Women in Real Estate Investing

Speaker 1: [Music] the amount of wealth that women control right now is 10 trillion in the United States in the next 3 to5 years that's going to 30 trillion investable cash and there's a lot of reasons for that right but the confidence is an all-time low for women to make the decisions from an investment perspective and so we start with this passion now there's a need and women actually outperform men as investors so we know women once they are investing they do very well now it's a matter of what do they need in their own toolkit to feel comfortable and confident hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the Shelt fit experience with Melanie join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in thank you for joining us Liz you are the co-founder of the real estate investor what inspired you to launch your business it's great to be here my business partner Andress and I about five years ago would be getting together we were partnering on real estate investment deals and we both had separate businesses but we would come together and both of us had this shared passion we discovered as you get to know people and get to know what else they're interested in supporting women that's look very differently to both of us along our Journeys but when we came together we both had this shared passion to support not just women women in investing in particular we'd go to conferences together we' go to events together and we always felt like we're the only women there and if anyone and anyone came up to us they're like oh are you here with your husband and we're like I'm like no we're here by ourselves because we are investors we knew that there was an opportunity to create a safe space for women that potentially wanted to connect with other women who were investing in that space our mission is to empower women to live financially free and balanced lives and five years later we have a podcast published by B Pockets which is the leader in a lot of education for the Real Estate Investors we have 50 plus meetups across the country of local groups coming together to support each other we do our invest Heron once a year we have about 500 women that come together in one location to really get not just the business and the real estate investing tips but really the mindset and the intentionality of living life on your own terms and whatever that looks like to you and we're doing a lot of different to support women in this space of really getting the confidence to support the camaraderie so they're not feeling alone in their investing journey and with a company like she built it obviously we're very much in support of women here and I used to work for the Dodgers and so I understand what it's like to be in many rooms in professional sports in particular and other rooms where there's not a lot of women and you look to groups to find that support and I purchased my first investment property in 2007 it gives a sense of empowerment and an independence that you keep with you and that you carry with you and it's evolving right because what we started with many years ago we had a hunch there was a need but you don't ever really know if there's a need until you really start to say okay what are we looking to do we believe it's a women's Financial right to be financially independent and it's it's a life or death for some women this is not just a making wealthy women wealthier this could be for life or death for certain women and we take that seriously as a literally a right to be able to hold your own in terms of your own Financial stability and then independence and then freedom of course so it's much deeper than just buying a rental property or or what have you years ago right it wasn't that long ago women weren't even able to get their own credit card the deed of the property there's so much still out there that women are still not taken seriously especially not just taken seriously but more importantly women are not able to have the space to get what they need to create that Financial wherewithal and passed along to other Generations yes and in real estate if you're remodeling or building that's a whole other side of not a lot of women at all and not a lot of people used to hearing decisions and choices made by women correct when we came together and we were partnering me on Jus in particular she was running all the construction I had another role of finding the deal and putting the money together and she was really the day-to-day operat on the projects she has her own construction boots she knows construction much better than I did and she always would tell me stories of different situations in certain contractors like you know do you need to run this by your husband no I write your check I do believe that there are a lot of good people out there and a lot of great contractors and women there's they're still not being treated the way I believe that they should be and that they that they do have the purse strings to to make the calls on their own what's interesting I've done a lot of research now right because this is our space of women and building the community and investing the amount of wealth that women control right now is 10 trillion in the United States in the next three to five years that's going to 30 trillion investable cash that and there's a lot of reasons for that right uh but the confidence is an all-time low for women to make the decisions from an investment perspective and so we started with this passion now there's a need and women actually outperform men as investors so we know women once they are investing they do very well now it's a matter of what do they need in their own toolkit to feel comfortable and confident they already have everything they need in my opinion they just may need some support or some a community or something that helps them get over the hurdle of making the call and that's really why we exist and I love that you're giving women the financial confidence and also if they need to remodel a home that's another set of confidence I remember sitting down with a contractor and he says where's your notepad well I have all the construction design elements in my head ask me a question whatever question you want it's all up here and they you you don't come to the table with that expectation all the time and so it's really great that you're empowering women to move forward in the space you have investor meetups across the country and in Canada like you mentioned tell us about them and how could someone that is investing in real estate get involved yeah the reason when we started our podcast it's funny I was told early on that we would run out of women because we said we're going to interview just women and the gentleman in my community said you're gon to run out out of women there's just not that many investors I said I don't think we're gonna have a problem there 400 episodes later we haven't run out of any women to interview but that then led to us saying it would be great to get get women together because there's something in the power of getting together right we all know that confidence builds and a lot of women will complain like hey I have friends I have neighbors when I say hey I I want to invest or they want to talk about something that's the substance of business entrepreneurship investing it's not easy for certain women to find those women in their circles in their local circles so so we said wouldn't be great to have investor meetups where women locally can get together and create that kind of local board if you will where they're sharing resources whether they're investing locally or they're investing out of state because different markets people want to invest in and so that's where we launched the Philadelphia group me and Andressa like divided and conquered and then women in our Facebook group would say where's this group or that group or I want to start a group in Texas and then at the time we're like we can't get to Texas you think little when you're growing you're like no we can create a community of other leaders leading these chapters so that's how we built that and women can find the meetups on our website these are a local group to get connected and learn from each other because these leaders are tend to be a little more schooled in they have Investments so they've been there and there's always something to give there's always something to get and that's the kind of community we're building a safe space there was a woman we started a group in Lancaster and is and I went up there we have some we have a few properties there so I went out there and saw the properties and then went to the Meetup and that's really cool to to sit there and just be part of the community myself and so I'm sitting there and everyone's introducing themselves and this woman gets up and she'd introduced herself and she said I've been wanting to invest for five years and my husband said I I would make a terrible investor but I didn't believe him I just went recently went through a divorce and I'm so excited about being here in a room of women because I feel like this will help me get over the hump of investing that's really powerful that's why these groups exist thankfully she didn't believe him didn't believe him that believed us and I think it's like anything when you see others like yourself whether it's a busy professional or somebody's working full-time or that single mom or the woman that's in her 50s her 6s and she's I'm done with this career I want to do something different so there's so many different types of women different ages ethnicities backgrounds and that's what's really need about what we're trying to build is women can see others in themselves and say okay that type of woman did it how can I do it and Life Changes different phases of life and she built it you know we encourage women to make leaps I bought my first property I learned through that at least I had the confidence to make that First Leap then we built a home new build completely learned a lot through that process then we remodeled a house built in 1927 have to say a new build was much easier but learned a lot through that process too it's like you know just you learn every time you take on the challenge you learn along the way um you also host invest Huracan tell us about that yeah during covid we at the time had a virtual Summit and that was our first time we got women together in our community and the women had this camaraderie and like they wanted to do this more and then eventually in person yeah we're coming up to our third year next June 2024 be our third conference and that was a leap of faith to put a conference on especially in this day and age we were told how much it is to even have it at these types of venues and we didn't want to just have it at some random venue we wanted to have a venue that women wanted to come to and feel comfortable every year we have a different theme next year is called Allin and it's about this the idea that women are going through this financial Revolution where more wealth is getting transferred yet do they have the confidence do they have the skills they already have what they need I believe internally but externally maybe some tools in their toolbox to feel comfortable and confident we took literally everything that we hated about conferences and said we would never do those and everything we absolutely loved about conferences that we've been to because we've been to so many we've spoken at them and said we're going to do more of that it feels like a big Retreat there's 500 women that come they're sitting in circles though so they do lots of pair and share lots of internal work we do some deep breaths we do some meditating we do some Keynotes around real estate investing the economy and then there's some sessions around business and there's some sessions around self-care but it feels like this really powerful Community because women are there to do business these are serious women that are there to do deals and I think women are ready to get out we're ready to go to conferences again we've been in our house enough we've done enough virtual virtual is great especially if you're speaking to someone across the country or the world but we're ready to be in person again if someone was interested in getting involved in real estate what is the first thing you suggest that they do I think I've been investing for 17 years so if you said is this a good time to invest I believe it's always could be and always a good time to invest depending on the strategy the market and what you're willing to do and not do right now interest rates are higher you have certain asset classes like multif family that's overpriced so I'm more of a multif family investor so some someone said I want to buy a multif family and say a duplex or a Triplex I would say there's always an element of finding motivated sellers so that's never gone out of style that's never oh that doesn't matter now and I think that's always important and always critical now it's a matter of how do you finance the deal how do you actually buy the property so if you really wanted to buy a let's use a duplex the interest rates are higher so if you do your analysis go this doesn't pencil out which is a lot of women's frustration women who actually have rental properties are frustrated right now because their analysis is just not making sense with the interest rates so then the question is how do women creatively Finance how do I buy this property in a different way and so that's where I believe right now you need to have multiple Tools in your toolkit to find deals and to finance deals so the greatest education think right now if you're getting started it's obviously be great to get connected to other women doing what you want to do but also start to say okay what are not only the markets but what are my goals with investing am I looking to park my money somewhere for seven to 10 years am I looking to make cash flow am I looking to make a chunk of money am I looking to replace my job or do I love my job and I'm just looking for some a retirement plan that's the first thing beyond the having multiple Tools in your toolkit right now is to take a step back always and say okay where do I want to be in five years financially and how can real estate as an investment get me there and I think most people don't do that they just look at it as it's just part of a an investment plan it's part of your financial plan it's all supposed to get you somewhere you want to get to and then you can start to say okay base on that answer what's maybe the right Market the right type of property I should buy where is there problems in society right now right now there's a housing shortage everywhere affordable housing just purely affordable places for people to live how can we part of that solution and so I'm a big fan of looking at what's happening in the current economy and saying how can I solve a problem and buy my first rental property and I think you can do both but it's not or it's and and so if you're not part of any sort of problem solving solution right now and you're literally just trying to buy a property off the MLS and not get creative that could be harder right now and if you're able to do that in this climate it's only going to get easier as yeah like thumbs up to you that's awesome but knowing where you want to be and knowing how real estate as an investment can get you there and also how interested you are how active you want to be how passive you want to be there's a lot of different strategies there's a lot of different ways to make money in this business and you want to figure out that like the the easiest way to do that to be perfectly Frank if you need 8% 10% are you really looking to replace your job so you need some consistent chunks of money so you can take care of yourself financially all those answers yield a different strategy now the having multiple Tools in your toolkits I think is critical especially financing SKS what do you think is the most important element in leadership when scaling and building a business I love that question it's funny you say that the word leadership because so many women especially growing their portfolios don't always see themselves as a leader they sometimes even say oh I'm not a leader I don't work in corporate and they think leadership is Corporate you're leading yourself you are a leader of your own life I love that question I think for scaling I think the most most important thing is I've scaled a couple different businesses and made mistakes and things have taken longer than I've wanted them to that's the other piece of it I think the key to scaling is a lot of self-work a lot of not just self-reflection but willing to do the work on your own personal growth and not just your own like personality or getting a new tactic I mean like looking yourself in the mirror and saying what's working what's not what do I need to do differently what do I accountability for especially when you have partners and you're scaling with a partner I've had multiple partners but I have two partners now my husband in some of our business ventures and my partner Andressa and invest her and I have to say the biggest piece of leadership is really leading yourself and knowing what you need to let go of and what you need to do differently and how you could be your best self and just in this last year our businesses have grown and I've literally done the most work on myself and I'm a very self-aware I love personal grow but I've never done as much work as I've done this year it's consistent with your growth right I love that you say that and I'm always truly so inspired by the women who come on the Sheila podcast and say that because if something's not working or you want to go to the next level sometimes we need to change things that we are doing either within ourselves or the way we're managing our team as the team grows you can't continue doing the same things that you were doing before I'm always so inspired by the women that come on the show that say that because ites takes a lot of Courage but it also leads to the most growth I'll be very Frank with you and Jess and I are always doing different different assessments and this and that and we actually went to a get our brain scanned Dr aan the best-selling author has tons of books out there he's multiple clinics and you can get your brain scan and you're they'll tell you how your brain is pretty much operating cognitively super fascinating I've done so many different things on myself we I've actually never thought about your brain and so anyway so we go into Manhattan we get this brain scan it turns out I have ADHD probably most entrepreneurs probably have ADHD but it was really powerful for me to learn as mid my mid-40s right and things that I've just always compensated or worked on I'm like that's how my brain works and then now not as an excuse but how do I optimize my brain and how do I optimize my productivity in a way that works I'm less foggy I'm clear I'm taking a vitamin set I'm like this has been really helpful earlier in my life so I think we as women we beat ourselves up for different things in our lives that aren't working when there's probably a good reason for it once we figure out what that is and we get the support that we need whatever that we need in that area of our lives and then to thrive and so it was very eye openening to me and it's been very helpful I've gotten a coach I'm doing vitamins I'm doing a bunch of different things to help myself right so I can thrive in my own world because there's certain things that I feel like oh you're so organized and I'm like you compensate and I think women have been compensating a lot of different areas of their lives for too long it's been very eye openening but I've been doing a lot of work on myself and try to be my best self I'm always so inspired by the women who say that because it does takes a conscious effort but it leads to the best results always it does magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy each day and it doesn't have to be through business it can be but it doesn't have to to be I feel really grateful and fortunate and humbled that I do I'm so passionate about what we do with invest her so it's like my hobby my business my passion all rolled into one and I think about the women a lot to support them and serve them and I feel very Mission oriented around it joy for me is being more present in my life I think I have been accustomed to moving quickly to the next thing whatever that is so I've been like really mindful of the present and I we got a puppy a year ago and I never wanted a dog holding her and playing with her is joyful for me it's something simple connecting with my kids when they get home from school and just asking them how they're doing that's joyful to me I mean they're nine and six year old they make me crazy sometimes of course but the joy is just in the present moment and I've been really being more mindful of what am I doing right now like right now all I'm doing is talking to you Melanie and that's all I'm thinking about of how I can add value and be as most helpful here and then the next thing is the next thing but I'm not there yet that's something I'm continually working on listening being present that brings me a lot of Joy when I'm really present to what I'm doing thank you for inspiring women to invest and invest in themselves can you please share with us how and where we can find you and thank you for joining us today yeah it's been awesome Melanie the best way for women to to connect with us in terms of our community we have a lot of free resources our Facebook Community is the easiest it's just going to Facebook and going to invest her community you can get it by going to our website the real estate inves her.com you can get our Facebook Community you can go there and get connected to our meetups we have a podcast released a couple times a week and we have free online events we have all all that good stuff on our website but we post it in our Facebook Community as well thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our shetit website or at Sheil it on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave