Liz Faircloth, CEO & Co-Founder Of The Real Estate InvestHER Community | Transforming Lives Through Real Estate

Welcome to Success Story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott DeClery. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like the Salesman podcast hosted by Will Barron. Now if you work in sales, you want to learn how to sell or you want to peek at some of the latest sales news and insights, you need to listen to the Salesman podcast. The host Will Barron helps sales professionals learn how to find buyers and win big business in effective and ethical ways. If you think any of the following topics resonate with you, you're going to love the show. How to find and close your dream job in sales, 12 essential principles of selling, digital body language, how to have better zoom sales meetings or how to tell a remarkable sales story. If these are topics that would interest you, go check out the Salesman podcast wherever you get your podcasts or at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. Today my guest is Liz Faircloth. She is the co-founder of the Derosa Group. She is the co-founder and CEO of the Real Estate Investor Community, co-host of the Real Estate Investor podcast and author of the recently published book Only Woman in the Room, Knowledge and Inspiration from 20 Successful Real Estate Woman Investors. Just to give you an idea of what she's built. The Derosa Group controls $60 million worth of residential and commercial assets up and down the east coast. The Real Estate Investor Community is an enormous community. Her show is one of the top 25 investing shows globally. It's one of the top 50 business podcasts and shows globally. It's part of the bigger pockets podcast network, which is one of the largest podcast networks with over 110 million collective downloads. So she's built an incredible real estate company, an incredible community, an incredible podcast. We spoke about her origin founding the Derosa Group with her husband Matt in 2005, scaling it to a rental portfolio of over $60 million dollars. Some of the lessons that she's learned. So if you have invested in real estate or if you ever want to invest in real estate, which anybody listening to this show, even if you don't want to be a real estate investor, you should learn how to invest in real estate from the best. So if you have gone in or you're looking to go in at some point in your life, she teaches you some of the lessons that she's learned, how to find the best deals, commercial versus residential, how to raise money so that you aren't putting your own money into real estate deals, and then of course how to scale your portfolio. And also why sometimes realtors can make the best investors. So if you are a realtor, if you have your real estate license, that's also an interesting point to just listen to. We also spoke about the investor community. So she has a mission. Transform lies through real estate. She's stood behind that mission and used that mission to drive everything she does. This is why she built the community. This is why she built her podcast, which is a highly successful podcast as well as why she wrote her book. So we spoke about community building, how to build a proper community, how to build a mission driven community, how to set up the community so that they all support each other so that they learn from each other, and that it fosters growth for community members, which ultimately will build the community and help your business, help your brand, help your name, but most importantly help the people that you're trying to serve. So a lot of great investing and real estate investing tips, a lot of great community building tips. She also spoke about her podcast, her book, and what she's done to launch these assets against her community. And if you do have a personal brand or business, you can learn some lessons there. So let's jump right into it. This is Liz Faircloth. She is the co-founder of the Derosa Group. She is the co-founder, CEO of the real estate investor community. She's a published author and she's the co-host of the real estate invests her podcast and show. So hey Scott, so a little bit about myself, you know, in terms of like where I grew up, I grew up in New Jersey, you know, I was a Jersey girl. I live in Pennsylvania now, so I'm not a Jersey girl anymore, but I think I'm just having it in my blood. And actually got my school, I got my training in psychology. I wanted to be, I was a psych major in college and then I wanted to be a social worker. So I wanted to get my, I was very focused on getting my license, masters degree in social work, and opening a practice and counseling people. And it's funny because during that time, I took a, I was at the University of Pennsylvania and there's two interesting like pivots that happened during that time because I was really focused on opening a practice. My brother-in-law, who was literally the only entrepreneur I knew ever gave me Rich Dad Portad. And I was, you know, 21 and he said, you have to read this book and I'm like, okay, you know, if you say so. And I like personal development books, so it wasn't that weird, but that really opened my eyes to, you know, so many things I wasn't familiar with, you know, passive income and entrepreneurship and having money work for you and just things I wasn't even raised to even have any realm of possibility. So, maintainously, while I was at the school at University of Pennsylvania, so I was literally at the best business school, Wharton. Now, I wasn't going to get my MBA, but I was literally like, it was the school of social work and my next to it was this, was the Wharton School, which was like an enormous, beautiful building. And the poor school of social work building was like this older, like one of the oldest buildings on campus, so we don't have to get into that dichotomy. But anyway, while I was there, I met my advisor and I said, hey, I want to take an entrepreneur class because I read this book and I'm like, I don't know anything about this. And she's like, why, you're in the school of social work. And I'm like, I just really moved to take a class. I'm here at University of Penn for only two years, so I did. And I took a class on starting a business. And the business I started 20 years ago was a business about helping women and empower women. And at the time, it was focused on their mental health, because that's the work I was involved in. But I wanted to create an organization to support women and empower them. So literally 20 years later, right? I actually started an organization in the company for women, but I think that's interesting. And then that whole experience, I ended up getting a sales job consulting slash sales job after grad school to learn the ropes like Rich Deb Portad talks about. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to learn how to sell. And so I didn't end up opening a practice or actually even using my master's degree in social work. Technically, I think I am, I think on my schooling and my way of being as a social worker. It always permeates somehow. Everything does. And I feel like I am, you know, but in terms of like what most of my, all of my classmates are doing, yeah, I'm not the traditional. But, but anyway, that's kind of what prompted me to do the work I was doing at the same time. I was a nice started investing. And we bought our first property and, and we're focused on multi family syndications now. But yeah, so that's just a little bit about how I started in some of the seeds that were born there. I see it. So you see it's so funny. Like when you, when you walk back to someone's life, like you see all these different seeds that have now led to, like who they are today, but every, everything, like every single thing that you've done in your life has found a way to manifest in like quite literally your current, you know, your current initiative, your current vision, your mission, whatever you want to call it. So walk me through even like the start of your real estate career, because I would say like that real estate is obviously a core component of your persona, like who you are. And, and that started probably with Rich Dad Poor Dad said, you, you bought your first duplex. So what was that process like getting into the financial independence game? Yeah, we knew nothing about it. We had no one that's always in his property. We were in our 20s, me and my husband and boyfriend at the time. And, you know, we'd get together and start dating. And I'm like, you gotta read Rich Dad Poor Dad and it's funny because people were like, oh, did not catch you in real estate. I'm like, now I got him and filed in real estate. But I gave him the Rich Dad Poor Dad. And he was like, his mind was blown too. And just, you know, very open to that. We ended up taking about a year of courses. We went to the local Rhea meetings. That's really, it was dig. They're still an organization, really good organization. And every guru in, guru in town came, you know, Colton Sheets like old school, right? Nothing was online. They gave you these binders, right? So I'm dating myself. And anyway, you know, we learned a lot. And then in a year and we, one of the strategies was to call foreign ads. And they said, go around, call foreign ads. And if it's a duplex, literally half their property is vacant and they might be motivated to sell. So that was the strategy. We did a lot of coal calling. We walked around neighborhoods knocked on doors. I mean, we literally did everything that they said to do, right? Got doors slams in our face. And that's what we did every weekend together while we were dating. So we found our first duplex and because of a foreign ad, and we didn't have the money to buy it. So we, my father loaned us about $30,000. And that, that kind of took care of the down payment. Property was about $150,000. Little row home in Roxboro, right outside of Philadelphia. And $15,000 was about rehab and $15 was the down payment. And so, you know, wrote up an agreement, paid him I think 6%, which was really amazing. Interest and started our journey. And that just kind of got us in the game. We learned a lot. And then really focused on growing our business in New Jersey. And really got our focus on Trenton, New Jersey in particular. It's really about all of our initial properties. And then kind of grew from there for other markets, other regions. But we're always about like, how do we make a difference and also, you know, make money? And so our motto is always transforming lives through real estate. We did it in Trenton initially. And then we kind of expanded that in working with our investors and just trying to do good, do good things and also make, make money. So that was kind of always what we wanted and had done in 15, what 16 years of investing and building a business. But, you know, it wasn't a, it wasn't a direct, you know, path, if you will. There was a lot of ups and downs, a lot of learned lessons, a lot of, you know, tough things that happened over the years. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode factor. Now it's a new year. I'm busy. I always, always, always am running out of time. 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So as you as you grew this portfolio walk me through the growth of the portfolio maybe some of the lessons that you learned when you're first getting into the market because I think obviously if anybody's listening to this and they're listening to you buying your first duplex that's the step that they haven't taken it they maybe want to take they want to start investing getting into the market if there are some 10 year real estate investors here I'm sorry I'm just I'm just generalizing but I would say people want to take that first step and then grow that portfolio even if for example they are working a job and they don't want to go into real estate full-time just yet so what are what are some of the lessons that you've learned as you grow in this portfolio what was that that was one of the big things that we did early on Scott was at the time that we bought we started buying property and we did whatever we could to figure out how to finance properties right it wasn't like we were just sitting on all this cash we were in our 20s we didn't have much money quite honestly and just kind of figured it out so we were doing a lot of different things active you know active projects hold everything literally under the sun doing some flips and so you know in hindsight right had we just focused on multi-family because that was our first deal and we did well with with that first duplex had we just focused on that niche and just did that I think our trajectory would have been different I don't want to say better because I think we are who we are and I think our path is our path and I think it it adds a lot of color to our story but we got involved in flips we got involved in buying a commercial building we got involved in raw land we were all over the place quite honestly so I don't I don't know most people would do that I would hope they don't do that but we were also pretty young and I think some being a little naive and being a little bit of a risk taker and saying what's the worst that can happen not having much to lose you do things like that quite honestly I mean you know and what I do that now my 40s no obviously I become more in a lot of ways my husband I've grown significantly but we actually become more conservative right we're a little smarter a little more less naive so couple learn lessons too is is market you can only participate in a market you can't change a market and that was a learn lesson for us because markets are everything and and so many times people get involved in investing and they get so fixated on the property it's so fixated on knowing everything about that one property yet when you ask them questions about the market are the area they just can't answer them and I think if you're going to know a lot about something know a lot about the market versus the deal they're the property itself if you want to know a lot about both to be honest of course but so many times that this pendulum is so much on the the deal versus the market so didn't know that the beginning we were so focused on the property oh we can renovate this this is really cheap we can really make this amazing and we really want to make a big difference in Trenton and we were so optimistic and we are still and we're still actually building a 40 unit building there so we're still active investors there but you can't change a whole market and I think that's that was one of the biggest learn lessons is that when we go into new markets we're like where can we participate where is this like an up and coming market where is this some is there affordable housing here not affordable housing in a technical sense but are people able to afford where they live is there movement coming here supply demand jobs growth all the things that are so important none of which we were even considering quite honestly when we started we were just like can we make a difference and and make a big you know make and is there a lot of properties to buy that we can renovate well but check those two boxes but in hindsight we were a little more optimistic because we thought we could make a bigger difference than we actually could you just can't change a whole city you can't just change a whole area unless you know you have billions of dollars which is awesome we don't and we didn't so anyway that's a big learn lesson and it's something we take into all of our investments now and when you say and I'm just curious because you mentioned something before about you sort of like your your mission as you go as you grew your real estate portfolio you did say you want to transform lives through real estate and you mentioned that a few times so what is transforming lives through real estate actually mean because people just think oh I want to get into real estate I don't want to I want to transform my life I just that's that's the first life I want to transform but how do you actually how do you actually action that and maybe people that are going to investing maybe you can think of more than just a selfish reason day one because that's an interesting I've never spoken to a lot of real estate people and I've never heard them say that they're very tactical they're very tangible I want you know if you have this you can make this you know monthly recurring revenue on this property or whatever you can go to short term rentals and and that's like a financial incentive or financial game what does transforming lives mean to you yeah and and you know it's a good question I mean I again my background social work right so so the idea of making a difference and making money was really important to both me and my husband I think tangibly what it means and there's so much research that shows this too is it's this whole idea of like businesses being socially responsible right and it's a catchphrase now in quite honestly people are just like ah we do good we do good work we give back because they just want to look good we start when we had nothing with that vision quite honestly it wasn't to look good it was really because it was part of our values so what does that look like you know you have to really look at who your customers are and so many people don't know who they're serving and so if you're in service to other people and you're growing an investment portfolio I don't see how you can't do that I don't see how you can have strong a strong investment in real estate a property that's thriving and not being service to those people I don't I don't know many investors and and maybe they just don't think in that that way when they just look at the the income and expenses and then I know why and all the good stuff we have to look at as investors but if you're actually not treating those customers tenants residents whatever they're you know whomever you right I like residents because it feels it feels a little more like they're your customer um you know you have to play that that that are in the arena of you know how do we serve them of course having rules and policies and procedures we used to get welcome baskets I mean my husband and I went above and beyond you know early on um we were like we're not making any money here we got to scale back a little with our welcome baskets because they're a little above beyond but there's always those ideas of serving our our our tenants um we always we've been building buying more property with investors right with passive investors um we started on 2000 and oh my you know parents and close family were our first but but in terms of non-family was really 2010 we've over 200 investors now right that's a huge customer of ours we're serving them so how do we do that um you know that that's how we we're transforming their lives we didn't investor tell us the other day um we're selling a building and with the they're doubling their money and with that money his wife is going to be able to retire like that's transformation like that's knee you know really that's true transformation life change yeah that's true transformation so it's I think when we when we get out of ourselves and go into other people and who you're serving investors tenants we have a lot of commercial tenants businesses have started and thrived in our buildings that's transformation um you know we've cleaned up blocks especially in Trenton where you know we have buildings on one one street where there's a pharmacy on the it was a dilapidated building that you know just had trash in front of it now it has a pharmacy and it has three tenants that's transformation in my opinion um so yeah it's really like those those very specific ways that you're you're using real estate in its highest and best use for whom you're serving and and you'll be able to make the profits accordingly um I don't know how to do I don't know how to do one of the other now I'm not saying all of our properties have always done both because you can do one or the other you can transform people's lives and not make any money and you can make money and eventually you're gonna it's gonna catch up where you're just not serving who you're serving so I you know I think when you can put those two together uh everyone will benefit you know I love that and I what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to pull out things that I've I noticed that are very not entirely unique to to you and and what you do but I think that they're unique enough in the real estate game or they're unique that many people don't talk about them so I love that and by the way I think I'm in agreement with that and I think that's actually very important because I think that actually drives you to do better work to operate at a more ethical high level um which I think is good for any industry but I think that that's probably why you've been so successful because you do have that vision from day one so that's sort of like the the lesson that I'm trying to impart on people is to don't go into things for the wrong reasons like maybe if you are going to be going into the business of you know owning things that people live in it shouldn't just be to fund your own retirement I think there's probably a better a better reason to go into it um one thing that you speak about a lot as well which again I don't speak I don't hear people in real estate speak about this that often is teams I think that's an interesting uh component and I've heard your other shows um saying that it's virtually impossible to scale without the right team in place so first of all how do you find the right team what's what's your formula for that and also uh why is it more difficult to scale without a team if I just am myself if I have investors if if I have like a mortgage broker if I have a real estate agent or I guess I could be the real estate agent myself why can't I just have like a a small few people that I can rely on yeah so for for us so a couple of things when I my husband and I decided to he did he quit his job and was going to bring you back to just why I know a lot about this topic um he he quit his job at the same time we got married literally the same month 2005 we're like get married and he quit his job he's like I'm doing this full time we're like yeah you do a full time we're like making no money anywhere it's just funny what you know you you think about hindsight but anyway um at the same time I got a job in consulting and the and what the work I did was I was a um and I stayed there for a decade as I as we grew our business and we grew our our portfolio I was you know you know paying our bills and and allowing us to keep investing in our business so um so anyway long story short I did consulting in I was a I was an expert in a personality assessment called the predictive index so it's basically a measurement of people's kind of natural tendencies their natural behaviors so what I did across the country and I had a lot of you know clients small and large um was basically I did consulting around putting the right teams together right and and counseling the CEOs and the leaders how they can manage people how they can put the right people in the right seat um based on personality and and everything so that was just the context I came from for over a decade so as I talk about this that's you know we're where that kind of comes from um now then to combine that with what I know in real estate and how important it is that to have teams um what really got us moving in that direction was we um we did team locally and we were managing everything ourselves over a hundred units in in the New Jersey area and we bought our first kind of like out of state hour and a half away property which was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania so we started to learn the power of scaling but not being able to do everything ourselves and so at the time you know that's what really caused us as we started to move out of state we needed to build like you know virtual virtual teams where we're not gonna see them all the time or not be with them all the time but you can apply this when you have teams in place I would say there's three pieces of like you know who not how is a great book right now where you know I know a lot of people have been reading by Dan Sullivan about I want to accomplish this and we think how versus who so the first question is who but to get even more refined there um what skills do they need what experience do they need and what type of personality do they need and most people think about skills and experience even if you wanted to hire a VA or just even a mortgage broker right think about that or or a commercial broker we often think do they have the experience to be someone I can use as on my team and often people forget that how important it is to have diversity of personality um I did an exercise when I did team buildings and stuff I did an exercise and I put all the same personality style together and then I would put different types of teams together because I because this is a statistically driven graph so I can see I five ten people I know who the extroverts are I know who the you know the dominant people are I know I know I know I know that so um I always was very mindful of that and I put these teams together well you know who you usually got the activity done the fastest it was never diverse it was a diverse group of multiple personalities I'm assuming yes and no so the worst performing group and the best performing group was the diverse groups okay the ones that were the ones that were similar kind of always just you know the dominant people no one listened the really quiet people were all just looking at each other and no one was really jumping in that was a disaster but the best performing team was diverse so they had different styles as like a task person and an extrovert but the worst performing team when you don't value diversity you can kind of go like this do you think about people that are very different from you you don't naturally attract to them you know and networking event so so if you don't know that and don't appreciate it and leverage the difference that's the rub in a sense and that's what will prevent you from really optimizing so it's one thing to have different personalities on a team but it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to guarantee you success so that's the kind of work that I did and that's the kind of work that we're very mindful of especially as we've grown our multi-family team and also I apply this with with building our investor team because we have you know start with me my partner so the biggest thing those we do like people like ourselves we're just we're just naturally inclined if you're an extroverted outgoing person and you go to an event especially now as people are you know doing more and more and like we finally get interact um you're gonna like people like yourself and those are never the right partners for you quite honestly um they're usually the ones that you like but then you're like you know too too too much the same so again I can't value that I can't stress that enough is that most people devalue personality they think it's just something nice to have something nice to know and then they look at skills and experience and the reason why people don't work is usually because of personality it's usually because of behavior so we don't value it we don't even look at it but yet it's the reason that people usually don't work together very well or stay together very well thrive together um because we don't want to tolerate people I mean who wants to tolerate people you want to thrive with people right I mean and that's what that's what I'm very mindful of and I'm not perfect at it you know I am my own personality traits that I I have to work on and I've learned a lot like me and my husband are very similar so when we work together I can't just work side by side with my husband because we're so similar it's like redundancy quite honestly so I'm like so when I found Andresa and we start building out our investor group in our community it was refreshing because she's very different personality to me than me so it didn't feel redundant it didn't feel like so and I think about that I didn't realize this for many years and I'm married to my husband I mean I know him very well so anyway that's a few thoughts there skills experience and personality I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode latter now over the past two years and a bit I'm sure we've all realized that how precious and fragile life can be in the last thing that you want to be worried about when something horrible happens is how you're going to afford it and that's why I am a firm believer in life insurance so that if something does happen you're not passing those costs onto your kids or your family now if you're asking yourself how do I find affordable long-term coverage how do I find affordable monthly that can protect my family from anything that happens well the answer that question would be 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younger age so if you want to see if you're instantly approved you can go to latter life dot com slash success story you'll see if you're instantly approved that is latter L A D D E R life dot com slash success story that's latter life dot com slash success story I think it's really interesting and I'm just I want to just ask one more question on this on this because I see that a lot of companies that happens a lot where they're like oh you know we want a cultural fit and they confuse cultural fit with we're just hiring somebody the same and I always challenge that and say you don't want somebody who just fits the existing culture but augments and adds on to it that's a true cultural fit so when somebody augments or adds on by definition they're bringing something new to the table that isn't already there so but to to double down on your point where you had these two separate groups where one was all diverse individuals and personalities that didn't work and then one was when you're looking for a partner or you're looking for a member of the team how do you figure out if that person will detract or augment it will add on to who you are I you know let's let's go with partners right because partners are are like it's a business marriage right it's a little deeper than say someone who's going to be a mortgage broker yeah I don't know if I would put those on the same level of like intensity so let's go down the partner path when you have somebody that's very different I'm I'm I'm much more obviously these some examples because I think we know we know this we we learn best by like stories so I'm much more extroverted I like people I trust people naturally again that's gotten me into trouble right every strength overuse becomes a weakness but anyway um I you know I have tons of ideas I love building relationships that's something as strength of mine right this who I I want to be who I am my partner on dress especially is much more task oriented she's much more strategic much more analytical she's much more logical I'm much more subjective so while that's a great complimentary match we um we have different ways approaching things we'll show will her and I will interact and when we've had breakdowns if you will show give me some information and and I'm thinking it in between the lines and I'm reading in between the lines and she's literally just telling me something right so we've had to work through that so the the way you go from the best performing team or the worst performing team because you can have two people like us who over time just say we can't work together anymore so her and I though when we started we value the same things we also are very into growth and we're able to come together and every time we have a breakdown we have a breakthrough as a partner partnership because we really want to create a culture of everything's not too perfect we're growing we've a lot of things going on we start this as a passion now it's a business all of our roles are shifting like it's a lot happening right in a few years that we've been in existence so we have very open and honest conversations and we're able to both take responsibility for where we can get better so every time we have a breakdown we have a good we put a new something in place a term or a boundary or hey this is what I really need from you if you don't have that with a partner it's just not gonna it's just not gonna work or you're not gonna have a like high performance team that's my opinion you'll have a okay partnership and maybe you'll make a lot of money together or not I don't know but I think that's the difference is open communication being willing to grow and learn together and it's hard right I mean think about it's like who wants to like look at themselves in the mirror all the time right everyone we all think we're all great all the time you know but that's where growth happens you know and that that's where you're able to like you know I can be doing this better you know what do you need for me what do I need for you so good advice um okay let's let's uh move on to investor so that's the that's where you're at right now um with the podcast uh obviously it's I think it's a culmination of it seems like women empowerment real estate investing like everything you've done over your life you decide to do a show build a brand around it so walk me through the process the thought process why did you want to do investor um why did you want to focus on women empowerment and investing what was what was your process for that yeah sure so so to say about six years ago I met my partner now in dressa and um became really good friends with her you know in her husband and and we would and we then partnered on some deals so we started as friends as they say started to get to know each other we actually started a women's mastermind long before investor so we both were always very pulled to um bringing women together to support each other and have each other's backs so that was always something that we both valued um and then we started partnering together on some flips and some um new construction projects in Philadelphia they were local to Philadelphia and we were in in New Jersey at the time so we really got a chance to partner um on on a number of projects together and we get together talking about these projects mean on dressa and it almost would have our own little mastermind and we would we would we would just always say oh but we'd be talking about kids or you know just had a lot on our plates or just the things that you know um we were experiencing and we we don't want like where are there other women like us you know and and and and there are women but we'd love to like create something where where we can really bounce things off of each other and bring other women together and you know especially women that are that are new or experienced everyone can give something everyone can get something as that's my philosophy so we googled it and we really couldn't find much we couldn't find many groups who couldn't find many resources uh at the time and we were both very like from different reasons very passionate about seeing women um become financially independent and and you know now that i'm in this space of you know thought leadership and women and investing the statistics and the information out there is crazy like women number one women outlive men six to seven years right so if you're in a traditional relationship not saying everyone is if you're in traditional relationship you're going to outlive your spouse right uh in a in a sense um so the need for financial resources becomes even more important um you know and that's number one number two statistically um and and this i think wealth simple i forget the source but they said that women outperform men as investors by 40 percent so when women invest they actually do very well they tend to be a little more conservative um they may not jump in as fast but there's a conservativeness but once they do it they're out there they they pick the right investments so then the next the next part those women invest less than men by 40 percent so for every man that's investing women are doing it a lot less so for those reasons just the the okay women are kind of live men when they invest they do it so well there's yeah we're just not doing it enough so what why is that i mean i and again i'm not here to solve the whole problem um there's lots of smarter people than me to do all that but what i can say now that we have a a community and we have a membership and we have a podcast highlighting women's stories uh and their journeys and having a a community that they feel safe to ask questions and get support and the way they need to get support um i didn't know if it was going to be important um you know it's got i didn't know if a lot of women needed this i know i wanted it i know on Jess i did and we both were experienced investors but the amount of women who just feel so comparable um we have 9,000 women in our facebook community you know and our podcast has over 200 episodes and we have meetups and we have 52 meetups across the country where women are coming together to support each other so i there is a need and there is a there is a an important kind of um niche that we've filled in the we're filling um and i i think it's uh not everyone can understand it i have i have women especially women uh don't see the need for our for our community you know uh actually men are more supportive and sometimes and and most most women are very supportive and i mean to say but there are certain women and i've gotten the feedback they don't see the need and i always say back to that is that there is a need um because we want to see women keynoting more we want to see women not just on panels um and we don't want to just be asked about how is it to be a woman in investing you know like it's it's that's not the right conversation i thought it's a bad one but it's all about like seeing yourself and other people um getting the confidence getting the the clarity getting the support and then going and making it happen with men women anywhere it's not like we just have to create this little secret society and we hot a lot but never talked to men you know that's just weird right that doesn't happen so anyway that's that's the reasoning that's the the really the the the kind of the motivation for us um and no i was just going to say well i think that if you look at just the data points obviously required it's obviously needed if you're saying that um women are investing at 40% less than than men it just seems like it's like it's like it's education um making somebody feel like psychologically safe to do something to feel okay doing something i think that it's it's it's important um and i think that you know uh any any initiative that builds a community around it that supports that like we're not we're not there where it's an irrelevant community like we're not at the point where you know we have you data points obviously are quite obvious we haven't reached parity in everything that we do so until that's until we're at that point we still have to build communities to support this and i think that's probably an an incredible initiative that you're doing right now even like the book that you wrote um it also focuses on that i think that a lot of it is just normalizing it's just all about normalizing so if somebody has an investor doesn't know somebody that invests like they're less likely to invest right so if they see people that are out there that are successful women that are investing uh groups of women that are incredibly successful investing that's just going to like enable that enable that behavior enable that mindset and then everybody wins at the end of the day and that's actually incredible i didn't know the stat that they they do 40 percent they do 40 percent better which i'm assuming could be tied to some sort of like less emotional investing because i could see i could totally see that yeah i think it's more conservative to where where some people who are you know if you think about it like and again this not all women are conservative but they conservatively invest there's a piece to that yeah so they're slower but yeah when they do it it's the right because they thought about it they've you know you know that another interesting statistic but short-term rentals and Airbnb 55 percent are female so you see the pendulum different in that niche and then you think about why that is and it's just that's neat you know because so many um it's concierge it's service it's it's you know uh and and just interesting it's an interesting statistic and they're i mean and think about that niche right now right i mean everyone especially since covid um everyone in in the real estate investing world especially if you're a multi-family or anything you're like i've got a five short-term rental i got to get i got to get a vacation not all like i feel that too you know in some ways of being in the market so but yeah i was talking with a few people i think it was a very carl who just wrote a book for bigger pockets um she said you know it's 55 percent i said that's that's pretty cool that is very cool can i can i ask um just advice for people that want to build a community because you've also done a great job at that so you started this podcast after very successful real estate career and now it's part of bigger pockets and now you have a book and now you have a community of 9,000 people on Facebook so how did you do that i'm gonna take notes for me so how did how did you do that you know i think you know there's there's people who jump into things and then there's people who are really intentional right and there's no right and wrong because i think you can add that i think you can be successfully the way but i i know for me and on dressa we did the amount of exercises and intention we thought about and in the intentions we kind of like the brainstorms i mean we talked about this and brainstormed it in a way that i don't know if most people would to be honest so we were really like mindful um when we came together we said we were both very passionate about you know empowering women and serving women in this niche um we then got more refined you know who are these women what's their age like what are their pains what are their challenges um what keeps them up at night you know uh because you can't serve everyone so getting really clear on who you want to serve is the the most important thing i i believe so we were really clear we wanted women who were either experienced had some deals under their belt um and if they were new to investing they had they had were professional women they were a business woman they're entrepreneurs they had you know experience uh they literally weren't just waking up thinking this is a good idea that's not our avatar necessarily and so we've got really clear and then we also said do we start a community do we start meetups do we start a conference do we start a podcast and so we did this exercise um and we talked about it's called to totally made it up and you can totally anyone can take this and please steal it because it's called analyzing your top moments in life so if you think back on your life and you say what were those moments that were like top you know like they're just the best moments of my life you know birth of children and all those things are amazing and i don't mean to dismiss those but we were trying like okay besides the family events which was which are amazing for me just personally what like what comes up for you and what were those moments that you just felt most joy most happiness um there's no sense of time it came easy to you like what were those times and so her and i both interestingly did this exercise and then came back together and talked about it and i remember doing this and my answers were like i love inspiring people and i love to be inspired i love both i love personal growth i love learning about myself and growing and figuring myself out and i love helping other people i love inspiring people it's like what gives me life and anything i've ever done in any walk i've ever taken she said she was very similar in that so we were like we got to start a podcast because a podcast literally does that right you're interviewing people you're talking to people and you're helping other people along the way so that's how we chose to figure out to focus on our podcast initially um then we said simultaneously let's start a facebook community because the last thing you want is to be like talking to people and you know for me i'm an extroer i got to talk i got to be engaged with people i can't just like you know talk to a camera um so then we started a facebook group simultaneously and then we started as a passion we didn't start a company we didn't start an LLC we didn't start anything it was just like let's do this and see and if six months we give this a six month go and it and if literally um it's just not going anywhere then then we given this all all and we said that at the beginning we're like we're given this six months we're not going to even we're not going to do anything like we're not going to think about stopping and you know and we edited all of our own podcasts and wrote all of our show notes for a hundred episodes so we did that way too on i feel your pain that's another story you know you got two very hard working women who think they can do everything which we were learning not to do right tonne delegate and automate all that could stop so long story short building the community then is more than a facebook group right it's about listening to people it's about asking questions it's um women women would post in there you know hey is anyone in this area do you want to get together and we're like i'm like on dress uh we were both talking we're like let's start a meetup and filly so her and i had led the meetup we were the leaders and then we'd have other women saying in other parts of our country hey we want to do a meetup and we're like oh this is interesting and so then we'd be like okay let's go in and that was two and a half years ago you know we have 53 meetups which is built community we never asked anyone for a dime you know and then so and that was you know people are like oh you you waited a long time when are you going to monetize when are you going to monetize like i just want to help people we just want to help people and serve them and then until there's a reason to charge someone for something then then we will make that make that call like so many people think about making money and not really providing a value i don't know how to do that if you don't do the value part so we hear a lot of women saying god there's so many gurus out there there's so many people that you know that they're charging all this crazy money for coaching in this and that and that there's a lot of good ones out there but they're like unjust and i came together what could we build that's different and uh is needed and that's something that aligns with what we're trying to build here so we created more of a membership mentorship kind of um program which is like more of like a um you know a monthly membership where women come in and they get mentorship they get a chance to be part of like a six month pod on syndication or multi-family um we're on a mastermind with them once a month they you know write out their goals and we hold them accountable to their goals and then they help each other it's like a community right so it's a many community that women to take things deeper we've got 70 members right now and um and we're growing that but it that came out of being asked to do it that didn't come out of like me just sitting in my office thinking about things i can offer um we did a summit we've done two summits um we have sponsors and we're gonna be doing our first in person next June um but we've done two virtual ones so i think that's important though Scott i think people want to build communities but they don't know why they want to build communities they don't know for who um i think the more laser focused you are i'm the avatar so is on dresser like i i not that i i i'm i'm experienced and investing we're growing up we're still active investors though me and my husband you know we have a portfolio where we're still in the business it's not like we're done with that um and i and i think that's you know we attract more people like that who are like serious women who want to get things done and want to do it in a way that's balanced and have has self-care at the prominence it's not just the slight doing it to do it because that's the other part of our mission it's not just real state investing education you can get that anywhere but how do you do it in in the realm of everything else in your life and in doing it in a way that's there's a lot of self-care i just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode hub spot now the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career so when you think about your success story what do you actually picture is it retiring early with a beautiful view of the skyline is it leaving a legacy with your name on it or maybe it's helping influence and change some of the world's most pressing issues whatever it is writing your success story starts by working smart because when you work smart your success story writes itself a hub spot CRM platform helps your marketing campaigns work harder and smarter with intuitive visual workflows and bot builders you can create scalable automated campaigns across email social media web and chat so your customers hear your messages loud and clear are you tired of your content not adapting to mobile making it difficult for your customers to absorb your message a hub spot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are which is just smart learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a hub spot CRM at hubspot.com you led with the same with the same mindset that you had when you started off in real estate investing which was your leading to help people and then look at what look at what the end result is the summits the the meetups the Facebook group the mentorship and now you can create a community around that but it was like the purpose drives everything the purpose drives out and the purpose probably stops you from burning out when there is no momentum day one because you still know that you have that purpose so you know when things aren't moving as quick as you want them to move if you have that purpose it's easier to keep going versus if you just do it for the money and you don't see any signups or whatnot or you don't see people joining your Facebook group and you don't really have a purpose you don't have that reason that's hard to keep going so that's something important too for people that are trying to start this I think to Scott for any community I think there's a distinction because I see a lot of people on Facebook of course it's never been about me and Angessa like we're not the gurus it's not like you join this membership and you have daily coaching calls with us there's pod mentors we have seven other women who know more about short-term rentals about creative financing it's it's a community we always wanted to build like it's not the Liz and Angessa show and I think there's a distinction there I think there's certain there's certain educational you know frameworks out there that are very person centric now we're the leaders and I have we've a presence in what we're doing I don't mean to say like that but we always had a vision of like a circle and we want the circle to be really big but it's you know if people know me or not but they know our community that's more important and on just and I always said that from when we started and I think that's very important if you're building a community you cannot be like egocentric in my opinion it's really hard to have both so if you want to build a coaching module and you're the you're the key if you will then then build that but don't build a community too because it's it's going to become less about you and people aren't going to know you and that and that's a good thing you know quite honestly yeah I have a podcast right I don't mean to say it like I don't want anyone to know me but that's not as important to me you know women get what they need at a meetup whether they know I'm one of the founders or not I mean you know nice for my ego but I want her to become financially free that's the more important part very smart okay um okay I want to ask some rapid fire questions to close this out but most importantly if people are wanting to check out the podcast get the book or contact you reach on social where should they go sure so our our website has like a lot of different ways to kind of go to different places so it's the real estate invest her h-e-r dot com we're really active on Facebook as well the real estate invest her and we've that that's where our free Facebook group is but you can get that from our website and Instagram you know we have a growing Instagram following you know we're putting out good content I do a run with Liz every week but it's at the real estate investor and it's h-e-r and our our podcast is on Spotify it's all in the major you know networks and what have you so yeah good awesome okay people go check that out we'll put some links in the show notes people can go find it as well okay so rapid fire questions to close this off and also thank you that was we went through like a ton of stuff so I was really happy that was that was great um okay so biggest challenge you've had in your life what was that challenge had you overcome it we had close to a million dollars stolen from us uh of our money and I know this is not going to be a very quick answer but I'm going to be as distinct as I can um and it was our money in our our investors money um don't ever give up and um every tough experience lead you to a better outcome and we learned a lot through that experience uh and it didn't it only made it stronger so remember that you can get literally kicked in the face and if you use it as a learning lesson it will make you stronger good that's another podcast that's another one sure that's a story have me and Matt have me and Matt on for that that's a I would totally that's uh that's a hello sorry okay um if you had to choose one person there's obviously been many but one person has been incredible impact influence impact on your life a mentor who was that person what do they teach you I think that you know there's a lot of people and and I'd say a lot of um you know people along my way of of high school and college and grad school but I'd say the first person that just popped in my head was my professor for my entrepreneur class and he was like this um serial entrepreneur me you know and again is like I didn't know any of these people and then I see this and he's an older gentleman he kind of took me under his wing um and and we had a lot of conversations during that class like just one-on-one um and it was just really cool because I got a chance to get to know someone and he was so giving so that's my first like you know serial entrepreneur that I ever met and he was the most giving person so that was very helpful for me that really imprinted on me of like oh these aren't just like sharks and people who want to make a lot of money you know I mean that's okay too but these are giving people too very good um a book or podcast outside of your own obviously they you'd recommend people go check out I'm really I've really been enjoying um Bernet Brown's podcast she's been on here she's uh she's uh she's been recommended a few times so I I think that's a good one for sure yeah I do I adore her her her work her stuff is great you know and and it's very it resonates a lot of just doing the work on yourself so you could be a better leader a better entrepreneur a better mom a better film the blank but better uh higher version of yourself if you will because you you know you are who you are and there's greatness but so I've really enjoyed her stuff I've enjoyed all her books podcast and she's just like you know the kind of podcast host she's just like chatting with people you feel like you were there with her that's why I think I like her as much I feel like I know her but I don't obviously not yet not yet oh that's one of my goals so have her have her on our podcast um if I get her on here I'll I'll send you I'll send you her info I'm trying to get her on too she's she's busy I'm sure she has enough invites I think I just are on conspiracy so maybe one day when I'm at that level um if you could uh tell your 20 year old self one thing what would that be oh I tell I tell her a lot of things I would probably tell her you know be be kind to yourself be kind to yourself that's good that's that never heard something that before but that's a good one um and lastly what does success mean to you oh success means to me um um being being a better version of myself than I was yesterday