Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What I've learned through many failed partnerships, because we all go through it, you know, I've had some good ones and I had some medium and some that are really not good. But what you learn is kind of who do you work best with? You know what I mean? Who complements your strengths? And I think that is one thing so many investors miss doing. They just kind of jump in. This sounds like a good idea. Let's just do it. So they jump in first and then try to figure it out. And that's where things go wrong because they haven't figured out, are they a good match?
Are they a good fit, and who else do they need in the mix for what they're missing? That's probably one of my biggest takeaways in the last nine years.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: And I agree with you. If you're not a good match for skills and personalities, that you complement each other, then it's not going to be, it's not going to work out over time.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: You might have one or two good deals. The other thing, too, is we get into these joint venture partnerships thinking it's going to be forever, and it's okay to not. It's okay to go into it and think, we're going to just do this one. If it works, hey, let's do one more. And then if it doesn't, you know, there's, there's a season to everything, and it's okay to not continue, you know, and not be locked in. I think that was my biggest mistake on the first partnership, was I locked in. I did the LLC first. I was like, never, ever again.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Hey, everybody, and welcome back to trust this, the master series. Today. Today I'm here with the wonderful Jenny Atkins, who's been through it and back, and we're going to talk about her story and her journey and how she got there and where she is today. Before I do that, though, I just want to remind you, we do nothing, advertise. We don't sell dog food. We don't sell insurance. We don't sell car warranties here on trust. This one thing we do ask is if you get anything out of our podcast, pay the fee by just liking it, subscribing, tell your friends about it, share it, and get us out there, because what we're trying to do is get ideas out there. We were just talking about that. We want to get some ideas out there and get people talking. So with that, I want to welcome Jenny Adkins to the show today.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: It's wonderful to have you. It's been a long time no see.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Great to catch up.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And so many times we just talk on the phone or online. You can't really have great conversations like you can in.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Right. It was great to be able to be here in person, face to face.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: So tell us where. Where are you now? What are you doing right now?
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Right now I am working. I still have my retail business. I'm running a team for the investor group with Exp.
I run a meetup once a month for female investors or women that want to learn to invest, whether they're an agent or not.
That's free to the public once a month. And I have short term, midterm, long term rentals that I manage myself, and I have a pool business on the side with my husband, so we're kind of full.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Free days all day long. Right. And weekends, too. I'm sure your weekends are very 30.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Minutes here and there.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
So tell me about the investor group. I want to. I want to hear more about that.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: So the investor group started with the investor community, which is kind of sparked from a couple of women that are really high level investors. They do a lot of multifamily. Started out flipping together up in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and they were going to all these big meetups and conferences around the country and realizing how few women were in the space. So one day, they invited all the women at this conference to have lunch together. Well, and the sad part is, out of 500 people there, all these women fit at one table, and they said, there's something wrong with this. Women deserve a seat at the table and a voice. And so they started meeting weekly, and then they decided to start meetups, and then it grew. Liz Faircloth's husband, Matt Faircloth, has been part of biggerpockets for some time, and they then created the invest her show. So Liz Faircloth and Andressa Guadali host the investor show probably once a week on bigger pockets, but it's syndicated everywhere. So they started that. We now have 50 plus meetups around the country and Canada, and then from that, they started the investor group so that we can serve agents. So the idea is for us to have a group of agents in every major market around America so that investors that want to know about a market and have boots on the ground and find what they're looking for have an agent in that area that can help now.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: And that's through ExP.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: That is through exP.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: So it's an exp group. So if there are realtors listening to this who want to, especially women realtors who want to work with investors. The investor group through Exp would be one of those to go to.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so important. I think every agent needs to understand what investors look at, how they operate, what they use for financing. And I think financing is one of the biggest issues we're having right now. You know, you have agents that don't understand seller financing or subject to. And not all are bad, but not all are good.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Right. It really kind of comes down to what do you understand about it and what is the need of your seller.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: How can we help them? So it's, you know, the meetups are a great place to go learn. So, you know, no matter where you are, you should find a meetup in your area that's talking about this, because we bring in different speakers every month to talk on different subjects, you know, everything from financing to finding deals to how do you analyze it, to insurance and the vendors and all that sort of stuff.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Well, now we were talking. This is one of the things that's always, I've never quite understood. It's, I mean, realtor industry, real estate industry has typically been dominated by women, at least during my entire life, and I'm 53 now.
But you were saying. Yeah, but not in the investor field. Why do you think that is, that women are such industry drivers in the real estate industry, but when it comes to the investor side of real estate, it was the women just weren't there that much.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Well, I think it all comes down to money and managing money. And I think we've been in a culture for many, many years, traditionally speaking, right. The man of the house handled the money, and so everyone assumed that he had more knowledge than the woman. Now, many of us married people know that who pays the bills?
The woman is really managing the checkbook. And even though we haven't been equally paid for many years. And so there's just this assumption that we don't know as much. And the reality is, statistically speaking, women are better investors. They are more successful over the long haul. They're not quick and risky. They look at the overall picture. They're more well rounded in thinking about the long term impact of what's going to happen in their community and to their family.
So I just think that they've never been looked at seriously enough, and we're changing that. I mean, there's so many more women coming out as investors today. We just had investor Con in Austin, Texas, and it's so incredible to have 500 women in the room that are all on the same page, and there's no competition, and they're there to encourage each other. And we had, for the second time, Kim Kiyosaki as our keynote speaker, and she came in and she said, I'm just so impressed by you women because, you know, we're trying to emulate her, like, in what she's done in this space. But even there, you know, she has kind of always been second to Robert in their company, so she's really kind of coming out on her own, too, which is so incredible to see. And I just think that more and more women are stepping out and stepping up and just feeling confident enough to take the risk because they have support now from other women. You know, the whole point of our meetups is so that women at any level can come into a room and ask questions and not feel stupid. There's no bad questions, you know, and you're not going to be teased or said, oh, why don't you know that? You know, we're there to just kind of support one another.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Well, speaking of Kim Kiyosaki. Okay, so Robert wrote rich dad, poor dad. When is she gonna write rich mom, poor mom? She did.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: She did. And I've listened to it. It's very good. She's so much more of a practical storyteller. So I recommend it. If any woman is out there listening to go listen to it on audible, because she's actually the speaker.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: She read it.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: She reads it. She has several books out there, but she did rich woman.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: It is excellent. It really is excellent because she walks through the stories of women and kind of where they're at in their journey from beginning and to helping them get where they need to be.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Well, now, you talk. You talk a lot about that, but also what I'm hearing here is you personally, I don't think this is a female male woman man thing. Empathy. And you have empathy, and I know that you went through some tough times, especially during the great recession.
What exactly happened, and how do you think that affected your abilities now, your capabilities now?
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's kind of one of the reasons I became an investor. So my husband and I took a job in Washington. We left Orlando, went out there for a couple years and sold and came back. Well, I thought we were doing so much better. When we came back, we kind of overbought because it was kind of the height, 2004.
So we bought in another neighborhood. And then, of course, when the whole crash happened, my husband lost his job, and so we survived. Maybe a year. We ended up short selling our house in 2010. And at that time, I had no education financially. I was working for a church. And so him being unemployed and me really not making any money, I did it so I could be a stay at home mom and work part time really changed everything for us. And it took him a year to get placed again with another company. So during that time is when he went to work for somebody doing pools, because we just needed to pay the bills. And, you know, realized even once he got another job, I'm not going to let this go because it's a stream of income. You know, he stopped working for somebody else, went and got his license to do it on our own. And so we kept that as a side business. But we did short sell our house. We did have to rent, and we had two little kids. And I thought, why? Why am I in this place? You know, you always just do this, why? For a while. And once I started in the real estate space and getting educated, I thought that's what those letters were coming to my house about. I didn't even know what they were, and I didn't know that any of it was real. I didn't have anybody knock on my door and offer help. I think at the time, we tried to go to the bank, and the bank at that time wasn't willing to help.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Right? That was early on. They weren't set up for short sales yet. They didn't know what to do.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: They would not help. And so I did have a friend help me do the short sale.
And then in 2015, so it was five years we were renting.
2015, I got the bug. The church I was at, we were multi site. I was managing a lot. And I just realized, you know, this is getting really big. It's not what I want to do forever. And if I'm ever going to make a change, now's the time. So I went to one of those real estate weekend, you know, guru things. And, you know, I don't regret the education. It was a lot of money. It was a lot of money. I had just gotten debt free from all of that mess. I'd just gotten debt free. And then we spent it all in this education program.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: You put it on a credit card.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Oh, we did everything.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah, we did it all wrong.
And then it took us about ten months to find our first deal to flip a house. It was in Winter park, and we overspent and didn't borrow enough. And so, again, here comes the credit cards. So it took us about a year and a week to finally flip and sell that house, and not that you.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Were counting a year and a week.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: I was so worried that hard money lender was going to foreclose on the house right away, again, uneducated.
So when all that was done, I was, like, licking my wounds, going, I don't know what I'm going to do. And here I quit my job. And so I'm like, what am I going to do? My husband's like, I know what you're going to do. He's like, you're going to go do pools for a while. And I just, oh, that was hard. Hot in the middle of summer, I'm driving a truck, and I'm doing pools by myself. And I thought, this is the worst misery I could ever ask. And I give kudos to all my techs. I love them because they're willing to do what I don't want to do. And I just had a friend that I realized was an investor. He's a pretty big investor and went to church with him.
My kid's Sunday school teacher for 15 years never told me he was doing what he was doing. And so I was like, why didn't you ever tell me you were an investor? He goes, I don't know. You didn't ask. So he started taking me to different events, and I would go to them, and I'd learn a little more and learn a little more. And then one day he called, and he's like, so what are you doing? And I was like, stop talking. You already know what I'm doing. And so he said, well, I kind of need help. I'm getting really busy. So I said, I'll be there tomorrow. And I literally started working for him. The next morning, I showed up. We were in the new view building, partnered with his friend Glenn, and then I also shared an office with Augie and Commonwealth. And so I got put in this space of just learning how all of this creative financing is going on and how they're buying up these houses. And I thought, this is where I need to be, you know? So I started doing tons of stuff for free just to be in the space and watching lots of investors coming in and out of the office. And then I learned about turnkey. So we started selling turnkey spaces and selling that to all the affiliates. You know, you've got the big, the real estate guys. You've got real wealth network.
Keith Weinhold is get rich education up in the Washington, and there were a few others, and so we put together kind of a program and property management to sell these properties to out of state investors. And so that's how I got started, working with a lot of investors.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: And by Turnkey, meaning you guys would find the house, fix up the house, and then get tenants in it and have it. Did you put the tenants in it and then had it?
[00:15:44] Speaker A: We would put tenants in property management and everything, have the property management. Everything was in place. Everything was turnkey for an investor to just come in and buy it, buy.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: It, and then they're just sitting there getting the rent.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: And the cool thing was, in his property management company, they partnered with all kinds of property management companies around the country. So for one of the affiliates, we would go and meet a couple days before you had, like, a show where everybody would talk about their inventory. But the coolest thing was all of these property managers would share their systems, their processes, to make sure everybody was doing it the same. So an investor would get the same product no matter where they went. I loved that.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: I think that's a thing, too. I think an industry, any industry, a lot of people go, well, this is my way of doing it. I'm going to keep it a secret and close, but actually, by sharing how you do things, it standardizes a lot to make it streamlined so it actually can create more business for everyone, not just. Not just you.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Well, and it creates credibility.
You know, I come off more credible when I share what I know. Right. And people will look at me like the expert rather than thinking I'm competition.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: You know, there's so much more to collaboration versus competition.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Right.
So what was the biggest thing that you learned from that first experience of going to that, that first weekend boot camp is probably what it was.
And from that experience, maybe not from what you actually learned from the boot camp, but from that, just paying that money and going to that. What was the biggest takeaway you had from that?
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Well, I knew I had an addiction to real estate before I even did that.
I have a background in design, and my dad owned his own flooring business, and so I kind of grew up going into people's houses and seeing whenever I had a chance, you know, I'd be around the vendors and businesses. And so I always loved design, and I thought I had the bug. I knew I did when I went. And then when I just started learning a little bit about the financial side and all the things you could do, my mind was blown. I really, like, left that weekend. Like, I don't know if this company's right, but I know I'm probably never going to leave this industry. I just, you know, even though I lost money on that first one, I was like, you know what? I could walk away from this or I can figure it out. And I decided to figure it out and stick it out, and I just knew I just needed to meet the right people to help me. And that's really what all of this is about. It's like, none of us do this on our own. We need other people to help us learn what we need to learn and ask questions about things we don't know.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Yeah, sounds like you've got that great network around you now. What do you do to continue building your network?
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Well, I go to, you know, I'm part of CFRI. That helps me network a lot. I go to lots of different network meetups. It's a great place to meet people, even online.
I'm part of several communities, even on Facebook, where it's, you know, it's a zoom world we're in now, so I don't have to be in person to learn. And I've done a lot of coaching, a lot of coaching. I mean, that program that I started with was just the first of many. I've joined many mentorships, and I, since 2015, I've never been without a coach.
It's so important to have somebody, and it's worth the money you're paying, you know, to have somebody to run your deals by to just go, am I thinking about this right? Is there something I'm missing? What do I nothing know, like, poke holes in this for me and help me learn? And I think that's really, and being around the people that know more than me is probably the most important thing. I just, I don't know if it's inserting myself, but I just make a point of talking to people that I know no more than me because that's where I want to be. I want to know what they know.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Because it's going to help me and what I'm doing and it's going to help me help somebody else.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Yeah. I've always said, and I've always heard, too, if you're, if you look around your group of friends, people you surround yourself with, and you are the smartest one in the group, you need to get a new set of friends.
If you are the richest one, most wealthy one in the group, you need to get another group of friends. And going back to coaches, I've, I've been in coaching since 2008. That's when the market crashed and I was like, I have no idea how to run a business. I've done very well, but, and I got a coach and then I've not been without a coach since. And my coach has always explained it to me. They said, well, look there. Imagine you can subscribe to Apple Fitness PlUs and you can, or Peloton and you can work out at your house or you can join a gym that's a little more commitment, or you can get a personal trainer. Now, which one do you think is going to have the most results from the time that they do spend working out? And that's going to be the ones with the personal trainer. And I find that the coaches really, they, they do, they give you that different perspective. They go, well, I can hear you because I've talked to you long enough. I know you well enough, and I know how you're looking at this. Right, but how about this? Have you thought of it this way instead? They can really give you a mind shift change that.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: You're like, I've had coaches that do that and they, like, see the expression just completely change on my face because I just get it.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: You know, and you're right about the personal trainer. I just skipped right from the, at home to the personal trainer. You know, it's you. I hate to say that you get what you pay for oftentimes. That's a, the truth.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: No, it is.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: You know, it really is. I mean, sometimes people get lucky, you know, but it's not, it's not going to be forever, right. You know, you got lucky on one.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Thing and that's the way it was. I had been very well, number one, I opened my law firm in 2004, right before the market just exploded and I did real estate closings. So it was like it just fell into your lap.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: And then in 2007, 2008, literally, it came to a screeching halt and I'm sitting there like, okay, now, how do I do this? How do I market? How do I sell? How do I build a team, a crew to, to do the work? And I had no clue. And I was like, oh, I probably need, probably need to get a coach and join a program to do that. So we were talking about, so what does a typical day for you look like?
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, I wish I could say. I mean, I do live by my calendar, but the calendar can change a lot. So I start my morning at 05:00 a.m.
every day. I know I just have to because if I don't, I wake up, my mind's racing, and I don't get anything done. You know, I can be really, I don't think I'm the add, but I can be, I don't know.
I think many of us have that tendency that are entrepreneurs. But I have to get up and I have to, I have to give an hour to myself. Just me. Myself. And I might, I ignore my dog because she's right there. And I have to meditate and pray and walk my dog and exercise. I just, if I don't do those things, there's no telling what my day is going to look like because the rest of it is chaos. I live in managed chaos the rest of the day. I know that I'm either dealing with, you know, bills or managing my rentals or running out to a showing or putting together a deal or meeting a seller. You know, when you, when you're still out there meeting sellers all the time, those appointments are very random. So I, I've never been good at dedicating. Okay, I have one day to do just this and focus on it. And plus, I'm still part of, like I said, a lot of coaching. So I'm on a lot of calls. I'm managing my real estate team. And so I'm just probably constantly on the phone, even in my car. I stop for meetings and then I try to make it home and be home and have dinner with my husband. And then it's so funny because almost every night I'm like, okay, are we going to work on your business or mine tonight? And we just kind of have decided that that's our life and as long as we're doing it together, we're good. You know, it. Could we consider it kind of a date night? You know, whether we're going to quote somebody's pool or he's just running a quick repair, or I make him run out to Daytona with me, you know, that's just what we do together.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Well, I think what you said, there is very important. A lot of people, you know, they talk about, well, I've got a spouse or I've got a partner who, they don't really support me in what I do, or they get angry that I work so much and they go, well, you have no work life balance, but they really find their work life balance is actually working with their spouse in.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Evenings, different fields, but very together.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Right. It's still business.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: It's still business. You know, he still has a w two. He's, you know, working a corporate day job still, but he does that. And, I mean, there's times because he works remote. He's like, I gotta go do this. Can you drive me there while I'm working on my computer? And so I do, you know, we just make it work. And I'm so fortunate because that's not the case for, you know, so many where their spouse either doesn't support them or they are just totally separate. We've kind of managed to incorporate all of this, our lives because we probably have, you know, five streams of income that we have to manage.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: That's a big thing I'm hearing lately is a lot of people are talking about they have to diversify their streams of income. And I think a big part of that, what really brought that to the forefront was the great Recession. Any of us who went through that, that wound, the scar, is that we feel that we have to. It's like, I can't, I can't just have my w two job anymore. I have to have other things.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Absolutely true. The fear of that happening again is what propels us to do all that we're doing, because I'm not willing to go through it again, and it doesn't need to. I'm like, we're smart enough to figure this out, and so we're okay. We're like, it's not forever. It's a season of our life. We're empty nesters. We're going to go until we can't or don't want to anymore, and then we'll stop. But we enjoy it. We enjoy. No matter what we're doing, we enjoy it.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: I think that's the thing, too, is we used to go, okay, 65, I retire and then do what I think we've all, especially x generation, we've, we've changed our mindset of, eh, I may be working till I'm in my seventies or eighties. You know, just because we live longer, we have a longer health span, and we can.
Yeah. What did you have to, what is something that you had learned that you had to unlearn to move forward at some point?
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Well, trusting myself and taking action, you know, I, you know, when all of this happened, when we lost our house and then I got into this and then I lost again, you know, I got debt free before I got into real estate investing, and I lost a bunch again, you know, after that first flip. And I'm like, how do I not do that again? So I really wasn't trusting myself, you know, financially, and I had to just go. The only way forward is through it, and I have to take action. I have to actually move on something that I'm learning or I'm never going to go anywhere, you know? And that was hard, you know, again, coming from, you know, when you grow up in a family where your dad ran everything and generally speaking, men controlled the money, you know, just really being a woman in the space and trusting myself to go out and do it was something I had to really learn. My mindset really had to change, especially after losing a couple times along the way. And coaching is what helped me through it, you know, really helped me change my mindset and having people encourage me and trust me and say, you do know what you're talking about. You have learned enough. You know, look at. And looking back, you know, that, that book, the gap in the gain.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Such a wonderful book to really look back and go, but look what you did do in that timeframe. Look what you did learn, you know, not to do that again because you figured it out. And I think that's so important for people taking the risk to jump into investing. It's not about thinking you're going to do it right all the way through. It's learning how to fail and keep going.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah. I was at a talk that Tiger woods former coach gave, and he said, failure is just feedback. It's just feedback from the world of what did you, what did, what should you have learned from this feedback that you got from this failure? And I took that and the gap in the gain, one of the things that we do here, and I learned it through my coaching programs. I attend whenever we have a quarterly meeting or an annual meeting, we start the meeting with, everybody fills out, okay, what were your biggest wins over the past 90 days, personally, and what were your biggest wins over the past 90 days, professionally? And it really forces you to go, gosh, what did, because you're so focused all the time of, well, here's where we've got to go. Here's where we're trying to get to. And, oh, we're such failures because we've not gotten there. But anybody looking at you are looking at your business from the outside, who they may be five years behind you, and they're like, my God, these people got together. Yeah, they're so great. They're moving, they're shaking. They're perfect. But you're looking at it from the inside, going up, we're such failures, we're never gonna get there. So every 90 days, every quarter, you have to look back and go, okay, I've got to come up with at least three things that we're great I gotta have at least three things that I succeeded in.
And speaking of. So you mentor folks. What is, what's one of the biggest pieces of advice? As you find advice, you find that you're giving people when they are starting out, they're. Jenny, five years ago. What do you tell them?
[00:30:43] Speaker A: I tell them to think about the things they're really good at and start there, because if we focus on that, we can figure out how to utilize that in the real estate space. Right. And then we fill in the gap of what you don't have. Right. So let's focus on what you're good at. Let's figure out how to maximize that. You know, whether you're an agent or not. Right. Let's figure out how to maximize that. What are the things you're good at? And how can we bring in other people to help you build, you know, the structure for what you don't have?
Because I was not good at any of it when I started. I mean, I feel like I've got a few things down, but definitely not all of them.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Nobody can ever have.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: No, no. And even if you do, no, you shouldn't. Nobody should ever try to do it all, because then you're only marginal.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: You're not really good at it.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Right.
How do you figure out, I mean, do you have any kind of tests or any.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Oh, I've taken all the tests, the disc test, you know, I took the predictive index test, which one of my coaches was a consultant for many, many years in, and I was like, wow. But what was really great about that test is it told me everything that I'm really good at and not good at and how to find the people to fill in, you know? And so what I've learned through many failed partnerships, because we all go through it, you know, I've had some good ones and I had some medium and some that are really not good. But what you learn is kind of who do you work best with? You know what I mean? Who complements your strengths? And I think that is one thing so many investors miss doing. They just kind of jump in. This sounds like a good idea. Let's just do it. So they jump in first and then try to figure it out. And that's where things go wrong, is because they haven't figured out, are they a good match, are they a good fit, and who else do they need in the mix for what they're missing? That's probably one of my biggest takeaways in the last nine years.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's been one of our recurring themes with people when entrepreneurs, business owners, real estate investors, partnerships have always been either the bane or the boon of their existence. Sometimes they start out just so great and they're getting along and they turn nasty, or they just sort of fritter out. And I agree with you. It's, if you're not a good match for skills and personalities that you complement each other, then it's not going to be, it's not going to work out over time.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: You might have one or two good deals, and that's okay, too. I think the other thing, too, is we get into these joint venture partnerships thinking it's going to be forever, and it's okay to not, it's okay to go into it and think, we're going to just do this one. It works. Hey, let's do one more. And then if it doesn't, you know, there's, there's a season to everything, and it's okay to not continue, you know, and not be locked in. I think that was my biggest mistake on the first partnership, was I locked in. I did the LLC first. I was like, never again.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, we, I get that a lot as an attorney. People come to me and say, hey, we just met at this boot camp, and we love each other to death, and we want to start an LLC together. And I go, this is like meeting each other on Tinder and proposing marriage.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: I mean, that's really that big of a loop.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: That's exactly right, too. It's really that bad?
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Don't do that.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: There's so many ways to do it. That's so much better.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Oh, goodness. What is the, what's the biggest achievement that you're most proud of?
[00:34:48] Speaker A: I think I'm proud that I kept going after failing, you know, more than once. And I, you know, I've done, I don't know, 40, 45 flips on my own. I've partnered with several people. I've, you know, bought. I, you know, have buy and hold. Now I feel like I started too late on the buy and hold. I feel like I missed an opportunity because I didn't ask the right questions early on. Enough. I'm thinking I could have kept probably most of those 40 some flips.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Just kept them.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: I could have not sold them, you know, because I had enough equity in them to keep them. And I just, I didn't think ahead, you know, because I was just new at it. And I think one of the biggest mistakes I made was just not keeping more. And I think that I would tell any new investors, figure out how to keep what you're doing, you know, because owning real estate is how we build wealth.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Now, your first flip, you admit, was a disaster.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: You did that, and now you've done 40 to 50 more. If I had been sitting there with you the day after that year and a week, and you had just finished that a year and a week later, and I go, you know what, Jenny?
In a few years, we're going to be sitting down and you're going to be talking about how you've done 40 or 50 of these. What would you have thought when I said that?
[00:36:15] Speaker A: I honestly don't know. I'd be like, I think I still had the fortitude to think I was going to push through it, but I knew I was in such a mess, I didn't know if I was going to be broke again trying to figure it out. And there's a lot of people getting in that don't have money, right. And that holds them back. And I understand that. I was there. I had that mental block that thought, I can't do real estate unless I have money. And I'm trying to do this and I'm trying to do it right, and I just don't know where to find it right. And what I would say is every new investor goes through that unless they're, you know, they have a really good w two job where they've set aside money, but that's not the case for a lot of people. And that was me. And so I partnered with people that had experience, so I made myself valuable, which is when I said I worked for free. I did a lot of things for free for other people to be in the space to learn what I need to know to earn the credibility for them to trust me, to loan money to me, you know. And then it was at a new view Ira, you know, self directed IRA event that someone introduced me to an investor. He wasn't really an investor. He had just put his money there, just recently retired, and said, if you want to loan money, this is the girl to talk to.
That introduction started me. I still borrow money from that same person today.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: And it's worked out for both of you?
[00:37:52] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness, yes. Yes.
I've probably borrowed well over $2 million, you know, just whatever I needed. And, you know, there's just credibility that comes with that. The people that you meet that will introduce you to the future, people that you need to know so valuable. That's why networking is so important, because if you bring value to somebody, they're going to introduce you to somebody else that you need on your team.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Well, and what I'm hearing is, again, I hear this from a lot of folks, it's the grit to get back up.
You had that experience of a year and a week, and it sounds to me like you had the grit, number one, to get back up and not go, okay, I'll never do that again.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Maybe not that deal.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like, I'm giving up, and I will never, ever buy another house and try to flip it again, because a lot of people, probably 99% of people out there in this world, that's exactly what they would have done.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: My partners on that, in that deal did.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: They walked away and never came back.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: They're done.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: And. But you. You said, well, no, that was a lesson.
And I'm going to surround myself by other people so I can learn more from. From their experience, and I'm going to network, and I'm going to get in with the right people to give me the financial backing to where I don't have to worry about it.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: I also had a really supportive husband that supported every decision I made, and I was also a very big risk taker. I mean, even after we lost our house and we had gotten debt free. And I'm getting back into this. I kid you not. This used to be in the back of my head. I would, like, weigh the risk, and I'd be like, is this gonna make me homeless?
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Okay, that's a big question. I know.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: I'd be like, is this gonna make me homeless? And I'm like, no. There's a lot of people that love me. I can make this work. I just. That was in my head, like, I'm gonna make this work, right? It's not gonna wreck me. I'm not gonna let it wreck me. So I'm just gonna keep moving forward.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Well, and I think that's the questions you ask yourself are a big part of this. It's like, you know, most people would be like, well, is this going to prevent me from going on a vacation this year? Your question is, will this make me homeless?
[00:40:12] Speaker A: It's got to be because I'd already lost a house.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: And you survived everything, right.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: And you survived it. So you're like, hey, if I can survive that, I can survive not getting a vacation this year, you know? Exactly. I can. I can survive homelessness. Oh, my gosh. Well, what are you reading? I.
Right now that are so.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: The book I just finished, I really love, because it, again, it's mindset, and it's called the mountain is you. And it talks all about how, you know, our.
Our playbook. You know, as we. We grew up, we have this thought of how the world's supposed to be. So our worldview. And it was just like I was talking about how we think about money and the roles we have in our life and the obstacles we literally put in front of ourselves because of the way we were thinking. And what I really like about it is she just really breaks it down. But not only does she break it down, she gives you tools on how to work through it, like, literally a track to run on. And I think that's so helpful. It's like, I just finished it. I want to start it again. You know, I love books that are practical. You know, I love learning different strategies. You know, real estate by the numbers was a really good one for me to learn. Okay, I've got to figure out this financial stuff that's more of a reference book. But I also like, how am I being? How am I being and how am I moving forward? Because the way I interact with people is going to affect the. How I do business.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: Right, right. Well, coming to the end of the show here, our number one mission is to help people aspire to a better life. Whether it's our audience members, our clients, customers, crew members, vendors, everybody around us, we want to help everybody aspire to a better life. Who is someone in your life who has helped you aspire to a better life?
[00:42:15] Speaker A: You know, I thought about that. I thought, you know, I could pick somebody from the last few years, but when I really go back, I think that my dad is the one that put the entrepreneurial spirit in me. I started working at a very young age.
We had a family of seven. He managed to, you know, run his business and keep a roof over our heads. And it wasn't easy. You know, this was back in the seventies and eighties when, like, your interest rate on your house was 15% to 20%. And we struggled. We really did struggle as a family. But I just never forget the things that we had to sit together as a family every night for dinner. There was no excuse not to be there. And I remember him sitting there at the dinner table and always telling me, you can do whatever you want, and don't ever count on somebody else to do it for you.
You do whatever you're capable of doing because you can. And I think that instilled in me the work ethic that I have today. Like, everything is figureoutable as long as.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: It doesn't make you homeless, right?
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Well, even then, you know, you figure.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Out something, then you'll figure that out, too.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: You know it's the only way to have fun in this world, right?
[00:43:35] Speaker B: Figure it out. Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for coming and sharing your stories with us today. It's been great. I want to thank everybody for watching. I hope you got something out of this again. If you did, please share it. Like it, subscribe and until next time, trust this.
Thanks for listening to this edition of trust this. If you got something out of it, please press like and subscribe and give us a five star review to help us reach others who can benefit from this series. Until next time, keep aspiring to a better life.
