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Fundamentals Of Investing To Achieve Financial Independence With Chris Larsen – Real Estate For Women

REW 67 Chris Larsen | Financial Independence

 

We have our own choices every day, especially in your funds. How do you handle your expenses, and what do you do to achieve financial independence? Join Moneeka Sawyer and the founder and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income, Chris Larsen, as they delve into controlling your cash flow, creating a structure that would enable you to grow as an individual and professional. Chris is passionate about helping investors attain success in their field. He enlightens people and shares a couple of his mistakes to take the fast track towards financial independence, which took him almost 20 years. In this episode, he talks about investing, infinite banking, loans, mortgage payments, tax strategies and more. Learn how to grow your portfolio, practice financial literacy and make the best choices in your professional life.

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Fundamentals Of Investing To Achieve Financial Independence With Chris Larsen – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show, Chris Larsen. Our guest is the Founder and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income. Chris has been investing and managing real estate for many years. While still a college student, he bought his first rental property at the age of 21. I love people that get into this industry young. Ladies, if you’re young, get in. From there, Chris expanded into development, private lending, buying distressed debt, as well as commercial offices and ultimately syndicating multifamily properties. He began syndicating deals in 2016 and has been actively involved in over $225 million of real estate acquisitions. Chris is passionate about helping investors become financially independent.

Chris, welcome to the show.

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

I’ve been looking forward to this show. You’ve been patient with me with all the rescheduling. Thank you. I’m glad we’re finally here. Chris, give us a high level of your story. I know it’s very exciting.

First off, I love that you bring up, “Get started early,” now is early, whenever you can do it. I was 21. I was in college and to rewind a little bit, my passion at the time was racing bicycles. I went to Virginia Tech for Biomechanical Engineering. I did well in school and was told, “You should be an engineer like your grandfather.” All I want to do is race bicycles. Cycling is like a real engineer sport because it’s all about numbers and power to weight ratios. That was the end of my story in a lot of ways because I didn’t want to do that.

Along the way, at that same time, when I was at this turning point, trying to decide what to do as I was looking towards a professional career, my best friend, roommate, training partner passed away. He had a massive brain hemorrhage between my freshman and sophomore years in college. I poured another year into this sport. Then realized even after I was winning more and more races, I wasn’t happy. Even though my team went professional, I stepped away from the sport and went back to school. As a junior in college, I thought, “What am I going to do with my life?” I don’t want to be an engineer. I was going to go race and then figure out what I wanted to do.

While I was racing and even when I was young, the first thing I remember is I hop on my bike and I have this tremendous sense of freedom. Probably if you’re reading, you think the same thing. I wanted the freedom to live life on my own terms, not only to respect the life I was given but also the life of the friend that I lost. I turned towards investing. I was introduced to it by the same gentleman, Clint Provenza who introduced me to cycling. My father passed away when I was five and he was a real mentor to me.

I started looking into investing. I was day trading and one of those nights/mornings at 3:00 AM when I was lying there in bed, thinking about what I should do with my trades, I thought, “Do I want to be doing this twenty years from now?” The answer was no. I looked at other investments. I read over 250 books on money investing and settled on real estate because you could control it. I bought my first property at 21. I built and managed a portfolio of single-family rentals for fifteen years but ultimately transitioned into commercial real estate. That’s what we focus on now. I try to enlighten people and share my mistakes so they can take the fast track to get towards financial independence, which took me almost twenty years.

I have a very similar story that I wanted to be a dancer. That was my thing. I came to investing for a similar reason. I wanted a life of choice. I think that freedom of choice is our true wealth. That’s what I wanted and real estate allowed that. It takes me fifteen years before I could say that my husband and I could retire but I couldn’t do it with the lifestyle that I wanted in California. We would have had to move. We continue to grow our portfolio but it was at the same thing. After about fifteen years, I was like, “We are doing everything now that we’re doing because of choice and we want to do that.” There’s nothing more liberating than that.

I teach a Financial Literacy course for high school students. They’re coming out of underprivileged homes. Most of them are living below the poverty line. We had a conversation that at some point, income is important but it’s the freedom to choose. I cited in a study that shows the janitors that have freedom in their day-to-day choices are happier than the CEOs that are making 10,000 times than they are. They’re not happy because they don’t have freedom.

Don't be afraid to ask questions and understand the numbers, the strategy, and why an operator is going into the market. Click To Tweet

My TED Talk is about this. There’s a lot of research where money does buy happiness to a certain threshold.

What’s that number?

The original number that came up within 2010 was 75, but a study that was done in January 2021 said 100,000. It’s gone up because of inflation, obviously. Basically up until then, the number of dollars that you bring into your household does relate directly to the level of happiness or satisfaction in the household. After that, we’re looking at we have freedom, excess income is taken care of and we can focus on joy or bliss. I’m glad we’re on the same wavelength around that. Talk to me about this concept of infinite banking. Tell me what you mean by that.

Next-Level Income was born of this desire to curate information around financial literacy and education. As I built it out, we have three main areas. We talk about how to make, keep and grow your money. Those are the three steps. I have coaching clients and that’s what we work through, “How can you maximize how much money you’re making? How can you keep more money?” That’s typically around entity structure, tax strategy but also this concept called Infinite Banking. If you think about what your biggest expenses are in life, most people know that taxes are one. If you are reading this, making a lot of money, you’re at those higher income levels like 20% or 30% in California, even 40% or 50% is not uncommon.

That’s a big expense but the next biggest expense that a lot of people don’t think about is financing. Think about how much money you spend on interest for your house or on cars and if you have a business, business loans, infrastructure, equipment. If I said to you, “What if you could take that financing dollars that you spent on interest, put them back in your own pocket and you could become the bank?” That’s what Nelson Nash talks about in this concept of becoming your own banker, which infinite banking was born of.

On average, when you pay a mortgage, it’s fully amortized, you pay a lot of interest in the front end, it goes down to so and so, and when you look at the very end, you were to finance out for 30 years, what amount of money relative to your principal do you end up paying? Isn’t that something crazy like three times as much?

It’s 2 to 3 times. Interest rates now are lower. It’s more like two times but historically, it’s about three times. Let’s not pretend you’re in California because you’re probably paying $3 million. Your average home in America is $300,000, so you’re probably paying somewhere between $600,000 to $1 million for that home. That doesn’t take into account when you refinance. A lot of people refinance. They reset the clock and you pay more interest. A lot of people never get out from under that.

Ladies, I want to give you a little clarity on that. What happens on a fully amortized loan is not what we call simple interest. A fully amortized loan means it’s heavy on the interest on the front end. Let’s say like 2/3 of your mortgage payment goes into interest, 1/3 might go into your principal and then it moves over your 30 years. At the end, you’re paying significantly more in principal. I don’t think it doesn’t exactly flip but you’re paying a lot more in principal and significantly less than interest. Every time you refinance, you start that clock on the heavy interest side.

In the past, ladies, I talked about I like interest-only loans. That’s because I don’t stay in homes very long. I refinance them to take money out so I can buy something else. I’m always high on the interest side. This is a way for me to control my cashflow and doing what I would normally be doing. When he’s going to talk about infinite banking, understand that you’re paying 2 to 3 times your principal. He’s talking about how you can put that to work for you rather than you paying that off.

That’s a great way. I co-hosted a radio show in college. One of the financial advisors advocated for a fifteen-year mortgage. I said, “No, you want 30-year. You want to have the money in your pocket and the ability to pay off your mortgage because, one, ask yourself, ‘What is your return on equity?’ It’s zero. The money’s sitting there. It’s not doing anything for you.” You can go out and use that money. You can finance, buy another property and leverage that. You can use the bank’s money to do that. If you have your home paid off, you have to pull that money out with the permission of the bank.

REW 67 Chris Larsen | Financial Independence

Financial Independence: Money buys happiness to a certain threshold. But then after that, we need to have freedom so we can focus on joy and bliss.

 

What’s interesting is whole life is very similar to owning a home. The term life insurance is very similar to renting. You build up equity in that policy but here’s the thing that’s great. When you have a properly structured life insurance policy and you build up that equity, you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission to take that money out. You own that policy. The collateral is your policy on your life. The insurance company has to lend you the money before it lends out to anyone else. They have to lend that money out to earn a rate of return because the other neat thing with life insurance, and this is unlike your home but similar, your home goes up in value. Life insurance does too because they pay dividends.

The insurance company invests that money. If they invest it well, what happens is they earn a return on that and give it back to the policyholders. This is important with this concept. You have to have the right insurance company that you’re working with and a properly structured policy. You can go buy the wrong mortgage for your home. There are multiple types of mortgages for your investment property. You have to make sure you buy the right policy with the right structures. Sometimes, there are multiple structures within that so it can be quite complex.

I was on the phone with one of my ladies and she was saying, “I’ve got something with State Farm.” I don’t know how State Farm is structured.

I do. I work for State Farm.

One of the other ladies that was on the same call with me said that she ended up trying the infinite banking structure. I don’t know how it all worked for her but over time, she wasn’t going to end up paying taxes on the money and was horrified. What I’m trying to say here is there are lots of different kinds of insurance companies and whole life structures depending on your goal. This is like with anything else, whether it’s investing, getting married or having a job. You have to know what your outcome is that you’re looking for. “Is it what is going to be paid to my family when I die? Can I use this money? Is it, I would rather not pay taxes or is it growth? What is it?” Once you make a decision, you have to find the policy that is structured to reach that goal in the best way possible.

You have to work. The unfortunate thing is there’s a limited number of companies that can do this. You want to optimize the company for your certain circumstance. If you are a 50-year-old woman, the company you might work with might be different than a 30-year-old man or 80-year-old woman. It depends on what your certain circumstance is. The other thing is if you work with an insurance agent that’s going to structure this policy, they’re paid less commission to structure the policies this way. When you maximize the cash value, you’re optimizing the insurance level. When you optimize that, it means you a lot of times lower it. You’re lowering the cost of insurance.

A big portion of that in the initial years is the commission. It’s paid to the agent. I’ve been in sales my whole life. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paying somebody for the service you provide. That’s part of the thing. If you’re reading, you may have heard things like, “Life insurance is a bad investment.” I don’t call it an investment. I’ve used it for over several years now. This exact type of policy structure is like a super-charged savings account. It’s a tool that you can use along your investment journey. If you’re a small business owner and you say, “I own a small business,” what’s cool is you can also structure it for retirement. You can use it like a Roth IRA, but what’s nice is unlike a Roth or 529 plan for your kids, you have a lot more flexibility. You can use this money for whatever you want along the way.

The other thing that I love about these is that depending on how it’s structured. You were talking about different ages. If you’re 20 versus 80, you can put together a policy where you’re doing a monthly installation. You could also put together a policy where you have one installation. Your business did good and maybe you put $200,000 in, then you let that ride for a while. There are different ways to structure it. You don’t feel like in the old world where, “This was going to be a payment every single month and I don’t want another payment every single month.” Especially if you run your own business, you don’t know what next year is going to look like. These newer policies are interesting because there’s so much flexibility and new opportunity in structuring to create other ways of using them.

We have a whole page to it at NextLevelIncome.com. We have a banking page. You can check out some of the resources, videos, white papers there that talk more about this as well.

Income is important, but the freedom to choose is even more so. Click To Tweet

Do you feel complete on that topic? Did you want to move to the next one?

I’m good. I edited my book, added a chapter and didn’t mention it but that’s the other thing we have on the website. If you want to learn more about it, you can also get a copy of my book for free. If you go to NextLevelIncome.com, you can click on the Book link. I’ll send your audience a copy if they put their address in.

Thank you so much. Talk to me about your perspective on multifamily. This is a hot topic with my ladies.

I’m trying to figure it out. When you say that, I’m like, “How can I figure something else on my podcast that I can say, ‘My ladies.’” I don’t know if I’m ever going to figure that out or not, and that’s probably a good thing. I don’t think that’s not going to be my tagline. I call multifamily real estate the Holy Grail of investing. If you look at my book, it says, “How to Make, Keep, and Grow Your Money Using the Holy Grail of Real Estate to Achieve Financial Independence.” I’ll send you a copy for free if you go to the website.

I’m high on multifamily. I was the person that managed my own portfolio for fifteen years. I was a person that got a phone call on my honeymoon in Costa Rica and paid $40-some in collect call fees to deal with the problem tenant. I was the guy that stayed in too long and didn’t get a great return on my properties. I was fortunate enough to run into somebody that introduced me to this space. Several years ago, I started to investigate multifamily real estate. I’m a demographics guy. I spent eighteen years in the medical device industry. That’s how I made money to invest. I got into a medical device and moved to Asheville, North Carolina because we have great demographic trends.

When I started to investigate multifamily being an engineer, a day-to-day guy, analytical, I found that multifamily was supported by these terrific demographics by what we now call the Millennials. They’d rented, and guess who’s supporting multifamily now? It’s their parents, the Baby Boomers. They’re selling their homes. They’re renting. Gen Z is renting as well. We’ve turned into this nation that we like to own. That’s the American Dream but we also like flexibility. I jumped into multifamily. It was because of the demographics, analytics, my MBAs and portfolio management. What I found is something that Ray Dalio calls the Holy Grail of investing, which allows you to increase the Sharpe ratio. Don’t let your eyes glaze over. I’ll simplify the Sharpe ratio. It increases the returns of your portfolio and decreases the risk. It’s like a boat that goes faster and has less bumps when you’re on it. I thought, “What is better than that?” Ray Dalio calls that the Holy Grail of investing. I call multifamily the Holy Grail of real estate because it allows you to increase the returns in your portfolio and decrease the risk.

I know that in EXTRA, we’re going to talk a lot more about multifamily and a high level of why he loves multifamily much. We’re going to go deeper into the pros and cons of multifamily and then he’s going to do some number breakdowns for us. These are things that I get asked about a lot. It’s not my strong suit. My husband and I have not been involved yet in multifamily. The commercial evaluation of the numbers is not his strong suit. He hasn’t had to do it yet. This will be fun. Why don’t you give us a high level on why you like multifamily? What’s exciting about it?

There are a few things. If you’re reading and are like, “I love real estate but I don’t want to be the person that has to go in and fix toilets, find new tenants, screen people and do showings,” I get that because I’ve done it. The big thing is if you invest in multifamily with an experienced operator, somebody that is pretty good in details, it’s 100% passive. You can invest, be a direct owner, get the income and appreciation. The depreciation has great tax benefits, especially if you’re a high-income earner but you don’t have to deal with it all yourself. That’s fantastic. It’s scalable. You could buy a 100-unit multifamily building for $10 million or a $1 billion multifamily portfolio. Whether you’re investing in your first deal or for twenty years and you’re looking to place $1 million or $10 million of capital, you can use the same strategy.

It’s very scalable but there’s something that I like even more. It is control. You might’ve read me talk about laying in bed at 3:00 AM, feeling like things were out of control with my money. I like real estate because you can control it. We’re acquiring a property in Greenville, South Carolina. We live in Asheville, which is about one hour away. We were down in South Carolina for my son’s Lacrosse games and took them to the property. We drove around. It was built in 1997. It’s a little beat up in the stairs. Some need to be replaced and new paint. We can control all of those things. If you own a business, you get this. Apartments are valued like a business. They’re valued by net operating income.

If you live in your home or have a rental home, it’s 1,000 square feet and sells for $300 a square foot. It’s worth $300,000. The bank figures that out because they say, “The home on your left is worth $295 a square foot. Yours is about $300 a square foot.” You don’t control that. The market goes up and down. If we go and buy an apartment building for $10 million and have $1 million of net operating income, that’s probably not a great metric. Call it a $20 million apartment building with $1 million in net operating income. We increase the net operating income to 50% from $1 million with a $20 million valuation to $1.5 million with that new valuation. You’re probably thinking to yourself with your calculators, $30 million. We control that when we’re able to move the rents by the renovations, operations, more efficient and bringing in better management. It’s passive and scalable but most importantly, it’s controllable.

We’ll break down more of this in EXTRA so we can take it a little bit slower. Did you feel like you already covered what are the important metrics? What exactly should we be looking at?

REW 67 Chris Larsen | Financial Independence

Financial Independence: There are multiple types of mortgages on your investment property. You have to make sure you buy the right policy with the right structures.

 

We can unpack this a lot more in the EXTRA section. If you’re thinking, “This sounds interesting,” which I look out for as an investor. I started as an investor in these deals. I was what’s called a limited partner before I syndicated these deals and became a general partner. If you’re a limited partner and you say, “I’m interested in this,” you need to look at three different things. Number one, the Geography. Are you investing in an area of the country that people want to move to? I wrote a whole blog post about this. I talked about how you can identify these. It’s very easy to see with reports from companies like United Van Lines. You can go on our blog at the beginning of 2021 and read the post I put on there.

You want to be in large cities where people are moving that are growing faster than the national average. Where are these cities? A lot of these are from the Southeast. Remember I said, “I moved to North Carolina for the demographics,” the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Phoenix, Colorado, Boise, Idaho seems to be a big one here. Why are people moving here? They’re moving out of California to places like Colorado, Texas, Idaho. They’re moving to the Southeast from places like California, LA, New England, New York. Places that are cold don’t have a great quality of life. Taxes are going up. I have a coaching client that is like, “We’re looking at South Carolina to move. Taxes are going up. We don’t want to live here anymore.”

Number two, the operator. Are you working with an operator? This is somebody that’s going and finding the property that’s going to buy the property, bring you in alongside them, they’re going to operate it and increase that net operating income. Have they done it before? Have they done it in the Geography that you’re invested in and what is their experience there? You want to ask them some tough questions like what’s their strategy. You look then at the metrics in the deal. That’s complex. We looked at over two dozen different metrics on the deals that we’re in. There’s a lot of different variables that come into play.

If you’ve ever invested in a business, business owner or professional, you can read a financial statement. If you call me and say, “I’m interested in this deal.” As an owner of these properties, you’re entitled to all the same information you would be entitled to if you go into a single-family home. You can go through those, call the operator and say, “Walk me through this. What am I seeing here and there?” Don’t be afraid to ask those questions and understand the numbers, the strategy and why an operator is going into the market.

Talk to me a little bit about ROI. Different operators do this differently. Tell us about how you structure your deals for your investors?

What we do is called syndication. It is very simple. It is an operator going out and bringing in investors alongside them to invest. What’s important is how that syndication is structured. We do what’s called, typically, our preferred return. If you look at deals, 6% to 8%, what does that mean? That means investors get the first 6% to 8% of the returns coming from that property. Investors are preferred in front of anybody else. They’re going to be subordinate to the lender. The other thing that’s nice about these properties is it’s called nonrecourse debt.

I work with a lot of doctors after spending eighteen years in the medical device profession. They don’t want more risk, debt and a bank to come after them for something. They have patients that are out for them if something bad happens. That’s a nice thing about these properties as well. After the lender, the investors get that preferred return and then there’s an equity split. A large part goes to investors and then the partners that organize these deals get the minority position in there but that’s the incentive. You want to work with the group, in my opinion. How we do it is we give the investors the first big portion of the returns, about a half of the returns upfront and the other half comes from that split on the backside. We, as partners, get a piece of that split.

We’re incentivized to maximize the profit of that property on the backend. You asked a question there and I’ll address this. There’s typically a couple of different ways to look at this. You can look at a total return. You’re going to get a 10% return comprised of half cash and half appreciation on a property. There’s also an equity multiple. Another way to look at it is you’re going to double your money over a certain period of time. There’s also the IRR, the Internal Rate of Return. We can dive deeper into the EXTRA portion of the show or you can go ahead and check out my book, which goes deeper into this as well. You can always read on a site like Investopedia, which dives deeper too. It depends on what type of investor you are. Maybe cash or the total return is important to you and it all depends on what type of investor you are.

Do you pay investors immediately? When they first invest money, are they guaranteed a certain return each year while the project is happening or how do you structure that for your people?

One little red flag, we never say guaranteed because these are investments that have a risk associated with them. If you ever heard me say, “Guaranteed,” you should either slap me on the face or stick a paper towel or something in my mouth. We have a couple of different types of investments. We have investments that we pay investors a fixed return based upon the performance of the property. Our group typically pays out monthly. We like it. There are groups that payout quarterly. It’s not necessarily better or worse but personally, I like to get money in my account every month.

People who have freedom in their day-to-day choices are mostly happier than the CEOs making enormous amounts of money. Click To Tweet

You get some stuff on the backend, depending on how the project goes.

Typically, in multifamily syndication, you’re going to get regular cashflow, monthly, quarterly or annually. Think about it as a rental property. You’re getting rent. If you’re renting it out for $1,000 a month and your expenses are $900, you might get $100 a month. When you sell it, if you bought a property for $100,000 and you sell it for $150,000, you get that $50,000 profit on the backend. It’s very similar to that.

Do you guys do the whole refinance structure piece too or you go for the sale?

When we model out the returns on our property, which is called a Proforma, we don’t assume we’re going to refinance the property. If you’ve ever owned a rental property or have a property of your own, what’s nice is if you have HELOC, Home Equity Line Of Credit, and you pull money out of your home or an investment property, you don’t pay taxes on that when you pull that money out. You might pay taxes when you sell it but you don’t typically pay taxes when you pull it out. It’s nice. It’s very similar to what we do. A lot of times, we look to do that if the property is performing. We don’t tell investors that’s part of the plan because we want to be a little bit more conservative than that. That is a very optimal way to pull investor capital out in a tax-efficient manner.

We dove pretty deep into all of that stuff and I know we’re going to get even deeper. Ladies, definitely stay tuned for EXTRA. We’ll be talking more about the fundamentals of multifamily investing, the numbers around that and why or why not to do it. Before we move towards the end of this show, Chris, could you tell everybody how they can reach you?

If you want to dive deeper and learn a little bit more, check us out at NextLevelIncome.com. We have a podcast, which hopefully we’ll be sharing Moneeka on in the future. We have a blog and you can also get our book for free, which dives deeper into all the different aspects that we talked about. Go to the website, click on the Book link, put your address in and I’ll even send you a copy for free.

Thank you for that. That was so generous. Chris, we have three Rapid-fire questions. Tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

The best tip I can think of is to find somebody that has gone down the path you want to go down, and either ask them for advice or hire them to help be a mentor.

What would you say is a strategy to be successful in real estate investing?

Success in general is habits. Whether you want to be successful in real estate, in life, losing weight or whatever it may be, you need to focus on your daily habits. If you want to be successful in real estate as far as syndications or passive investments, that may be reviewing a deal every day and every week. If you are going out and buying your own properties, that may be contacting brokers, making phone calls and getting options out there that are coming in towards you on a regular basis.

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

REW 67 Chris Larsen | Financial Independence

Financial Independence: When you maximize the cash value, you’re optimizing the insurance level. And when you optimize that, it means you’re lowering the cost of insurance.

 

I’ve learned a lot over the past few years. I bought my older son The Five-Minute Journal for Children and I use The Five-Minute Journal to meditate every morning. The Five-Minute Journal is basically a gratitude practice. I know you’re big on this. Happiness comes before success. You have to get in that right and abundance mindset, which is you share. You know that success or money will come to you and there’s always a deal out there. You don’t have to worry or fight over these things. Share, help other people, and other people will help you get in the right mindset. That’s what I try to do every day.

This has been an amazing show. Thank you so much for all you’ve already contributed, Chris. This has been great.

It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Ladies, stay tuned for EXTRA. We’re going to be talking more about the fundamentals of multifamily. If you are not subscribed but would like to be, please go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get the first seven days for free, so check it out. Download as much as you can and you can stay if it’s for you. For those of you that are leaving Chris and I, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. We appreciate you. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams, so get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

 

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About Chris Larsen

REW 67 Chris Larsen | Financial IndependenceChristopher Larsen is the founder and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income. After 18 years in the medical device industry, he dedicates his time to helping others become financially independent through education and investment opportunities. Chris has been investing in and managing real estate for over 20 years.

While completing his degree in Biomechanical Engineering and M.B.A. in Finance at Virginia Tech, he bought his first single-family rental at age 21. Chris expanded into development, private-lending, buying distressed debt as well as commercial office, and ultimately syndicating multifamily properties.

He began syndicating deals in 2016 and has been actively involved in over $350M of real estate acquisitions. In addition to real estate, Chris has invested in equities, oil & gas, and small business lending, as well as being active in Venture South, one of the nation’s Top 10 Angel Investing groups.

Chris lives with his wife and two boys in Asheville, NC where he loves spending time with them in the outdoors and enjoying the food and culture that the region has to offer.

 

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Create Inflows Of Cash And Ease In Real Estate With Michelle Bosch

REW 36 | Land Investment

 

Most people who dabble in real estate investment focus solely on wholesaling, rehabbing, and acquiring properties.Only a few pay attention to land investment, which actually offers high returns at pretty low costs. Michelle Bosch, the Cofounder of Orbit Investments, shares with Moneeka Sawyer how to take advantage of some dirty piece of land and turn it into something profitable. Michelle looks back on her journey from being an immigrant to a full-time real estate professional, dissects the four stages they used to structure cashflow, and underlines the importance of pouring all of your courage and concentration on your selected niche.

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Create Inflows Of Cash And Ease In Real Estate With Michelle Bosch

I am excited to welcome to our show our guest, Michelle Bosch. Michelle is the Cofounder of Orbit Investments and a full-time real estate investor since 2002. She has bought and sold over 4,000 pieces of real estate and built the third largest land investment and auction company in the United States, bringing that company successfully in the eight bigger revenues in a matter of eighteen months. Through the recession, she positioned Orbit Investments for rapid growth in the single-family and multifamily investing space with over $40 million in assets under management.

She’s also the creator of the nationally recognized Land Profit Generator program, focusing on teaching others how to invest in land, and has created over 145,000 followers via the Forever Cash podcast radio show, LandProfitGenerator.com, UltimateBoardroom.com and social media channels. Her businesses have been featured in Inc., Fox, NBC, ABC, and Forbes, and she holds an MBA in Business and Finance from Thunderbird Global School of International Management, the world’s number one graduate school in international management. Michelle, welcome to this show.

Thank you, Moneeka for having me. It’s an honor to be here with you.

Why don’t you tell us Michelle, a little bit about your story, how you got going and started doing all this amazing stuff?

It sounds like an amazing bio, but at the end of the day, we all have to have faith in the small. We started small with humble beginnings. Both my husband and I are not originally from the US. We’re both immigrants. I am originally from Honduras. He’s originally from Germany. We came here to study. We decided to stay here, got jobs, and found companies that were willing to sponsor our working visas and eventually, our permanent residency or green cards. We got jobs 100% travel. We hated it. We’ve spent all this money on an MBA, on a degree in the promises that you’re going to go and get a job and live the American dream.

We were far from living the American dream. We had living paycheck to paycheck. A glamorous life for about three months and then traveling 100% gets old and working 60 to 80-hour weeks for someone else as a consultant and a client-side was not necessarily our idea of how I thought that the end goal was supposed to look like. We started looking for something else to do. We came here with two suitcases to our names and hearts full of dreams. Parts of those dreams were getting the job, but it wasn’t entirely fitting the picture of what we thought we were going to be doing in terms of having the freedom of money, time, relationships, and purpose and living out those four freedoms. As a result of discontent with our life back then, which was comfortable, but it was comfortably miserable.

That’s how many people live, constantly miserable. They don’t feel miserable. They’re like, “I’m fine.” There’s a difference between, “I’m fine too” to “My life rocks.” It’s a completely different thing, but we don’t know that when we’re stuck in comfortably miserable.

My family back home had some experience in real estate with a commercial property. I knew about passive cashflow from back home and I’m like, “Let’s start looking at real estate.” When everyone thinks about real estate, the very first thing that comes to your mind, at least for us, it was like, “Let’s look at single-family homes.” Perhaps we can get home, wholesale it, rehab it, flip it, make some money and be a hot side hustle because we couldn’t go over jobs. Our jobs were the ticket to a permanent residency here, so we couldn’t leave our jobs. We put a junker under contract. We realized quickly that we’re way over our heads. We had no idea how to estimate repairs, a new kitchen flooring, which had foundation issues, and roofing. Nobody took our wholesale special that we were going to have to probably look for money partners and have holding costs. Eventually, secure probably traditional financing, so on and so forth.

REW 36 | Land Investment

Land Investment: Nobody talks about land. Jurd is something that is so way out there for people.

 

It’s not like we didn’t have bad credit. We had no credit because we were not originally from here. There’s a lot of moving pieces. To cut the story short, we decided, “We’re not doing this. We’re pulling out during our due diligence period.” We came across something interesting to us, Moneeka. Here’s where I think that a lot of it is your perspective and the immigrant advantage. I always talk about the immigrant advantage being that you have, number one, zero fear of hard work because you’re willing to create a better world than the one you left. Number two, you see opportunities that others perhaps missed. What we came across here in the US was a concept that was completely revolutionary to us. Both in Germany and Honduras, people do not lose their properties to property taxes.

I found out about tax liens and tax deeds. I went to Sonoma County to a tax deed, which means they’re auctioning off a property that has been delinquent five years or more. What I noticed that most of the properties that were coming for auction, which is incredibly competitive were pieces of land. I’m like, “These people have decided mentally, have checked out and let these properties go probably years before this is coming to auction.” My husband and I were like, “Why don’t we send them a letter and try to see if we can get some of this vacant land before it goes to auction because I saw it going for good numbers, for way about what it was doing back taxes.”

We perfected what we call our proven performance ladder over the years. It took us about three years to perfect our methodology and split test every sentence. The whole process of buying from the lead, all the way to closing on a property and having actual profit been made. I’m like, “Let’s put the pedal to the metal. This is it.” We’re able to get properties to this day, not just ourselves but our clients and our students are able to get properties for $0.05 to $0.25 on the dollar. For every 750 to 1,000 pieces of mail that we send, we get anywhere between 6 and 15 calls for every hundred offers about three deals.

Those are amazing conversion rates when it comes to comparing that to the house flippers. The house flippers need to send 10,000 pieces of mail in order to be able to get one deal. For us, it was a gap in the industry that others overlook and don’t care to explore. To be frank, if you go to any real estate investment conference, anything that people are going to think of has to do with rehabbing, with wholesaling a home, with multifamily, small multifamily, large multifamily, commercial property, and notes. Nobody talks about land. Jurd is something that is so way out there for people. That’s the opportunity that we saw that there were in a blue ocean with no competition.

We could get these properties cheap and that we could turn around and sell them quickly because we were getting them cheap. We could sell them for 60% to 80% of the market value. We specialize in three types of properties. We buy properties that are infill lots in the cities, in the path of growth, or that are in recreational areas. This is how we started. The first year, we did 60 deals. In the second year, we did about 100 deals. By that time, our green cards were coming. We’re like, “We can let go of our jobs.” We didn’t put a two weeks’ notice. It was more a three-month notice because I’ve always thought you always want to leave the door open with someone that has given you a hand. We were both immensely grateful to our companies for having given us the opportunity to stay in this country permanently forever legally.

How long did you work for each of them?

Five years.

That’s great because they sponsored you. They also got good high-performance out of you. It was a win-win and I loved those stories.

Repetition creates the possibility to scale. Click To Tweet

We decided to go at this full-time, then the next year we did about 150 deals. That was with us doing this full-time. What we noticed is that we were at a point where we were as tired, as exhausted putting the number of hours that we were putting in our jobs we were putting it into the business. We were like, “Do we shrink in order for us to have the freedom of time that we have because we were making good money, but we didn’t have any freedom of time, or do we expand so that we can have a team that helps us leverage our time?” That’s what we decided. We went for expansion. We hired a team that next year. We did our first auction and we sold about 200 pieces of land in one day.

We used to do those once a quarter. We continue doing that even through the recession. What that allowed us, Moneeka is to have an incredibly privileged situation. When 2008, 2009 came around, a lot of people were losing their shirts. We were having a situation that we were sitting on a ton of cash and a ton of liquidity from our cash flips, which are anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000 for each piece of land. We can either flip it for cash or we can flip it using seller financing. For example, I buy a property for $1,000, I sell it for $20,000. Somebody gives me $2,000 down so I have recouped my entire investment. They make $300 to $400 payments for the next 5 to 10 years. That’s how we’ve been able to make land cashflow.

At some point, we had over $70,000 in passive cashflow, $12 million in notes from the land. It’s like doing the right strategy at the right time in the market. It was our time to start allocating some of the cash profits because our land continues to be our cash machine and putting those profits into single-family homes. We went crazy shopping because in Phoenix in 2009, it was the bottom of the market. We could buy a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home for $40,000 to $50,000, put in $5,000 and $10,000 and rent it for $900 to $1,100. Those properties have quadruple in price and we’ve sold some and bought in other markets where we could buy them again for $40,000 to $50,000 and do the same thing over again.

Back in 2016, we’re doing this amazing thing because the end goal has always been at the end of the day, passive cashflow. We call it Forever Cash. There’s one-time cash from flips. There’s temporary cash from notes and the land, then the Holy grail, in my opinion, of all cashflows is that Forever Cash. That comes in forever. We decided, “How can we start not looking at one door at a time, but a hundred doors?” That’s when we started looking into multifamily. We now have four projects. We are almost coming full circle with one of them where we purchased, totally improved, efficiency operating it at a high level. We increased market rents. Any deferred maintenance that was there with the property is taking care of, and we’re looking to sell it.

We’re coming full circle with our first project, which is 94 units from a purchase in 2016. As we grew as investors in our sophistication and understanding, we were able to go up asset classes. To be frank, the land is my darling because it is the cornerstone of our wealth. It has been transformational to us, Moneeka not just like real money in my bank account, but as individuals, people, and entrepreneurs. Nothing will sculpture spirit. Even if it’s a small deal where maybe your spread is $3,000 to $5,000, going through the process of having the courage, talking to a seller, talking to a buyer, figuring out the documentation pieces, how to close on it, and how to market. There’s nothing like that to sculpt your character and help you become a better person in all aspects of life.

A couple of questions I have for you, first of all, where do you live? Where are you located?

I live in Phoenix, Arizona, in Paradise Valley. There are beautiful mountains here. I’m five minutes from the mountain preserve and a hiking trail. We love the outdoors. Now’s the time to be here. Usually, June through September. We try to escape the heat from Germany. We have a yearly pilgrimage to Europe. Part of it is from leveraging our time with the team, but also finding asset classes. In the beginning, an asset class that we could wrap our mind around and that could put our family first and could give us those four freedoms. We’re all looking for freedom of time. We’re all looking for freedom of money, but also relationships and a purpose. The land business is giving me also that freedom of purpose is that we’re teaching that to others. I’m able to give back in some way, shape, or form, and pour my heart into developing a person from going from an employee mentality into an entrepreneurial mentality using land as a vehicle because it’s simple.

That’s been a lot of my purpose too. I use my favorite vehicle which is real estate. I’m a buy and hold person, but my journey and message are about living a life of bliss, which is all about the four freedoms that you talk about. For me, that emotional freedom too, living a blissful life. We’re aligned. Where do you invest? Do you invest in Phoenix or do you invest all over the place?

REW 36 | Land Investment

Land Investment: With land, you have to be much more creative to move it quickly and for the prices you want.

 

For land, we invest all across the US only because we don’t need to look at the land. Back in the day, there was no Google Earth. Now, we can do everything through that. I don’t need to look at any single piece of dirt whatsoever or run down to negotiate with a seller with the land. These are people that have never been approached by anyone ever. They are happy to take my offer whenever I’m ready to give them an offer. It’s single-families. There are three markets and multifamily three markets that we specialize in so that we can understand those markets well. We can understand the employment base and become masters because I’m all about mastery. Repetition creates the possibility to scale. That repetition also gives you the opportunity to do something over and over again until you mastered it. We write on those two asset classes when it comes to single-families and multifamily. We like to focus on those three markets only.

My big question about land is if you buy it on $0.05 to $0.25 on the dollar, where are you going to sell it? Who do you sell it to? Why they did just sell it?

This is the story of our lives. It’s beyond me, but people will sell at that amount of money or that level of discount because they decided that they were going to purchase two pieces of land, one in Florida and one in Arizona. They decide to retire in Arizona. There is a piece of property in Florida, their kids don’t want it or they pass away, Arizona want it, or there’s a divorce and they need to get out. There are endless reasons why, but circumstances are always difficult for people. There are always reasons for money. Why didn’t they list it with a realtor? Many actually have. Realtor suck when it comes to selling pieces of land. You cannot put in the MLS a piece of dirt with two corner markers and expect to sell it. You have to sell a dream when you’re selling land. You need to sell the possibility of what could be in that piece of land and create your listings and your marketing with a completely different perspective than when you’re selling a home, which is easily stageable. With good lighting, you can make it look attractive and pretty. With land, you have to be much more creative to be able to move it quickly and for the prices that you want.

If the buyers are developers, it’s a quick lookup. It’s looking up on Google, an association of builders in the city that you’re in. You can get a list of builders that you could send your property and market your property to. If it’s an infill a lot, neighbors will win your property. We have what we call our proven neighbor letter. Fifty percent of all our sales and our client’s sales come from a neighbor letter. You can sell on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Zillow, LandWatch, or LANDFLIP. There are many places where you can do it for free. You don’t even have to pay to market the property.

Are they easy to sell?

Yes. If your listing is looking nice and a piece of property, it’s not going to sell. It is just a piece of dirt with two corner markers, but if you say, “Selling two acres of paradise for 40% under market value,” and that’s your heading versus “Here are my two acres of land in such and such county or such and such city.” You start building the dream of, “Look at all the amenities. We’re about an hour away from the main city of such and such. These are the homes and developments that are happening in the area.” You put views of that, “These are some of the hospitals and some of the employment centers.” You then go narrow your focus and maybe your picture number 5 or 6 is the actual piece of dirt.

You finalize by saying, “I offer either 40% market value, or we could talk about seller financing with a low down payment and monthly payments of X.” All of a sudden, you’ve opened your pool of potential buyers when you have the opportunity for them to buy with seller financing. Maybe not everyone is going to have $20,000 sitting around. Maybe they’ll have $2,000 to give you as a down payment and then you can start creating those notes and that passive cashflow. Now, what has been off the hook has been Facebook Marketplace out of all places.

You do land, single-family homes, and large multifamily. Talk about how you’re structuring your cashflow to get that from each one of those that you invest in.

It takes an understanding that you're going to make mistakes, which is part of evolution and mastery. Click To Tweet

For example for us, when we started our business, after that Forever Cash and after those four freedoms. We have broken up into different stages, a level of freedom in each of those four areas. Our first level is always like, “What we call our security plan?” If the security plan of my lifestyle costs me $5,000, how can I create with passive cashflow from land, houses, or multifamily? $5,000 is easily 10, 20 properties of $20,000 each, where I’m getting maybe $400 or $500 in monthly payments. That’s easily doable in a matter of 1 or 1.5 years to build that passive cashflow.

That was our first milestone. How can we get the first $5,000 over lifestyle to be paid? For everyone, that security will be different. When we started, we had nothing. $5,000 for us was a great lifestyle. We even afforded a vacation if we wanted once a year. We then moved on to our second plan, which is our comfort plan. That comfort plan for everyone will be different. For us, it was about $10,000. How can we create $10,000 of passive cashflow either with land, with a single-families, or with buildings? How can we build up to that? All our lifestyle is being paid for that and luxury.

Now, we’re working on our luxury plan. For that, it’s going to be different for everyone. Maybe someone wants to have living la vida loca and fly private. Maybe that idea of passive cashflow for you is $50,000 to $100,000 a month. Maybe for some of you, $20,000 would be fine, so it depends. For us, we gave ourselves personal numbers of what each of those would look like. In the beginning, we use the land, and then we transitioned some of those land profits and cashflow into the single-families, which we continue to own to this day and into the multifamily. At the end of the day, one drawback from land is that there are no benefits when it comes to taxes. There is multifamily where you can use a lot of the depreciation to shelter and offset. What we use is a lot of the depreciation from the multifamily and the single-family to offset a lot of our active income that comes from the land flips. We get the benefit of both worlds. That’s how we structured it.

I’ve never heard it done that way. Everybody that I’ve spoken to that does land love land and they will not touch anything else because everything else is higher maintenance than land is. From my perspective, the land wasn’t that exciting in the past. I’ve looked at it several times. You would bring in the other asset classes so that you could take the tax benefits that offset your profits, which gives you a lot more income. It’s a simple way to do that.

It’s still in an industry that I understand now intimately well. I don’t understand the stock market. I don’t understand foreign exchange. I don’t understand cryptocurrency, but I do understand dirt and I understand creating a home in a first in the class community for someone such that they can continue paying rent and there’s that pride of ownership in our community. I understand how to do those things, but I don’t understand a lot of other things. It’s like sticking to your lane. There are so many shiny objects out there that it’s an exercise and discipline in terms of putting blinders on. I always say to my husband whenever he comes home, “So and so is doing this.” I’m like, “Is that a carousel ride?” I call it a carousel ride because of those shiny objects. You get on the carousel. You go for a wonderful ride. It’s fun. For the three minutes that it lasts or three months or whatever you’re doing, get out of the carousel. You’re in the exact same spot financially. If it’s one of those I’m like, “I don’t want to hear about it.”

You meet some good points here. First of all, there are a million ways to make a million dollars in real estate. We have a lot of options. The first thing is to get to know real estate, but you do need to specialize and you need mastery. When you up-level what you’re doing, you started on land. You wanted to use that cashflow differently so you up-leveled to single-family homes and then to multifamily.

The team is also up-leveling so that you can have ahead of the horse that you’ve mastered. That runs on its own before you can go and get diluted with something else. That’s the key.

The point that I’m trying to make is when you decide you need to do something different, don’t suddenly jump to Forex Trading, Bitcoin, or from, “I own land and now I’m going to run a syndication project on this apartment building.” You don’t know anything about it. You need to step into it and allow your mastery to be the foundation for those next levels that you go to. You want to make sure that you’re climbing with mastery rather than starting on the ground floor for every single thing that you do. That’s what we love about your story. It’s true with building a team too. You start with one employee and then you might grow to 100, but you got to start with one. You’re not going to in general unless you’re a big corporation buy another company with 100 employees if you’ve never had employees.

REW 36 | Land Investment

Land Investment: If you are going through uncertain times, it will only last for a specific period of time. It will pass.

 

You want to make sure that when you are deciding to grow, many of the ladies that are reading are just beginners. They’re trying to figure out, “Where am I going to start that path towards mastery?” Maybe it’s going to be land. Maybe it’s going to be single-family homes. I do BRRR where I rent things out. What is it that we want to do? What is the starting point for that? The thing that I want to say to the ladies is where you are now, you’re not going to be able to see that next step. You create mastery where you start, which means it takes a commitment. It takes a willingness to cry through some nights because things get hard and you don’t know everything yet. It takes an understanding that you’re going to make mistakes and that’s part of evolution and mastery.

As you move through that, you become, as Michelle says so eloquently and I love, your business will turn you into something you didn’t know you could be. It will be an amazing journey. Sometimes it’s hard, but it’s so worth it. The thing is that if you’ve got bliss tools like I talk about, you learn to see the hard as a piece of the puzzle, a part of the game. Even though it’s stressful, it’s part of what you do. You learn to reframe it, but then when you get to mastery, you understand. You can look at some other things and you’re like, “On top of this, what can I build?” I love this image of starting with land and then building a single-family home because that’s what you do. It’s literal, but in your business is more metaphorical, then you go, “That’s kind of playing monopoly too. You buy land, you buy a house, and you buy a hotel.”

It’s important to start your journey towards mastery and understand all of those pieces and become the person that you want to be and you need to be to make that successful and then evolve into the next step of mastery. That’s the way that it goes. I’ve been in this business for many years now, and the growth and the learning never stop. I didn’t have all this knowledge back when I started. What if I had waited and not done that waited for the mastery? You have to grow into mastery. It’s a one-step process of the time. You have to have the full experience.

In our ecosystem, we talk about the four Cs. The first one is commitment. Commit to one thing. If your lane is going to be land or if your lane is going to be housed in a specific strategy, commit to that one thing. What you’re going to find is that once you commit, you’re going to be like, “What have I gotten myself into?” You’re going to have to muster the second C, which is courage only for a period of time. You’re going to go through uncertain times, uncomfortable times, but it’s only going to be for a specific period of time. It will pass.

As you do and willing to get your hands dirty, you’re going to gain the capability from doing it. That’s the third C, capability. Once you have the capability, you have the confidence of looking back, “Look at what I’ve done.” That gives you the opportunity to go say, “Now that I have this confidence, I can go and iterate in zeros and look at properties with a few more zeros at the end.” It’s like an upward spiral of confidence of going through those four Cs, committing, killing other options because if you feel overcommitted, you haven’t decided. Deciding on one thing, mustering the courage, gaining the capability by doing it, getting dirty, and doing the hard work. We all have to do it. There are no shortcuts.

There’s a way to collapse time, which is through a mentor, especially when we started on the multifamily side because we didn’t have any mentors for the land. I don’t know if anyone back in 2002 was out there teaching land, otherwise, I would have invested. By the time we wanted to do multifamily, we invested in a mentor. We invested in someone willing to basically bring the deal, mentor us. We put in our money for the escrow deposit. We did the fundraising and so forth. It has been the best money spent because this person has helped us collapse time and has steered us away from possible landmines that we would’ve never known were there.

It takes a little bit of sometimes banking on ourselves and willing to reach out for support more than likely. Once you have found the vehicle, a lot of the answers are not going to come on how-tos and what, but from who is going to have the what’s and how-tos for you and help you steer you in the right direction. That’s something that I wish I would have focused on earlier. Who’s in my life are going to hold me accountable that are going to walk me in and collapsed times and help me have less heartache and fewer headaches.

We’re almost out of time. We’re going to head towards the end of this part of the show. I want to let the ladies know that on Extra, Michelle and I are going to be talking about the details of how to get a land business going. We’ve never had anybody cover that in this show so I’m excited about that. We’re going to talk about specifics on how to get started. How do you pick areas? How do you do a mailing? That’s going to be valuable information. Before we head into our three rapid questions, could you tell people how they can reach you?

There are no shortcuts for hard work. Click To Tweet

They can reach me by going to MichelleBosch.com. I’m also on Facebook, Michelle Bosch, Michelle Bosch Official on Instagram. You can also go to LandProfitGenerator.com/bliss. You can find me in any of those places.

I know that you’re offering a free masterclass as a gift to my ladies. Could you tell us a little bit about it?

It’s a masterclass on the five steps to finding a deal and closing a deal with land. You can go to LandProfitGenerator.com/bliss. I know that you guys are going to be blown away by the simplicity of the method and how so many of us are looking for that one thing. We’ve been looking sometimes in the wrong place, especially on the house flipping world. A lot of the stuff out there is not designed for a beginner. There’s nothing like finding that one thing that where things are going to click where things align where you can see yourself doing this, and getting an ROI quickly.

I love what Michelle said, “Who I like to be a hero for is the beginning investor.” I can see based on the masterclass and how you talk about this that you are. You’re a hero to the beginner. I appreciate that Michelle.

Our mission is if we can touch a thousand families and turn them into millionaires, bring fathers to become stay at home dads or allowed them to retire a spouse that hates their job, allow them to have private schooling for their children, that home that they’ve always wanted, moving closer to family, traveling the world or extra money for retirement. I’m all for it. We’re already well underway. It’s incredibly fulfilling to see the stories, especially like I was telling you inside of our Facebook community. Just seeing people making their dreams come true. We’re not talking dreamers, but these are people that are doers as well. I have found a higher purpose, a higher why and therefore, there’s a higher income as well that correlates with that. Sometimes it’s just tapping into that and snapping out of that comfortable misery somethings were in.

Thank you for the free gift. I know I’m going to go download it. Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions? Tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

The first time I’m going to say is to take bold action. I know that this has been said and it’s overused, but I cannot overemphasize how important it is. Courage loves speed. If you are sitting there doubting, analyzing and being stuck in paralysis analysis, nothing happens when you’re stuck. Things happen when you’re moving. Take action and make sure it’s an action that is bringing you forward. Sometimes we think, “I’m taking action. I’m setting up my website. I’m setting up my LLC.” That’s all fantastic, but that’s not what’s going to make you money. What’s going to make you money is reaching out to sellers, making offers, and selling properties. Those are the three activities. Don’t be like thinking that busy movement is moving forward. It’s a good movement. It’s better than nothing, but take bold action that scares you, at the same time, excites you. That is bold action.

What is the strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

The strategy on being successful, if you’re going to scale, have the discipline to go through the repetition. The repetition will eventually allow you to bring in team, to leverage your time by leveraging other people’s time. That’s the secret to scaling. Otherwise, you’re stuck like we were back in the day with freedom of money, but no freedom of time. When I say bring in team, it’s not recruiting them. It is developing leaders within your team. In the beginning, it’s like, “I need to find someone that helps me.” You might get a VA and that’s fine. I’m a big proponent of being all-in. If someone is all-in in my company, I want to be all-in with them. The Return on Involvement or ROI that I get from that person being 100% dedicated to me versus a VA that is dedicated to maybe 3 or 4 different clients. The ROI, I find it with someone that is full-time. They’re dedicated for you. You’re not recruiting, but building up and empowering to make decisions with the intentions that buy into your mission and into your vision for sure.

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

REW 36 | Land Investment

Land Investment: As long you are willing to get your hands dirty, you’re going to gain the capability from doing it.

 

I practicing something that is called Yoga Nidra. Back in 2011, I went through a period of complete burnout. Burnout is something that we hear about. It’s very real. I was burnout mentally, physically, emotionally. It was not because, “We still needed to get to where we needed to.” It was because I had noticed that we had gotten to where we needed to. I had not allowed myself the opportunity to enjoy and smell the roses and that journey. One of the practices that I stumbled into was yoga. Within yoga, there’s a meditation called Yoga Nidra. You don’t even have to sit up, criss-cross applesauce. You can lay down.

It’s a visualization of relaxation through the body. I love starting my day with that. It includes a little bit of breathwork. I love doing that also in the afternoons before picking up my daughter from school. That way I can let go of whatever crazy energy I’ve had during the day. Pick her up completely grounded and centered. Sometimes we can be a complete jerk to the people that we most love and it’s because we’re stressed. That does not help me with my relationships, but it also creativity. It has helped me in being braver and more courageous because how can you freaking be brave and courageous of your stress out of your mind? That meditation has been instrumental for me so I highly recommend it.

This show has been truly amazing, Michelle. I can not wait to move into Extra to get more details. Thank you for what you’ve been offering so far.

Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

We do have more in Extra. Michelle is going to be talking about the details, the specifics on how to get started in land. I’m want excited to engage in that conversation. I hope you are too. If you are not subscribed to Extra but would like to be, it’s easy. This is what you do. Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You’re going to subscribe. You get seven days for free to test the waters and see if you like the content. Once you become a member, you will get that episode wherever you’re reading this. You don’t have to worry about, “I need a new app. I need new tools,” nothing. It’s all right there.

When you drive, you walk, you’re working out or whatever, we can read that piece in the same way. Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com to check that out. If you are leaving Michelle and I now, thank you for joining us for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you next time. Bye.

 

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About Michael Bosch

REW 36 | Land InvestmentI’m a first-generation immigrant into the US and for as long as I can remember I have been a hard cash mystic…driven, ambitious and insatiably curious about entrepreneurship, human potential, faith, and Real Estate. Yep, you read that right, my definition of life includes Faith, Family, the state of Flow and Finances.

I am the mother of a brave, kind, smart and beautiful daughter and a precious little Yorkie named Daisyand for the last two decades, I have been in partnership, in life and in business, with a phenomenal man. I stand for finding heart and making money in meaningful and transformational ways. I believe in integrity, excellence, bold action and finding heart. I believe everything you do, including hard cash, is a matter of the heart.
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