Transcript
Speaker: Hi, I'm Kristi Winfrey and I'm so excited you're here with me today.
Speaker: Welcome to the Not Just a Daydream podcast.
Speaker: Welcome to the Not Just a Daydream Podcast.
Speaker: Hey guys, welcome to today's show.
Speaker: Today I have the honor of interviewing Mike Swenson.
Speaker: I was recently on his podcast, The Real Freedom Podcast, and we've had such a great time.
Speaker: And so he's got such a cool story.
Speaker: I just wanted to bring him on our podcast and let him share his story with you.
Speaker: So welcome to the show, Mike.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me on, Christy.
Speaker: I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: So tell us a little bit about your story.
Speaker: How did you get into real estate and
Speaker: and all the different avenues and paths that you took.
Speaker: So I think for me, I talk a little bit about kind of my upbringing, because I think that that's important from a mindset perspective.
Speaker: I was raised very much of get a W-2 job, contribute to your retirement plan, and then you'll have a safe, stable retirement.
Speaker: And so that's kind of up until I was 18-ish.
Speaker: That's how I was raised.
Speaker: That's how I thought.
Speaker: And so it was get a good job, contribute to the retirement.
Speaker: And what's interesting is for a lot of people, they have read books.
Speaker: you know, have read Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a book that a lot of kind of entrepreneurs or real estate folks read.
Speaker: And I found out about that book in college.
Speaker: It was actually my eye doctor when I came back and told him because I majored in entrepreneurship and finance.
Speaker: And when he found out I majored in entrepreneurship, he's like, oh, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad?
Speaker: And I was like, no, I haven't.
Speaker: And so I read it and it was pretty cool.
Speaker: But I would say through college and after college, my mindset shifted to being one of an entrepreneur and taking control of my own destiny.
Speaker: Because like I said, I was just raised to believe we work for other people.
Speaker: That's going to be the best option.
Speaker: And so I hadn't really been exposed to entrepreneurs.
Speaker: But that being said, when I got to college, I decided to major in entrepreneurship, not because I wanted to start my own business.
Speaker: I just wanted to learn everything about business.
Speaker: And so I knew I wanted to major in business.
Speaker: And so I was like, well, entrepreneurship is going to help give me the most exposure to kind of all areas of business instead of just being like a general business major.
Speaker: So the funny thing is, is, you know, I majored in entrepreneurship with no intention of being an entrepreneur right out of college.
Speaker: And so I learned a lot.
Speaker: It was fantastic.
Speaker: And then I decided I needed to get a real job out of college.
Speaker: And so that's where I added the finance piece.
Speaker: So a company would hire me because people wouldn't hire an entrepreneurship major.
Speaker: And so I got a job doing accounting and finance for a nonprofit, worked there for two years.
Speaker: That job rolled into an operations type role, which I did for the next eight years.
Speaker: And then after that, I realized I wanted more and I knew that I had more potential.
Speaker: I was kind of looking for my next big thing.
Speaker: And then I found out about a real estate team that was looking for a lead admin type role.
Speaker: And so I said, hey, for what it's worth, like I've done all these admin ops related stuff, managing people, leading people in the nonprofit sector.
Speaker: So, you know, I'm not sure.
Speaker: Is this something that you're OK with?
Speaker: If you know, would I even be a fit to apply?
Speaker: The quick pause point is I I flipped a few properties on the side and.
Speaker: I work construction in college.
Speaker: Um, so I loved working on homes.
Speaker: And so I dabbled in some stuff on the side while I was working for the nonprofit.
Speaker: So this was kind of my chance to put those two things together.
Speaker: Um, and so, you know, I, I reached out and I said, you know, for what it's worth, this is what my background is, you know, is, would you be interested in hiring me?
Speaker: I thought you maybe had to have real estate experience.
Speaker: And so interviewed for the job, got the job and, uh,
Speaker: worked for a large residential real estate team.
Speaker: Eventually, I became the COO and ran everything on the admin ops side.
Speaker: We grew that to about 50 agents doing 600 transactions back in 2019.
Speaker: And then really, I was at the point where I was ready to finally be the entrepreneur that I learned about.
Speaker: And I always tell people, it just took me 20 years to finally use my major.
Speaker: I know a lot of times people don't use their major in college, but I did.
Speaker: It just took me 20 years to do that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's usually the other way around.
Speaker: You start out using it and then end up going to something else.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So yeah, then I launched my own real estate team, kind of end of 2019 leading into 2020.
Speaker: Shifted that to focusing on working with investors after about a year because I just love investing myself and helping investors.
Speaker: And so then we had an investor-focused real estate team for a couple of years.
Speaker: And then just a couple months ago, I merged my team into a much larger residential team, the Pinnacle team.
Speaker: And we are launching an investor division that I'm heading up and leading.
Speaker: And so my kind of passion is working with investors, helping people invest in real estate.
Speaker: And then I have my Real Freedom podcast on the side as well, where we kind of talk about similar things, building financial freedom through real estate.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So have you been like consistently flipping properties and doing that even whenever you joined the team?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I would say I have a love-hate relationship with flipping.
Speaker: So I had some flips that worked well when I was younger.
Speaker: And then I kind of house hacked my own property.
Speaker: So I had kind of a slow flip, I guess you could say.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And then we did a flip as a team.
Speaker: So when we when we created our investor focus team and decided that's where we were going to go, the other agents on my team didn't have experience with it.
Speaker: Like they liked the idea of, you know, working with investors on a sales side, but they hadn't done an investment property themselves.
Speaker: And so we said, okay, well, let's find a property for us to flip together.
Speaker: And so we identified a property, we got to working on it.
Speaker: And what I found is now that I'm a dad with three kids, when I used to work on my properties, I was newly married, my wife was in grad school.
Speaker: So she was in school a lot.
Speaker: We didn't have any kids.
Speaker: And so I could spend the time to do that.
Speaker: What I learned a couple of years ago flipping is anytime I spend on the property, I'm spending time away from my kids and family.
Speaker: And this was a little bit post-COVID when working, finding people that wanted to work, could work.
Speaker: We were still kind of wearing the masks.
Speaker: And so finding vendors,
Speaker: in the time we needed to find them.
Speaker: It took long.
Speaker: We had that supply chain problem of getting products, vendors getting their products in.
Speaker: And so we ended up doing a lot of the work on the property ourselves.
Speaker: And the thing is, to my own detriment, I love working on those types of things.
Speaker: And so I got sucked in to doing that.
Speaker: And what ended up happening is I would go
Speaker: go there in the morning.
Speaker: I would do some kind of real estate agent type work for an hour or two, go to the property, work from about 10 till five, come home, have dinner with my family.
Speaker: And then from about 8.30 till 2 a.m., I would go work on the house,
Speaker: get home at 2.30 in the morning, wake up and do it again.
Speaker: And then Saturdays all day and Sundays, most of the day, I would be at the property.
Speaker: And so now my wife was essentially a single mom raising our kids because I was working on the property.
Speaker: And so what I was like, hey, wait a second, I'm doing this for my family and it's actually pulling me away from my family.
Speaker: And so at that point, we decided we're not going to do flips anymore.
Speaker: Unless we had a good plan in place to have vendors working on it.
Speaker: I'm not going to do it, even though I love doing it.
Speaker: Like I said, to my own detriment, I kind of get sucked into that type of work because I love to do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so now we're working on larger properties.
Speaker: And so we've done apartment buildings.
Speaker: We closed on a 25 unit apartment building about a year ago.
Speaker: We flipped 11 units out of that through a property manager.
Speaker: So now I'm an arm's length away from getting sucked in to doing that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And then we're under contract on a 20 unit property that's going to close here in about a month.
Speaker: And so I think for me, it's probably...
Speaker: I like the economies, the scale of the larger properties, and then it's a healthy arm's length away where I can't go work on it or get sucked into those things.
Speaker: And so leveraging my time working through great property managers is kind of where I see my future there.
Speaker: So yeah, probably the days of the single family flip slinging a hammer are done for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, like you said, I mean, the purpose of
Speaker: the business and stuff and to bring in more finances is to create that life with your family that you want.
Speaker: And it, and it was good that you recognize that you weren't able to spend as much time with your family because of that.
Speaker: And when, and when were you sleeping either?
Speaker: You know, it didn't sound like you have much sleep in there.
Speaker: Yeah, it was difficult.
Speaker: It was difficult.
Speaker: And I, you know, I even physically, I had complications that came up from that where like I could feel like blood wasn't fully circulating through my hands.
Speaker: And I'm sure it was just kind of a complication of like.
Speaker: just overwork and overstress and then physical labor and I'm not as young as I used to be and that takes its toll.
Speaker: And so, yeah, I was just like this.
Speaker: My highest and best use is not doing that at this point in my life.
Speaker: And so leveraging through others and I can be more helpful for doing things like now, like we're helping to identify great properties that people want to invest in with us and using my experience to
Speaker: to help them fund properties, I think that's really where my highest and best use is now in terms of investing in real estate versus slinging a hammer and painting the house myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Are you starting to see more and more investors getting back into the market now that things are sitting on the market a little bit longer?
Speaker: A lot of people are waiting and seeing on the sidelines.
Speaker: It feels like you have...
Speaker: So sellers selling investment properties are looking at what did this property sell for last year?
Speaker: And they're like, well, I want that or I want more than that.
Speaker: The reality is the interest rate is way higher than it was previously.
Speaker: And so for the buyers, they want to buy something where the numbers make sense.
Speaker: And it's a lot harder to get the numbers to make sense at an 8% interest rate
Speaker: than it was at a 4% interest rate or a 5% interest rate about a year ago.
Speaker: And so you've kind of got this standoff where sellers want top dollar, buyers can't get the numbers to work or get a property to cash flow.
Speaker: And so you're kind of figuring out who are the truly motivated sellers.
Speaker: I've had some properties that I've listed.
Speaker: They've sat for a while.
Speaker: These are investment properties.
Speaker: And my investors are like, well, if I can't get that price, I'll just keep it.
Speaker: And I think that's the other thing too that's different about residential versus an investment property is if I'm renting out this house as a duplex for $1,200, $1,100 per side, I'm getting $2,200, $2,400.
Speaker: I don't need to sell this property for dirt cheap at a low price because...
Speaker: It's making enough money right now as it is.
Speaker: And so that's kind of where we're at right now is the people that have to sell are probably pricing it in a way that's going to cause it to sell.
Speaker: The people that are kind of like, it'd be nice to sell are okay hanging on to it.
Speaker: And then the buyers are just looking for anything and everything that they can get their hands on where the numbers work.
Speaker: And it's just it's fewer or far between than it used to be.
Speaker: And it's not going anywhere for probably the next year or two.
Speaker: And so you've kind of, we're going to see what happens.
Speaker: You know, you've got to be creative just because sellers are pausing and buyers are pausing as an agent.
Speaker: I got to figure out a way to be creative here and make something work.
Speaker: And so, yeah, it's certainly a challenge.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And I've heard too that when you're an investor, you truly make your money on the buy when you purchase the property.
Speaker: Would you agree with that?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, the nice thing is, so talk about a property that's $250,000 or something like that.
Speaker: If I can get the numbers to work at 8%, the numbers will work.
Speaker: And if rates go down, I can refinance.
Speaker: And I think that's where, and what we'll see is when rates go down, buyers are going to flock to the market and prices are going to shoot up.
Speaker: And so I think right now it's like, if you can find a property that works,
Speaker: you better be buying it because the worst, if the numbers work today, you know, rents are going to continue to go up as long as you can mitigate your expenses.
Speaker: If you can make the numbers work at a, you know, seven, 8% interest rate, you're good because you're,
Speaker: It's not like you're ever going to refi for a higher rate because you have to, right?
Speaker: If you refi, it's because you choose to.
Speaker: And so if the rates go down, you can refinance down if you want to.
Speaker: But if the numbers are already working at today's rates, you're good to go.
Speaker: So then you can hang on to that.
Speaker: Well, if rates go down, you refi, prices can shoot up because now all these buyers that don't want to buy at 8% are going to buy at 5% sometime in the future, 6%.
Speaker: Well, then now the prices are going to go up and then you can sell it.
Speaker: So I think if this is the time, you know, I remember hearing this on a real estate investment podcast a while ago.
Speaker: If everybody's running away from the fire, you want to be the one figuring out how to run into the fire.
Speaker: And that's what's happening right now.
Speaker: A lot of investors are like, well, I'll just wait till the rates come down.
Speaker: Well, guess what?
Speaker: Everybody else is waiting for the rates to come down too.
Speaker: So when they do come down, you're going to have a lot more competition.
Speaker: And so we have negotiating power here on these properties where you can negotiate some concessions.
Speaker: You can negotiate a lower price or fixes and things like that, where two years ago, after an inspection, if something came up, the seller would tell you to kick rocks if you asked them to do anything because there's four other buyers lined up behind you to buy it underneath you if you back out.
Speaker: So yeah, if you can get the numbers to work now, great time to buy.
Speaker: And then worst thing that happens in the future is you refinance at a lower rate and get a better payment.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, and I'm not sure about like in your city, but here in Houston, we're not really seeing prices go down that much.
Speaker: I mean, yes, they are.
Speaker: Maybe they've dropped just a little bit, but they're just not inflating as fast as they were over the past two years, but they're still going up.
Speaker: And so-
Speaker: Like you said, when the, when the interest rates come down, we're going to have that crazy market again.
Speaker: So, so if somebody was wanting to start getting into real estate investing, what would be some of like the top tips that you would give them?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I would say find a place to get started and get started.
Speaker: So many people have this paralysis by analysis and there's a lot out there.
Speaker: I can flip, I can buy single family homes, multi-family homes, I can do mobile homes, all these different things.
Speaker: And so for a lot of people, they become a consumer of education on real estate investing and don't take action.
Speaker: And so I just got off of a podcast interview
Speaker: from a guy who got his start in college and he's like, and we just figured we had to get our first property.
Speaker: And once we got our first property, everything else would kind of flow from there.
Speaker: And that's the truth.
Speaker: You know, you may want to do mobile home parks in the future.
Speaker: Maybe you start with a single family home right now to learn because your first property is going to be where a lot of your learning happens and then it's going to get easier and easier and easier.
Speaker: So you got to figure out how to get started.
Speaker: And so I just advise people,
Speaker: you know, scratch and claw and figure out how to, a way to get something.
Speaker: So if you can't afford it yourself, can you find a partner?
Speaker: There's lots of people, experienced people out there that are willing to work with you.
Speaker: I always tell people, I call it the value triangle.
Speaker: So if you think about three sides of a triangle, you've got time, time,
Speaker: on one side, money on one side and expertise on the other side.
Speaker: And do a self-assessment and look at what can I bring to the table of a transaction.
Speaker: If I don't have a lot of expertise and if I don't have a lot of money, well then I probably got to figure out a way to have some time to pour into this.
Speaker: So I might be the sweat equity person, right?
Speaker: I'm going to be the one swinging the hammer, you know, working on stuff late at night to get the experience.
Speaker: And maybe I find an investor partner who has the money.
Speaker: They may or may not have expertise, but they don't have the time.
Speaker: And so your large amount of time can pair well with somebody who has money.
Speaker: and maybe some expertise because they've done it before and they can help you.
Speaker: And so you just got to figure out a way to get in and get started.
Speaker: And it does look different for every person.
Speaker: And so it's kind of hard to put a blanket statement on that, but you just got to figure out like, how do I get in the game somehow?
Speaker: Or can I partner with somebody on a property where we each put up half the money?
Speaker: But if you don't have experience, that's probably good to find somebody with experience and say, Hey,
Speaker: I'm looking to grow.
Speaker: How can we do this together?
Speaker: And then it takes a little bit of time, but I'm happy to talk through kind of each situation with people if they want to reach out because it is different for everybody, but you can't
Speaker: let the fear of failure stop you from getting in.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like I said, most people, they consume content and they kind of have this paralysis by analysis, but they don't take action.
Speaker: But you're, you know, it's like, I'm not going to get my master's degree in real estate investing by not investing.
Speaker: You've got to get in the game.
Speaker: And that's where all your lessons are going to come from, from learning.
Speaker: What would you say as far as like,
Speaker: you know, let's say you are going to get a single family home and you're going to hold it for long, like a long-term rental.
Speaker: What are your thoughts about investing in a different market than not your local market?
Speaker: Because maybe affordability is not there in your local market, but you could go to, I don't know, like Oklahoma and maybe there's affordability there for your first rental.
Speaker: Would you consider that?
Speaker: Or do you think that's a bad idea because you're too far away?
Speaker: Yeah, so I think you've got to look at, there's kind of two ways that people win in investing in real estate, cash flow and appreciation.
Speaker: And so I kind of pictured as a sliding scale.
Speaker: So on one side, you've got a ton of cash flow, no appreciation.
Speaker: On the other side, you've got no cash flow, but a ton of appreciation.
Speaker: And so typically your appreciation is more on the coasts.
Speaker: and your cash flows are your more middle America in the Midwest.
Speaker: And some people want some sort of combo in between.
Speaker: And so, you know, we have a lot of out of state investors that invest in Minnesota because you can find cash flow and you still get some appreciation.
Speaker: But there's markets out there that are cash cows for cash flow, but you can't hope to get appreciation.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: And especially with the economy these last few years, you know, things have swung in a few different directions.
Speaker: So I would say a lot of people like to get a start on the cash flow side because bringing in properties that start to bring in some cash flow now gives you some consistent income coming in that you can then use for future properties.
Speaker: It's hard to buy.
Speaker: I mean, you may want to buy, you know, some people that are on the appreciation side say, well, I make a lot more in appreciation than I ever will on cashflow.
Speaker: And that's true.
Speaker: But if you're buying a property that is losing $800 a month in cashflow, can you afford to pump $800 a month into this property, even though you might make tens of thousands of dollars of more on the sale?
Speaker: And so for most people, that's not a reality.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: So you want to kind of assess on cash flow versus appreciation.
Speaker: And then to your point, your market may not be that.
Speaker: And so if you say, I want cash flow, sorry, it might just not be in your market.
Speaker: However, so then what you'd have to do is find somebody that you trust and
Speaker: in that market that can help you.
Speaker: We work with, like I said, most of our investors are out of state and 95% of them never view the property before they purchase it.
Speaker: It's rare for an investor to fly in and see the property.
Speaker: They're relying on us as experts to
Speaker: go through everything.
Speaker: And so we do a video tour that we send to them.
Speaker: We obviously take photos that we upload into Google Drive and we send to them.
Speaker: We talk to them.
Speaker: And so we pour a lot of time in, but they trust us.
Speaker: And so that's the key to like, yeah, if you want to go invest in Oklahoma, you absolutely can.
Speaker: So then you got to go find who's my expert there.
Speaker: Who's the person that I can trust that
Speaker: I'm putting in a lot of money and I know what I'm, I'm putting my money into.
Speaker: And so, um, it takes time to find those people too.
Speaker: But yeah, if your market doesn't have, have what you need, you may want to look somewhere else.
Speaker: Um, but then what you're giving up is the control of, you know, now I'm trusting somebody else.
Speaker: So what's their resume?
Speaker: Who else have they worked with?
Speaker: How else have they helped people to where you can earn their trust to, to find you a property?
Speaker: and manage the property.
Speaker: It's finding it as one, one thing, but then you got to have somebody that, you know, will take care of that asset while you own it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think knowing yourself and knowing how like versatile you are to risk is important, especially if you're going to invest out a state, because if you're not much, for me, I'm not like a huge risk taker.
Speaker: So I would probably want to, you know,
Speaker: I might, at least in the beginning for the very first one, might want my, might want something that is a little bit closer to home.
Speaker: That way I could run and go check on it if I needed to.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And I tell people to, I mean, yeah, real estate is risky.
Speaker: The stock market's also risky too.
Speaker: You know, crypto, cryptocurrency is also risky.
Speaker: Investing in precious metals, there can be risks too.
Speaker: And so, you know, people want, they want the reward of real estate, but
Speaker: And don't necessarily always want the risk that's associated with that.
Speaker: And so that's where, yeah, you've got to be comfortable.
Speaker: I was talking with another agent earlier this week and they were asking about short term rentals.
Speaker: Well, what if I buy a short term rental and then the city comes and says, hey, we're changing the regulations and you can no longer have a short term rental here.
Speaker: What would you do?
Speaker: And I said, well, you'd have to think through what your next step is, what your potential exit plan is.
Speaker: Can I rent it out as a long-term rental?
Speaker: Or if I make enough money through the short term and I sell it and cut my losses, well, then maybe that's good enough.
Speaker: And he was kind of looking at me for the silver bullet answer.
Speaker: And I said, that's investing in real estate.
Speaker: You do take that risk investing in that property.
Speaker: But you also want the reward too, right?
Speaker: And so you can't expect to have the reward without having some risk associated with it.
Speaker: And I will still say real estate...
Speaker: as a long term play, it can be much safer than a lot of other things out there because you have all these little levers of how you can make money.
Speaker: It's the cash flow coming in.
Speaker: It's your principal getting paid on on your mortgage every month.
Speaker: It's the tax benefits that you get.
Speaker: It's the appreciation that happens.
Speaker: And so there's all these little buckets of ways you can win, too.
Speaker: For my first rental, I had a townhouse.
Speaker: We ended up, it was the townhouse we bought when we first got married and the market tanked.
Speaker: And our property was worth half of what we bought it for.
Speaker: And I said, okay, we wanted to start a family.
Speaker: And I said, well, do we want to start a family living in this townhouse or do we want to go find a place with a house and a yard that we have a little bit more room?
Speaker: Because my wife and I, just the two of us were tight in that townhouse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I said, okay, how do I solve this problem?
Speaker: So I said, I talked to a lender and I said, here's what I'm thinking about doing.
Speaker: Could I even qualify for another property if I rented this out?
Speaker: And he said, okay, we run the numbers.
Speaker: You're right on the debt to income ratio.
Speaker: It would work.
Speaker: And so I said, okay, so now I assess the next step.
Speaker: Then I was like, okay, the next step here is I'd have to rent this out.
Speaker: I didn't feel comfortable buying my next property until I knew I had somebody that I wanted to rent to.
Speaker: So my wife had a coworker.
Speaker: It was a husband and wife who were planning to move back out east to where their family was in a couple of years.
Speaker: So they didn't want to buy anything.
Speaker: They just wanted to rent.
Speaker: And these were people that we hung out with after hours, after work.
Speaker: And so we started to talk to them, hey, here's what we're looking to do.
Speaker: And they're like, well, we might be interested in renting your townhouse.
Speaker: So I figured out my next step, I qualified for a mortgage and I had two great people that were going to be my first renters.
Speaker: And so now I was willing to take that risk.
Speaker: So kind of going back to the risk, I limited it a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we ended up renting that out.
Speaker: They only stayed there a year.
Speaker: And so then I had to go find a new renter.
Speaker: But it was knowing I had that first year covered, bought me a little bit of time, made me comfortable taking that risk.
Speaker: And then I found another renter and then another renter.
Speaker: And then I had the same renter for seven years.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Which was super easy.
Speaker: They were fantastic tenants.
Speaker: And so, you know, sometimes we hear complaints about bad tenants.
Speaker: And I was like, well, what if you have good tenants?
Speaker: You know, let's look at the positives, too.
Speaker: You might be able to find some amazing tenants, which we had.
Speaker: And so that's really how I got started.
Speaker: And so, you know, going back to my advice of you got to figure out a way to get started for me.
Speaker: I was underwater in my home.
Speaker: All of our neighbors foreclosed and short sailed.
Speaker: I said, no, I'm going to stick with this property, but how can I make it work?
Speaker: And I found a way to make it work.
Speaker: And then that led into the next property, which led into the next property.
Speaker: And I learned a lot through that process.
Speaker: So it's how to get started to get better.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, that's a good, that's a good, good point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get started to get better.
Speaker: So you mentioned that you have an investor agent mastermind group.
Speaker: Would you touch on that a little bit?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So kind of going back, I saw in real estate, there's so many people in real estate as agents on the residential side, admin side, that just don't know enough about investing in real estate and leveraging this goldmine of opportunity that they're in in real estate.
Speaker: And the example that I use is...
Speaker: If I was a trader on Wall Street and I got inside information about a stock and I went and bought it and I made money off of it, well, I can go to jail for insider trading, right?
Speaker: So I'm using my inside intel to help me make money.
Speaker: That's illegal on Wall Street.
Speaker: But in real estate, it's perfectly legal.
Speaker: I have the MLS.
Speaker: I have amazing vendors, lenders, tax people.
Speaker: There's all the trades people.
Speaker: plumbers, electricians, and all that.
Speaker: I'm sitting on all this knowledge and information and tools and resources and people, and I'm not leveraging it to the best of my ability to help my financial future.
Speaker: And I see in these Facebook groups where these realtors are like, well, what's your retirement plan?
Speaker: And a lot of them say, well, I just love my clients so much, I'll just work till the day I die.
Speaker: And that might be true.
Speaker: But what if you work to the day that you die because you wanted to, not because you're saying that, because the reality is you don't have a retirement plan.
Speaker: I was talking with somebody the other week that's 60 years old in real estate.
Speaker: And they're like, I got to get my retirement figured out.
Speaker: I'm 60.
Speaker: I was like,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What's the two best times to plant a tree 20 years ago, right?
Speaker: Or today.
Speaker: So you didn't do it 20 years ago.
Speaker: So now we got to start today.
Speaker: And so I saw these people in real estate that just didn't know what to do to leverage this great entrepreneurial playground of opportunity to build wealth and gain time and financial freedom.
Speaker: So I launched my podcast to highlight people that are in real estate doing what they love, working on building their future.
Speaker: And so this is just kind of an extension of that.
Speaker: So I was like, what's another way that we can, you know, the podcast is fantastic.
Speaker: I love the content we're putting out there, but I want to do something more one-on-one helping people.
Speaker: And so I put together this investor agent mastermind group where it's people in real estate that either want to work with investors and learn the basics of investing in real estate.
Speaker: or they want to do it themselves and kind of figure out a path.
Speaker: So I put together a mastermind group.
Speaker: We meet every week.
Speaker: We've got a Facebook group together, and we're just helping each other on how do we grow our real estate?
Speaker: How do we help make more money through more closings of helping investors?
Speaker: But it's just a group of agents, any state, any brokerage,
Speaker: And even non-agents, we haven't had any non-agents, but if you're in real estate, but you're interested in just learning more about investing, great.
Speaker: And so it's a group.
Speaker: Right now we have it free for people to join.
Speaker: We're just building community, helping educate on how do I find a deal?
Speaker: How do I analyze a deal?
Speaker: How do I present a deal to an investor?
Speaker: And there's all these other things that we can work on in the future.
Speaker: So it's really just helping people, helping to kind of hold their hand a little bit more, give them kind of the next couple of steps in their investing journey or their sales journey, working with investors to help them build wealth.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: How does somebody go about finding that group?
Speaker: Yeah, so you can go to agentinvestormastermind.com.
Speaker: And so agentinvestormastermind.com and check it out and see what's on there.
Speaker: But then if you wanna reach out to me,
Speaker: like I mentioned, you know, as of the time of this recording, we're just having it free for people to get into it and kind of build that initial community.
Speaker: You can just reach out to me.
Speaker: It's Mike at Real Freedom.
Speaker: It's R-E-L freedom.com.
Speaker: And I'll get you the promo code to make sure that you get in for free.
Speaker: But it's really just to help people on their journey.
Speaker: And the reality is, it takes time, right?
Speaker: Like you're not going to
Speaker: start to learn about investing in real estate in the next week, buy your first property.
Speaker: And so for a lot of people, it's delayed gratification.
Speaker: It might take three, six, 12 months of working at this thing to go get your first property.
Speaker: And for a lot of people that, you know, they want to, hey, in two weeks, I want to learn everything I need to know.
Speaker: It's just not like that.
Speaker: It takes time, but it's also a lifetime path where if I learn something now,
Speaker: I'm going to be able to build and build and build more and more knowledge to make more and more money as we continue to grow.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, I'm so glad that you put or gave us that information in how to find you.
Speaker: So we're kind of coming to a close.
Speaker: So I have my closing questions, but usually that's my last one.
Speaker: But how else can somebody find you?
Speaker: Are you on Instagram?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know you said you all have a Facebook group, but how would somebody find you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Facebook's great.
Speaker: Mike Swenson.
Speaker: Hopefully there's not a ton of them out there.
Speaker: LinkedIn is another great spot.
Speaker: So if you if you find me on LinkedIn, that's another one.
Speaker: And then, yeah, you can feel free to email me at any time.
Speaker: Mike at Real Freedom and that's REL Freedom dot com.
Speaker: reach out.
Speaker: And I just love helping people.
Speaker: So it's even, hey, I don't even know what I want to do in real estate.
Speaker: Or I did this one thing and I don't know my next steps.
Speaker: That's exactly the type of conversation I love having with people to help provide some clarity on figuring out what your next couple of steps are for your future path in real estate.
Speaker: Because my paths change too.
Speaker: You know, it changes and that's okay.
Speaker: But it's, you know, you don't always know the next step until you take that step.
Speaker: So that's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wholeheartedly believe that.
Speaker: So what are a couple of or what is a book or a podcast that's been super influential in your life?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So for me, I mean, I guess I mentioned it before, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Speaker: And I know that's kind of the answer that most people, a lot of real estate investors take.
Speaker: It helps you to think differently about how you approach life and how you approach what you're going to spend your time on and what you're going to spend your money on.
Speaker: If you spend your time focusing on building assets that are... We always talked with our agents back in my residential days about
Speaker: You know, running into the wind or having the wind at your back.
Speaker: And for me, that book made me think about how can I go through life with a little bit more wind at my back than feeling like I'm running into the wind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I think that's, you know, for me, it was it was a mindset shift.
Speaker: of how I'm approaching what I'm accomplishing in life.
Speaker: And yeah, it takes risks to do that, but it really made me think about how do I do something different?
Speaker: Because going back to the story of get a good job, say for your retirement, and you'll have a safe, stable retirement, my parents were the ones that told me that.
Speaker: Both of them, their jobs...
Speaker: changed five years before retirement, where it was either you got to jump through these hoops, or we found somebody, a new college student, you know, that can do your job for cheaper.
Speaker: And so now you're out.
Speaker: And so for the, my parents who kind of told me safe, stable is the way to go.
Speaker: Neither, both of them were kind of forced into an earlier retirement.
Speaker: Now, fortunately they planned ahead and they had the financial wherewithal to have the savings saved up, but there's a lot of people that don't have that.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: I saw their plan not reach what they hoped at the finish line.
Speaker: And so now I'm looking at how do I put the eggs in my basket to be in control of my future versus having another person make that decision for me.
Speaker: Yeah, that's such a good point.
Speaker: Well, and then lastly, what's one piece of advice you would give somebody who wants to step out and chase their dreams?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: kind of like getting started investing in real estate.
Speaker: You got to figure out how to get started because... And it might start small, but you don't really know what the future is going to hold.
Speaker: And so for me, even when I worked in my nonprofit, I started a financial blog that
Speaker: like what would this be, maybe 10, 10, 12 years ago, probably a few years before I even got into real estate, because I wanted to help people with thinking through building wealth.
Speaker: And at that time, it's like I had some real estate experience.
Speaker: I kind of started this blog because I knew I wanted to get my message out there.
Speaker: And then it wasn't until a few years later that I got into real estate full time that I learned more about real estate.
Speaker: And then it was a few years later, I learned more about real estate investing.
Speaker: And here I am now, an agent that works with investors, invests in apartment buildings and runs a podcast talking about building financial freedom.
Speaker: That all started because I rented out my first property because I had to.
Speaker: And I started this blog and then I got into real estate and these little pieces start to build up more and more momentum.
Speaker: And so figure out a way to get started.
Speaker: Whatever you're excited about or whatever lights you up.
Speaker: Don't worry about how is it going to make me money today, but figure out a way to pursue that passion because that passion is going to build and grow.
Speaker: And then you'll figure out the next step and you'll figure out the next step.
Speaker: But you got to get started on that dream so that you can see it to fruition five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Such great advice.
Speaker: And just like you said, just take the next step.
Speaker: You don't know what that looks like or what the future holds.
Speaker: And whenever you're going through that whole situation with your townhouse, I mean...
Speaker: it looked like a bad situation.
Speaker: And then now look at how great it's actually turned out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we had to own it.
Speaker: I mean, we owned it for 15 years before we sold it.
Speaker: But over time, we had refinanced it, got a better rate, a lower payment.
Speaker: The appreciation continued to happen.
Speaker: We had the tax benefits.
Speaker: And so it took time to get there.
Speaker: And that's the thing about real estate is there might be a bad year or two, but over time, you're going to tend to be on the upside.
Speaker: It might just be two years, five years, 10 years.
Speaker: But over time, you will make money in real estate with a good investment.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker: That was so much great wisdom.
Speaker: And I can't wait for everybody to listen to it because I know they're just going to get so much out of it.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much, Christy, for having me on.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks so much for tuning in today.
Speaker: If you'd be so kind and leave me a quick review, I would love to hear from you.
Speaker: You can also connect with me on Instagram at Christy Winfrey.
Speaker: If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit that follow button.
Speaker: And until next time, keep chasing those dreams, my friend.
Speaker: Remember, you are worth it.
