teach people some of the strategies that I talked about and a whole bunch more? I’ll put these people on the front lines and created a movement of ethical real estate investors that were on the front lines, finding people in distress, helping them and getting paid for it.

This is going to be my fourth time doing this event. The first time I did it, it was $997. We got amazing feedback but I also got some people saying, “I don’t have a job right now, $1,000 is a lot of money for me.” I’m not making a ton of money off this event, even $1,000. When people come to my live events, it’s a lot more than that. I decided I want to help get as many people trained as possible. The three-day event is $97. It’s three full days of content like teaching some of the strategies I talked about inside and out and a whole bunch more, teaching how to do deals. It’s mostly focused on how do you do deals with little or no cash.

I know a lot of people are reinventing themselves. They’re not working, their business shuts down. They’re not in a good spot financially. How can I help the people that tune in to get to a better place and have those people help other people get to a better place and create this ripple effect? It’s $97 for three days. It’s been very successful and I’m proud of these events. I never would have done if it weren’t for COVID. It’s allowed me to help a lot of people so I’m super excited about it.

What strategies specifically do you cover at that event? Is there too many to list?

 

We’re going to talk about fix and flips, passive income, wholesaling, subject-to, the list goes on and on. How do you use technology to generate leads? A lot more about how I did the Foreclosure Fixers business, and talk about marketing and how people can emulate and copy exactly what I did. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Pretty much all the strategies that are going to be the most effective. When something like this happens, when you have a pandemic or a major change in the economy, what worked a year ago is not what’s going to work now. It’s going to be totally different.

It’s focusing on the stuff that you can do even if you can’t get out of your home, you can’t go look at properties. There are stuff you can do from your computer. Getting the most relevant strategies for these crazy times that we live in. My goal is to teach as many people as possible. Wherever you’re at whether you have money, whether you don’t have money, we’re going to teach you the different strategies to get you in this business and the stuff that’s going to work.

It’s $97. Do you record it? For instance, I know that weekend is my mom’s birthday. I would have to miss it if I were to attend. Will you be recording it and stuff?

I’ve got to check with my team. We have been selling recordings in the past. I’m not sure what the price point is on those. It’s funny because I have teams that delegate to me. They say, “Mike, where’s that video?” They set all this stuff up. I believe this event is going to be $247 but because I said $97. The last one was $97. We’ll honor that for your people. Remind me to make sure that we give you a discount code for your people for $97. We’ve been trying different price points because we want to get people to show up. I’d let people on for free but people don’t put a value on what they get for free, and they don’t show up. If they get it for free, they don’t show up because you don’t put any value. We’ve been testing different price points. We started at $997, and then we did the next few at $97. We’re going to try going a little bit higher but they’ll be $97 for your people.

Let’s use a coupon code and that’s BLISS.

That sounds good. Remind me and I’ll get my team to do that because I don’t know how to do any of that stuff.

I’ll go ahead and email you this stuff. There are a couple of things. That’s the event. Do you want to do a link for that event? I’ve got one for your free gift but let’s make up one for your event also. Let’s do BlissfulInvestor.com/mikeevent. What do you think?

That sounds great. As long as you remind me, that’d be good.

We’re going to do that. It’s going to be BlissfulInvestor.com/mikeevent. The code to get the ticket for $97 is going to be BLISS. That is going to be on March 12 through 14, which is a Friday through Sunday in the middle of March 2021. That will be awesome. Thank you for that. I also know that you have a free gift for everybody. Did you want to talk a little bit about that?

I got to thank COVID. In all seriousness, it created a lot of extra time in my schedule. Normally, I’m catching flights and bouncing all over the place. At the time I settled down, one of the things that I did is I wrote an eBook on the top strategies that are working right now. It’s called the Radical Real Estate Revolution. I’m happy to give it to your followers for free. It talks about some of the things you can get started in that are working. I wrote it while locked down. All the strategies or things you can do from your sofa. If you turn off Netflix for a few minutes, this is the stuff that you can do while you’re on your computer.

Focus on having balance in your life and life will become magical for you. Share on X

The book is called Radical Real Estate Revolution: The Top 7 Ways to Invest In Real Estate, Even If You Have No Money. The link to get the free report is going to be BlissfulInvestor.com/mikewolf. That’s where you can get the free report. That was generous of you. Thank you for that.

The goal is to help as many people as possible. There are many people that they’re going through a lot of stuff, a lot of transformations. I feel like a lot of people are losing hope, unfortunately. If I could share what I have in here, they’d be optimistic about the future and what’s coming up. There’s going to be a lot of people struggling but if we’re problem solvers, that’s an opportunity to help them and get paid for it. We have great times coming up ahead. There are going to be a lot of people that are needing our help. If I can help the people that are reading, and they go help some more people, who knows how many people those other people can help too. It trickles down.

It is the ripple effect. You help ten people, each of them helps people like that. It’s amazing what we can do. Thank you so much for that. In Extra, we are going to go on a deep dive into what Mike is foreseeing in the economy. We’re going to do a deeper dive on that. He talks in the show all over the place about that. I’m interested in his viewpoint. He gave us a high level here, but we’ll do a deeper dive on that in Extra. Before we go to the next show, are you ready for three rapid-fire questions?

Bring it on. I get excited and get passionate. I talk for hours. I had to keep it rapid but no guarantees.

Give us one super tip on how to be successful or how to get started in real estate investing.

The first thing that I would do and the thing that I didn’t do is I would get a mentor right off the bat. I wouldn’t mess around and lose a whole bunch of money and then realize, “I need a mentor.” I’d get the mentor right at the beginning. I’m proud of myself. I did a good job.

What is one strategy in being successful in real estate investing?

The biggest thing is all here. The most important piece of real estate is right in here. I’m pointing at my head and I’m talking about mindset. Mindset is the most important thing. For me, the biggest thing is gratitude. I know it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with real estate but when you are grateful for where you’re at and what you have. There are people that no matter what they’ve got, they’re never happy. They finish that one big thing that they’ve been trying to do, and then they’ve got the next thing and they’re not even grateful. Start to practice gratitude. Every morning write down the things you’re grateful for.

I do a lot of volunteering. I went to a place called Vanuatu, which are these islands in the middle of the South Pacific between Australia and New Zealand. They had got hit by a hurricane. Myself and several other entrepreneurs who raised a bunch of money bought a bunch of water filters and gave them clean drinking water. After you see people don’t have clean drinking water, when you come home and you turn a tap and magically water appears, you can never be ungrateful. You have something to be grateful for. If you are reading this right now, you have a lot to be grateful for. You have a computer, Wi-Fi and technology. We have so much to be grateful for. I know it doesn’t sound very real estate-esque but that’s the secret. It’s practicing gratitude. Setting goals for where you want to get but being happy for where you’re at too.

That’s one of my big tenets of real estate. I call it the master key of bliss, is gratitude. Thank you so much for sharing that. What would you say is one daily practice that you do that contributes to your personal success?

Since I answered it for the second one, I’m going to give you a different answer. The other thing that I do, and this is what I talked about on the TEDx stage. When I was younger, I was always chasing money. I became a workaholic as a result of it. I didn’t mind it because I’m very passionate about real estate. I certainly was back then when I was younger. I was extra passionate because I love being in the trenches. Now I’ve got grandkids, my priorities have changed. For me, every day I wake up, I figure what makes me happy. Instead of figuring out how do I make more money, it’s what can I do to make myself happier?

That’s why I travel a lot because that’s one of my favorite things to do or hanging out with my grandkids, spending a lot of time with them. When my daughter was growing up, when I was a workaholic, I did not spend nearly as much time as I should have. If I could go back, I would definitely change that. Happiness for sure and then fulfillment. To me, fulfillment comes from helping other people. That’s why I do a lot of philanthropy and a lot of giveback projects. I love to help other people because, at the end of the day, I do it selfishly because it’s a win for the people that you help. When I do it selfishly, I’m seeking more fulfillment in my life. Those are the things that I do every day. I look for where can I create more happiness and fulfillment for myself and for others. How can I go help other people? That’s what I would do. Don’t ever become a workaholic. Don’t ever let your business get in the way of family and your health. If you don’t have those other two things, it doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got in the bank. Focus on having that balance in your life, and life will become magical for you. Every day you wake up excited and happy.

It’s as if you’re repeating what comes out of my mouth all the time. Thank you for validating.

There was a time in my life where I had plenty of money in my bank account but everything else around me was falling apart. I had the big house and all the toys and I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t lit up. I was thinking, “I did everything that my parents told me. I got the degree and I did this and I did this. I did all things I was supposed to do.” This is all there is. I got this material stuff but that lights you up. You get the new car and for two weeks you’re excited about it. After that, it’s not a new car anymore. You need that next thing.

It’s like a drug. You need that next thing and the next thing. You get caught up on this treadmill where you’re always chasing after more money to get that other thing. I’m glad those days are behind me now. I love being a nomad because I got rid of a lot of my stuff that I worked hard to get. It was still good to get rid of it. Now I travel with a couple of suitcases and almost everything else, I got rid of it and it feels good. Focus on the things that are important in life. If money was no object, what are the things you would do? I’m pretty sure, for most people, it wouldn’t be to go to a job that you hate every day. Find those other things, get your money in a good position, put that on autopilot, which is some of the stuff that I teach, big passive income, and then focus on the things that matter in life. When you say success, success to me isn’t money. Money is part of it for sure. To me, success is having a well-rounded, healthy, happy, and fulfilled life.

Thank you for that. Ladies, we are going to be talking more about the economy specifically and what Mike foresees for us in Extra. Mike, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show, for what you’ve already shared. It’s been amazing.

Thank you for having me. I am grateful to be here and I appreciate you so much.

Thank you, Mike. Ladies, thank you for joining Mike and me for this portion of the show. In Extra, we’re going to be talking about the economy and what we can expect. If you’re not subscribed to Extra but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com and you get the first seven days for free. You can check it out and see if you like it. Download a bunch of episodes or listen to them. If you love it, stick with it. If you don’t, no obligation at all. I have to say that I love these conversations, and I have the conversations that I want to have.

They are so juicy and full of great content. It’s like a quick pick me up, something I can do to make my world better. I love Extra. Ladies, definitely check that out. For those of you who are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining Mike and me for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

 

Important Links

• Mike Wolf
• BlissfulInvestor.com/mikeevent
• BlissfulInvestor.com/mikewolf
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Mike Wolf

 

 

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join the Real Estate Investing for Women Community today:>

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook

——————————————————

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

To see this program in the video:

Search on Roku for Real Estate Investing 4 Women or go to this link: https://blissfulinvestor.com/biroku

On YouTube go to Real Estate Investing for Women

0

How To Accomplish What Matters Most To You With John Lee Dumas

 

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

To see this program in the video:

Search on Roku for Real Estate Investing 4 Women or go to this link: https://blissfulinvestor.com/biroku

On YouTube go to Real Estate Investing for Women

——————————————————
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