Recently, our favorite Sharad Mehta, founder and CEO of REsimpli, had the privilege to host a super talented and all-rounder guest, Julie Holly, a successful real estate investor, a wonderful coach, founder of Three Keys Investments and Podcast host of The Conscious Investor. In this Mastermind call, she shed light on the concept of “shiny object syndrome.” The conversation touches upon various investment channels and markets that can potentially divert attention.
Looking for the actual freedom while working on your own terms without any potential distractions? We can help!
Many people are suffering from shiny object syndrome without realizing they are. In this way, they struggle with maintaining focus and avoiding distractions. But it’s possible to overcome this condition. So whether you’re a seasoned investor or a baby investor facing the same issue, this episode has something for everyone!
Julie is dedicated to helping individuals like you discover financial freedom through multifamily real estate investing, enabling them to live their desired lives. With extensive experience in real estate, Julie has invested in single-family homes, engaged in house-hacking before it became a recognized concept, effectively managed remote properties, and made passive investments in multifamily assets. At present, Julie is a passive investor in almost 300 properties, holds strategic partnerships in 68 Atlanta-based properties, and serves as a general partner in 387 units.
Through her podcast, “The Conscious Investor,” Julie provides invaluable support to investors throughout their journey. The podcast consists of over 400 episodes that delve into mindset and explore how highly successful investors conquer limitations to become unstoppable forces of success. Additionally, she frequently speaks at national events, serves clients as a high-performance coach, and organizes the Five Week Book & Networking Club to consciously assist individuals.
Sharad Mehta 00:01
You know you just go down this rabbit hole. So, yeah, that was like the biggest challenge that I personally struggle with is to just stay away. Like, not even let that temptation come into my life. That’s a daily struggle for me, honestly.
Julie Holly 00:15
I appreciate your transparency with that because the comparison syndrome can be so fierce on us.
Sharad Mehta 00:32
Hey guys, welcome to our weekly Mastermind Call. My name is Sharad. I’m the owner and founder of REsimpli. I’m a local investor. I invest in Northwest Indiana right outside of Chicago, but I live in Toronto, Canada, moving to California in about three months. Here I do fix and flip to other investors selling turnkey properties. And I also own a property management company and of course I own REsimpli also. I’m super excited to have Julie on this call today. She and I connected a few weeks ago, and the information she has to share, I’m super excited about. She has tons and tons of knowledge and she’s very selective about the calls that she jumps on. But she agreed to jump on this call and I’m very grateful to her for this. Julie, welcome to our weekly Mastermind call!
Julie Holly 01:22
I’m so happy to be here and you’re right, I am, because time is limited and you always want to make sure that you’re going to be nurturing everybody in the appropriate way.
Sharad Mehta 01:32
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah. If you can just share a little bit, if I could, about I mean, I know you’re doing a lot of really cool things, but if you can just share little bit about everything you’re doing just to kind of lay the groundwork for everyone who’s on the call here.
Julie Holly 01:46
Yeah. So I am founder of Three Keys Investments. I am also host of this really awesome podcast, The Conscious Investor. It has almost 400 episodes now. It’s been around for a while.
Sharad Mehta 01:56
Wow!
Julie Holly 01:57
It’s in the top 1% globally, which is really exciting, and it serves people powerfully mindset on Mondays and investor interviews on Thursdays. So we really believe as conscious investors, that we need to be investing in the things that are most important in life, not just the money part of it, but when we invest in personal freedom, then we will also gain that financial freedom without bankrupting the rest of our life. So that really is the heartbeat of the message to support investors. I’m sure that many of you have seen some collateral damage from people chasing dollar signs and units, unit counts and things like that. And we really want to support people in achieving all levels of success, really in a grounded way.
I have been investing really my whole entire life. I’m third generation in real estate, which is super cool. Half hacked when I was in my very early 20s and became a long distance landlord when we left California for Colorado. And what’s interesting about that is my husband and I made a determination early on that we would just live a modest lifestyle. And we have this idea we’ll just continually pick up houses and serve people by providing quality homes for them to live in. We’ll just go in, we’ll fix them, and then we’ll just move on and rinse, repeat. This is long before Burr was a thing, long before all of this ever. Like, we had acronyms for things.
And then after our second child, I became very gun shy. I was like, wait a second. This feels really uncomfortable. This feels really vulnerable. I feel like if we have a vacancy for a moment, even though we have reserves, if we have a vacancy or an emergency in these single family assets, profit could be wiped out. It just felt very uncomfortable all of a sudden. And I don’t know if that’s whatever happened after my daughter was born, I just was like, okay, we decided to sell. And we were sitting on the money. And I’m like, I can’t take sitting on this. We’ve got to do something about it.
And my husband looked at me and he’s like, hey, you want to do something about that’s totally cool? Why don’t you do some research and bring me some ideas? Smart strategy, by the way. Had me do the legwork. How many of you drop it in the chat box? How many of you listen to real estate podcasts? Just put me or some emoji or drop what you listen to, but drop that down in the chat box, because podcast see, I know, I’m like, I know there’s more. Yes. See, a lot of us, we go to always yes, I’m always person, like, every day, constantly. Thank you.
And I’m sure many of you who haven’t dropped that down there are listening to podcasts through bigger pockets. I found out about real estate syndication, which is not something they normally speak about, was also the first woman that I happened to hear. So that was like, oh, wow, this is cool. So I have a faith testimony, and then I have a real estate testimony. And that moment literally was like, everything I’ve ever done in my life prepares me to be in real estate syndication. All of my experiences, and I have not deviated since. I will try not to go on too long.
So portfolio wise, we’ve invested passively. So we’re in roughly 275 units as passive investors. And on the active side, I’m a general partner in a office to luxury residential space in Atlanta, Georgia. We’re doing ground up construction in Winston Salem, North Carolina. That’s been great, going from raw land into we’re about ready to go horizontal. We’re also involved in class B units, 120 class B units in Des Moines, Iowa, 123 class B units in Minneapolis, and then getting ready to close in a new asset class. All of that’s multifamily, but we’re getting ready to go into assisted living as well.
So I’ll add one more element. One more element is our company is unique. We offer 506 B offerings. We decided to no longer offer 506 C offerings because we care about the rising middle class, and there are those people on the cusp of being accredited that are constantly getting squeezed. And so we know that we can support accredited and sophisticated through that 506 B model, and so we know we can do powerful good in that regard.
And I’m going to be speaking about Shiny Object Syndrome in a moment. So we only invest in residential dwellings, so we stay away from self-storage, light industrial, and all the other shiny objects out there because our purpose in our investing is to support our investors through powerful investments and residents with quality housing.
Sharad Mehta 06:57
Awesome! Yeah. I don’t think I would have done a good job of summarizing everything you’re doing. Yeah. That’s incredible. Yeah. Do you have a presentation that you want to share or we can just do a Q and A, whatever that you’re comfortable with.
Julie Holly 07:12
So I would like to do something off script that’s really different. A lot of times people come present and it’s not interactive, and there’s definitely a time and place for that. But the topic today is actually just, like, overcoming Shiny Object Syndrome that crippled and debilitated my investing and slowed me down when I went into commercial investing. And so I really would like, with everyone’s permission here, is I’d like to make this interactive.
We can ask questions along the way, but I want to know where you’re at. I actually performance coach as well, and so a lot of this can like, we could do a little twist of the investing in coaching if everyone’s okay with that. So if you’re okay with that, just, like, drop an emoji or scale of one to five. Like five. Yeah, I’m totally cool with that. Julie and zero is like, heck no.
Sharad Mehta 08:09
Yeah, no, I think that’s a great idea. No, I love it. Let’s make it definitely it seems like everybody is on board.
Julie Holly 08:19
Awesome!
Sharad Mehta 08:20
All right, you’re the expert, so we’ll have you lead the call.
Julie Holly 08:25
Thank you. All right, well, let me ask you this. Let’s go with this. And I appreciate everybody being interactive because that really just helps everyone out, especially since you guys are in a community together. And the more you get to know each other on these levels, the more you’re going to be like, oh, my gosh, I totally have to get to know Jim better, or like, oh, Brandon, he’s the guy. I got to call him up. I got to schedule time. So just be honest. This is we’ll call it a brave space so we can be brave and answer honestly. Nobody’s going to make fun of anybody. We’re all going to commit to that. Everything stays here and on the recording for the rest of the world.
Anyhow in this brave space, this is where our growth can take place. So let’s just evaluate right now on a scale of I’m going to give this a ten scale of one to ten and let me define shiny object syndrome before we do that. Shiny object syndrome for our purposes during this session is going to be I go down a path and then I see something over there and it looks like it’s going to be great. And then I see something over there and that looks like a really great opportunity. And all of a sudden we’re spread too thin because we’re trying to chase after so many different things that are all super appealing and exciting to us.
So that’s going to be like when we say shiny objects, that’s what I’m talking about. So with that in mind, on a scale one to ten, are you chasing shiny objects? Ten is like, I am so spread thin because I see everything, every opportunity, and I’m going after all of them. And one is I’m locked in, I’m focused, and this is what I’m doing and I know exactly where I’m going and I’m not distracted at all. You can just drop that in the chat.
Sharad Mehta 10:16
That’s a really great question, Julie.
Julie Holly 10:19
Thank you. I typically do have presentations with slide decks and everything.
Sharad Mehta 10:26
Shin said eleven for the last year.
Julie Holly 10:31
I’m loving these real answers. You know. Yeah. Some of you are focused and some of you are like, hey, I’d like to get more focus. So I’m actually going to put some people on the spot. And remember, you’re going to be supporting each other. And let me just ask, hey, Dominic, you gave yourself a three on your focus level. Can you just share with us what that means to you? And I’d like to know also if you were ever closer to a ten and if that came down to a three, what’s that experience been like?
Dominic Franco 11:05
Yeah. So I’m relatively new. I went all in on real estate investing. Realistically in January is when we started marketing. So it’s kind of hard to get shiny object syndrome when you’re just getting started. Prior to that, I would say for sure shiny object syndrome, trying to figure out what it is that I wanted to do if I wanted to just dabble in real estate or just go head in all in on it. So since then, I think I’ve done an okay job. Right now, I’m like one channel of marketing going very heavy on direct mail, just finding off market deals.
The only thing I would say, maybe why it’s a three is whenever I get a deal, I start to try and analyze what all the possible highest and best use is. And the hardest part is probably the best use, not just the highest. There might be a much higher profit margin, but being new. And if it’s a larger rehab project, that’s going to take six months versus like, hey, we know we can offload it right now. Why not just take the money and put it back into marketing.
Julie Holly 12:02
I appreciate thank you for letting me just draw you into this. And what’s really fascinating to me is that you’re like, well, I’m new, so I’m not going to be distracted. Now I will throw myself under the bus and anyone can self-identify, if you would like. But I will say I had a different experience and I’m super impressed that you’ve been able to be really focused and diligent on that. When I got into multifamily, I was like, well, what about mobile home parks and RV parks? They provide residences and oh, my gosh, what about I started seeing all the different things that I could syndicate as opportunities and I was so excited to just be going after anything in real estate, even market wise.
Well, I could go into that market. That’s a great market. And that’s a great market. And Dallas Fort Worth is awesome. And holy cow, Des Moines is awesome. And I’m just going to say Alex is nodding his head. I’m like, Kevin’s nodding his head. I think some of you are is so really being able to narrow it down is powerful. And so I want you to know Dominic’s on the phone now, but maybe he’ll catch the recording. Is that that’s a real gift when we’re able to really just stay focused from the very get go.
So the question might be then is it how do we get that type of focus? How do we offload the shiny object syndrome so that we can get the focus? Because in all reality, if we’re going for everything, then we are going for nothing and we will get zero traction. So I’m going to ask Alex real fast, what your biggest challenge? Just I’m pulling you in because you were nodding and I think you were in an agreement. And I want to ask you, what was your biggest challenge or what has your biggest challenge been with shiny object syndrome?
Alex Carranza 14:00
My biggest thing has been like, you see the success that other investors and friends are having with different channels of marketing or even different assets that there are commercial single family. Then I got a really good deal from direct mail, and I would start doing direct mail and then I’d get a good lead from cold call, and I’m like, well, we need four more cold callers. Let’s do that. And then they all start drying up sometimes for me.
And it’s a matter of having a good CRM and making sure that you’re following up with things from the past. But my thing has always been like, all right, if I’m kind of slow now and if I see a friend that got a deal from a particular marketing channel or particular market, then I’m like, all right, well, off we go. Let’s do it. So I’ve gotten some deals that way, but it’s like throwing stuff against the wall, hoping it’ll stick. It’s not good.
Julie Holly 14:59
Okay, I’m putting in the chat right now that I’m a ten on agreeing with you that I went down that path. If you want to just throw yourself in the pool with us and let us know. If you can relate to Alex at all, just let us know that it’s such a natural thing to be drawn towards other people’s successes. And I will say early on in my investing, my husband recently reminded me of this, and he’s been great about this over the years. But I was so caught up in a similar line of thinking, Alex and I felt everybody else is going ahead. Everybody else is like, oh, my gosh, they’re on clubhouse now. I got to be on clubhouse.
What is even clubhouse doing now? I don’t know. You won’t get distracted with that no shiny object, right? You know, we start looking at other people’s success and we see that as, oh, that just happened. And we don’t see the discipline over time, the consistency. Kind of like what Dominic was saying. He’s doing like, no, I’m being consistent. I’m being diligent, and this is what we’re doing, having that clear process. So I didn’t close my first multifamily deal for a year and a half, and it was the most painful year and a half of my life because all I wanted to do love the first deal. If you just close your first deal, everything else is going to come and everything else is going to follow.
And it was really being clear, am I having shiny object syndrome or not really looking back? And I hope this is encouraging for those of you who are in a similar position where you’re like, I want my success now. I’m not willing to compromise. So I’d be evaluating opportunities and partnerships and deals, and it would be like, I like all this and this and this, but this isn’t going to be the best, not going to be the best, not going to be the best. And I waited, waited, waited. Meanwhile, some people in my mastermind were they just seemed to be blasting ahead. And we’re closing deal, deal, deal, deal.
I would just ask my husband, like, what’s wrong with me? Why am I not closing these deals? I’m not speaking any names or any places or anything like this. So I can say this with knowing that I’m not throwing anybody under the bus, but I can look back now. Every one of those deals I said no to are not doing well today. So that discipline to know at least my investing thesis and to say I won’t compromise on my underwriting. I won’t compromise on who the type of communication I need with my partners. I knew some bare basics that I would not compromise on and that created this foundation. And it’s unfortunate that those deals are struggling and some of them are having capital calls.
Now, that is unfortunate, but it is that cautionary tale to say when you are grounded, you are going to go further. You’re going to go with a lot more stability and sleeping at night with a lot of peace. So I’m wondering for everyone here, I want you to think for a moment and this doesn’t have to be we’re investing in a lot of different capacities here. And so when you think about your investing, I want you to think about what is the number one thing that is distracting you and then think about what would the foundation be for that? What is a commitment that you’re like, I’m going to commit and this is something I’m not going to relent on and I’m going to ask you to put that down in the chat box. Or if you want, you can unmute yourself and say it aloud to the group.
Sharad Mehta 19:04
Yeah, I’ll share. For now, it was kind of what Alex was mentioning. It was kind know, comparing what other people are doing. And I had to get to the point where I don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I don’t use social media for personal use at all. The only thing I use it for REsimpli Facebook Group and I have it bookmarked. So I just come directly to it and just exit out as soon as I’m done. Because when you’re looking at someone else’s success, you don’t know the real story. Like, they might have spent $120,000 to get a house that’s worth $130,000, but you only see $130,000 house. You don’t know what else is going on behind the scenes.
So for me, it was the discipline of not even get temptation, just completely avoid it, ignore it and just take it out of like I even have a paid app on my phone that blocks certain websites so I don’t get sucked into. For example, let me just check this code really quick like ESPN. It’s just like really, really small things, but you just go down this rabbit hole. So, yeah, that was like the biggest challenge that I personally struggle with is to just stay away. Like not even let that temptation come into my life. That’s a daily struggle for me honestly.
Julie Holly 20:25
I appreciate your transparency with that because the comparison syndrome can be so fierce on us. And although we would want to have the strength to cheer people on, it’s sometimes just painful and it stings. I’ll admit there are times I was in tears and my husband would remind me to your point, are they cash flowing? Do you know what the numbers are? Are their principles, your principles? So for us, it’s like, hey, we have very firm principles on which we’re investing. And I don’t care if it’s a four unit or a 400 unit, is it going to cash flow? That’s really critical for us. Right? So it’s like knowing what is actually super important for you. I’d like to see some more people or drop in what is the number one criteria for you on your investments. Kind of like your do or die. Like, no, if it doesn’t meet this, I’m not going to do it. I’m not moving forward.
Sharad Mehta 21:30
Yeah. For us, it’s one to four. You need that cash flow.
Julie Holly 21:35
Yep. The cash flows. I like, Brianna has the win-win for us and the seller and the buyer. That is the foundation that the first two generations my grandpa and my dad taught me. They’re like, everybody should be winning in the deal. I really appreciate that. That’s good business practices and it will build a very strong empire. Anyone else? We’ve got time. Don’t be shy with your, number one, yes. Buy at the right price and flipping right now. This is an interesting time to be flipping. I’ve been going outside my buy criteria, but with owner financing deals but feel limited on the exit.
Yeah. So then knowing when do I stretch? When am I willing to have that shiny object syndrome with my buy criteria? So, like, knowing these are things that I can live with and these are non-negotiables, I’m not going to do anything with this. This is really critical when we’re talking about getting traction in our businesses and in our investing. So one of the elements I’m just going to shift this a little bit is that it’s really healthy to have some level initially of where, okay, I can look at the spectrum and see what’s out there. That’s really important for us to be able to have because we don’t know everything.
And so we have to have our explore an educational period. I did this and I was telling Sharad on our first meeting that we had, I’m like, so I wanted passive investments. I just wanted cash flow coming into me and I was going to achieve that through real estate investing. And then I got shiny object syndrome. And I was like, oh, my gosh, there’s Forex trading out there. Oh, my gosh, I could have my Ecom store. Oh, my gosh, I could have multiple streams of passive income. Yeah. CSC, you guys are like so let me just say those things are no longer in my life at all. The horror story about this and the lesson learned.
Another cautionary tale is that instead of simply focusing on my real estate investing completely and being as sold out as Dominic is right. And just like, I know what I’m doing and this is what I’m going for, I was like, okay, passive income, multiple income streams. This is going to be great. I ended up having a Walmart store that got shut down with 126,000 leveraged on an American Express card. It was so incredibly stressful. That was supposed to be a passive investment that somebody else is managing it, they’re running it, and I’m just supposed to be a liaison, basically. Right?
All this to say, I did not do my research. I did not do my homework. So I didn’t educate myself. I looked at my options. So all that is to say, when you’re chasing after too many things, you’re not going to do any of those super well. I found myself with those chasing after passive investing and found myself on the downside of 126,000. Unfortunately, God is so kind and good and merciful, and every time, every payment was made. But when you have a $60,000, hey, you’ve got 60,000 due and Walmart’s holding it hostage or something, you lose some sleep at night. But those type of experiences can also temper us as investors, and so I would never want to relive it. But I’m also glad I lived it because I made me very more focused and also very cautious.
I had gone into a partnership in order to have that business, so it created some real clear lines about partnerships and who and how I partner and what my expectations are with partners. So even when it comes to partnerships, we can have Shiny Object Syndrome. We could go into the next meetup group and be like, oh, awesome, I’m going to go partner with David, and I’m going to partner with Keith, and they seem like super cool people. And then next week you put a deal together. It’s like, is that going to be the best practice? Shiny Object Syndromes with what we’re investing in, but we can also have Shiny Object Syndrome with who we are investing in. So now I want to ask you, do you have a clear criteria for (Inaudible 26:07). Sharad, are you doing everything solo?
Sharad Mehta 26:14
Yeah, I own all my businesses 100%, but I’ve considered partnership in some of my businesses, and I’ve gone down that path also and was very poor in my judgment. But luckily I got pulled out of it. I had the awareness or talked to the right people, but that’s something definitely. Shiny Object had a big influence on me, you know, just kind of watching someone portray themselves on social media, how successful they are, and I got sucked into it, but luckily talked to the right people and then was able to pull out of some deals at the right time.
But I don’t have good just being very candid, I don’t have good judgment on sometimes when I’m partnering up with thinking about partnering up with people. I haven’t I own 100% of all my businesses, but yeah, that’s something down the road. If I need to partner up, I need to get other, more experienced, expert people involved that can keep me in my lane.
Julie Holly 27:18
Yeah, it’s super powerful. I see we have a few responses. Let’s see a few more responses of we’re kind of on the fence right now of like, yes and no. I kind of want to see where a majority lies. We need a larger sample group.
Sharad Mehta 27:35
Everyone just share kind of, what do you guys think? Are you clear on your partnership? If you want to partner up with someone? Kind of what your criteria is or you’re not. Like I mentioned, that’s something I’ve struggled with, and I so feel like I’m not 100% clear on that and when that opportunity were to come.
Julie Holly 28:00
Thank you. I see we have a few more responses, and this is actually really great for a lot of you who have not. You’re still like, hey, we’re doing this on our own. Maybe it’s a husband, wife. And that’s a really powerful beginning. I will tell you, partnerships are so much good. Partnerships are so much fun, and it lightens the load and you can scale really, really well. So I would highly encourage you with pursuing partnerships. Would it be helpful to talk about partnerships for a moment and some criteria that my company has created around partnerships? I don’t want to go off on a tangent on a shiny object if that’s not going to serve you well.
Okay. All right. So, yeah, I will let you know. We have really created, just like we have zeroed in on exactly what we’re investing, exactly who our investors are going to be. Right? So we invest in residential units across the America. I’m actually market Agnostic because I’m partner driven, so I’ll get into that. When we talk about partnerships, we only offer the 506 B offerings. So now by clarity, clarity. Now when we go into partnerships here’s, the criteria that we’ve concluded is that we only do partners. We only choose to enter into a partnership where we have known the person we’re partnering with for at least one year, like minimum.
Anybody can even a year, people can kind of shine you on. And so let me see. Yes, when I say partners, Alex, I would say any type of partnership at all. If that’s a joint venture, if it’s a general partnership on a syndication, anyone that you are locked into an agreement with for a prolonged period of time, that is your partner. And so you really want to know who they are. So we love to see people for at least a year. We like to watch them and get to know them better. So, number one, one year, and that can create a lot of pain. Yes.
Sharad Mehta 30:22
Julie, if you can just go over what is 506 B offering just so that everybody on the call knows what that is.
Julie Holly 30:35
Yes, thank you. All right, so there are lots of different offerings that we can offer people, right, to investors to come into syndications. They are regulated by the Security Exchange Commission, which is called the SEC. So when you hear people say that and it just sounds like us altogether, but it’s SEC (Security Exchange Commission), so we can operate without having special licensure. So if we were to go in and sell securities, like stocks and such, we’d actually have to have different licenses, but we can operate and trade this commodity, this real estate commodity, through different vehicles.
So regulation B gets broken down into 506 C, which is for accredited investors only. And the upside of that is that you can actually advertise 506 C. You could put it all over social media and you don’t even have to know your investors at all. They could just simply click on your website and go and sign up and invest with you. But it’s limited only to accredited investors. So that means we have some of the ways you can be accredited. You can have net worth of a million dollars or more. You could have income, average annual income of 250,000 or more if you’re married and you’re expecting to make that year over year. So that would be 506 C accredited only.
We prefer 506 B, as in boy or better, we like to say because sure, the accredited investors can come into our offerings, into our investments. The cool thing is they can self-verify, so they don’t have to go through a third party like they would on a 506 C. And that can actually be a headache. I have a farmer and it’s kind of a headache for farmers. And depending on what your industry is, it can take a little bit of effort to put everything on paper.
So on 506 B is open to sophisticated and accredited investors alike. By sophisticated it means, hey, you have a relationship with whoever is presenting you that offering. And this is why we always get to know our investors first, one of the many reasons. So you have a relationship with whoever is presenting that investment to you, and you need to demonstrate that you have some knowledge. You need to understand what this process is so that you are qualified to make that investment decision for yourself.
And so they want to make sure the heart behind this whole regulation for 506 B was sort of to protect, I say this loosely, to protect, perhaps we’ll say the middle class from being taken advantage of and scammed by ill willed people. And so that is important, right? I had a Walmart store. It did not work out well. If I would have understood more, if I would have been more sophisticated in my knowledge and my understanding, and if I would have vetted that partner better, I would have made a different choice.
So there is a correlation between that story and this whole concept of a 506 B sophisticated investor. So knowing how does the syndication process work, how does this business plan on this particular investment work, and do I trust these general partners to actually steer the ship in the direction and execute on their business plan? Is that helpful?
Sharad Mehta 34:24
Yes. No, that’s super helpful.
Julie Holly 34:27
Yeah. It is really important to understand that. For us, we always like to know the other element of not having a 506 C. For us just to go down that a little bit further, is we don’t want strangers. We just don’t want strangers in our investment community. We want to know who people are. How can we advocate as general partners if we’re deciding if we want to sell or dispose of an asset or if we want to refinance it or recapitalize it or anything? Right? If we’re thinking about those decisions, we really, truly need to understand what are our investor goals.
So if somebody is just some stranger off the street investing, I’m not going to be able to advocate and say, actually, my investors are looking for I know what my investors are looking for right now. And I can say this is what they’re looking for. This is why they chose that deal. And I can speak and represent them because passive investors have no voting rights. They are passive, they’re limited in their capacity, and they are entrusting everything about what they’re entrusting that general partner that they’re investing with to represent their voice at the table. So we just believe that you can’t adequately do that unless you actually have phone calls and conversations with your investors.
Sharad Mehta 35:50
Would you say it’s almost like 506 B would be like your relational money partners and 506 C is more like transactional? They could be relational also, but they could also be transactional. But 506 B, they would all be relational, your money partners in the business.
Julie Holly 36:09
That’s a great way of putting it. And we could even go as far as, say, the SEC would say that you have to have a preexisting substantiative relationship with someone before they come into your offering. There’s a lot of chatter about that. So I’m not going to go too far down that rabbit hole.
Sharad Mehta 36:29
No, we don’t want to get too technical, but I just wanted to kind of help you explain. So just kind of everybody knew what 506 B was.
Julie Holly 36:39
Yeah, definitely. I appreciate that. Yeah. So when we’re choosing partners, right, we think, how long have I known this person? And your criteria, establishing your own criteria, even if you’re like, I don’t know that I’ll ever partner with someone. Just even giving yourself the space to think about that. Because when that opportunity presents itself, because it more than likely will at some point in your investing journey, especially if you want to scale your investments, more than likely at some point you are going to be joint venturing or going into some type of partnership. So creating this type of criteria, even if you’re like, oh, Julie, I’m just at the beginning, I don’t know that this applies to me. Thinking about it is just helping prepare you for your future in a very powerful way.
So just consider, how long do I think it’s important for me? Julie says her company, it’s a minimum of a year, but maybe I feel comfortable with six months or maybe I need two years. So like having that understanding for yourself. The second thing that is important to us is we want to meet people in person. So all of our partnerships are people that we have met. I spend a lot of money traveling to events and going to events. If you’re not attending events, you need to be going to events. I cannot overemphasize how going to events will catapult your investing. I don’t say that naively either. I’ve literally watched this transpire over years now with people who’ve gone to events.
I was speaking at an event, or MC last week, an event. I watched some people go from, I don’t even know why I’m here, I just came with my husband to just this whole evolution of you can’t even recognize a person. Like the amount of expansion that takes place. Here’s the other benefit. When you go to events and you’re considering partnering with someone, now, you can see how do they carry themselves, how do they conduct themselves? Is that similar to how I want to be perceived? Some people might say this is too technical or too particular. However, anyone you’re partnering with is also a reflection of you, your company, your brand, whatever it is that you’re building.
And so if you’re associated with somebody that carries themselves in a way that is wonderful and is like a great representation, how’s that going to reflect on you? It’s going to be like, oh, my gosh, you’re partnered with them. Yes. I want to know more about what you have to offer. It can really be a help, or it can be a potential hindrance. So going to events, you get to learn, you get to meet really great people, and you get to see how people carry themselves, conduct themselves. You get to break bread with them. It’s a very critical moment.
And the third element of our partnerships is collaborate on something small and petty. And if you’re in the single family space and maybe you’re wholesaling or something along those lines that might look like, hey, you know what, let’s just throw barbecue. Let’s throw barbecue at the park or at our house or whatever, invite. Just do something that has really a very nominal cost associated with it so that you can see how you do collaborate together. Nobody else is involved. There’s not much money on the table. If it’s a barbecue, you do something where you’re creating content. For me, I’ll have people on my podcast and such.
You do something where you see, do they show up on time? What’s their attitude like? And you’re communicating and you’re seeing, does this work? Does it work? Does it work? Again, that has a very small price tag to it compared to ruin the deal for the next 3, 5, 10 years. So getting to know people and vetting them up front paves the way. And now those partnerships, when your phone rings or you have to hop on an asset management call, you’re actually happy to see each other and you’re actually able to work through. There will be hurdles, there will be challenges that come up.
And so when you have those type of relationships, you’re able to really collaborate and create a better outcome, because I will assure you once again, and I think everyone’s going to agree with this one, as long as you hold real estate for more than two weeks, you’re going to have some hiccup happen to you. So it’s good to be prepared and to know who I’m in the foxhole with and how are they going to respond when things aren’t going and are they going to be Jekyll and Hyde or are they going to be a steady, consistent person that we’re going to be able to work through this with.
Sharad Mehta 41:32
I agree with you, Julie, 100% on that. When I started out in the business, I used to go to the local RIA in northwest Indiana. It wasn’t even like a conscious decision on just being myself. I would talk to, I would network with investors. This one investor, she had also been coming to the group for few months. And I just mentioned that, hey, I’m buying properties and I’m looking to and I didn’t even mention that I need some money. I said, eventually I would need some private money to scale. She’s like, oh, I have some money if you’re interested. I mean, you don’t even know, going to these events, who has money, how they can help you. It’s not just about money or it’s about other things in the business that they can help you with.
And having what you said is so, so true that how you carry yourself makes a huge difference. It’s such a small thing, the impression that you’re making, especially if someone is going to partner up with you, someone is going to lend you money. Even I have other private money lenders. This one common friend that I have would hang out at my friend’s house and then just talk about kind of, hey, this is what I’m doing. And he said, hey, I have some money that I would like to invest. Would you be interested? I’m like, great, but it’s just about being myself, like being excited about what I’m doing. Those small things make a huge difference. So, yeah, thank you for mentioning that.
Julie Holly 42:58
That’s absolutely huge. I have recently I mentioned I’m on the Canadian border. I live in a town of TWY 9500 and I’ve been driving an hour. There’s another one. There are two meetup groups, one’s an hour away, one’s an hour and a half away. But I’ve decided I’m going to dig my heels in and really support the real estate community, investing community, where I live, loosely put, where I live, right? Since I live far away from everything. But it’s been super powerful to get to know and to create those alliances and every connection we make. It’s not a tit for tat, right? It’s not like, I give you $10, you give me $10 back type thing. It’s like, oh, my gosh, you know what? I gave Brady a connection and then Brady somehow.
Now May is reaching out to me, and Jesse’s reaching out to me, and then I connected them up know, Kent and everything comes back to us in some capacity when we’re putting it out there and giving in. So, you know, when you go to those type of RIAs and such, you’ll meet a variety of people, and when you go with that go giver mentality and you’re just willing to support, you’re going to get tenfold back every single time, everything that you need.
Sharad Mehta 44:18
Absolutely.
Julie Holly 44:19
Yeah. I think we’re coming to — almost at the end of our time, aren’t we?
Sharad Mehta 44:27
We are, yes. About 30 minutes.
Julie Holly Sharad Mehta 42:39
It’s almost like I’m a podcaster and I talk or something.
Sharad Mehta 44:34
No, this has been a great call. Yeah, this has been a great call. Thank you.
Julie Holly 44:39
Yeah. What do you think, what would serve you guys best? Should we talk? I have a couple more points that we can actually I should wrap up shiny objects, and then we could do some Q A, perhaps. Does that work?
Sharad Mehta 44:52
Yeah, that sounds great.
Julie Holly 44:55
Awesome. I want to encourage everyone with this. Dabbling is distracting, distracting, distraction. However you want to say it for yourself, like, put it on a T shirt, put it on the wall. But Dabbling is going to just you’re going to spin your wheels, and you’re not going to be going forward. So when you are looking at, I want to gain momentum, and I want to gain traction in this, and now I’ve funneled it down. So you want to make sure that you’re not Dabbling. I recently had a coaching client, and she was looking at all different markets. She’s like, I’m interested in DFW, and I’m interested in the Midwest, and she happens to be from the Midwest.
And so we started narrowing it down, and this might be helpful as you’re looking at how am I narrowing my focus down? Because we are going to start out with a big funnel, but we want to narrow it down so that we are no longer Dabbling. We go from that whole, okay, I’m educating myself, I’m getting experience, to now I’m becoming more refined, focused, and clear. And in that process, we started just asking simple questions for her.
Some of the questions, and this will be, I think, very helpful for a lot of you trying to figure out, well, where do I want to invest if I don’t want to invest right in my backyard? It’s like, how much time do you want to spend on an airplane? How easy is it for you to hop on that plane to get down into that target market that you’re looking at? How well do you know the culture there? What kind of resources do you have in that environment? And ultimately, this client actually determined to invest in the Midwest a couple hours away from where she lives, because she said, well, I could drive there. I could easily develop my network there.
And her other criteria was I already speak Midwest. There’s a culture just like the DFW area, for her taxes, or they have a culture, they have a way, they communicate. East coast has a way of communicating. Every place has their own little way and nuances. And she’s like, I already know the nuances. So it’s going to be far easier for me to gain trust and traction in this market because I’m not going to look like the outsider trying to come in. So when you’re starting to look at your market, start to look at what assets am I bringing to the table? And sure, there might be greater appreciation in a market. There is also more competition in that market. What’s going to give me the inside edge, really?
Sharad Mehta 47:34
Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a couple of things you always have to balance between the rate of return that you’re going to get on your money and also rate of return that you’re going to get on your time. Is it worth getting a couple of extra points? But then you’re always stressed out if something happens, like you jump on a flight, take like a 1, 2, 3, 4 hour flight to get to the property. Is it really worth that extra two percentage rate of return that you’ll get? Or you’re happier making a little bit lower rate of return, but then you have the peace of mind if something were to happen, you can just hop in your car, just drive a couple of hours and be there.
Those are the decisions sometimes. Again, it comes down to kind of what you talked about, the shiny object. It’s really important to make decision based on what works best for me, given my situation. It’s so unique. I mean, there’s nobody else in my situation with all the circumstances of background and then make decision based on that and not look at what someone else is doing, what might be working for them, for their background, given their circumstances.
Julie Holly 48:41
Yeah, which begs a question. When do you know when to quit on a strategy or tactic? And when do you know to be resolved and resilient to push through? This is a really critical thing because if you haven’t read the book the Alchemist, you can drop in the chat box if you have what is that? Paulo Coelho? Who wrote that? Yeah. Highly recommend it. In fact, I’m going to highly recommend the audio version. And if you have any children of any kind in your like, listen to it with them in the car and everything.
It’s a fantastic fable, but it talks and it very much addresses the concept of pursuing something, everything. I’m going to spoil it. Nobody’s going to hate me for spoiling it, right? Just turn your audio off for the next 5 seconds. Okay. I’ll put my hand back up when it’s safe. Okay. But ultimately what ends up happening is what the main character was pursuing was literally he goes on this entire journey and finds himself right back where he started, everything he wanted was already right there.
And so a lot of times we want to chase and go after things, but what ends up happening is it develops our character, it develops our resolve, and we learn more about ourselves and we show back up as a different person. It was there all along, but he couldn’t see it because he wasn’t even the right person. Right?
And so you have to know, like, when do we push on? Are we going to just stay? Yes. It’s called the alchemist here. I’ll pull it off the shelf. That’s what it looks like. Absolutely fantastic book! I highly recommend the audiobook was so good that I bought the book because it’s something like you just want to read it once a year because it just gets your thinking restabilized, and it reminds you that if you’re in the pressure cooker, you’re going to find your way to the end of that pressure cooker. It’s going to be okay. And if you’re having a great time, that’s great, but you’re going to have a pressure cooker situation coming your way. So be resolved and be prepared.
So I’d love to ask you guys, what are some of your strategies? Let’s just see where we are. What are some of your strategies to say, no, I know I need to stay with this. maybe I’m doing direct mail, maybe I’m doing cold calls. Maybe a lot of people are using social media to redo their marketing. Maybe direct messages, whatever strategy that it is that you are working on in your investing, when have you decided to pull the plug or when have you decided or hit the brakes or when have you decided to just keep the foot on the gas?
And I’m going to just ask a couple of people because I think it’s fun. It’s also good for everyone to hear each other and then you guys are going to be like, oh, my gosh, I’m going to go to him for advice. So anyway, Brandon, how about you? Do you ever have to hit the brakes or hold that pedal down on the gas?
Brandon Barnes 51: 51
We have a couple of times. So my wife and I, we invest, just the two of us, and as we work through employees and especially the last six months with the market change, kind of a little dip that we had. Instead of just continuing the way we were going, we pulled back brakes, changed stuff, and then have been in the reverse and put our foot to the gas as we’ve kind of built it back out.
We’ve had a couple of different changes in our business over the last three years, but as we’ve evolved, hired people, set up new processes, had some wins, had some losses, kind of learned and iterate from each one. And so that’s kind of been it. And then my wife has a staging business that we have been pretty foot down on the gas for the last six months, it’s been taken off.
Julie Holly 52:45
What a complimentary business profile. Let me ask you this. When you guys were okay, we got to pivot what led up to that moment to where you guys said, wait, we got to slow down. We got to check the scenery and see what’s going on.
Brandon Barnes 53: 02
So we’re primarily fix and flippers. So for a lot of it for us has been cash flow. It’s a very cash intensive business, and sometimes we would buy and buy and buy and then realize we have a bunch of monthly payments coming up. You have a property, a couple of properties go over budget once it’s on the market a little bit longer. And so what we kind of implemented into our life, we call it Money Monday. And so every Monday, we look at all of our money. So it’s money coming in, money coming out. And then from there, we determine, okay, can we continue to keep buying, or do we need to kind of slow down?
And that’s kind of how we kind of do it on a week by week, we project it out 90 days, but we take that number and kind of break it down every week. And so that lets us know if we have to bring in a private investor, if we have to maybe submit a draw for one of our projects, it just kind of determines that. And so that’s where we really started in our business, because we got to a point where we bought a bunch of homes and didn’t have any money.
I mean, legitimately, we have a ton of assets and have no cash. And so that situation and feeling is no fun. And when I taught my business coach, that’s when we kind of implemented it, and that really helped us grow. And we’re at a phase right now. I’m not acquiring anything that doesn’t meet exactly our buy criteria, 100%. If every box is not checked, it’s just a no where. If we get everything on the market and houses are all selling and we’re running out of inventory, then maybe we’ll say, all right, this is a quicker rehab. We’ll do this or make some decisions.
Julie Holly 54:55
I appreciate your thoroughness. And you can hear I hear the process that created so much clarity for you. And I love the whole concept of Money Mondays. That’s really powerful and to be connected on that level. So what I’m hearing and this is, like, a huge takeaway, and this is why it’s great to always just bring people into the conversation, because it’s real, right? And you guys have a relationship with Brandon. You should get to know him better because he’s got a lot of this figured out. But when we can become clearer about, okay, this is my buy criteria, I stay in this parameter, and this is what we do on Mondays with our money. And you create these levels of clarity so that you can do those pivots as needed and you can see them.
So I do a ton of mountain biking, and I was out on the trail this last weekend, and I realized when you’re mountain biking in treed areas, you can see maybe 10, 15 yards ahead of you because it’s not straight, but you just have to focus on that 10, 15 yards. You don’t need to know 50 and 100 yards away. You just need to go, 10, 15, we’re good. And so this is a great opportunity. When you have a level of clarity, you’re able to say, I know the 10, 15 yards ahead of me. I can pivot, adjust, and do what I need to do for this. I’m not going to get distracted because I don’t need to know what’s totally ahead of me and I don’t have to see what’s to the sides. Just got to trust the path unfolding before me. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Brandon Barnes 56: 33
Yeah, you’re welcome.
Julie Holly 56: 34
I appreciate that. That’s super helpful. Does anyone else have a way where they’re like, this is how I’ve seen the moment I’ve recognized the moment I need to pivot. And Sharad maybe you have one of those where you’re like, yeah, this is how I know when I need to pivot, when I need to hit the brake, and this is when I know I’m going to just hold steady on cruise control.
Sharad Mehta 56: 59
Yeah. I think for me, one thing that’s really helped me is simplifying or eliminating as many decisions as I can out of my, like, down to the point I don’t even want to get tempted. My wife and I, we closed on a house, like a couple of weeks ago in California where we’re moving to, and just so know, it’s such a tight market, you’re not sure if you bought the right house or if there will be another better deal. I literally just unsuccessful from any notification from Redfin, Zillow or anything. I deleted all the apps, so I don’t even get tempted. If I paid 100,000 for a house and there’s another house right next to it comes for 80,000, there’s nothing I can do at this point. The only thing I can do is just not even get bothered because it’s not going to help me with those sort of things.
So, yeah, for me, that’s just avoiding any distraction, any temptations, and staying very disciplined to things that are going to add value. I feel like that’s my daily struggle. Honestly, if I can just stay disciplined, I mean, to the point, honestly, I shared on one of the calls at the beginning of the year. I have an app on my phone that I track my daily activity. Like, I have certain things that I need to know. Don’t go to Facebook or whatever, spec certain things. As long as I do that, I feel like I had a good day and I can just check it. I get a good feeling just marking it completed. That just helps me stay disciplined, stay in my lane. But honestly, for me, that’s a daily, daily struggle for me, just avoiding temptations.
So, yeah, if you have any pill I can take for that, so I never get tempted by that, I’ll sign up for that. I’m sure a lot of people on the call struggle with the same thing, but for me, the solution has been just getting off social media and not even having those temptations. And generally I feel like when you’re watching somebody’s Instagram, TikTok or whatever new social media platform is out there right now, you’re watching somebody’s highlight of their life at mostly lowest point in your day at that point. And it’s not a fair comparison when you’re comparing watching someone living this exotic life and you’re at a very low stage of your day, it’s not a fair comparison to the point.
I don’t even keep my phone with me at night. I have a burner phone, like a flip phone that I take with me at night on my nightstand. And it’s for emergency purposes only. Few people, my family and a couple of employees have that phone number. So even if I get up in the middle of the night anxious about something, I don’t even have anything to surf. I just keep a Kindle on my bed. Just if I can’t sleep, I’ll read.
But I’ve had to force myself in those situations because I don’t have the willpower. So there’s just knowing kind of what I’m good at and what I’m not. I’m good at avoiding temptations, but if there’s like cookies in front of me, I’m going to eat them. There’s no other ways about it. That’s just who I am. And knowing that helps me stay disciplined.
Julie Holly 01:00:27
I appreciate that. It reminds me of a story I used to read as a kid from Frog and Toad. And if you haven’t read it’s in the book, Frog and Toad Are Friends, it’s a kid’s book, but it talks about this, and he ends up putting the cookies up in a cookie jar, like the cookie jar up on the shelf where he’s just always trying to make it more difficult for him to get that.
But ultimately, you said so many important things in what you’re talking about and describing and creating some parameters for ourselves, like do not disturb is a powerful feature on our phone. I probably frustrate a lot of people, but like, you actually I’m like, did I hit Do Not Disturb on this? I must have, because nobody has been disturbing us, right?
But all that to say, when you hit that do not disturb or when you don’t have any notifications on, now you’re in the driver’s seat of your life and your time and everything, right? And so why do I need to know that X, Y, and Z is happening at any snap of the moment? I don’t need to know that. And even. If I get a text message, if I am in a flow zone, I don’t need to be distracted. That’s a shiny object over there and I need to stay in the zone, get my work done because if you are distracted in that capacity, you end up spending. I think the statistics are 65% longer on your task just by every single distraction derails you so significantly, substantially.
It’s not that you don’t ever have to check your messages, but you can do it when you want to. You can have that time in your day when you are checking your messages or checking the social media or whatever it is in your life that you want to. You were talking about reducing decisions and our society is so inundated with information overload constantly and that’s one of the elements of social media also and just engaging in the world. Even podcasts is we have that decision fatigue. I opened up my phone this morning. What podcasts do I want to listen to? Decision. Decision. We make so many more decisions today than people did 100 years ago.
And so the more we can reduce those amount of decisions that we have to make. There’s a podcast I listen to on Tuesdays. It’s my Tuesday podcast. You could go that granular if you wanted to, but reducing the amount of energy that your brain has to release in order to move forward in anything is going to help you out substantially. Some people who is at Steve Jobs, all they wears black shirts. I have wanted to adopt that a lot. Just because you don’t even have to worry about what you’re wearing. You just show up and you’re good to go. I do that on my….
Sharad Mehta 01:03:15
I think it’s a little bit easier for guys to do that than women. Yeah, for me, I have so many of these recently t shirts that this is all I wear. But yeah, I had my wife try to adopt that. She’s like, you’re crazy, I don’t want to do that.
Julie Holly 01:03:32
When I launched the podcast, I always wore a black shirt. I still almost always wear a black shirt. I’m like, I never want to have to worry about what am I wearing on the podcast, it’s always like, this is what I wear. It’s one less decision. It sounds silly, but all of those micro decisions. So then you can also do this other practice, right? Decide. Just pre-decide. You don’t have to wait. So like, before you go to bed, you’re already pre-deciding what your morning looks like. I’m pre-deciding. I’m going to get up at four, I’m going to read my Bible, I’m going to read my book journal, and then I’m going to hit the gym.
I make a pre decision so I don’t even have to be thinking in the morning when I wake up. I don’t have to be thinking about what do I need to be doing, how I’m going to do it. It’s like I already decided. I already decided on my schedule at the beginning of the week. I pre-decided these are the people I’m speaking with and these are the tasks that I’m going to get done so I can keep and maintain the traction and momentum and then I cannot be distracted because that’s really ultimately what we’re trying to prevent, right, is like we don’t need to be distracted. The clearer we are on what we want to pursue in life, the fewer distractions that we will have.
So there’s one last point I want to make about comparison because I loved how you were like, we’re comparing our low point to somebody’s high point oftentimes. But I’ve also found in the investing space that oftentimes newer investors will want the same level of success as people who’ve been investing consistently for years. And so we have to remember where am I in my investing journey and am I expecting that I am going to reach their level of success in the first six months of my investing journey?
I mean, that would be super cool, but it’s taken them 12 years to get to where they’re going or it’s taken them 7 or 15. Right? They’ve built this over a prolonged period of time. And so I need to make sure that I’m not comparing where I’m at in my journey to where they are because they are not the same spot. It’s not an equal comparison. At are walking on your journey.
Sharad Mehta 01:05:45
That’s a very good point!
Julie Holly 01:05:37
I want you to make sure that, you know, being aware of, oh, my gosh, you know, Sharad and his wife have been doing this for a really long time. Of course their portfolio is larger. Of course they have had these other experiences. I’ve only been doing this for the last year. Right? So you want to look at where am I at? It doesn’t mean that you can’t expedite success and being in these type of spaces and being clear about who you are, being around people that have systems and processes like Brandon, this is really powerful for you.
Sharad Mehta 01:06:23
I think another that’s a really fantastic point. One other thing I would add is when you’re looking at someone else, just looking at how many years or all the effort they put into another thing to look at it is what are the other sacrifices they’ve made in their life? For example, like, for example, I might be okay driving a Honda minivan, but are you okay with that?
Those are the things you have to look at. It’s just not the investment strategy. It’s also what are the other life choices I’ve made. Maybe I prioritize travel or I may be completely cutting back on travel or other things, but is that something you’re okay with just to get to the same level of portfolio somebody else has gotten or same number of deals that somebody else has gotten?
So it’s really important. And then again, like social media, you’re never going to get the complete picture. People are only going to post about their high moments or highlights of their life. So it’s really important to look at the complete holistic picture of kind of what’s going on with someone and not just look at one percentage or a very small fraction of their life and then compare that with their entire life and just imagine or just assume that their entire life is just full of these amazing things because that’s never true for anyone.
Julie Holly 01:07:50
And I will tell you, just with my experience in life and by nature of everything I do with coaching and podcasting and being well, networked, everybody has their ups and downs, just pardon the expression, but everybody poops. Everybody’s human. And there’s a human condition and experience that nobody can work around. No amount of money. Gary Vey, Grant Cardone all those guys still have to use the restroom just like everybody else, and they have highs and lows just like everybody. Like, we are all human. I used to be a competitive rock climber, and I was on the national level in the isolation space because you can’t watch everybody else and figure out the moves early, right?
And I just remember sitting back there with the people that you’d see on the cover of the magazine and I’m like, oh, well, she’s just trying to chill out and get in her zone, just like I am. There’s no difference here, so there’s no difference between any level of success that people have. So definitely keep that in mind for sure. I had something else I was going to throw out there and it just went out the window.
Sharad Mehta 01:09:06
Now if it comes back, let us know and then we always send out a recording of the call and then we can include anything that you want us to include in there also.
Julie Holly 01:09:16
Yeah, definitely. I do want to encourage you on this. I think we were talking about just being focused. Our focus comes with the clarity that we have, and when you do have that clarity, you are able and capable of doing things that you would otherwise never do. So for about six months before I left public school education, there was this window of time where I woke up at three in the morning. I actually just got teary eyed thinking about that and it was just gritty, but I knew something it kind of goes to, do you hit the brakes? Do you hit cruise control? What are you doing? Are you going to just go pedal to the metal?
And for that period of time where I was waking up at three in the morning, that was the bridge that I needed to go from, okay, I’m going to transition, I’m going into full time investing, and I have things that I need to get set up in place and I just need the extra time. But it was a commitment because I was clear I knew exactly where I was going and I also knew it wasn’t a forever commitment. And so sometimes having that in mind is what’s the purpose behind the process of this? And am I willing to commit to this? What level of commitment is this?
And so for me, it was like, oh, I’m not committing in a forever way because this is not sustainable. Like waking up that early for me would never be sustainable. However, it was something I could do in the short interim in order to take me to that next spot that I wanted to be with my investing. So you know, sometimes looking at you were talking shroud about what am I willing to like maybe I’m willing know, drive a certain car or not eat out or not go on certain vacations and things like that because that’s what I’m willing to commit to for x period of time. So just understanding your bandwidth and your capacity is really going to help you out a lot. But being focused is going to be huge.
Sharad Mehta 01:11:27
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like especially in the day and age that we live in right now, being focused without distraction is almost like a superpower that you have. And if you can apply it in your personal life, business life, it’s going to be an amazing, amazing advantage. I have certain things that I do in my life. For example, I love watching Netflix, but I have made a commitment. I will only watch Netflix if I’m on my bike or I’m running on my treadmill. That’s the only time I’ll watch.
So I’ll pick up a show that’s absolutely very interesting show. Then that gives me an incentive. Just kind of keep me excited about working out because that’s the only time I’ve committed. I’ll watch something on Netflix if I’m working out. Those are like the disciplines that you make and I feel like just the small little things that you make makes such a big difference. And then I look at it’s hard to look at somebody who’s super successful and kind of just get to that level immediately.
But you can start following somebody else’s process right away because that doesn’t take know, like Brandon mentioned, Money Mondays, that’s something, it doesn’t matter what business level you’re at, you can immediately start implementing in your business. Or if somebody is doing direct mail, they might be spending $10,000 a month. But you can start implementing right away. And you can just start at like $500 or $1,000 a month, but just be consistent day in, day out, follow the process and it’s a matter of time before you start seeing success.
Julie Holly 01:13:09
Oh gosh, that’s so true. By the way, direct mail is definitely not dead. My husband, he owns a RE/MAX brokerage where we live. He’s one of the broker owners. And yeah, I’m like, direct mail still works. It worked in the past and it still works. And email is ridiculously amazing as well, email is powerful, so, so powerful. I would like to know. I think we’re going to probably end up wrapping up here. I’d love to know a biggest takeaway that you could actually apply something that it may be challenged you, it motivated you, it gave you an insight. If you would drop that down in the chat, that would be awesome.
And what that does is that actually helps you solidify and take something meaningful away that you can go that. Yeah. David we all have our challenges. Yes. That criteria before partnering Dominic is going to be game changer. Brady, thanks for dropping that in there. Relationships are important and it’s amazing. I will add this. This is crazy, but I auditioned for a TEDx Talk recently and somebody from the RIA group actually messaged me and was like, hey, is this you? This is before I’m going to this audition. I’m like, yeah. She’s like, I’m on the board. I had no idea. I wasn’t looking for that.
You just never know who knows who and who knows what. It’s great when you see an organizer as transparent, like Sharad, it’s huge. It’s absolutely huge. You guys should just be high fiving him for his willingness to be vulnerable and share under the hood of like, these things are real. We all go through this.
Sharad Mehta 01:15:14
Absolutely. I feel like it’s a daily struggle. I mean, when you and I connected and you mentioned the topic and I was like, if nobody else gets value out of it, I don’t care. I know I’m going to get tons of value out of it because that’s a daily struggle for me. And just staying focused and having a strong mindset, it makes a huge, huge difference.
Julie Holly 01:15:38
It is absolutely huge. So that’s actually a really good point also is that before I even committed to this, we hopped on a call. I was like, I don’t know that I’m the right person. I don’t know what’s your group about. Tell me more. How can I add value to the group? What does that look like? So it’s a great process. It was a great process for both of us to see, like, oh, gosh, shiny objects is a real thing for people at some point in their life.
I did drop in the chat box, I dropped a link to the Conscious Investor podcast. I’m always grateful for new listeners. Mondays are mindset Wednesday or Thursdays. I’m sorry, it’s only been like the past three years. That is for an investor, insight and that’s really powerful when you’re hearing people talk. We talk about real estate investing in a different way, oftentimes less mechanical and more practical.
And so you can get a lot of the mechanics in a lot of different capacities. But learning somebody’s thinking and their philosophy is very different than learning the numbers elements of things. And then I also dropped a link. If you want to pop on a call sometime, there’s a link to my calendar and I love connecting with people.
Sharad Mehta 01:17:04
Is it okay if we email the link out to our email list?
Julie Holly 01:17:07
Of course, yes.
Sharad Mehta 01:17:08
Okay, perfect.
Julie Holly 01:17:10
Yeah, just tell them that if they want to book time with me, then they have to subscribe to the podcast or YouTube channel. Totally kidding. But…
Sharad Mehta 01:17:23
I should do that. Should do that.
Julie Holly 01:17:26
Prerequisite.
Sharad Mehta 01:17:27
The first 30 seconds of the call should be, hey, I have all these links open. Can you go ahead and subscribe to all of these?
Julie Holly 01:17:35
Yeah, exactly. Do this and then you can unlock the rest of this. Thank you so much for inviting me, for sticking around. Thanks for being letting me. Just call on people and you get to hear from each other and it’s super powerful when we start to realize our experience is not unique. We’re humans and some people have some strategies that are really going to support us and clarity is key in life.
Sharad Mehta 01:18:05
Absolutely.
Julie Holly 01:18:06
Yeah.
Sharad Mehta 01:18:07
Thank you, Julie. Thank you so much for being on this call. I think all of us got tons and tons of value out of it. Thank you.
Julie Holly 01:18:16
Thank you. And if you guys have any questions, I would even go into podcasting for a few minutes. I don’t know if you want Q and A or anything like that.
Sharad Mehta 01:18:28
Yeah, guys, if any of you have any questions you want to ask Judy, please put it in the chat or feel free to unmute yourself and just ask the question.
Julie Holly 01:18:39
If you don’t ask questions, I ask questions.
Dominic Franco 01:18:44
I have a question, but I’m not really too sure how to formulate it. I was thinking of the distractions thing, right? And I’m just getting started. So I’m doing pretty much everything right. Like, I’m a one man band and I’m starting to look at hiring things out, at least on the VA side. How do you decide what role I should sit in, like what seat and what to hire out 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or how quickly?
Julie Holly 01:19:11
This is ‘The E-Myth Revisited’. You can get real this. I’m usually a Book person, but this is again, something I read, I listened to as an audiobook. Really good! And it is also kind of fable story driven with practical business examples. Highly recommend this. Maybe someone can add a link.
Sharad Mehta 01:19:35
I’ll put a link in there.
Julie Holly 01:19:37
But that will tell you exactly how to set up your business from day one, whether you are a single person running your business or if you’re in it with a partner, it tells you how to set up the roles and then how to scale and grow into that. And then when it comes to hiring a VA, I will promise you this. Every coach and every VA and every assistant, everything I’ve ever hired out for has returned in tenfold, probably 20, 50 fold. It’s absolutely amazing. And when you want to start hiring the VA, and I don’t think I’m going to go against anything that they’re saying in here is I kept a list for a period of time. I had like a list that was a constant, what am I not loving?
So I believe in doing everything in my zone of genius. I don’t do any sounds crazy. I do not do anything that is not in my zone of genius. If it does not make me happy, I don’t do it. It goes to somebody else. And yes, sometimes I do things that are not my favorite, but I know, okay, that’s just a step to get to where I want to go. So I’m okay with it as long as it’s a green light. For me, it’s green light and I’m going to go. But if I feel resistance toward any task that went down onto a list and then I was able to see who I felt I needed to bring on as an assistant first.
But you just keep that running list for a period of time and then you’ll be like, oh, okay, somebody else can do this and this and this. And when you’re in your zone, your flow zone or your zone of genius, whatever you want to call it, when you’re operating in that capacity, your ability to move forward is expedited tremendously. So I highly recommend as soon as you can bring on an assistant.
Dominic Franco 01:21:27
Okay. Yeah. We had task audit sheet, which is kind of like one to five. One being I’m terrible at it and I hate it, and five being I’m really great at it and I love it. I’ve been sort of filling that out. But how do you feel about is there some tasks that you’d never have to do it at all, but you could still hire it out? Like, for instance, sales calls. I feel like it’s difficult to hire someone on sales calls if I’ve never done one or even learned how to do it myself first.
Julie Holly 01:21:54
I don’t think you have to know how to do absolutely everything. How much slower is that going to take us to proceed? So there are plenty of VAS that know how to have that skill set already. And that’s what they do. They book the calls or they make that sales call and things like to for anyone. Not you. I’m not like, oh, you, Dominic. If we expect ourselves to become experts in everything before we hire out that position, we will never be able to really create and establish the business that we are striving for. It’s going to take us so long, we’re going to be exhausted. So finding those people to hire is huge.
Dominic Franco 01:22:37
Okay, cool.
Julie Holly 01:22:39
Yeah, that’s a good question. Does anybody else here have an assistant or a team? You mentioned that, Brandon. How did you guys start scaling in that capacity?
Brandon Barnes 01:22:42
So we’re on our second assistant, actually, right now. We have an assistant and a project manager. No, sorry, we don’t have that anymore. We really tried to bootstrap as much as we could and just we consider, like, parts of our lives seasons. I know you mentioned earlier you can’t withstand Waking up certain times. And so we would just kind of push through seasons till we realized that my wife and I were at capacity, and generally it would happen in her staging business, where I have a 16 foot trailer. I’d pull it, we’d be moving couches. It’s mid-July, and by the end of the day, we want a divorce.
It’s like, all right, how can we figure out how to move this? And honestly, the person that we have now just kind of fell into our lap. It was another investor that we’ve done business with. They were done flipping, and they had a really good team member that they were not going to need anymore, and so they recommended her to us. And honestly, we sat through for a couple of weeks and really at the time didn’t need her, and I say need like we didn’t know. But it was the right person at the right time in the right seat.
And so we pulled the trigger and just kind of fumbled through it in the beginning, and that’s kind of been where it’s at. It’s ten folded what we’ve been able to do as a two person team completely. And if you find the right people, they will continue to dig for more opportunities, which is what? It depends on your business. Are you a business that wants to grow or you want to stay stagnant? Do you want to stay small?
And we want to not necessarily grow, but get more efficient and get better. And so everybody that’s with us, we want them to be the same. I want them to ask questions, why are we doing this? Could we do this better? Is us spending $200 better than driving a trailer and doing this ourselves? Like, what else can we be doing? So we kind of take it through seasons.
Julie Holly 01:24:57
Yes is the answer.
Brandon Barnes 01:24:59
Yes, it is, 100%. And our business coach helped us with that a ton. He has us paint a paintbrush, and it’s like, what does your business look like? If you could dream it exactly how you want it. And I talked to my wife a lot about it, but hers was, I want to show up at the house, make sure it’s staged properly, and leave. Furniture is dropped off. All the work is done. I just come in and finish it. And I think she’s successfully done that a couple of times in the matter of four or five months.
Julie Holly 01:25:31
Coach business coaches make a difference. Hiring out makes a difference. Read this book. Everyone should read, ‘The E-Myth Revisited’. If you don’t have a coach and you’re looking for those components, that will give you a super, super leg up.
Brandon Barnes 01:25:52
I am sad that hotels don’t have newspapers and chocolate mints on their beds, like in the E-Myth.
Julie Holly 01:25:56
Seriously. And I’m like, you should know my coffee order, please bring me.
Brandon Barnes 01:25:59
Yeah, I want the newspaper. I want to turn down the newspaper. The mint on my bed, you know.
Julie Holly 01:26:05
I think we can find that hotel.
Brandon Barnes 01:26:08
Yeah, I’m sure they exist.
Sharad Mehta 01:26:10
Yeah. That particular book, E-Myth Revisited, was a huge influence on when I started of that was a huge influence on how I wanted to create things in recently. So amazing book to read. It just gives you so much mental clarity on what you think a business should be and what it actually takes for you to run a successful business. So really, really good book. I mean, it’s one of those books that you read it, at least for me.
I didn’t realize how much of a positive influence it was going to have on my life until, like, two or three years after I read it. And I look back on some of the things that I’ve done, I’m like, wow, it’s actually that book that I read, and it started influencing a lot of decisions that I was making in my life. So very grateful that I read that book a few years ago.
Julie Holly 01:27:05
Yeah.
Brandon Barnes 01:27:06
Sharad, we all know The One Thing is the only book that you’ve ever.
Sharad Mehta 01:27:09
Yeah. If I have to pick one book, it would absolutely have to be The One Thing by Gary Keller. It’s like that book has made the biggest influence in my life just from everything. Absolutely. Hands down the best book ever for me. I read that book once a year, every year, just to kind of keep reinforcing, even kind of to the point what you were talking about. It was something very, very simple in that book. It talked about sometimes we get so busy in our life trying to be successful, and we’re telling this story to ourselves. That, all right, I’m not spending time with my family, but I’m going to make up for this time when I sell my company or when I make this much money.
But the book just made it. But you can never make up for lost time. Never. That’s not something that’s going to happen. And this was I read that book around the time when my wife and I, we were expecting our first child, and it talked about something that going to a birthday party of your five year old kid where he has imaginary friends. It’s not the same thing as going to your 15 year old kid’s birthday party where he’s not even interested in hanging out with you. It’s just like the value of time. That book is absolutely a classic. Yeah. Hands down the best book I’ve ever read.
Julie Holly 01:28:40
I’m dropping one more book in the box. It’s called the Inside Out Revolution.
Sharad Mehta 01:28:47
Oh, I haven’t read that.
Julie Holly 01:28:49
It’s by Michael Neal, and it’s about how our thinking shapes our life and our world. And it’s very insightful. It’s a very, very different read than everything else that has been discussed, but it is an easy read, and it will shift blinds in your life, I promise you.
Sharad Mehta 01:29:07
I appreciate that. Thank you. Great reviews. Yeah. I’m going to check it out.
Julie Holly 01:29:13
Yeah. It will change your life. It’s just one of those books where you’re like…
Sharad Mehta 01:29:20
Thank you.
Julie Holly 01:29:22
Why did I not read that a while ago?
Sharad Mehta 01:29:27
All right, any other questions, guys, for Julie? She’s been very generous with her time, and I appreciate that, Julie. I appreciate it.
Julie Holly 01:29:33
Ooh, I appreciate that you and the community and everybody’s been willing to talk and throw some spaghetti noodles against the wall a little bit. It’s really great.
Sharad Mehta01:29:44
I feel like that’s how you get the value, right? Just being vulnerable and then just kind of sharing. Everybody can go to social media and see everything that’s great about the you know, when you start being real and authentic about, hey, this is what I’m struggling with, and that’s where people can start relating with you. All right, Julie, thank you so much. What we are going to do is we’re going to send the recording out. We’ll put it on our YouTube channel, and I’ll share the link with you. Also, if you want to share somewhere. And then we’ll also send it out to our email list and include the links to your podcast and also to the calendar link.
Julie Holly 01:30:24
Thank you so much, everybody. Have a great day and please reach out. Let’s stay in touch.
Sharad Mehta 01:30:31
Absolutely. Thank you, Julie! Thank you, everyone, for being on the call. This was a great call. Thank you. See you guys next week!
