Build & Protect Your Wealth Through Apartment Investing With Ronnie Shalev

Being a doctor can be exhausting, especially when you have to work 12 hours and your family relies on you financially doesn’t help in helping to reclaim your life. This episode is dedicated to everyone who wants to reclaim their life and remain financially stable. Today, Ronnie Shalev, a board-certified ER physician turned real estate investor, shares her career shift and how you can build and protect your wealth through apartment investing. Ronnie’s mission to help people with their financial wellness led her to provide some more insights on why investing in apartments is more relevant than other asset classes. Choosing the right market is part of risk mitigation, which Moneeka and Ronnie dive deep into. So if you want to free yourself from the job holding you down, tune in to this episode now! Learn how you can live a life on your terms!

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Build & Protect Your Wealth Through Apartment Investing With Ronnie Shalev

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show, Dr. Ronnie Shalev. She is a board-certified emergency physician turned real estate investor. She was a practicing ER doc for sixteen years, but her job sucked the life out of her, leaving her drained, burnt out, and unable to enjoy her family and kids. She wanted to reclaim her life but didn’t know where to start.

She was making great money. Her family was relying on her financially, so she was trapped by the golden handcuffs. That’s when she started exploring the world of real estate investing and found a way to make recurring income without having to be physically at the hospital or with her patients. After some time, the income she earned from her real estate investments gave her the freedom to quit her grueling emergency medicine job and transition to a medical device company. Ronnie’s mission is to share her knowledge with other women who are feeling trapped and want to free themselves from their jobs and live life on their terms. Welcome to the show, Ronnie. It’s so nice to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me.

I know we were talking a little bit about this in the green room, but it’s interesting to me how many doctors have come onto the show talking about either how they are evaluating syndications, or they are actual syndicators. What’s fascinating to me is my mom is also an MD. I know what kind of income you guys make. Especially as an ER doc, that’s some crazy difficult stuff, and they pay you well for that.

It’s fascinating to me to see how syndications and being a syndicator can replace that kind of income. It’s such an inspiration. This is something to think about. We wonder, “Can I replace my income?” Think about the six-figure incomes that are being replaced with real estate. It’s awesome. Thank you so much for coming to share your story on the show.

I’m so excited to share my story. I know that a lot of people can relate to wanting to design their own life.

I’m one of those people, too. That’s what bliss means to me. It is a choice. It is not being a slave to the expectations of the world around us, whether it’s our job, our families, or whatever it is. We want to be able to live life on our own terms. It’s awesome. I read your bio, but why syndication? Why did you take this particular route?

I was not ever planning on being a syndicator. Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to be an ER doctor. I wanted to help people. I wanted to help people with their health and their life in their times of need. I remember a shift where I was alone. I was the only doctor in the entire ER. There was no scribe, no mid-level, no physician assistant, nothing. It was around 10:00 PM, and I was treating two stroke patients at the same time. I also had an asthmatic who was having severe trouble breathing. I had someone having a heart attack. The waiting room was full. There wasn’t an empty chair. You could see the pain and frustration on everyone’s faces, the patients and the families.

On top of it, there were several ambulances lined up waiting to get checked in. I looked at the clock to see, “When is my relief coming?” It was eight more hours. The stress was unbearable. I couldn’t breathe. I was responsible for all of these people. The administrators had cut all of the physician hours and assistance hours, leaving only one doctor responsible for everyone who walked into the ER or was already there. I’m faced with this situation. What did I do? I put my head down, and I did it. I took care of everyone at the expense of my own health. I didn’t eat, drink, or pee during that shift.

For eight hours?

Twelve. I came home, and I was so exhausted. I collapsed on the bed. I went to sleep in my scrubs, which is unheard of because you feel disgusting after the hospital. I slept the rest of the day. My husband and my family didn’t understand why I was so tired. They didn’t understand that I’d taken care of over 50 patients that night with extreme stress and liability. It’s hard to fathom. How could they?

I started to think about what else I was supposed to do. I was like, “What else is there? I’m a high-paid hourly worker, and I’m tied to my job. I have to keep it.” I was told by my administrators with no medical education how to practice medicine and how quickly to see the patients. They made sure to tell me that I was dispensable and could be fired if they didn’t like my numbers. I started to think, “Why did I love this job in the first place? Something has to change.” That’s when I started looking at other options and what else was there. I was like, “How can I free myself from this job?” That’s where I found real estate.

It was about that time that a friend told me that he was passively investing in real estate. I didn’t understand what that meant. He was like, “I own a piece of 100 7-Elevens, and I receive a check every quarter. I get passive income.” I’m like, “Passive income? What is that? That’s weird.” For years, I had been working per hour. My time was not passive at all. My money was never passive. I thought to myself, “This sounds weird. This sounds fishy. Is it a pyramid scheme? Is he lying to me? It sounds like it’s too good to be true. Maybe you could lose your money. I don’t know.” I was very paranoid.

I started thinking and remembering what was going on in the hospital and with those administrators. I was so frustrated about trading my health and my well-being for money. I decided, “Why not? Let’s give it a shot. It’s not like real estate goes to zero. It’s almost impossible for that. There are hard assets. There’s land.”

My husband and I decided to dip our toe in and do a small investment first. It worked. We started getting checks every quarter. I said, “This is interesting. Does it work again? Let’s do it again.” We did it again. We started seeing results. That’s where we started investing. We’ve been part of over 26 deals. We’re always looking for new ones. We did a reassessment and said, “I could leave medicine. I can go to something that’s way less stressful with this passive income that we’ve generated.” It took many years.

How many?

It took eight years. That’s the thing. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme or something like that. This is a long-term strategy where you know what the outcome is. It’s predictable. After I was able to do that, I still see all of my physician friends and colleagues as miserable. I’m telling them, “This is what I did.” They’re like, “How did you do it? Did you win the lottery?” I’m like, “I didn’t win the lottery. This is the actual strategy that I did.”

They still have fear. They were like, “I don’t have time to learn it. I don’t have time to study it.” I said, “That’s perfect. I’ll do it for you. I’ll do that. You can leverage my expertise. You can leverage my time. You can leverage other people’s money through the banks.” I went and studied how to do it actively myself. My husband and I took a mentorship program and learned how to do it. We started our own company, where we are syndicating apartments specifically and bringing along other professionals.

Do you ever miss the helping people aspect of medicine?

I help people all the time. What I didn’t know when I was looking at being a physician as a career at that time, I thought, “This is how you help people.” Now I have a better perspective that you don’t have to help people with their health. You can help them with their financial wellness. I’m still helping, which is huge. On top of it, I’m also able to still use my medical knowledge. I work at a medical device company. It’s not because I have to work there. It’s because I want to work there. We’re helping thousands of patients every single day. I get to use my medical knowledge. I get to use my investing knowledge. I get to help so many people on a grander scale. I’m still feeling that drive to help people. That’s that feeling.

It’s so interesting because I don’t have to work either. I’m like you in your situation. I’m, by nature, a coach. My mom was a psychiatrist. She and I are so similar. My heart is to help. I found a very similar thing when I was coaching. I was trading time for money. I gave up on so many other things that were important to me. It’s certainly not comparable to you, but there’s that feeling inside me of wanting to help.

As I’m trying to redesign my life, retire, and have more time for my husband, my family, my nephew, and my parents as they’re aging, I’ve got the financial wherewithal to not have to do anything. My way of helping is by doing this show because this way, my ladies are elevated by my guests and whatever little knowledge I can offer. It’s an opportunity for me to give back so that I have that peace inside of me fulfilled. The biggest things in people’s lives that we need an abundance of are our health, our wealth, and love. It is our relationships. It is the three biggest things, and you’re handling two of them. That’s unbelievable. That’s awesome.

I love that you’re helping so many women and bringing on powerful people to motivate. How does someone know that they can do it without hearing that other people have done it, too?

That’s right. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with my ladies. Talk to me a little bit about why you chose apartments.

We passively invested in a lot of different asset classes. We’ve done self-storage, retail centers, mixed-use buildings, industrial warehouses, and assisted living. There’s a lot that I’ve done, but I like apartments the best because they make sense to me. I feel like housing is a basic need. Everyone needs a place to live. If they’re shopping online on Amazon, they’re at home. They’re not going into the office. They’re working remotely. They’re doing it from their homes.

With the interest rates going up and the supply shortage, people can’t afford a house. They can’t afford a down payment. There’s a whole population of renters that have to be renters. There’s also a whole population of people that want to be renters. There are the Millennials that don’t want to be tied down. They don’t want to be having these roof leaks, plumbing, and all kinds of deferred maintenance on their home. They don’t want that. There are seniors. These are people that are trying to buckle down and live on fixed incomes. They don’t want surprise expenses with their homes.

That’s a good point.

They’re downsizing. They move out, so they become renters. There are all these people going to rent, and there are not enough places. That’s why rents are going up crazy all over the place. I’m going into apartments, but I’m not just going into any apartment. We focus on recession-resistant assets. We’re looking at Class B and Class C properties. The reason I’m looking at that is that what happens when you’re in a recession? It is what people might say we’re in. You’re living in a Class A building, which is a high-rise. There’s a bellman or a doorman. It has all of it.

Maybe you have a pay cut, or you get furloughed, or you’re let go. Why do they move? They move into Class B. It is the same thing. The people living in Class B move to Class C. I’m right in that demographic that whether we’re in an economic downturn or not, people are looking to live there. I’m taking those communities, and I’m making them better. I’m doing value add. We’re putting in dog parks and solar panels. We’re including internet in our packages. We’re doing a lot of nice things for the residents, making it a community where it’s a nice place to live. What we’re doing is we’re adding value. We’re making the residents a great place to live, and then the investors make money. It’s a win-win.

Tell me about how you pick your markets. I know you’re doing Class B and C, but how do you pick the markets you want to go into?

I’m focusing on the Sunbelt states because I want people to be moving to where my apartments are. I’m looking for landlord-friendly states. I want to be able to evict if I need to. I don’t want a tenant that has lived there for two years and doesn’t pay rent. I’m looking for landlord-friendly states. I’m looking for growing markets. These are sub-markets where people are moving into. Why are they moving? There are jobs. I’m looking for where there’s job growth.

I don’t look for only one employer or one type of employer. The last thing you want is to have this robust factory, and then the factory closes, and everybody loses their job and moves out of your apartment. I’m looking for markets where there are multiple diverse employers in energy, entertainment, device, biotech, or whatever it is. There’s a lot of variety. If one goes out of business, they’re not all going to go out of business.

You can’t completely reduce risk, but you can start thinking and pre-planning if you have a safety plan. I’m looking for recession-resistant assets. I’m looking for places where you can evict tenants that aren’t paying. The goal is to bring income. We want to make sure that people are moving there. We want to make sure that there are different types of employers. There’s a lot of thought into the market selection.

Apartment Investing: You can’t completely reduce risk, but you can start thinking and pre-planning.

In EXTRA, we’re going to be talking about how to mitigate risk. My belief, and correct me if I’m wrong, is part of the mitigation of risk is how you choose a market. Is that true?

Absolutely.

We’ll do a deeper dive on that, so we get a little bit more conversation around that in EXTRA. I’m super excited about that. You talked about passive investors versus active investors. Give me your perspective on it because, as a doctor, it’s going to look very different than it does for the rest of us. Go ahead and define for me what you were looking for as far as a passive investor versus an active investor.

Personally, I love passive investing. It is the ultimate way to explode your wealth. The biggest reason because of that is because of leverage. You are leveraging other people’s expertise. I’m not going as a passive investor to go and fly into every city, drive around, see what the best areas are, and then do research on which companies are moving there, who’s moving their headquarters, and what’s happening in the city design planning. Someone’s doing that for you. You’re not spending your time doing it.

You’re also leveraging other people’s relationships. You’re not having to forge relationships with brokers and tour properties and show them that you’re serious. You’re also not having to sign on for any loans. When you’re a passive investor, you’re not having to find the financing, the debt, and all that stuff and meet all these bankers and mortgage brokers. You don’t have to do all of that. You also don’t have to be finding the deals and analyzing them. You’re leveraging other people’s expertise. You’re leveraging other people’s time.

You have a life. You’re a busy professional. You have a family. You want extra income, but you don’t want to be tied to a new hobby where you’re like, “I wasn’t planning on being a landlord,” where tenants are calling you about termites and how there’s a leak or a fire. Passive investors don’t have to deal with any of that.

Active investors, on the other hand, are the people that want to do work. They’re the ones that are finding the properties. They’re the ones that are doing the market analysis. They’re like, “Is this a good market? Is this a good property? Does this make financial sense? What is the business plan? Is this a buy-and-hold? Are we holding it for a long period of time and waiting for it to go up, or are we renovating it? Are we raising rents? What are we doing?” You’re the one that creates the plan. You’re in charge of it. You’re also in charge of executing that plan. It is making sure that the contractors are coming, that the property managers are renting out the units, and that there’s marketing to the property.

You’re doing a lot of that stuff, and then at the end, you’re the one that does the exit plan. You either refinance it or sell it. Active people are doing active work. It depends on what you want as a person. How do you want to design your life? That’s what I love about real estate. Anything you do in real estate, you’re going to do well. Is it active? Is it passive? Is it commercial? Is it residential? There are so many things that you can do, and you’re going to do them well. As long as you have the right team and the right education about it, anyone can do it.

Apartment Investing: Anything you do in real estate, you’re going to do well.

It’s available to anybody. That’s what I love about real estate. That’s not true in other parts of the world, but here in the United States, we are so lucky. The government even helps you do it and rewards you for doing it. They want people to own their houses. They want people to feel committed to their communities. They want that, so they encourage us to do that.

It’s interesting because when we look at passive versus active, there’s a whole spectrum of passive versus active. The ultimate passive is investing, for instance, in REITs or syndications. I’d love for you to address that. It is all the way to fully actively being the syndicator doing all of those other things. Personally, I have an active model, but I only 5 five to 10 hours a month. It’s active, but I consider it passive. For me, that’s what I consider passive, but you’re right. It’s not fully passive.

I’m my own acquisition person. I have the exit strategy. I’m calling the tenants for rent raises. I’m doing all of those things. It doesn’t take me a lot of time, so it seems much more passive than a 40-hour-a-week job or a 60-hour-a-week job, which is what I had before. It’s still very passive. It’s more active than what you’re talking about. Could you tell me a little bit about your perspective on REITs versus syndication?

A REIT is very similar to a stock. You are buying shares of a company that is owning and managing properties. You’re not owning the real estate itself. A positive with a REIT is that your money’s not locked into a property. You can buy it. The stock, you can sell it. It’s like the stock market. You’re liquid. You can go in, and you can go out.

What I don’t like about REITs is that you don’t own the real estate. You’re investing in a company. If the company is spread thin or something happens in the company, those shares do go down. It’s not a for sure thing, not that anything is for sure. Real estate is getting the depreciation from the real estate. If you are owning part of a company, you’re not getting the depreciation. In syndication, you are an actual owner of the property. You get a depreciation. You get the tax benefits without having the headaches of home ownership.

Apartment Investing: In syndication, you are an actual owner of the property. You get depreciation, the tax benefits without the headaches of home ownership.

Thank you for that. That was awesome. I love what you’re sharing. I’m so inspired by your story and what you’ve been able to do. Could you tell us how people can get in touch with you?

I have an email account. If someone wants to email me, it’s [email protected]. You can email me. I’m happy to hop on a call and talk to you about what you want, how you want your life to look, how active you want to be, or how passive you want to be. Picture a day when you go to work because you want to go to work, not because you have to go to work. Picture a day when your spouse tells you, “You seem healthier. I love the freedom that we have now in our life.” Picture a day you can travel if you want to travel, relax if you want to relax, or serve others if you want to serve others. That’s what real estate investing can do for you. That’s what it did for me. That’s why I’m so passionate about real estate and helping other people. Email me. I’ll be happy to connect.

I love that. Tell us a little bit about your free gift.

I offer a free masterclass about passive real estate investing, what it is, what are the different asset classes you can invest in, and the difference between active and passive. It is a lot more in-depth than we’re talking about here. We’ll talk about what syndication is and what returns we are looking for. You can find it at Invest.ShalwinProperties.com.

That is perfect. Thank you for that. That will be a great way for people to get started and get to know passive investing a little bit more. Thank you. We are going to be doing EXTRA, which is going to be about how to mitigate risk. We’re going to be doing a little more of a deep dive also on finding markets. We’re going to do that after our three rapid-fire questions. Are you ready for three rapid-fire questions?

I’m ready.

Give us one strategy for getting started investing in real estate.

The best way to start is to find out the different ways that you can start and figure out how you want to start. Do you want to be doing it all? Do you want to start passive and then be active later? Do you want to start active and maybe be passive later? Do you want to do both? The first step is to sit down and think about what you want to do and then do it. That’s my big thing. Taking action is so important.

I agree with you on that. What is one strategy for being successful as a real estate investor?

It’s important to listen to podcasts. This is an easy thing. Try to educate yourself by hearing people talk about stories about how they did it. Once you hear how they did it so many times, you start thinking, “I can do it, too. It doesn’t sound so hard.” Listening to other people’s successes and how they did it is important in being successful yourself because success leaves clues.

It’s a personal self-brainwashing, isn’t it? It is building that confidence. It all starts in mind.

I believe that strongly.

Tell us one daily practice you do that contributes to your personal success.

We’re going to do mindset. I work on my mindset every single day. Stress is wired into me, whether I’m in the ER or doing real estate. My mind is always thinking. In calming my mind down, one of the big things that I do is meditate. I also practice something called reframing, where if you’re thinking one thing, you release, pause, and start thinking like, “Is this thought serving me? Is this helping me to think this way? How am I going to get where I want to be?” It’s certainly not going to be thinking this way. You got to start thinking the other way. Trying to manipulate how I’m thinking and trying to always reframe is a big thing that has always helped me.

Reframing is such an interesting thing because people are like, “You’re making it up if you’re reframing.” The thing is that you made it up in the first place. Any situation that’s happening could be happening to ten different people, and they would have ten different reactions. The situation is not the problem. It’s a story that we make up about it that creates our response. If you’re going to make up the story anyways, you might as well make up a story that’s more serving to your business, your joy, and your life.

There’s something in our minds that we have something called automatic negative thoughts. That is back in the caveman days when we were trying to protect ourselves. We’re like, “Someone’s coming,” and it could be a tiger or whatever it is. That is a preservation thing. Our mind does that. We have to stop. We don’t have to listen to every single thing our mind tells us. That’s something that is important for people to understand. You need to recognize when you’re starting to spin in a spiral of negative thoughts that might not be true.

True is an interesting word. There are some basic truths like don’t kill people. That’s probably a basic truth. In general, in our lives, truth is very subjective. What you’re perceiving is not necessarily true. I love that. Thank you so much for all that you’ve offered in this portion of the show. This has been wonderful, Ronnie.

Thank you so much for having me. I love talking to you.

We get to talk more in EXTRA. Stay tuned. We’re going to be talking about mitigating risk in syndications and picking markets. I’m super excited about that conversation. If you are subscribed to EXTRA, stay tuned. If you’re not but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. For those of you that are leaving Ronnie and me, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. You know how much I love having you here. I look forward to seeing you next episode. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams, so get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you next episode.

 Important Links

• Dr. Ronnie Shalev
• [email protected]
• Invest.ShalwinProperties.com
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com

About Dr. Ronnie Shalev

When I was an ER doctor, my high pressure job sucked the life out of me. I was left weary, burned out, and unable to enjoy my family, my kids, and my day-to-day life. Since I made great money, I felt hopelessly stuck in these “golden handcuffs”, and saw no end in sight.

Now I help others create PASSIVE INCOME so that they have the FREEDOM to do what they want with their time and not be held captive by their jobs.

SHALWIN PROPERTIES partners with investors who want access to real estate deals so they can get the benefits of real estate without the headaches of being a landlord.

Whether you want to diversify your assets, earn passive income, hedge against inflation, or maximize the tax benefits that come with real estate investing, Shalwin Properties helps you every step of the way.

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

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

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

Moneeka Sawyer

Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet.   She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market.  Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.

While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.

She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”

Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod,  and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.

blissfulinvestor.com

Why You Should Flip The Switch From Real Estate Agent To Investor With Lorraine Beato – Real Estate Women

In Atlanta 2020, the average real estate investor made almost three times as much money as a real estate agent did. In this episode, you’ll learn the benefits of switching from real estate agent to investor. Moneeka Sawyer’s guest is Lorraine Beato, a real estate specialist at eXp Realty. Lorraine shares with Moneeka how she was surprised to hear her friend, a real estate agent, lament about how she has no retirement plans. Are you a real estate agent who chases solely after commissions without a Plan B for the future? Then this episode is for you. Join in the conversation and flip that switch!

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Why You Should Flip The Switch From Real Estate Agent To Investor With Lorraine Beato – Real Estate Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome to the show Lorraine Beato. Thinking outside the box and getting a transaction to the closing table is her specialty. With over 25 years in the industry, starting with Merrill Lynch and mortgage-backed securities, trading all the way to investing both nationwide and internationally, she knows how to navigate the complex and intricate waters of real estate. In an ever-changing industry, you need to have someone on your side who understands all the facets. If you’re a real estate professional and haven’t started thinking about retirement or want to learn how to invest in the things that you sell every single day, check out Lorraine’s book Flip The Switch: from Real Estate Agent to Real Estate Investor.

She has been featured in some interesting places. Her renovation in Europe was featured in the January 2018 Think Realty Magazine International Renovation Rockstar. She had listings featured on HGTV’s House Hunters. She’s a Think Realty Single Family Investors of the Year nominee in 2018. The 2019 September issue of Think Realty Renovation Rockstar also featured her. She was featured in 2020 in Yahoo Finance. That’s an awful lot of lovely credentials. I’m glad this finally worked out. Lorraine and I met through Women’s Real Estate Network with Deborah Razo. Deborah has been on the show before talking about networking. She’s a complete powerhouse. It looks like Lorraine was one of the very first WREN leaders on the East Coast, Georgia. Is that true?

I opened the first chapter on the East Coast in September of 2019.

Welcome to the show, and thank you so much. Next time you talk to Deborah, please tell her I say hello. I love your specialty, your niche. I’m going to let you take it away, and then I will interject why I love this so much. Tell us a little bit about what you do and why you picked this particular niche.

Flip the switch: from Real Estate Agent to Real Estate Investor

I have been a licensed agent since 1988. I was working for Merrill Lynch. When I graduated college, my best friend said, “Let’s go get our real estate license.” I said, “Sure, why not.” I’m always adding to the tool belt. I did that. I didn’t sell in New York, but I love real estate. I became an appraiser. I worked full-time for Merrill Lynch during the week, and I did appraisals on the weekends. I’ve always had a love for real estate, especially architecture. Going to Portugal every summer as a child, I was always fascinated by everything out there. When we got transferred to Atlanta many years ago, I thought I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. That lasted for 60 days. I was going stir crazy because I worked a full week on Wall Street on the trading floor. I got home. I did appraisals on the weekends. I said, “This is nuts.”

We didn’t know anybody in Atlanta when we moved. I called up the lady that sold us our house. I saw that there was reciprocity. I had my license transferred. I did real estate very part-time. I took some time off because when we moved, my daughter was twenty months old. A year and a half later, I had my other daughter, and I said, “I’m going to do something part-time.” I started selling part-time then I took a break. When I took the break, we bought investment properties. I jumped back in 2003 once my girls were back in school. I was able to work around their schedules.

Fast forward to 2019. I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine, multiple of these conversations. There was one in particular. I was talking to one of my good friends. We used to work in the same office, and she said, “I’m tired. My back hurts. I’ve been driving these buyers around for five weeks. I have to sell houses until I’m 70. I’m turning 60 soon.” I said, “Why do you have to sell houses until you’re 70?” She said, “I have no retirement.” I was floored because this is someone who has a corporate background.

She’s a northerner in the south, a highly intelligent woman, a businesswoman, did a good couple of million dollars in volume as a solo agent well into the six figures, and she has no retirement. That conversation in particular, I think because we’re close friends, hit me. As time went by, I spoke at some fix and flip boot camps for some of the local REIAs and local gurus, as I called them. I started having agents reach out to me on Instagram, direct messaging me saying, “Lorraine, I didn’t know you taught real estate agents how to fix and flip.” I stopped, and I was like, “I don’t, but I can.”

Culminate everything together. That’s when I said, “Okay.” There are a lot of people, at least in my market, that are out there telling real estate agents to come and learn how to work with investors so that you can add to your business, but there’s nobody telling the real estate agent that they need to be the ones investing. They need to invest in the product that they sell every day because, at the end of the day, I’m sure you would agree real estate is still one of the largest wealth-building opportunities out there. You can fix and flip. You can have cash flow properties. There are so many ways. There’s so much land, and people need a place to live. I was on a women’s summit. The average real estate agent in 2020, ballpark made about $47,000. The average real estate investor in 2020 in Atlanta averaged $111,000. That’s almost three times as much.

I started doing some of these numbers, and as I said, I’ve had agents reach out to me and said, “It’s time I put this down, and I put it in writing.” That’s my mantra. That’s my platform. I want to get out there and get real estate agents to learn that you don’t need a lot of money. They already have most of the tools that they need or a good portion of them. To become real estate investors, they just have to think outside of the box and get out of that mindset. Most real estate agents are like, “Here comes an investor offer. They’re lowballing us.” They don’t know why. They don’t understand the numbers. I think that was important to do.

I’d say my business is probably 50-50, 50% regular retail buyers and sellers, and then my other half is investors. I came from a closing, as I mentioned, to an investor that found me online. We built a relationship. When the project’s done, we’re going to have a $1.3 million project, and he closed. I will also be helping him with the renovation. I think it’s important. Real estate agents need to get out there. There are so many changes in the industry. When the pandemic hit, we all shifted to doing everything virtually. I think it’s time they learn.

Here’s one of the things that I say on my show frequently. When you’re looking for an agent, look for a real estate investor, friendly agent. Preferably, an agent who is investing themselves because there’s no way to know what an investor goes through unless you’ve been there. You have to have been through the process, fell to the stress, deal with the challenges before you understand what’s happening. Investors deal with a completely different set of opportunities as well as challenges than a regular homebuyer would deal with. Most real estate agents are just taught to sell a house they haven’t been trained in or have it exercise the muscle of thinking outside of the box. They don’t understand.

I’ve got investor-friendly agents. They can’t bring me the project that might make my heart sing. They’ll send me the MLS listings. They’ll send me some ideas, but in the end, I’m the one that has to be the machine that figures it all out. My agents know what I’m going to ask. They know that I’m probably going to rent something out. When they show me a condo, they know that they have to look at the CC&Rs to see if I can rent it out. They know the basics. They know my neighborhoods. They know what I’m looking for. It has to have a particular zoning. That’s all stuff that I’ve shared with them. They don’t come to me and say, “Moneeka, this just became a pocket listing. I think it would be amazing for your strategy or if you would consider altering your strategy a little bit, this is what we could do with it.”

Agent To Investor: As a real estate agent, don’t just tell clients what they want to hear. Tell them why you think the project won’t work. They’ll realize you’re not about the commission and follow you anywhere you go.

I engaged another realtor who does more of that. She herself only has one rental property. At least she’s got one. That’s better than the last person. She’s not fully engaged yet in that whole process. She wants to be, so she’s also learning a lot from me. That’s a more interesting relationship to me, too, because the conversations can be different. I don’t get a lot of noes. I get a lot of, “Let’s find out about that.” That’s at least better. From my perspective, if an agent is investing, they’re going to be the best partner for an investor. Here’s the truth. Being an agent is a job. As long as you sell houses, you make money. If you can manage to sell houses and still save, you’re doing great, but the best savings plan is a house. In the end, you don’t have to have a certain number of dollars saved away. You just have to have cash flow. You can do it one way or the other. We can’t do that in other industries. This whole thing about, “I don’t have a retirement,” that is so familiar, sad, not necessary in this industry.

The gentleman that I closed earlier found me online on a listing that he thought would be a good fix and flip because there was an investor that had it. I told him, “This is not a good fix and flip. The numbers don’t work. That’s the other thing. This is what needs in rehab. This is what needs for this. These are the finishes that it needs for this neighborhood.” We built that relationship. He would periodically bring me deals. He’s like, “What do you think of this one?” I’m like, “There’s not enough margin.” I understand what the margin is. He’s like, “What about this one?” I was so blessed because he told the hard money lender. He said, “I’ve worked with a lot of real estate agents. Most of them tell me what I want to hear. I’ve run 4 or 5 deals by Lorraine, and she’s told me why she thought they didn’t work. She wasn’t about the commission.” As we’re sitting there at the closing table, I told him, “I may be in a transition period from brokerages.” He said, “I don’t care where you go, I’m following you.” I set him up with the builder, architect, hard money lender. He’s like, “You’re like the one stop shop.” I think that’s the difference. I think that’s what separates us a bit.

A lot of agents will tell you what you want to hear because they want to make the commission, but there’s also the other side where the agents will be like, “That’s too scary. That’s got a foundational problem. That’s got that problem. This is going to be too expensive or too hard.” This is not a criticism. It’s just training. They’re not trained to think of all the opportunities that each of these challenges can present. I have a business partner. He’s been in real estate for about as long as me but in a very different world. He grew up in the country. I grew up in the city. He and his dad loved to get in there and pick up the swing and hammer and put in the appliances, and do all this stuff. They built their own house too. He gets his hands on the mud type of guy. I’m totally hands-off. I’m like, “I’m going to go on vacation to Europe. Can you fix this house for me?” We totally complement each other beautifully because we both come from this different angle.

What’s so funny is we started shopping for properties together. We’re doing some construction stuff together. I would go in, and I would be like, “This is like sloping. They say there’s a foundation problem.” He’s like, “This is amazing.” They’re like, “What are you talking about?” He’s like, “We’re going to buy it, and we’re going to rent it for two years. We’re going to get permits during those two years. We’re going to get the architect and engineer. We’re getting it all done, and then we’re tearing the thing down.” We want something that nobody else wants because we know what to do with it. It’s like a foundation problem. You’re going to get it at a big discount for liability reasons. I’m not saying that I have any kinds of homes that are not really safe to live in.

A foundation problem is not usually a problem for 10 to 15 years. If I’m holding it for only two, I plan to tear the whole thing down and rebuild. It’s a different conversation. Of course, it has to be safe, but it doesn’t need to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be gorgeous. It needs to be safe, happy, and livable. We’ll make someone very happy for a little while. I had to have that conversation with my business partner, and no real estate agent wanted to sign the contract on this. People didn’t even want the liability of signing the contract. This is California. Things are done a little differently here. I get that. The point that I’m simply trying to make is an agent that understands investing is a huge asset.

I just love what you’re talking about, Lorraine. This show is mostly for investors. Investor ladies, you are going to learn a lot from Lorraine. She’s already given us some amazing nuggets like the numbers have to work. Say no as often as you need to find the right kind of project that should be a yes. Make sure your margins are good. Any project that you take is going to take more money and more time than you ever anticipated. You need to know that you got some good margins. If you’re going to do flipping, you have to be on point because if anything goes wrong, it takes away those margins. If you’re not on point, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can have some challenging times.

That’s why I don’t recommend flipping for beginners, although I know a lot of beginners have done really well. I generally don’t recommend it because when you have that expertise of walking into enough houses and evaluating enough projects, that’s when you start to be able to be better at evaluating what those margins are really going to be. Having the confidence to know that even if that margin shrinks, you’re going to make money. Would you agree with me on that, Lorraine?

Yes. If you are going to do your first project, be smart about it. I had a gentleman who reached out to me a couple of years ago. I was on a panel for Think Realty. I’ve got a close relationship with him. He was in the audience. He stood up and said, “How can I be an intern?” It took a couple of years. We went back and forth. He would ping me here and there. A few summers ago, he reached out, and someone wanted him to invest his money with them. I said to him, “You’re not going to get in and out of new construction in six months, especially in Atlanta. Your permits are going to take too long. I don’t agree with the ARV.” He came back, and he has a lot of buts because he was new, young and green.

I said, “At the end of the day, it’s your money. I can’t tell you what to do with your money. You have paid me for my professional opinion. If you’re going to move forward, I want you to go ask this investor these questions.” He came back to me the next day with no questions answered. I was like, “How’s your money secured? Who’s holding it? What percentage of the LLC do you have?” He proceeded to send me a screenshot of his bank account.

When I saw how much he had in there, I said, “Why don’t you do your own fix and flip? Let’s find you the right project. I will mentor you through it. We’ll joint venture.” It took us about six months because I was not going to put a new investor into a gut job. That’s a lot of what’s in Atlanta. I wanted something that was simpler. That’s what we did. If you are new, find someone who can mentor you through your first project. We joint ventured. I held his hand. I managed most of the projects. We did a profit split at the end. I listed the property being an agent. His first flip was very successful. After our split, he got a 50% return on his money. That was after our split. If you’re going to do that, find someone you trust and go about it that way is what I would recommend.

Talk to us about what your specialty, teaching realtors. The adventures. I want to let the ladies know preemptively. You’ve gotten some good stuff, and you’ll continue to get good stuff. This is for the readers that are realtors that are thinking about this whole investing thing. Either they’re growing their business with investors or growing their own business for retirement or for themselves. Here’s another thing that’s really interesting. Many of the ladies that have contacted me have said, “I want to be an investor, so I’m going to go get my license.”

I want to say that you do not need to have a license to be an investor. As a matter of fact, there are states, for instance, in California, where that is a hindrance. There’s a reason I don’t have a license. I wanted to build a multimillion-dollar business without the hindrance of California poking their nose into it or the real estate board. I don’t have a license. You do not need to have a license to be an investor. However, if you do have a license and you want to be an investor, you want to specialize and invest in clients. That’s what Lorraine talks about. Let’s move into that conversation.

You don’t need a license. I started as a realtor before I got into investing. I created a niche. We did a guru program. I became the point person in Atlanta. I started telling people in this group, “Your numbers don’t make that sense. This doesn’t make sense. If you’re going to get funds, make sure your positions are secured,” and all of these other things. When I saw the money I was making for my clients, that’s when I jumped into real estate and became an investor. I do both and I love it. You need to understand that if you’re going to be a realtor, a real estate agent, and you’re going to invest if you’re going to get into the wholesaling side, that’s not something that I do. The question comes up a lot.

You have to see the requirements for your state because they vary. I don’t wholesale because in the state of Georgia if I were going to do any marketing or do any mailers on the wholesaling side, I would have to list that I am a licensed agent, the brokerage firm, broker’s phone number, my phone number. It’s not to say that it wouldn’t work, but it’s like muddies in waters. I don’t like to do that, so I don’t. Do you want me to go into the piece about my lake house?

We’re going to talk about the lake house in Extra. She’s got a case study that she wants to share with you, and we’re going to talk about it. We’re also going to talk about a cash flow property. For now, I wanted the ladies to have an idea of what you’re talking about.

I think being a real estate agent that’s also being an investor, most real estate agents are after the commission. If a seller calls them, it’s all about, “I need to get the sign in the yard. I need to get the listing agreement.” You need to understand that, in my opinion, for us as real estate agents, it is our responsibility to help people in the best way that we can. For a seller, that may not always be putting a sign in their yard. That might not be the best solution for them for various reasons. It’s understanding how we solve their problem.

I’ll give another example. I had an agent in my office who threw up a post and said, “I need help with a short sale.” I’m not a short sale agent. I don’t know what to do with it. Now I am a certified REO and short sales specialist. I said, “I can help you. I’ll take the referral.” What you want is a referral fee. As I got down to it, I call the client and had a conversation with them. I realized this wasn’t a short sale at all. It was a pre-foreclosure. In this particular instance, the client would have never been able to do a short sale because there was equity in the property, even in the condition that the property was in. For them, sticking a sign in the yard was not the best solution. We also had six weeks to get the property sold. What I did instead, because I work with investors, and she was ready to walk away, the property she had inherited would have gone through probate. Family members move in didn’t pay the mortgage. They weren’t pre-foreclosure. They couldn’t catch up because it was something to the tune of $28,000.

Agent To Investor: Keep reading. Learn about what’s going on in the market. Be aware of what’s trending both locally and nationally.

She said, “I’m ready to walk away.” I said, “Let’s not walk away. Let me put some money in your pocket.” I called one of my investors, and I said, “Here’s a great property that would be a great fix and flip.” I know he’s cash. He buys with smaller margins because he is cash. I got her a cash offer. I got it sold. I made my percentage because he paid me. They didn’t have any capital, but the investor paid me. I put $13,000 in their pocket when they were ready to walk away. Her biggest concern was, “I cannot have a foreclosure in the memory of my mother’s name,” something to that effect because her mom had passed. It bothered her to the core that she would let her mother’s property goes into foreclosure. Even though she was gone, she didn’t want to taint that memory. That’s what was more important. It wasn’t putting a for-sale sign in the front yard with people traipsing in and out of their house.

Those stories happen all the time. As an agent, a lot of times, you don’t get to that story. The client calls and says, “I’ve got this problem.” In the stuff that you’ve been trained in, in this case, you had heard the term short sale but didn’t understand well enough about it to know that this wasn’t that particular instance. Some of the things that we’re trained on as investors is really getting the whole story. It’s not just another number, another house, another sale. As investors, were significantly more involved in the project and in people’s lives. That’s even true if you invest like me.

I do have an agent. I get all of my properties off the MLS. I probably make 30 offers for each one that I buy. The ones that I end up buying are the ones where we wrote a personal letter. I write a personal letter for all of them. We end up having a conversation with the seller about what they need. My agent is not particularly tuned that way. He resists me. I’ll say, “This seems a little odd. Why are they selling it at this price in this particular neighborhood? What’s going on?” “There are a few problems with the house.” “There’s something else going. Can we find out?” He’s like, “That’s intruding.” No, it’s not intruding. I want to know how to best make an offer that’s going to make them happy. You’re welcome to tell them that. He has told me that the best offer that’s going to make them happy is the most expensive one. That’s what they’re going to say.

Consistently, I don’t know why he sells this to me. It’s been going on for twenty years. If I say, “Could you ask what’s going on?” After we go through our back and forth, he’s like, “The dog just died. The smell is making them crazy. They just remember this dog, and they want to move out.” Not that the house is smelly, but the way that it is, whatever. They’ve had this heartbreak. That’s weird to me, an interesting reason to want to move. It’s happened, but they wanted someone to love the house still because they still love the house. Who would ever talk about their dog died?

God gave us two ears and one mouth. If you just shut up and let people talk, they will pour their guts out to you.

A lot of times, they’ll say, “There’s an open house.” I’ll say, “Is the owner going to be there?” My agent was like, “You don’t want the owner there.” I was like, “Yes, I do.”

Going back to that list, just to tell you something interesting. She hadn’t had a bunch of wholesalers sending her letters. She had talked to a bunch of people. It was so funny. This is what people think about. I walked in the door, and her grandson, who was eighteen months old, comes up to me and grabs me by the leg. He’s mesmerized. I’m talking to him, “How are you doing?” I left after I spent about an hour with him. I called her back. “Here’s what I think we could do.” She’s like, “I trust you. My grandson doesn’t like anybody. The mere fact that he immediately took to you, I knew you were the right person.” She’s like, “Children and dogs. They know who the good people are.”

Isn’t that the truth? I’ve had that also happen where I walked into a house, and the dog did not go crazy barking. Instead, it came over so I can scratch him behind the ears. That got me a sale too. It bought me a purchase also. You don’t know where it’s going to come from. The whole point is that there’s a definite different mindset of an investor than with most agents. If you’re able to be an agent that is also investing, you’re going to be a better representative for your own clients. As importantly, you’re going to set yourself up for success in the future and build that retirement program that you’re building for your clients. Tell me what the path is possibly for an agent to start making that mindset switch and taking those first pieces of action.

A lot of things have moved online because things are virtual. I am a big networker. I do it virtually now. I’m in a bunch of Facebook groups. I would say start by joining a group like WREN, the Women’s Real Estate Network, or joining a local REIA. Start to understand. Start talking to people and have conversations. Even in some of these Facebook groups, go in and take time. For example, someone posted this property, and the numbers were wrong. We were all calling this guy out, telling him why his numbers were wrong. You can learn a lot by spending some time going in and reading some of the conversations in these forums, joining a REIA, and finding your local investors. Is anybody willing to work with you? Can you shadow them? How can you help them? Go, run free comps for them if they need it. How can you bring value to them so that you can also learn from them? You’ve got a relationship. It’s giving on both ends. It’s not just one-sided. I think that’s your best way to start. That’s what I tell people to do.

You also mentioned that you’ve already got the tools that you can use to start that investment journey. Could you talk a little bit more about those tools and how to use them differently?

As real estate agents, we have access to the MLS. If you’re a good agent, you know how to pull and run comps. You should be able to see areas that are starting to trend. We’ve had a lot of areas here in Metro Atlanta that have gentrified. You can see where the values are starting to go up. You can identify neighborhoods that are up and coming. You’re working with clients, with buyers. You know what your buyers like. If you’re going to fix and flip, you know what they’re looking for. From their feedback, when you go through houses, you granted to their like. What are the paint colors that are in? If you’re going to either fix and flip or do cash flow properties, the property needs some work. You should have a handyman, an electrician, a landscaper. We already have so many of the tools as resources that we provide to our clients that are ready to go and can help us make that transition easier because we already have that foundation.

You also have the conversations in the office that the rest of us don’t get to have like the REIA client. I’ve got this listing that’s interesting. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know if you do pocket listings there. You get first access. They are allowed in some places. They’re not allowed to others. It is interesting. You have resources when you’re an agent that the rest of us investors don’t have. You have to figure out how to utilize them for yourself with an investor slant.

In my office, when people have scenarios with properties, I had another one that I could get into. When you have agents that don’t know how to think outside the box, that’s a potential for you to also get more referrals. I had another one that we should be closing with an agent from my office’s opinion on Facebook. He’s like, “I’ve got a referral for you.” I messaged him back, and I said, “Did you stop selling real estate?” He said, “No. I just don’t know what to do with it. It’s more an investor-type deal.” He goes, “The guy works with my wife.” I said, “No problem.”

I went and looked at it. I told him, “I can put it on the market. I can probably get you $20,000 more.” My wholesale partner talked to him. We were able to meet his number. He’s like, “If you can get me this, I’ll sign the paperwork, and I’ll walk away.” We’re selling it to a hedge fund that’s going to have it as a rental. We’ll split the wholesale fee. I’m still in a way getting my commission. You then become a go-to person for those agents that don’t know what to do with these properties where you can find potential opportunities for yourself or your investor clients.

If you have an investor that you can shadow, that’s one way to learn some stuff. Are there any other ways that you would recommend for an agent to learn about a lot of these resources that you talk about and how to become an investor themselves?

I could probably go on for hours. Pick up my book. I go through a lot of this in my book. There are so many different things depending on what asset class you want to go into. I will tell you I am not a systems girl. Don’t ask me for systems because I’m still very much a pen, paper, and Excel spreadsheet type of person. That’s how I’m wired. I still think that’s the best one. Join the REIAs and shadow another investor. Read as much as you possibly can. Get into some of these Facebook groups.

Thank you so much. That’s awesome. Tell everybody how they can reach you, Lorraine.

I am Lorraine Beato across all platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. My phone’s getting bombarded, but if you’d like to email me and reach out, if I can help, I’d be happy to. It’s [email protected]. I have my website. That’s LorraineBeato.com as well. I was in there, and something happened because it doesn’t look right. We’ll put that one on the back burner. That’s the easiest way to find me. You can reach out to me on any of the forms of social media.

Lorraine, I did not tell you this preemptively. I hope you’re not going to kill me. I got some rapid-fire questions for you. Are you ready to go? Lorraine, here are the three rapid-fire questions. The first one is, what is a super tip on getting started investing in real estate? You can give this from the agent’s perspective.

Do it. Don’t get into analysis paralysis. Just do it. Of course, be cautious. Do your due diligence. Take that first step. Whatever that first small step may be, even if it’s a phone call. A lot of real estate agents don’t know what hard money is. Google hard money and make some phone calls to the hard money folks in your area and start that conversation. That’s how I started learning about hard money.

What is one strategy on being successful in real estate investing? This is more for people that have already been investing.

I’m very anal about my numbers and the after repair value. I think you always need to run things conservatively. Have a contingency fund. Always plan to add to your budget. As you said earlier, there will always be something that comes up. It will always take longer than you expected. For example, if I have a fix and flip, the contractor is telling me we’ll be in and out in eight weeks, I run all my numbers on six months holding costs, no matter what. Pad your budget and timeline.

What is one daily practice that you do, Lorraine, that contributes to your personal success?

I read a lot. I am always learning about what is going on in the market, what’s trending, both locally and nationally. I keep up with all the CARES Act stuff because of COVID, the moratoriums, and what’s happening. I read a lot. I like to stay informed on what is happening in the real estate industry across the board, not just as a real estate agent but as a real estate investor. It’s important because then you become a resource for people that maybe aren’t going to buy or sell right now. I had regular clients reach out to me. They’re like, “Should we go into forbearance or not?” I had that conversation. “Why do you want to go into forbearance? These are the ramifications.” It’s having that knowledge and really being in tune with what’s happening across the board.

I read a lot too. It expands your mind too. Lorraine, this has been awesome. Thank you for everything you’ve shared. We are going to go into Extra. We’re going to talk about how she acquired her lake house. We’re going to have a case study. If we’ve got the time, we’ll do another couple of properties also. I’m really excited for Extra. If you’re not subscribed, you can go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get seven days for free, so you can check it out. If you love it, you stay. If you don’t love it, you can, of course, not stay. Try it out. For those of you that are leaving us 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 dreams. Get out there. Take action. Create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

Important Links:

• Lorraine Beato
• Flip The Switch: from Real Estate Agent to Real Estate Investor
• Women’s Real Estate Network
• Deborah Razo – Previous episode
• LinkedIn – Lorraine Beato
• Instagram – Lorraine Beato
• Facebook – Lorraine Beato
• [email protected]
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

About Lorraine Beato

Graduating in 1988 from Manhattan College with a BA in Economics and International Relations and working full time for Merrill Lynch, her best friend asked her to join her in a real estate licensing class.  So about 3 weeks after graduating from college, off they went, took the class and became licensed REALTOR®s in May 1988.

After working for Merrill Lynch she spent some time working for a small Brazilian Bank on the investment banking side and foreign exchange trading. She was bored at the Brazilian bank, quit and as a referral started working for an internationally well-known businessman, Adnan Khashoggi who in the mid-1980s was dubbed “The Richest Man in the World” Lorraine became exposed to international business and real estate deals and was enthralled with all the residences which Mr. Khashoggi owned.

As AK’s personal executive assistant, she was heavily involved in his dealings including the sale of AK’s mega-yacht The Nabila to Donald Trump in 1989. Real estate has always been a constant thread in Lorraine’s life albeit in different ways.

• Here’s How »

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
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Moneeka

I have been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so have seen all the different cycles of the market.  Through my strategies, I’ve turned $10,000 into over $2,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress. Learn More…

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How An Aussie Can Move Half Way Across The Globe With Limited Funds with Reed Goossens

Your dream of financial freedom is attainable with the right strategy. In this episode, Reed Goossens, real estate investor, joins Moneeka Sawyer to share his journey moving across the globe from Australia to the United States with limited funds and how he found success and financial freedom. Reed talks about building a holistic long-term business by creating an ecosystem to recession-proof his business. By having diversified multiple streams of income, Reed dives into how you can create your own ecosystem that’s more stable in the long-term on your way to wealth generation and financial freedom.

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How An Aussie Can Move Half Way Across The Globe With Limited Funds with Reed Goossens

Have you been interested in investing in real estate, but nothing you’ve looked at so far looks blissful? If so, I totally understand. That’s why I’d like to introduce you to Maureen McCann at Spartan Invest. At Spartan Invest, they strive to identify real estate assets which will offer viable investment options with exceptional rates of return. They do the work for you. They locate, purchase and rehab the property, then find and manage the tenants. You simply invest in a turnkey property and monitor your investments from the comfort of your own home. What could be more blissful than that? If you would like to find out more, go to www.SpartanInvest.com/Investing4Women, or email Maureen directly at [email protected]. Let her know I sent you.

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I am delighted to welcome to the show, Reed Goossens. Reed is a real estate investor, bestselling author, entrepreneur, podcast host and an all-around good bloke. I love the way he says that. In 2012, Reed quit his job in Australia and moved halfway across the globe to the United States to change his life and to chase a dream. With limited funds, no investing experience and no credit, Reed went from purchasing a small duplex to growing his own real estate investment firm. Reed syndicates large multimillion-dollar deals across the United States. He has also achieved financial freedom and has taken control of his life. If we can move halfway across the world and achieve this success, so can you.

One of the things I want to tell you, ladies, about Reed. I was on his show. I’ve been on a lot of shows and this was probably the best show I have ever been on. Reed is heart-centered in spite of his success. I know many people come on here and want to talk about how amazing they are, but I’m not sure whether it’s in spite of or because of his success. He is so heart-centered. That interview warmed my heart. I was tingling for days remembering the conversation and what I learned from it. I’m delighted to share him with you. Reed, thank you so much for blessing our show by joining us.

That’s a very awesome introduction. Thank you.

Welcome to the show. Could you tell us a little bit about your story, like the two-minute version?

You pretty much summed it up. I moved here in 2012 to chase two loves of my life. One was the love to live in New York City, to be an ex-pat. My background is instructional engineering. The other love was for a girl who is now my wife, Erica. We live in sunny, California. We were in New York for a couple of years and then moved out here. When I first moved out here, it was more to do with the fact that I wanted to live in the United States for a period of time and not have the fear of regret when I’m 60 or 70 years of age. Fast forward many years later, so much stuff has happened and it’s been an incredible journey and I loved every single minute of it. I know the next decade is going to be even better. That’s the two-minute pitch in terms of the coming to America story, wanting to chase a dream, wanting to scratch an itch and opening doors and walking through those doors and throwing away worrying about ten years later what’s going to happen. Enjoy the now, the moment, being in the present.

Where in California are you?

We are in Los Angeles. We are near Culver City if you know where that is.

Reed, I know that you talk about creating a holistic long-term business, which is what I’m all about also. Could you talk to me about creating what you call an ecosystem to recession-proof your business?

When you start scratching this itch of how to create financial freedom for yourself, you increase your financial IQ. I’m very much a math nerd being an engineer. I love numbers. When I got into real estate, it is a vehicle to achieve financial freedom. To have a legacy wealth and long-term freedom of having time on your hands, it’s the other ancillary business that you can create from the one vehicle that will feed one another that will ultimately create this system. You could remove yourself from it and continue going without you being in it. What am I talking about? We talk about funnels and there’s the marketing side of it.

I do my own podcast. I have my income streams from the marketing side piece of it. There’s obviously the deal of the acquisition side, which is important. It’s a very massive pillar that supports the foundation, but it’s one pillar. From there, there are other businesses that we can create. In my business, we don’t do it now, but you could do property management, you could bring that in house and you could create fees and income from that. You can also create construction management, which is something we do in house for our deals. We’re not outsourcing it to a third party and giving someone else the profits, but bringing the profits in house and making it more sustainable.

Through doing that, you create this system of one feeds the other and that keeps the profits in house. It creates better returns for our investors. It also helps when you may not be acquiring assets, you still have other income streams coming in through the management of the portfolio that may be in the past, you’ve given it away to a third-party company. Instead, you now brought it in house and creating that ecosystem. For me, long-term wealth is created through creating ecosystems. That’s just one example. There are many different examples of what an ecosystem can look like within any business. It’s understanding the stuff that you may do on a daily basis that you may pay for that you could potentially bring in house over the long-term.

It’s interesting because we hear over and over again that the rich have seven streams of income. A lot of times what people think is that seven different businesses, “I’m going to do this MLM and I’m going to do this job and then I’m going to do this.” What is the mistake in that is that you end up being spread thin between all of those different avenues of creating a stream of income. The rich don’t do it that way. They are not plugged in to every single one of those pieces. What they do is they create passive income and other income streams that are related to their main business or main genre. For instance, our genre is real estate. What you talked about is multiple streams of income within the umbrella of real estate. When we’re creating multiple streams of income, like you say, if you’ve got one that’s not performing but another one is, your business is still fine or another five are. It gives you an opportunity to be successful in different kinds of markets.

Different kinds of markets, but also different kinds of volatility in the markets. When one market may be going better or now in COVID, acquisitions have gone completely to a grinding halt. Having other ancillary fees coming in like asset management fees or construction management fees or property management fees that can keep the business supported and keep the lights on, it’s important to creating that ecosystem that we spoke about, those multiple streams of income.

Could you talk a little bit about if you’re a professional working full-time, how this might fit into your ecosystem investing in real estate?

If you like what you do, and some people do, they don’t want to quit their job and they only want to be passive. That’s the beauty of real estate investing, particularly in the syndication’s world, which is what I am in. I’m in the multifamily, but you could have an ecosystem of diversification. Meaning that you could have your passive dollars invested in different asset classes. There could be some multifamily, it might be some single-family investments. There might be some mobile home parks or some warehouse, some self-storage or some office space. All of that can help you be diversified and have those multiple streams of income. When one asset class is sucking wind like retail right now, you might be more heavily reliant on multifamily or more heavily rely on a warehouse, whatever that might be.

That helps you create the multiple streams of income, which makes your little ecosystem as a passive investor more stable in the long-term. That’s why I think from the passive side is powerful about the vehicles that are now accessible to the average investor. Maybe several years ago, these vehicles went away and weren’t available. The way in which we’ve evolved over time, with the way we’ve invested in people not wanting to invest in the historical traditional ways of investing in the stock market and going investing in hard assets with different operators has become more plentiful in the last 5 to 10 years. That has opened up a Pandora’s box of opportunities for investors to go out and we’re like a kid at a candy store.

I want to give a little bit of clarity on what Reed is talking about here. It’s to invest in other operators. This isn’t you go out and invest in a single or in a multifamily, a mobile home park, a warehouse or whatever. This is finding other operators that you trust that are paying you. Everybody has a different schedule. Some of them will pay interest. Some of them will pay interest plus equity. There are different formulas and you want to find an operator that you trust and then take a look at their formula and see if both of those things work for you. If you’ve got the cash, then you can turn it over and make quite a nice return. It’s easier to diversify that way.

10,000 Miles to the American Dream: Our Story of Financial Freedom

Reed, tell me if this analogy works for you or if you’ve got a better one. It is like investing in the stock market where you’re investing in a company that has a series of assets that then will pay you on. The big difference here is that we have hard assets as opposed to paper assets that we have no control over. When you’re investing in a syndication, some have a level of where you can vote or make an impact. The other thing is they are usually smaller operators that do feel very committed to communicate with you. That is different than a lot of the bigger companies that you can get stuck on there. They say they’re committed to their shareholders, but that looks a little bit different to us than we might hope for. You do get a lot more control as a hard asset in a syndicator that is going to be paying you.

That’s where the transparency comes in. You have the element of the hard asset for the depreciation benefits. Also seeing that you’re investing in ABC Smith Street. It’s not just throwing your money into the stock market and hoping that it’s going to do well for you. It’s a physical asset and you can see it. To your point, it’s usually smaller operators like myself who will communicate directly with the investors that can see what’s happening. They can walk the property if they want. We encourage investors to go walk. They’d probably keep an eye on the onsite team, make sure they’re doing their job. That’s your money in that deal. There are a lot of benefits of investing in smaller operators, in physical assets, in syndication that you don’t have to be the expert going out and finding these deals. You can be more of what’s called an armchair investor, passive investor and go along for the ride.

Where do you do most of your syndications?

We do most of them in Austin and San Antonio in Central Texas.

We’ve had several people on the show from different areas. I like people to see that if you like the Texas market, you might call Reed. If you like a different market, you might call one of the other people that have been on the show. That’s a great resource. Thank you for that. Could you talk to me about re-entitling land? This is my personal strategy, so I want someone else to talk about it so I can learn.

You look at it like flipping paper, but to boil it down to its nuts and bolts is highest and best use. What is the highest and best use for a piece of land? I’ll give you an example. You might have a single-family house on a larger lot that you could simply split into two lots and you can sell one of the lots and make a profit. That is a highest and best use because it zoned for two lots. Back in the day, back in the early 1900s or wherever it was when the house was built and zoning laws have changed a ton with density increasing and housing crisis, particularly in places like LA and up in the Bay Area where you are. Zoning always evolves over time.

You can find these gems where you can split the block. You could find with a single-family, but maybe you could build a fourplex on it. It’s a highest and best use. Here’s the rub. You don’t have to go and do the construction. You could go in and get the physical paper or the plans approved for a second edition, or a full unit. You can sell that paper to a developer who wants to build it. There’s profit in that. You can’t go to a broker and be like, “Tell me what all those pieces of paper we’re selling for to those developers.” There’s no actual MLS for that, but you can go and create value out of literally the house that you own, going to the city and saying, “I want to build a granny flat on the back. I know by looking at the zoning laws, I could potentially build a fourplex.” Maybe that’s your exit strategy.

You’ve created value for someone because also you’ve taken risks off the table. If you’ve gone to the city and spent time negotiating with the city and going through planning approval and they get comfortable like, “This is a good idea. Let’s put four units on it.” You can package it up. You can say, “Here, developer, go nuts. Here’s my piece of land. Here’s a single-family house on it. You could build four units on it. You take all the construction risk. I’m going to walk down the road with my profits and go do something else.”

You can find those in the MLS. It will often say, “House for sale, great contractor, special plans already approved by the city.” We will look at those properties myself because every once in a while, I might want to pick something up like that. Everything has gone through the city. I’m not dealing with that piece of the paperwork.

It’s very bureaucratic. In saying that, once you do get to know the planners and your local municipality, it’s not as hard as people think. It’s a people’s game. You’ve got to make sure you’re on it. Person A is talking to Person B and the right hand is talking to the left hand.

This is my thing. I talk about how to go in and take a look at a property. I’m calling it an underdeveloped property. It’s a property that has something on it, but it has so much more potential. I don’t have very many people that come on the show that talk about that. What I love is your strategy about the value add. You buy the land and then the value add is you go through all the bureaucracy. You upsell it. It’s almost like a wholesale deal, but it takes a little longer.

The people who are out there reading are thinking, “How do I even get started?” There are many municipalities around the country that are very gray. Compared to my home country of Australia, they have incredible systems online that you can go see what the zoning is. What I’m encouraging people to do is educate yourself in your local municipality about what are the zoning laws? Here in LA, there’s R and there’s C. R stands for Residential, C stands for Commercial. There’s more but I’m not going to get any more complicated than that. It starts with R1. That is like a single-family block, you can only build one on it. There’s R2, there are R3 and R4. As you go down the line, what happens is the zoning laws then tell you in plain English, you can have the smallest amount of habitable space, meaning it might be for example an R4 lot.

You can have an R4 lot and the smallest dwelling size on it can be a 450 square feet unit. If you’ve got that in the back of your mind, “I’ve got 10,000 square feet here. I can maybe split this block up into X amount of units.” There are setback issues on the front and the back, and I’m not trying to get too complicated. What I’m getting at is that there is a lot of information readily available at your fingertips. You can find out exactly what zoning you’re sitting on right now, what block you’re looking at to see what’s the highest and best use. An R2 lot is a great example. My wife and I bought an R2. It’s a single-family house, but it’s on an R2 lot, which is a 5,500 square feet lot that I can put another dwelling on the back.

I’m not trying to change the zoning. It’s the highest and best use. It wasn’t built to the highest and best use back in the day. That’s the easiest way to get approved because the city can’t stop you if it is the highest and best use. For example, it’s an R2 lot. You can build two dwellings on it. You’ve only got one. You’re not changing anything. You’re literally going through the process, from A to Z, stock standard stuff to get it approved. It’s not like zoning changes where you need to go in and some developers do that. It’s something that you need to be very educated on to do, but that takes years.

Where something that is buy right, that’s the thing you need to need to understand, “I can buy right to build two dwellings on this block or I can buy right to build four dwellings on this block and it’s only got one.” Know that in the back of your mind that you can find that information online. When you go to the city, they’re not going to put up these red flags. “This is my right to build. I own this land. I can build four units on it and you need to approve plans for me.” You go down that path with the city and it takes a period of time. It won’t happen overnight. Once you do get it, there’s value in that. That value you can sell to some other person or you can build it yourself if you want.

There’s also value in building that relationship with the city like you said. There are a couple of things I want to add here. He talked about rezoning. Also, don’t ask for variances because again variances will slow things down quite a bit. Variance is a fancy word for exceptions. I want to do something a little bit different. It’s only this little thing. If it’s such a little thing, don’t ask for it because it will slow things down quite a lot. The other thing is to take the time to get to know the planners and the engineers in the planning departments of your city, especially when you’re starting. Even though everything is laid out online and with the zoning, you’ll have things come up. One of my favorite questions with my different planners that I go and see in the different cities is, “Is there something I should be asking you that I don’t know to ask?”

For instance, I’ve got a project that I’m interested in Campbell and they’ve got all the electric wires above ground, but they’re trying to change in that particular area to have everything underground. Every single developer that comes in that gets new permits has to go underground. There’s no way we could have known that by looking at it online, but I knew it because I went in and they know me. Everybody in the office was like, “Moneeka, you should be paying attention to this. Moneeka, this is probably going to cost you about another $100,000 on that project.” I was like, “At least now I know what my hard costs are, what my soft costs are and what this is going to take to make it happen.” As you start to open up that conversation and you’re a likable person and they want to help you out, you start to have these conversations where you get so much more information about what’s possible.

I don’t know what it’s called up in the Bay Area, but at least here in LA, it’s called a Q condition. It’s a Q overlay. You might view it online. It’s an R2. This is what it is. When you go into the actual city, there might be what’s called a Q overlay where they may have added something that the website hasn’t picked up yet because it hasn’t kept up in real-time. A bill modeling passed down by the local council to say, “We want all power lines now to go underground.” That might not be online yet because it was only past 6 or 7 months ago. Keeping those relationships up is important.

Moving Across The Globe: When you start scratching this itch of how to create financial freedom for yourself, you increase your financial IQ.

The one thing I’ll also add is how blown away I was when I first moved to this country that pre-COVID, you could walk into most cities and have a chat with someone who is in the city planning department, and they’re willing to do it. You’re taking a ticket at a meat sale line and I call your name out and you go up and say, “I’m looking at this particular piece of land. Is there anything else in this state or county in its Q conditions? Are there any other Q conditions I need to be made aware of to see if I’m doing my due diligence?” You can do that before you even bought the property. In Australia, you can’t do that. The system isn’t set up like that. Realize that the access to information here is so much greater than when you’re trying to develop in other countries, even like in my home country of Australia.

Originally when I started doing this, I was like, “I haven’t made an offer. I don’t know if I’m going to buy this place.” I felt a little bit bad about taking their time, but no, they love it. They love chatting. It’s like a puzzle for them. They’re like, “Yes, we could do this. We could do that.”

The other thing I’ll quickly add in there is for us, we bought this house. It was 1912. They don’t have any plans on record of what the house looks like. They have some very loose papers that it’s a 3-bedroom, 1-bath, but they don’t have physical plans of it. When you’re going in to do these improvements, they love the fact that you’re bringing plans to the city and that goes on file for the next 100 years or whatever it is. The city is incentivized to make sure they’re collecting as much data as they can. When you’re in there, even when you’re prospecting, they’re interested to know what you might want to do with it because that might give them ideas for their planning or urban development committees in their file.

They aren’t having conversations for no reason. They’re having a conversation listening and taking them back to their superiors and giving feedback, “We had someone come in today. They’re looking at doing X, Y, Z. What do you think of that? Does that go with the plans that the mayor wants to do for the downtown urban center or whatever it might be?” Most cities will have that. I bring up another point. Different cities called different things. I know in like the city of Long Beach, they call it the downtown urban development plan. It’s a book. It’s 100 pages of this outline of what they want to invest in the city over the next 20, 25 years. They have different areas they want to inject money into. They want to have certain sidewalk improvements. They want to have more shops and mixed-use areas. You can read that and see if it aligns with what their downtown plan might want to be and look like in the future. Get your hands on that. It’s great nighttime reading if you’re interested.

It’s also impressive because one of the reasons why I get things through is because people know that I’m interested in the community. I’m not some developer coming in and saying, “I want to make $2 billion.” I care about the community, what’s going up, what’s their plan, how to make something beautiful and how to up-level the community in different ways. I’ll often go into what we call redevelopment areas. If you’ve done that reading or at least scanned it, they’re like, “This particular developer is interested in us and our plan and what we think, not just in themselves.” That makes a huge impact on them.

You’re doing a great job. It sounds incredible. I want to come and join you one day.

I would love that, Reed. Let’s do it. I can do something down there with you. That would be fun. We are going to have more of Reed in EXTRA where we’re going to be talking about what he calls his six Ps, which is all about what successful people do to up-level their relationships to increase their business. I’m excited to talk about that in EXTRA. Reed, could you tell everybody how they can get in touch with you?

The simplest and easiest way is to go to ReedGoossens.com. If you go there, you can find my podcast. You can find books. If you are ever coming through LA and you to hit me up, you can send me an email at [email protected]. Give me a little bit of heads up and we can go out for lunch, coffee or whatever you want. We can talk shop. For those readers, if you are interested, I have a book out and I’ve got a lot of them sitting in my office at home and my wife is nagging me to get rid of them. If you want a free copy of my book called 10,000 Miles to the American Dream: Our Story of Financial Freedom, email me at and I will shoot you a free copy. Just say you read the show and I will shoot you a free copy.

Could you tell everybody what your amazing podcast name is?

It is called Investing in the US. It is a collection of conversations of people coming and creating something from nothing in and around obviously real estate, but overdoing it. We talk a lot more about the journey and creating something from nothing. Check it out.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to be on that show. Go check it out. It’s good. Reed, are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

Let’s do it.

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

A quote that my dad always said, and I use this all the time, “A fool and their money are easily parted.” Don’t be a fool when it comes to your money and be educated. Start with education. I’m self-educated. I didn’t go to school for real estate development. I went to school for engineering, and I’m all self-taught about how this business and how to go out and be successful. The same can apply to the readers.

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

Getting started. Everyone asks me, “What’s the best deal you’ve ever done?” I said, “It’s the first one,” because you don’t get to deal number ten without doing deal number one. Getting off the fence, there comes a point in the education piece at the start, and then you get to analysis paralysis where you start spinning your wheels, and then you need to go take action. I vividly remember reading books on the subway in New York City and thinking, “I need to get going. I need to go do my own deals because reading a book isn’t going to do anything for me.” It’s like reading about losing weight. You’ve got to stop reading that and go open the door and go to the gym. It’s the same thing. Take action. Educate yourself first and then go and take some action, and massive amounts of it because it’s going to be needed to get you to that first deal.

The other thing is don’t feel like you need to be so educated that you know everything. Going to the gym, it takes time to build those muscles and you’re going to learn different skills and increase your capacity. All of those things change, but you have to start somewhere. Get enough education to get started and then take action. What would you say is one daily practice that you do that contributes to your personal success?

It was changed over the years. As I become more self-aware of my subconscious, and it sounds like you talk a lot about on this show, which I’m very much a huge believer of. I have changed my mindset around some things that I’ve had hang-ups in the past. Meditation is a big one for me in the morning. Taking some time in the morning to sit with my thoughts before jumping into the day. I’m very much guilty of trying to turn the phone on too quickly or jump into emails and having that quiet time, being prepared, being self-aware, centering yourself, and then not going often in tackling the day. When I don’t do my breathing exercises in the morning, it throws the whole day off. That’s a massive spanner in the works. I don’t feel as productive as what I usually do.

Moving Across The Globe: Don’t be a fool when it comes to your money. Be educated.

Probably that and exercising are the two big things. A lot of people say that a level of mindfulness. It’s counterintuitive. People are like, “I don’t have the time for that. I’m busy. I’ve got a lot to do.” The problem is that if you don’t do it, you need a lot more time to do the things that you need to do. If you do get centered, you do meditate, you do take some time to be very introspective, you are so much more productive during the day.

You stop that chatter of, “I’ve got too much to do,” because all of a sudden, you find time to do those important things, which is working on yourself first and foremost before you can help others.

Reed, thank you so much for all you’ve offered in this portion of the show. I can’t wait until the next portion.

Thank you so much for having me. I hope everyone has learnt a little bit and remember to reach out if you’re ever in LA.

If you are subscribed to EXTRA, we have some awesome stuff. We’re going to be talking about Reed’s six Ps, which will help you to create the relationships that will build your business. I’m excited to learn all about those. If you’re 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 things out. See if it’s like up your alley. You can binge on a bunch of stuff. The other cool thing is that EXTRA comes down on whatever device or app you’re using. You don’t have to have new technology around that. That’s cool too. Go check it out. If you’re leaving us now, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. You know how much I appreciate you. 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 soon. Bye.

Important Links

• Spartan Invest
• www.SpartanInvest.com/Investing4Women
• [email protected]
• Reed Goossens
• [email protected]
• 10,000 Miles to the American Dream: Our Story of Financial Freedom
• Investing in the US Podcast
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

Moneeka Sawyer

Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet.   She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market.  Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.

While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.

She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”

Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod,  and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.

blissfulinvestor.com

Lessons from the Top Marketer in the Real Estate Niche with Gary Boomershine

 

In this episode, Gary Boomershine, Founder of RealEstateInvestor.com, joins Moneeka Sawyer and shares some of the lessons he has learned throughout the years as a top marketer in the real estate niche. Seeing a lot of positives in the market, Gary talks about the downturn and what it will look like. Get to know more about direct mail and how it can impact your business right away. Moneeka and Gary dive into the deal flow, the real estate cycle and how you can find opportunities no matter where you are in the cycle. Not only does Gary share his successful formula but he also explains why he thinks all leads suck.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Lessons from the Top Marketer in the Real Estate Niche with Gary Boomershine

I am excited to welcome to the show, our guest, Gary Boomershine. He founded RealEstateInvestor.com in 2005 out of the need to scale and grow his own real estate investing and home buying business. With a family legacy in the real estate niche and a long, successful career and enterprise in emerging technology markets, Gary saw the vision for RealEstateInvestor.com. He noticed the glaring opportunity to leverage people, processes and technology, to gain a leg up in the changing and competitive marketplace. As he worked to develop and use the initial product and service, he saw his real estate business flourish by allowing him to work smarter, not harder and focusing on the one thing that makes money talking to sellers and making offers. That’s when RealEstateInvestor.com began offering its flagship product, REIvault to the savvy investor market. Gary, how are you? Welcome to the show.

It’s such a pleasure being here. I know we’ve been talking about pulling this together for quite some time. I am so pleased to be here and also share some good content and information to your loyal group of followers.

I’ve watched some of your stuff. It’s amazing. My ladies are going to absolutely love this. Let’s start by telling us your story. How did you get started?

I’ve been around a long time in this niche. I grew up in a family of real estate entrepreneurs. My parents had a real estate brokerage. I was a licensed agent two weeks after turning eighteen. I was a licensed agent in 1987. I paid for college that way, holding open houses and door knocking and cold calling and even coming home on the rental properties with a paintbrush. I went down the technology path. I live in California. I’m right here in Silicon Valley about 45 minutes from San Francisco. I’ve got a Computer Engineering degree. I went down that path. It was great except it was 90-hour weeks and traveling all over the world, but never seeing the sunshine because I was inside of buildings. I learned a lot, but it was in 2004 after doing four technology startups on the sales side and running a sales team that my wife and I said, “Let’s get back to the brick and mortar.” We started real estate investing and that was in 2004.

It’s been an incredible journey. What I love about real estate is, first off, it’s cyclical. You want to be constantly changing and evolving because what works now is different than what worked a few years ago. I liked that change. Number two is our product is everywhere. I was speaking at an event in San Diego. I said, “Look outside, look at all these buildings and look at San Diego, this is our product.” It’s not like we have to manufacture something like garments or widgets. It’s right there in front of us.

Not only is it right there in front of us, everybody needs it. It’s a product that will never go away.

I started that. I don’t even know the number. I know it’s 600 or 700 properties. Even now, I’m working in four markets. I do a lot of private lending as well. It’s probably what I’m most passionate about, being the bank. I started a company called RealEstateInvestor.com. We’re the largest marketer for real estate investors and agents. I shared this with you. Our number is 36 million pieces of direct mail is what we have sent out for a small group of real estate investors. There are about 250 investors and agents that we service as a company where we manage all their direct mail better than they could do it on their own. We provide the systems to do all the follow-up and then the phone team to call, screen, qualify and schedule appointments. We’ve been doing that for many years. It’s a lot of fun.

What have you learned? What has the market taught you?

You want to be constantly changing and evolving because what works today is different than what worked a few years ago. Click To Tweet

Especially for the people that are fairly new, this has been an incredible market, what it’s done for me. I was at an event in Tampa and one of the gentlemen got sick. He’d been sick. He ended up getting MRSA. He’s a well-known guy. His name is Rob Swanson. He was sharing how he got MRSA at a dental office. He was sick for four years. He couldn’t get out of bed. He said, “What saved my life and saved my family financially was his rental properties. It was cashflow. One of the things I’ve learned in real estate is there are three buckets in real estate and a lot of people forget this. There’s cash now, there’s cashflow, and then there’s cash later.

A lot of people get stuck focusing on one or another. A lot of people in this market are just doing wholesaling. That’s a cash now business. It’s transactional, which means it’s a job. If you don’t work, you don’t make money. It’s important to be thinking of doing all three. Even now when I’m purchasing property, I’m always looking, “Is this a property I’m going to do cash now or am I going to turn this into a rental property or possibly down the road into appreciation?” That’s a big one. A lot of people get a little bit misguided, focusing and getting stuck on that cash now. That would be number one.

Number two, this market is changing. We’re in a euphoric stage of real estate. Real estate for over 100 years, by the way, Moneeka, you know this as well. Real estate has been consistently a seven-year cycle. The last cycle was seven as well almost to the day. Some people even call it a Shmita. It’s from 2001 to 2008. Now we’re at the ten-year mark and we’re seeing a lot of things that were similar like direct mail. Everybody’s focusing on going after off-market deals. It’s become more competitive. A lot of the late-night TV commercial guys are back. I work out at the gym and I see both Dean Graziosi and Than Merrill up on the screen from FortuneBuilders. It’s a sign of the times. This is a time to be watchful. The market is going to turn. Anybody that doesn’t think so, they are a bit happier.

We’ve already started to see it especially here in the Bay Area. I’m in San Jose. Where exactly are you?

I’m in Danville. I’m right up the street from you.

I don’t often get to talk to locals. Anyways, even here, days on market has gone way up, prices are stable, but we’re not getting multiple offers. They’re not getting full bids. We’ve already seen it starting to turn.

There’s a lot of money to be made. Those people who are doing heavy rehabs could get stuck. Warren Buffett, I was at his shareholder meeting and I remember he has Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the wealthiest guys, if not the wealthiest guy in the world. He said, “A true real estate investor is somebody that has money and they invest and hold for the long haul.” That’s not necessarily people who are wholesaling, fixing and flipping, rehabbing, which is also awesome, but it’s not investing. It’s more of being a business operator. I always say, “All businesses need a CEO. If the CEO is doing $10 an hour work, you’re going to have a $10 bank account.”

It’s focusing on the moneymaking opportunities. Warren Buffett said that his keys to success are to buy low, sell high, don’t lose investor money, and follow the local, state, and federal laws.” There’s so much wisdom. I’ve been coaching thousands of people for years around RealEstateInvestor.com. I see a lot of people that are taking profits. I’ve got some people in Denver, as an example, a very saturated market. They’re rehabbing. They’re buying. They’re using investor money for breakeven. They’re not even making any profit. They’re trying to keep their teams afloat and busy. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Top Marketer Lessons: There are three buckets in real estate. There’s cash now, cashflow, and then cash later.

 

A lot of people are buying creatively. They may be getting some owner financing. They may be wholesaling because this is still a very hot market, the wholesale, with very little risk. When they’re buying and holding, they’re either doing it more linear markets, or they’re doing it where the numbers make sense. This is a time to do it right. Those people that are doing it right will survive and thrive in this changing market.

You said you’re in four markets. Are those four different cashflow strategies or four different real estate markets? Could you clarify that?

I like working in a couple of counties outside of the metroplex. I’m not even in the Bay Area. Santa Cruz South is where I’m at, the Central Valley of California. What I’ve found is those are markets that are producing well for me. I’m also in Salt Lake City. Primarily, we’re wholesaling. I would say that 80% of what we’re doing there is wholesaling because the profits are great. We’re finding properties that are value-add properties. We’ve got cash buyers that are picking them up because the market is hot. I’m getting some owner financing where some of the sellers are carrying back paper at low-interest rates. We’re holding those. I’m also lending right in your town as an example. I love lending, first position money. Those are my three strategies.

The cash now is my wholesaling business. In California, we’ll be making an average of like $22,000 to $25,000 per deal. On the cashflow is lending. Deals where we’re owner financing and renting those back. Some will turn into Airbnb and Vrbos. Cash later are things where we’re owner finance, where we’re getting super-low interest and we’re paying down notes over the long haul. I picked up a property in Pasatiempo. I had owner financing and that property is an $800,000 deal, payout in over 22 years. That would have probably been a $20,000 to $30,000 flip, but the way we ended up doing it is a long cashflow play. I can share a little bit more in your private group when we go a little bit deeper.

Especially because it’s in my hometown, my readers may not be super interested but I am. There are a lot of people that are reading that are in these saturated markets or these expensive markets. I talk about it all the time but there aren’t many guests that can have that same conversation with me. This will be delightful for the ladies that are reading. They’re like, “What do you do in my market type of thing?”

I’m talking a little bit about the downturn. I don’t want that to be doom and gloom. It’s what we should all be talking about. I’m involved in a lot of masterminds, which is another thing I recommend for a lot of us to be involved, interacting with people, small groups in a mastermind format. A lot of us are having this conversation of what to be doing now with the foresight of the market of either being a correction or a downturn and what that looks like. I’m super positive about it. It’s a great thing. A lot of us are looking forward to a slowdown in the market.

I don’t think any cycle in the market is doom and gloom. We have opportunities everywhere, no matter what’s going on, but you have to be aware of what those opportunities are, how to take advantage of them and where you are in the cycle. There’s no bad piece of the cycle. It’s what are you going to do with it? I’m with you on that. You have this concept of all leads suck. Talk to me a little bit about that in your business.

Let me back up. This is so important. Most of the deal flow where most of the investors are targeting are people that are looking for consistent 2, 3, 4, 5 deals a month. It’s coming from off-market. We’re going direct to the seller. We’re bypassing the agent. The best formulas for it that we’re seeing is direct mail. It is an outbound text messaging. Being able to buy a list, this is something that we do for our members, skip tracing that list, and then doing outbound text messaging that’s under compliance because you want to stay compliant with the FCC. Cold calling, RBM, and then another one that’s called PCSOI, which is building your long-term sphere of influence and relationship but it’s targeting off-market.

Those people that are doing it right will survive and thrive in this changing market. Click To Tweet

I see a lot of people that come to me and they’re looking for a motivated seller but the reality is that motivated seller doesn’t exist. What we’re looking for is a reasonable seller. I’m delivering a sales course specifically around this. It’s a certification course that I’m building out right now, but I have a price curve and the motivation curve. What happens is a lot of people are talking to sellers and they’re not ready to sell yet. It takes follow up. What we’re finding is that there’s a live conversation that has to be had with the seller.

A lot of people will see leads and they’ll be like, “This seller isn’t motivated. They’ve never even talked to him.” The motivation level happens over a period of time. On average, it’s between 5 and 12 interactions with the seller. There’s a national statistic, less than 10% of any real estate investor or agent will ever follow up more than twice. The reason I say all leads suck is it’s more of a mindset because a lot the people that I see, they’re what I would consider 3 feet from gold. They’re close, but they’re looking at a lead. It’s like, “The seller isn’t motivated.” It’s like, “No, they’re not ready.” Usually, a seller that’s not ready, they want a higher price.

The more motivated they are, the more time that’s gone by, the lower the price goes down. I encourage people especially if they’re going after say direct mail and they’re sending out direct mail. The key is consistent follow up, text message and phone calls. One of the most profitable roles for hiring or having a third-party like us is somebody that can be calling those people and texting them all day long. I see a lot of people that don’t do that.

This is important what you said. There are a lot of ladies that are reading that have tried different strategies and that didn’t work. What I want people to do is find whatever that strategy is that makes their heart sing and get good at it. You’ve got these three pieces. There’s the now, the cashflow and the later, and you’re going to add those in as you get better. I started with the later because I didn’t need the now or the cashflow. Now I’m moving back because now I need the cashflow. It goes in whatever order works for your life and what your needs are. Get good at it and then move to the next thing.

The problem is that so much of the time we pick something because it sounds good, it makes our heart sing when we think about it. We try it and it didn’t work. There are a lot of reasons that it didn’t work. First of all, you’re not awesome at it yet. There’s a learning curve in everything. The biggest issue is the follow-up. I will admit, this is a big issue with me too, because if I get a couple of noes, I feel bad about calling again. I don’t know if this is true for men as much as it is for women, but I know as women, we don’t want to be rejected. We want to be liked. It’s part of our makeup. It’s hard to keep making those phone calls. This is valuable and important, Gary, because if you can hire somebody to take care of that piece, that doesn’t make your heart sing, you can have a successful business in the way that you want it.

There is a sale that happens. Even in a marriage, I always say there is a sale and there’s a customer. In any deal, there’s a sale and then there’s a customer. I say marriage because if you didn’t know that there was a sale, it probably means that you were the one that got sold. My wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary. It was great.

You and I are like twins. We did a renewal of our vows for 25th in Maui.

Top Marketer Lessons: This is a time to be watchful. The market is going to turn.

 

Here’s from a sales perspective. True sales do not start until there’s been rejection or a no. The sale doesn’t happen. This is every Fortune 1000 company that’s in America or anywhere else. This is standard training. It’s not something I’ve created, but the sale starts when there’s a no or there’s a rejection. The biggest reason that people, especially men even more than women, are not on the phone is a fear of rejection. It is something to overcome. There is live human interaction. What’s interesting is that people buy or sell to people that they like, trust, and respect. Rule number one of sales, first, they sell to their friends. Second, they sell to their friends. Third, they sell to their friends.

Getting on the phone, interacting, and being okay because it’s an emotional decision. Selling a house is a big deal. You could go directly and work with an agent. An agent has done all this work. They’re the ones that are doing all the sales work, talking, and doing the listing. If we’re going direct to the seller, there is a relationship that has to be built. What I teach people that’s important is to take the pressure off. It’s a conversation. They’re probably not motivated. That’s why I say all leads suck until you get on the phone and talk to the seller and then realize it’s not all about making the offer on the first phone call. It might take 4 to 7 phone conversations.

I did this on stage. I called it the state of the union on a real estate business. That is, everybody’s focused on finding these motivated leads or the perfect words to convert sellers. I said you want to establish value more than anything is what problem do they have and how can you solve it? That comes at a discount. You’re able to make a lot of money. I’ll give you a perfect example. One of the worst calls I ever had was in Morgan Hill, down the street from you. It was a very angry seller. Some of the angriest sellers by the way are some of the most profitable. He was a fireman and called and left a nasty message. I called him back and he goes, “Who is this?” I said, “I’m probably the last person on the planet you want to hear from. I’m the guy that sent you the postcard.”

He yelled and screamed. I said, “I’m sorry. You don’t know me, but how would you recommended that I reach out and get in contact with you? I have something that you may be interested in.” Anyway, I made $240,000 buying two properties from him. It turned out that his wife was in jail for embezzlement. They had $1 million lien against two properties. He wasn’t angry at me. He was angry with the situation. You have to get on the phone and talk with these people. I’ll give you a couple of other things. I don’t want to go into too much crazy detail. We’ll leave it for the other group.

Assume this is the national average 45 leads will average into one deal. A lot of people don’t know that number. It’s super important because if you knew that you have 45 leads, and if you averaged to follow up with each of them, 5 to 12 times, and you’re going to close a deal that could be a $20,000 or $100,000 deal. If you look at the amount of money for dialing the phone, it’s a lot of money. Every time that you dial the phone, whether the seller answers or not. Somebody needs to do that work.

At the end of the day, if we’re going after off-market deals, you can do all the courses. You can have all the systems. You can be in all the mastermind groups and real estate clubs. If you’re not on the phone, having a live interaction with the seller, there’s no profit to be made. That’s more than anything else. For us as a company, people come to us because number one, we get them in front of those leads. We’re generating those leads typically off a direct mail or cold calling. We’re following up, calling, and having a 6 to 8-minute conversation to find out of those leads, which are the ones that are ready and more motivated now?

Instead of you having to do hundreds and hundreds of calls, you’re already talking to maybe 15 or 20 people a month that are the truly qualified ones. This is classic sales. If you get that right, you’ve got a thriving business. I know one of our members, he did $2.3 million in flips. Half of it came off of direct mail and a little less than half came off a cold calling. He’s in Indianapolis. A young kid, he’s 27 or 28. He started a few years ago in the business. There’s a lot of money to be made if you get the marketing and the phone work dialed in.

Talk to me specifically about REIvault. Who would be the best member for you? Give me an idea of the costs. What does that look like for an investor?

A motivated seller doesn't exist. What you're looking for is a reasonable seller. Click To Tweet

Who’s a good fit? People who have been doing this business with some success. We’re probably not best for people that are brand new. Somebody that’s closed a handful of deals at least and they’re looking to scale it up. The reason I say that is because when somebody comes to us, they’re looking for more consistency versus getting their first deal or two across the goal line. If you need help with your first deal or two, that’s probably a coach or having somebody to coach you. We’re not a coaching platform. We’re more of a results-oriented company. It’s an agency model. You’re plugging into our staff. I have a team of over 110 people. I have a group of people that will work to identify what we think is going to be the best marketing for you.

We’ll execute the marketing. We’re going to take our phone team and then work those leads. It’s about the cost of hiring one full-time overseas person. If you were hiring a $12 to $14 an hour person full-time, that’s what you’d be paying to us, but that would include marketing and doing the phone work. On top of that, there’s a marketing budget. If you’re in California, as an example, you’re going to be spending a lot more money on marketing than if you were in the central part of the country. What we do is we help our members. Somebody will tell us they want to buy three houses a month, or they want to buy ten houses a month and we’ll say, “You’re in Wisconsin,” or we got Erik Hatch, a well-known real estate agent and they are also buying houses.

We got in front of 127 appointments and he closed 30 houses and 27 listings is what he did. We came up with a budget and said, “We think your cost per deal, how much money you’re going to have to spend to get enough leads to close one deal.” We predicted that at about $1,500 a deal. It was super conservative because he was way below that on costs. We’ll come up with the budget and then we’ll execute and do all the marketing for that. Call the leads and schedule appointments. An average member would be spending about $2,500 a month to tap into our team. A lot of people say it’s like having the equivalent team of 40 people for the cost of one resource. They’ll pay a flat monthly membership fee plus whatever their marketing spend is that can go up or down. I have some people with us that are spending $60,000 to $80,000 a month in marketing and still working to scale it up from there.

There’s a huge range of people that you can work with, someone that’s got a $60,000 spend. What would you say a lower spend might be like a beginner, someone who’s starting with you?

It’s market-dependent. If you’re in California, I don’t think you should be spending less than $5,000 or $6,000 a month in marketing. That’s probably to get you one deal. California is extremely competitive. We’re very predictive. We’ve done over 38 million pieces of direct mail. We’ve tracked every response rate. I know what we mail to get how many calls. If you’re in the center part of the country, it could be closer to maybe $1,500 to $1,700 a deal. If you’re in Florida, you’re probably closer to $2,400 to $2,800 a deal. What will happen is somebody will sign up with us. It’s a fast process. It’s about seven days that we’re onboarding them.

We build a marketing plan that we both agree to. We start and about ten days total from the time that they sign up, we’re generating leads for them. What we do is we usually tell somebody, “Why don’t we start with maybe a $3,000 or $4,000 budget? It could be less, could be more, and then let’s get on a phone in a month after we start this, we’ll do an account review and look at how things are going. We then make any changes and either scale up or what have you. A typical member will be somebody like we’ve got Javier in North Carolina. He started a couple of years ago. He’s doing like a $30,000 a month budget. He’s got a seven-figure business and started with no deals in 2018.

What do you mean he started with no deals? He hadn’t done anything yet.

He had done a couple of deals, but there was no consistency. Also, he didn’t have a large marketing budget. He tells his story that in 2017, he had to borrow money from his son because he ran out of cash. He didn’t have a lot of cashflow and operating capital to run his business. We got him started. He closed a couple of deals. He started scaling from there. He’s in five markets. He’s got a large team now with a seven-figure flipping business.

Top Marketer Lessons: A true real estate investor is somebody that has money, and invest and hold for the long haul.

 

We’ve got a lot that we’re going to talk about in the EXTRA portion of the show. We’re going to do some deep dives on some things like what do the numbers look like? What are some big secrets on how to get the deals, specifically what to do in these larger markets? Your favorite mailing lists and strategy. We are going to talk about that stuff in the EXTRA and some other stuff that’s come up. I know that you give a huge amount of information. We’ll talk about all of that in the EXTRA portion of the show. For now, could you tell me how they can get in touch with you?

The best way is to go to REIvault.com. There is a See If I’m Qualified button. It will walk you through. You can schedule an appointment with one of us or probably Julia Jordan. She lives in Dallas. She and I have been working together for years. She’s bought and sold herself a couple of hundred houses. You’d have a live phone conversation with her at REIvault.com. I do have a giveaway that I’ll give to everybody. We finished this. It’s our direct mail secrets of everything I talked about, but probably even more granular. Here are the things to implement to make direct mail work. You can go to RealEstateInvestor.com/directmailsecrets. That’s a free guide that we put out. I’m pleased with how it’s working. I’ve had a lot of people that have provided great feedback on that.

Thank you for that. You can definitely plug into Gary’s gift and also see if this might be something that would work for you, which it sounds like it could for a lot of my readers.

I’m always posting videos. I have a podcast. I’m always interviewing interesting people on building culture, building teams, hiring people and all that stuff. That’s RealEstateInvestor.com/huddle-podcasts. I’m on Instagram. I’m always posting my morning minute or my inspirational tip for entrepreneurs. You’ll see me there as well. You can go to https://tinyurl.com/timeROIbliss to evaluate what your time is worth and when it makes sense to outsource. This is a very valuable tool.

Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions? Gary, tell us one strategy on getting started in real estate investing.

The key is in the follow-up. Click To Tweet

The best strategy especially if you don’t have a lot of money is wholesaling. Wholesaling is a very simple model for finding properties that have value. You’re buying them under market with cash. It’s a single offer. You’re finding a cash buyer that wants to buy that property at a higher price. You’re signing what’s called an assignment contract and people make millions of dollars doing that. It’s an easy model, little risk. That’s a great strategy. It’s something I’m doing. I know that you do a little of it. If you have money, a great model I like is what’s called the turnkey model. Some of the linear markets, I do this as well. I take some of my money and I provide it with a couple of turnkey providers where they are finding the properties. They are producing nice results, but they handle all of the renovation and property management.

Memphis Invest is an example of that business model. We’re there in Memphis. I love the Omaha market. I love the Kansas market. I love Memphis. Those are the linear markets. When I say linear, typically they don’t have huge spikes in up and down. Omaha, Nebraska had less than a 6% drop during the recession in 2008. I like those because they’re nice cashflowing markets. As I see the downturn happening, I also see massive inflation down the road. They’re printing more money, the Federal Reserve. We can’t even make our debt. 2022, the United States cannot make its debt payments. The only thing that got 8 or 9 triggers, but one is inflation. If we’re in an inflationary market, holding assets in real estate is an incredible thing. All of us and the readers, we should be holding real estate for the long haul.

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

I was a huge workaholic. It’s very easy to get stuck in the weeds in this business. One thing I do is what I call my 5-10-3 Rule because as a CEO, as an entrepreneur running a business, which is what I’m doing and many of us are. We have to be CEOs in our business. I wake up at 5:00 in the morning. I push out my start day to 10:00. That gives me five hours of personal time. I journal. I read scripture. I work out. That gives me five hours and I plan my one thing. What’s the one thing that I’m going to do to move the marker? 5:00, 10:00, and then the 3:00 are the three hours that I’m going to work in the business as a CEO.

Top Marketer Lessons: True sales do not start until there’s been rejection or a no.

 

I do that. When I only have three hours, it means I’ve got to use my time wisely. It’s raising money, reaching out to other investors that I’ve raised money from on deals. It might be closing a bigger deal. It might be reaching out to a contact or working with a staff person for me. That’s changed my life. There’s a book called Traction. That’s popular in our business. I follow Traction. It’s an operating model for a lot of us. A lot of people get stuck. Even though we might have professional degrees, it’s easy to be doing the $10 an hour work and focus on the wrong money-making activities. I’m focused on my time. I’d recommend other people do that. It’s easy to get trapped and then chasing shiny objects. There’s not a lot of money to be made reading emails, watching social media and courses and things like that.

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

Persistence and tenacity. Everybody should be a referral for you. That’s probably the biggest one for me is everybody that I talk to are the people that I’m raising money from. I always say when you’re raising money, which we should always be raising money, every one of us, you want to raise money when you don’t need it and you never have to ask for the money. I tell people what I do and people immediately come back saying, “Could you tell me a little bit more?” I get a lot of people that will come in and participate with me on deals. All of us should be raising money. Businesses do that.

I’m looking forward to the EXTRA portion of this show, but thank you for what you’ve shared so far, Gary. This has been amazing.

It’s been great.

Ladies, if you are subscribed to EXTRA, please stay tuned. We’ve got more coming for you. If you’re not subscribed but would like to be, and you want to get all this additional GC information, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com and you can get subscribed there. If you’re leaving us now, thank you so much for joining Gary 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 that your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you next time.

 

Important Links

• RealEstateInvestor.com
• REIvault.com
• RealEstateInvestor.com/directmailsecrets
• RealEstateInvestor.com/huddle-podcasts
• Instagram – Gary Boomershine
• Traction
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com
• https://tinyurl.com/timeROIbliss

 

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Moneeka Sawyer

Moneeka Sawyer is often described as one of the most blissful people you will ever meet.   She has been investing in Real Estate for over 20 years, so has been through all the different cycles of the market.  Still, she has turned $10,000 into over $5,000,000, working only 5-10 hours per MONTH with very little stress.

While building her multi-million dollar business, she has traveled to over 55 countries, dances every single day, supports causes that are important to her, and spends lots of time with her husband of over 20 years.

She is the international best-selling author of the multiple award-winning books “Choose Bliss: The Power and Practice of Joy and Contentment” and “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way.”

Moneeka has been featured on stages including Carnegie Hall and Nasdaq, radio, podcasts such as Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod,  and TV stations including ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW, impacting over 150 million people.

blissfulinvestor.com