How Real Estate Helped Save Me

October 5, 2015 by Lacie

When I was a little girl I would come up with business ideas. I would sit around and daydream about things that I could sell. I would see things out in my everyday life and think to myself, “that would be a good business.” Although it might seem silly to some people, it was enjoyable for me.

I started my first business when I was nine years old. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. She was (and still is) a remarkable artist and craftswoman.

One day she taught me how to make dream catcher earrings. Do you know what a dream catcher is? In Native American culture, a dream catcher is a handmade object based on a hoop, incorporating a loose net (it looks like a spider’s web). There is a traditional belief that a dream catcher filters a person’s dreams, trapping the bad ones and letting only the good ones through.

The earrings I made looked very similar to this.

Anyways, my grandmother got the idea for us to make these earrings and I absolutely loved mine. I wore them to school the next day and got so many complements. One teacher loved them so much and when I told her that I made them, she asked if I could make her a pair as well. My earrings business was born that day! After that I would take orders from teachers and students at school and go home in the evening and make more earrings.

I didn’t charge much, but I remember that at the end of the month I had over $250! I had never seen that much cash in my little life, and I was so excited that I was able to make people happy with something that I created. There is something so wonderful about doing something that no one else has thought of and creating something and sharing it with people (and getting paid for the effort!).

Montana, the place I will always call home.

As I got older, I started to put ideas of business out of my mind. My love of helping people started to draw me toward the medical field, and I thought that I would eventually become a doctor. I was a nerdy kid and I got many invitations to go to camps and events because of my nerd skills. When I was a junior in high school, I got an invitation to a month long business program. The program was competitive but was held all over the U.S. at very prestigious colleges. Now, at first, I wasn’t interested in it at all. But my parents said that it might be a good experience for me, even if I didn’t want to go into business. I would still get to spend a month away from home with all expenses paid, and maybe it would lead to other opportunities at that college down the road.

Needless to say that I was accepted to the program and got to spend a month in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson Business School. It was such a great experience and completely changed my life. I spent the month with 30 young talented people, many that I count as friends today. Most importantly, it reignited my love for entrepreneurship. The highlight of the program was when my team of six won the product marketing competition at General Mills headquarters beating out the other four teams.

At the end of the program we were all told that if we wanted to attend college there after we graduating high school, we would be offered a very large scholarship. Not long after, I decided that I wanted to make the University of Minnesota my college home and decided to major in Marketing.

Next week I will talk about what happened after I started college.

The Best Way to Find Your Niche

September 2, 2015 by Lacie

How do you go about finding your real estate niche (your area of real estate expertise) if you don’t know anything about real estate? How can you become an expert when you have no clue where to start?

Mentoring

Mentoring isn’t a new trend, but I feel like it has come back in style recently. Mentoring is a relationship you develop with someone who is more knowledgeable in an area than you are. A mentor will help you learn about that particular subject and offer their advice. So in our case, we are looking for mentors that are real estate investors.

Why You Need a Mentor

They will hold you accountable.
You will avoid costly mistakes by listening to their advice.
They can help you build your network.
You will become a better investor, faster.

How to Find Potential Mentors

Real estate investors are everywhere! You probably just didn’t realize it, as most tend to keep a low profile. The following are great ways to find local investors that could become your mentor:

Local Real Estate Groups

You might not realize this, but there are usually several real estate investor groups in your area. You can check out these websites to see if you have a group in your area:

National REIA

REI Club

Unfortunately, you can’t find these groups in every area. However, you still might be able to find a group by searching for “State name landlord association” or even “county name state name landlord association”. Most of the members of these groups have quite a bit of experience in real estate and love to share their knowledge.

Local Small Business Owners

Often local small business owners become successful in their business, and then decide to buy real estate as a way to protect and grow their wealth. Do you have a favorite neighborhood restaurant that is locally owned? Ask the owner if they invest in real estate. You might be surprised that they often do. . One of my very first business mentors owned a pizza shop that he started when he was 18 years old. We met him when he was in his early 30’s; by that time he owned the entire plaza that the pizza shop was located in. I think he could relate to me and my husband as we were so young when we were first starting out. He is a dear friend of ours and I know that his wisdom in those early years helped us avoid several costly decisions.

Newspaper Classified Ads

If all else fails, you can go through your local newspaper’s classified ads and call the number that is listed in the ad. Tell the person a little about yourself and that you are interested in getting into real estate. Offer to buy them a cup of coffee to pick their brain.

What You Should Do

Once you find a potential mentor, you can ask them if they would be willing to let you interview them about what they do. Offer to buy them coffee or take them to lunch. Try to make it casual and fun.

Before you show up for your meeting, do a little homework to make the most of it. Research the local real estate industry and the person you’ll be meeting with (if you can) so you have a context for the experience. Come prepared with questions, but be ready to listen. It is very important that you are respectful of the investor’s time. If you tell them that the meeting will only take one hour, be sure to keep track of time, and end the meeting in one hour. You will not be able to gather all of the information you want from one meeting with an investor, but you should see it as a great start to a fruitful relationship.

What to Ask an Investor

Here are some sample questions that you can ask an investor:

What made you want to go into real estate?
Can you tell me about the first property you bought?
How many properties do you currently have?
What’s your favorite type of property to buy and why?
What are some of your greatest challenges?
How have you overcome those challenges?
What are some characteristics of a successful investor?
What other people do you work with on a regular basis to make you successful?
What are some of your favorite books?
Do you have any routines or habits that you think have gotten you to where you are today?
What is something you wish you would have known when you were just starting out?

Building the Mentoring Relationship

At the end of the first meeting, you can ask the investor if they would be willing for you to follow them for a day so you can get a more in depth look at what a typical day is like for them. If they are willing, you should be prepared to help out where needed. If that goes well, you might want to ask if they would be interested in having coffee with you once a month. This is how a mentorship relationship starts. Don’t look at the relationship as a one-sided “What can he do for me”, but be willing to volunteer to help them as needed. You want to make sure that the investor would be gaining something from the experience as well. I’m sure that if you are helpful and polite, you will find a great real estate mentor who can help you on your path to success.

Being Broke Can Be Your Greatest Asset

August 28, 2015 by Lacie

As many of you may know, Brad and I bought our first rental property when I was 20 and Brad was 22. We were broke college students with a baby. When I say broke, I mean like, we would sometimes have $40 in our bank account and would need to make it through for a week on beans and rice. While I’m not sure I’d ever want to go back to those days, I know that those difficult times allowed us to take the risks that we never would have done otherwise. There are several reasons why being broke helped make us who we are today.

You Have Nothing to Lose

The truly freeing aspect of being broke is that you have nothing to lose. Like in our situation, we were already broke college students that had a child, so we figured why not try something crazy like invest in real estate? The worst thing that would happen would be that we would fail and have to go out and get real jobs like all of our friends were doing anyway, so the downside didn’t seem that bad.

You Work Harder

We didn’t focus on what would happen if we failed, because we didn’t think we would. I know that may sound naïve, but when we bought our first property, we just had the attitude that this was going to work. This was the path that we had chosen so we were all in. I think that sometimes people make a choice and then get scared or try to talk themselves out of it. We didn’t make that an option for ourselves, and were willing to do whatever we could to make it work.

Since we had very little money, we used one thing we did have: time. We put in a good many hours of sweat equity into our first few properties. This not only saved us money, but now that we hire out many of our property jobs, we know what we want and are less likely to get taken advantage of.

You Get Creative

Sometimes constraints can free you up to be more creative. If you have an unlimited budget and unlimited time, it becomes almost overwhelming with all the choices you would have. You would get so overwhelmed with all of the things that you COULD do, that you never end up doing anything. It’s kind of like Netflix. I love Netflix, but I think I actually spend more time scrolling through the entire list of movie options than I actually do watching movies. Why? So many choices.

When you have no money, you get creative with how you are going to accomplish your goal. This applied to us in our real estate adventures. We would figure out creative ways to finance a property. Our first property deal was great structurally, but was ugly on the inside. We spent the little money that we had on paint and refinishing hardwood floors that we found under old, nasty carpet. That first deal would not have happened if we weren’t broke, because we wouldn’t have had the constraints forcing the use of our creativity.

Success Can Be Redefined

Sometimes being successful is not always measured in dollars. There is value in learning, and to us the property that we invested in (among other businesses we tried) was a huge education. We were both taking classes in business at the time, but those were more theory than substance. There really was no better business education for us than the business projects that we were working on when we were broke. We still own those first few properties, and the lessons that we have learned from them have brought us to where we are today.

I Am NOT Your Guru

August 7, 2015 by Lacie

I am not your real estate guru. I do not have all of the answers. I don’t profess to know exactly what to do, when to do it, and how much money it will take exactly for you to “become successful” in real estate; whatever that means. I get so tired of hearing from these gurus, that if you just pay them thousands upon thousands of dollars then you can do no work, live on a beach, and make thousands of dollars every month. I know why they are popular, because it sounds amazing, but it’s not true! I’m sorry guys, but I want to be very honest with you. Brad and I are actually involved in real estate investing every day in a small town. We started when we were broke college students, and have built up our little empire, but it was not easy. We are just ordinary people, and we are just like you. We are not “gurus” and we don’t live on a beach collecting checks every month and never have to do any work. The bulk of the work is when you first purchase a property and get it fixed up, but there is always a little bit of time and work that you have to put in to keep your money flowing in. Passive income is not truly passive, it takes way less work than a traditional job, but it does still involve work.

I just read about a group of people that charge you for a $2,000 seminar that is really a sales pitch for a $40,000 program that “guarantees” you access to $500,000. It’s actually a system that makes you go out and find deals, and then you bring it back to this group and they “finance” it for you and take a percentage of the deal every month. They are acting like a bank (a very high interest one) and then making you pay thousands of dollars for access to this! Guys, that’s crazy!

Truly, you CAN be successful in real estate without the gurus; you don’t even need our help! You can definitely do it; I know you can, because we did. All Brad and I would like to do is to teach you to be able to be a real estate investor faster. You can avoid a ton of our mistakes and heartaches if you take our advice, but ultimately you are the one making the choices, and we want to help YOU become successful. We don’t see you as someone we can use to make us more money. We love real estate investing so much and want to share it with others. We want to teach you to fish, so to speak, so that you have the tools to do this on your own. There is a reason that real estate investing gets a bad rap, and that’s because there are so many people out there trying to scam others. There are a lot of people out there like you and me, real people that do this and make good money at it. You just need to be cautious about anyone who tells you that they have all of the answers. Please, be smart guys, and be careful.

What We Don’t Spend Money On

June 22, 2015 by Lacie

Earlier, I had written a post on what we spend our money on. I thought it might also be helpful if I talked a bit on what we don’t spend money on, or rather, things that we value less.

Cars

A car is not an investment. This is a mistake that I see young people make over and over. I need something that gets me safely from one point to another, other than that, I really don’t care very much about how my car looks. Currently, I drive a 2002 Saturn. We bought it used about six years ago. I basically use it to get around town and don’t make very long car trips in it, so it’s perfect. The paint is chipping a bit in the back and the rear spoiler is missing because Brad ripped it off when we had a big storm this past winter while he was trying to push my car out of a snow bank in front of the house. I get made fun of quite a bit for it, as basically everyone I know drives a nice new car, even a good majority of the teenagers I know. It brings me a strange joy to have a car that we paid $3,000 and have only put a couple hundred dollars into over the years. While a college girl I know was lamenting to me about her $400 a month car payment, I was secretly reveling in the fact that I have no car payments. I also have young children, and they tend to, you know, tear stuff up. Not to worry! My car is old, so I don’t yell at my youngest when he wants to bring a collection of rocks and sticks with him in the car. The problem with having a nice new car when you are a teenager is that you get used to it. You get used to the creature comforts of leather seats and a sun roof. Then in a couple of years, when you get your first job, you have to get a new car. You can’t downgrade, oh the horror of hand cranked windows! So you perpetuate the cycle of new car ownership for life. But if you started out like I did, you might think a little differently. My first car was an 82’ Subaru GL, and it cost $500. That thing was like a tank, and it had barbed wire scratches on the side where someone probably ran through a fence. Compared to that, my Saturn is luxury. It has air conditioning! When the Saturn dies, which might be in the next year, I will get a “new” used car. I will probably be looking for something from 2010-2013, which will be much cheaper than a brand new car, but will be super awesome for me. It’s all about perspective, and using our money wisely.

Fancy “Toys”

We don’t own a boat, or jet skis, or 4-wheelers, or anything like that. Those things are fun, but they are a huge drain on your bank account. The majority of the people that I know that own those things also rarely use them. Not only that, but you usually have to purchase other expensive things in order to use those items. For example, you need a truck and a trailer to haul your boat. If we ever feel the urge to use some of these items…we borrow them from a friend for free.

Furniture

We don’t have nice new furniture. Most of the items we have were either given to us by family members, bought very cheaply from IKEA, or left by renters. You would be surprised how many nice items renters leave behind when they move out. Our dining room table and chairs is from our first rental property. I sanded it down and repainted it and it looks great! We have slowly been upgrading our items a little at a time, but with young children, we don’t see a need for us to have really nice furniture, at least until the boys are older.

Designer Clothes

So this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but we don’t spend a lot of money on clothes either. We do a good bit of thrift shopping and discount-type stores (like TJ Max and Marshalls). Brad has a penchant for being really hard on his clothes, even some of the nicer dress shirts he has owned can’t seem to stand up to him. We also have some rough and tumble boys and I like to let them play and be kids and not worry about getting their outfits dirty. For myself, I try to find around 10-12 items that I like to wear for a particular season and then just rotate those items through, and might try to change the accessories a bit. I am not fashionable by any means, but I don’t really think most people care how others are dressed as long as you look presentable. I only have so many decisions I can make in a day, and by not worrying too much about what I’m going to wear, I save valuable brain space for other, more important decisions.

All of these items basically boil down to the fact that we really don’t care to impress others with money or the appearance of us having money. What do you choose to do without or less of?

How We Spend Our Money

June 15, 2015 by Lacie

No matter your income, you have a choice in how you spend the money that you have. The way that you choose to spend your money can have a dramatic effect on whether you are creating wealth or creating poverty. We are not typical Americans in that we spend our money on some things that most Americans don’t value as much. Here are some of the unconventional things that we spend our money on:

Relationship Building Relationships are extremely important to us. We will often have people over to our house for dinner. We may take people out to lunch or for coffee and pay for the meal. Sometimes I send books to friends and relatives that may have been inspirational for me. I get to share something that has impacted me, and they get to know that I am thinking about them.

Travel

We travel several times a year. As my family is mostly in Montana, we try to go out to visit once a year or so. My mom and stepdad recently moved to Alaska and we will be visiting them in a few weeks. Brad and I also enjoy Latin American countries, and I’ve been to Guatemala and Puerto Rico in the last year. We love to travel, and even took long trips when we were poor college students. We also take our children with us on quite a few of our trips. I hear people make excuses all of the time why they can’t go anywhere. It’s sad. We hear this often from people when they have kids. I think this is a huge disservice to your children. My boys love to travel, and it has helped them with so many skills. They have learned how to have a good attitude even when they are tired (early morning flights), how to pack their own bags and be responsible for them, meeting new people and experiences new cultures, gaining a sense of independence (our oldest son has flown by himself to visit his grandparents), overcoming difficult circumstances and making the best of it (missing flights). I could go on and on. I am a better person because of travelling frequently and I think it is helping to shape the character of my children. You will never regret spending money on experiences that you will always remember; whereas that brand new car won’t be so great in five years.

Health

This is another big thing that I feel like most Americans don’t spend money on. Our health is one of our most valuable assets. We do our best to eat healthy by buying meat and produce from local farmers. We have a small garden of our own that provides a little as well. I try to cook the majority of our food at home from scratch using basic whole foods. My oldest son and I work out at a gym several times a week, and we have a rowing machine in our basement that Brad uses quite often. Our family also invests in a few supplements to help our health. In addition, we spend money on chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage when needed to help us heal from everything from allergies to back pain. All of these can add up in cost, but we feel that the money we spend on these things can only help us in the long run.

Personal Development

This one goes along with health, but is something a little different. Brad and I both are constantly looking for ways to improve ourselves. We read books, listen to podcasts, do courses, and watch documentaries all in order to try to become better people. I have a goal to read 26 books this year which averages out to a book every two weeks. I wouldn’t be near the person I am today without investing in myself and making it a priority.

Investments

We spend a good amount of our money on investments, and most of that is put into properties. If our choice is to buy new living room furniture or put money down on a new property, we will choose the latter almost every time. Our family has also put a good amount of money into whole life insurances policies in case something were to happen to Brad or I so that our children would still be financially secure. Brad could probably talk more about this at length at another time. You don’t realize just how many people pass away without life insurance and the family is left having to scramble to cover the funeral expenses, let alone any other expenses that were left behind. It’s very sad, and can be avoided by just spending a little bit every month.

Charity

We choose to give 10% of our money to our church. In addition to that, there are times when we feel like we can help someone financially, so we do that. We bought a bed for friends that had been sleeping on a 30 year old mattress that had springs poking them in the back every night. We found out and had a new bed delivered to them. We try to help young people as much as we can. It could be that they are going on a mission’s trip and are raising money for that so we will put money towards that for them. I try to incorporate the kids sometimes as well. Last summer on a very hot day, I took the boys and we went and bought cold drinks and snacks and parked our car in front of the local homeless shelter and handed things out to people. The people were so happy, and the boys enjoyed doing it. Please understand me; I am not saying this to brag about how great we are, but to get you thinking about how you currently spend your money. Money is simply a tool that you can use, how are you using it?

What Makes a Successful Investor?

June 8, 2015 by Lacie

I have been contemplating for the past few days on why we decided to invest in real estate. There were so many other areas of business that either Brad or I could have focused on (and that we tried). But, real estate has been a love of ours for over a decade. Here are a few of the traits that I think a successful real estate investor must develop:

Learn how to delegate properly. This is something that we struggled with for many years. Some of it was a lack of money, so to make up for that lack of money, we used our own time. Now, however, we do more and more delegating to other people. It’s not that we can’t do everything; we have and certainly could again. It’s that a person only has so many hours in a day, and so much space in their brain. By hiring out tasks, it frees us to focus on the things that only we can do, and makes all of our efforts more productive as a result.

Invest in yourself. The most successful people I know take time to become better people. I remember many nights when I’d be up late painting listening to Tony Robbins or Dave Ramsey books on cd when I was 20 years old. Now I listen to podcasts in the car or read in the evenings before bed. No one else is more invested in your future success than you are, and you cannot rely on traditional schooling to give you the tools to make you successful.

Be strategic, and set goals. I have always been very good about setting goals for myself. I have yearly goals as well as longer term goals. Do I always accomplish every single goal? Not necessarily. For example, my goal last year was to learn to snowboard and go snowboarding 5 times. I did learn to snowboard, but I only was able to go 4 times. So did I fail in meeting my goal? I guess technically yes, but I still counted it as a win, as I never would have gone snowboarding at all without the goal. Sometimes goals can help push us to do something that we never would have done otherwise.

Be proud of what you do. This is kind of an old school value, but I still believe that it holds true. Brad and I are very proud of the properties we own. We may buy a place that needs work, but we put the work in to make it a nice place to live for someone. The term “slumlord” is not applicable to us, as we provide nice clean places for our tenants to live in. We are also always upgrading our properties, and adding more value for current and future tenants. Take what you do seriously.

Don’t be afraid of mistakes. I am a perfectionist at heart, so this is something that has been very difficult for me. I think the educational system also instills a fear of mistakes that can carry on into your adult life if you are not conscious of it. It is okay to make mistakes. If you are not making mistakes, that probably means that you are not actually doing anything, and you are just sitting there being paralyzed by fear. It’s okay to analyze opportunities, but at a certain point you have to move forward and act. Use the mistakes and become a problem solver, which is a valuable skill that many people are lacking.

Get comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. I can’t remember where I learned this from, but I try to remind myself of this often. That your success in life is judged by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have. Just think about this for a moment. If you think about choices you have made in your past, many can be traced back to the uncomfortable conversation you did or did not have.

What else does it take to be a successful investor?

The Passive Income Myth

April 20, 2015 by Lacie Leave a Comment

We think that real estate investing is one of the best things you can do to help your family’s financial situation, but as with most passive income streams, there are quite a few misconceptions that are commonly thought of that are simply untrue.

Passive income is completely passive

There is nothing that you can work at for several months, get a structure in place, and start collecting money without ever having to do anything again. We have some excellent renters; there is one family that has rented from us for the last 10 years! They keep the place spotless, have no desire to move, and send us a check every month on time. Every landlord’s dream. However, we still check in with them, and we are even talking about remodeling their kitchen as it needs an update. Do they take up a lot of our time? No, probably not even an hour a month, but some of our time is still required to make the property that they are renting from us a success.

Rental Property takes up way more time than its worth.

On the other end of the spectrum are people that think that investing in rental property will take up all of your time and be an unbearable nightmare. I guess it can be difficult, if you don’t have the right systems in place, and there are some times that we are busier than others. However, overall, there is very little out there that you can do with part time hours that can make the amount of money that you make in real estate. This is one of the reasons we love it so much!

If you build it they will come.

Some people believe that if you put together a passive income stream, that people will just automatically show up. Whether in blogs, books, or real estate, this is not true. If you buy a property for cheap but in a bad neighborhood, you probably won’t do very well, as many low hassle tenants want a nice area to live in. Having the drive to do something is great, but you have to do the right things in order to be successful.

Those are just a few of the myths that I’ve been confronted with on occasion. What about you? Would you like to share any myths about passive income that you have heard?