REIG Monick | Real Estate Investing Goddess

 

Something worth bragging about is an accomplishment that has helped many reach far and wide. In today’s special 100th episode, Monick Halm puts on her goddess tiara and shares her gratefulness for achieving something so impactful. She shares a few takeaways from the 99 past episodes and what she learned from the incredible women that she has interviewed on this show. She also gathers some common big mistakes and regrets from these goddesses and reviews some crucial real estate questions. Join Monick as she shares the big Whys for staying on this course and more things worth celebrating, including her book called Wealth for Women: Conversations with the Team That Creates the Dream.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Special Live 100th Episode Q&A With Monick Halm

I can’t believe it’s here. It feels like there have been many times on this journey where I have felt like giving up because nobody was watching. It was a sad and lonely endeavor. Every once in a while, I would hear from somebody who says, “Great episode. I’ve been driving and hearing all your episodes.” There would be men that would come and say, “I enjoy your Real Estate Investor Goddesses podcast.” I’m like, “You’re listening too?” That kept me going. Your emails, comments and all of that make such a big difference. I appreciate you and I’m super excited for this 100th. For this, since it’s 100 and it’s a special one, first I’m going to put on my tiara because it’s special. For goddesses, tiaras are important.

Also, I want to share a few of my takeaways from these 99 past ones and what I learned from the incredible women that I’ve interviewed on this show. Normally, we interview these badass female real estate investors who share their stories, their biggest mistakes, what they’re most proud of and their best advice. I’ve gotten some definite takeaways from their stories in these interviews, so I want to share a bit of that. I also have gotten some questions from you and I’m also looking and eager to see what other questions you might have for me. I’ll take as many as I can during this. I want to first off start with some of my takeaways from this past 100.

Great Takeaways From The Incredible Goddesses

The first main takeaway that I’ve gotten is that you can start from anywhere. We have had goddesses that I have interviewed who were born into real estate. I’ve had quite a few of them. Dad, mom or the whole family was doing real estate. They grew up with real estate around, they saw it, it made sense and they got into it. That’s awesome. There were others that didn’t, like me. They had no idea about real estate investing as an opportunity for them and fell into it in different ways. We had Vicky Schettini who was homeless before she got her first investment. We’ve had CJ Matthews who was a single mom on minimum wage and she started and got into it. There were people that came in that had good, high paying jobs and were able to get in. The money was never the issue. There are other people who scrimped, saved and did whatever it took to get in the game. That’s one big takeaway that I’ve gotten. Hopefully, you’ve gotten, too. Whatever you are, you can do this. You can get in the game. We’ve interviewed grandmothers, young women, the gamut. You’re not too old and you’re not too young. You’re not anything. You can get in the game. That’s my first takeaway. I hope that you can take that away too.

The second thing that I hope you take away because I always ask what’s your biggest mistake. Everybody has a mistake and quite a few are like, “This was hard to figure out which one of the many I should choose.” There will be stumbles, falls and things that don’t work out. It’s feedback, so it doesn’t have to break you and it doesn’t have to keep you down. I had Paige Panzarello who spoke about going through the last downturn and losing $20 million. First of all, I applaud her for having $20 million to lose because she created that much. That was hard, but she’s still in the game. That’s the other takeaway that I hope you get out of it too, that even when you stumble and make mistakes, stay in the game because staying in, you will come out ahead. You’ll learn from the stumbles and mistakes and you fail forward. That’s been a big takeaway for me.

One of the biggest regrets that many of the women have was not starting earlier. Share on X

Some of the main mistakes that people had are because they didn’t have education beforehand. Other mistakes were because they weren’t trusting the right people and ultimately because they were not trusting that small voice inside that was telling them like, “Maybe I shouldn’t trust this person.” A mistake that I heard was waiting too long to start, they wish they’d started sooner or they wished they’d gone bigger instead of starting smaller. I hope you can take that away as well. I always ask what advice they have. There are some common themes that come up with regard to advice. Some of the most common pieces of advice that I’ve heard from all of these incredible women, one is the importance of education and two is the importance of taking action. You need to get educated, but ultimately the education is for effective actions.

Q&A: Valuable Skill

One of the biggest regrets that many of the women have was not starting earlier. It’s getting that education, taking action and getting mentorship and support. The mentorship was another common one. I hope that you have heard that. I’d love to read in the comments, what are your takeaways that you’ve had from hearing these episodes and hearing these incredible women? What have you learned? What have you gotten? I’d love for you to share that. Let me get into some of these questions that have come in and I appreciate them. These were awesome questions. One of the questions is what is one skill you learn that has proven to be the most valuable to you? One of the skills I’ve learned is how to bring in partners and this is something that I’ve gotten from Beth Clifford. I interviewed her. I don’t remember if we talked about the three Cs there but over the years, this was something that I heard from her that has shifted everything. These are the three things that you’re looking for when you’re bringing on team members whether this is a partner, an employee or a contractor. These three Cs are genius. The first has to do with the character. What is the character of the person? This is in order of importance. How do they show up? What is their integrity like? Character is everything and it can’t be taught.

Two is commitment. What is their commitment to your vision, values and project? Three is their capacity. Capacity can be trained, but I try to work with the best. I need somebody who has the capacity all ready to do what I need them to do. It’s in that order, character, commitment and capacity. Learning to you hear and trust my intuition has been the most valuable skill. Between my intuition and these three Cs to bring in a team, that’s been the most valuable thing because real estate is a team sport. Thank you for that awesome question.

Q&A: Podcast On Student Housing

Here’s number two. Have I done one on student housing? I have not yet. I did interview Sonia Lee and she has student housing. I don’t remember if we talked about that much during our interview. I will search for somebody else that that’s their sweet spot and what they do and I’ll bring that in. A lot of the people that we have interviewed deal with B and C Class residential multifamily rather than somebody who does mobile home parks. All of that is workforce housing. There are a lot of people talking about that. If you’re interested, go back and Chimene Van Gundy is Mobile Home Queen. We talked about mobile homes in that. I’ve had quite a few women talking about apartment investing. Those are all workforce housing.

REIG Monick | Real Estate Investing Goddess

Real Estate Investing Goddess: You need to get educated, but ultimately the education is for effective actions.

 

Q&A: Beginning The Real Estate Journey

Another question I got was how do you even begin your journey into owning real estate when it all seems overwhelming and you just started adulting? That is such a good question. First of all, good for you for just starting adulting and thinking about this because when I got my first property, I had just turned 30. I got that property high by accident because I didn’t know anything about real estate investing. I was trying to buy a house and I ended up buying a multiunit property and house hacking to be able to afford my house because that’s all I’d been taught. I joyfully stumbled into the fact that my tenants were paying for my mortgage, but I didn’t know how to do that. The first thing that I would tell you the same thing I would tell anybody else is to get an education and start learning.

Of course, we have a program at Real Estate Investor Goddesses, Wealthy Goddess Program, which I’m a big fan of. There are a lot of other ways that you can learn. You can read this and others out there. There’s a lot of information in BiggerPockets and on Google. It can get overwhelming because there’s so much out there, which is why I would recommend a program like the Wealthy Goddess Program, something that can help guide you into what’s most important and valuable. You don’t need it if you’re like, “I don’t know if I can do that right now.” Don’t let that stop you. There are a lot of other ways to get into the game. Also, go to your local real estate investor association meetings. You’ll meet other people who are doing it and you’ll learn that way too. I would suggest you to begin learning and learn from people who are doing it, not people who did it 30 years ago because they’re good at marketing and selling it. You want people who are investing right now. Start taking action, it’s my advice.

Q&A: Business Structure, Insurance, And Systems

Another question that I got were business structure, insurance and systems. I’m Type A. Thank you. That’s not a question, so I don’t know what you’re asking me. Do you want to know more about business structure, insurance, and systems? We’ve interviewed a couple of CPAs. I interviewed Amanda Han who was our first actual one-on-one interview and she’s awesome. She talks about taxes, but ultimately, it’s your CPA that you want to talk to about your business structure. We also interviewed Marie Grasmeier. Both of them are awesome people to follow up with if that’s you’re trying to figure out, how do you structure your investments. This is something that we talked about a lot at the Wealth Through Real Estate Event and my program. I go on several hours about this topic. It’s good that you’re asking because when you’re doing real estate, you are in business. The business structure, the insurance, maybe even looking at business credit, all of those thinking about asset protection, tax mitigation and liability protection. All of those are super important things to think about and do. It’s not one answer. It’s going to depend on where you live, what your other sources of income are, where the property properties you’re investing in or your strategy for investing.

If you’re flipping, that’s a different strategy than buying and holding, which is a different strategy from passively investing in syndication. All of those are different in terms of how the money will be treated. Depending on where you live, there are different tax implications. You’ll want to talk to somebody who knows what they’re doing. A good CPA that understands real estate investing on and/or an asset protection attorney to help you come up with a good plan, plus great insurance. I did have an interview with somebody talking about insurance, Amber Seggie. Check it out. We’ve gone deeper into these topics.

Even when you stumble and make mistakes, stay in the game because by staying in, you will come out ahead. Share on X

Q&A: Getting Started With Small Capital

Another question. How do you get started with a small amount of capital like $20,000? Small is relative. There are people that can start with little to no money down. There’s never a lack of resources. The problem is always resourcefulness. In $20,000, you can definitely do things with, it depends on what you want to do and how. It depends on how active you want to be or there are passive investments that you can get into for that amount. There are active ways that you can get into. I’ll throw out some examples for you. If you wanted to do an owner-occupied fourplex, you want to get in the game, so you can get an FHA loan. You’re putting out 3.5%. You move in one unit, you rent out the other units and you have these income streams coming in, you’d likely do that for $20,000 or less depending on where that property is.

If we’re talking about investing in an expensive market like Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco, $20,000 is not going to go far. In markets where we have our turnkey houses in Jackson, Mississippi, that $20,000 is easily the down payment for 1 or 2 turnkey houses. You can do quite a bit with that. There are other funds that you can invest in for relatively little amounts of money. I interviewed DeAnn O’Donovan of American Home Preservation Funds. We can invest for as little as $100 into that fund. I don’t know if they’re taking investors, but there are other ones like that, too. One of our sponsors for the Wealth Through Real Estate Event, DiversyFund, they take investments of $500. You can get into the game for a lot less than you think. That’s a great question.

Q&A: Staying On The Course

Another question that came in and somebody had asked, this was from the email because I’d sent out an email to my list and if you want to get on the list, definitely go to REIGoddesses.com and join us there. You can get our freebie to get on the list and you can join our Private Community on Facebook and our Investor Club. As celebrating this 100th, I talked about how I had wanted to quit many times and I got a question like, “What made you stay the course? Why didn’t you give up?” This is a great question when you’re thinking about real estate too, because everybody has those mistakes. All of us have these times when it’s like, “What am I doing? Why should I stay? Why should I do this?”

There are three major reasons why I stayed the course. First was that I have a big why. That’s my purpose behind doing this is big. I’ve talked before about my story. Why did I start Real Estate Investor Goddesses? As I was going around and started getting into real estate, there were no women. There are no women in the room. I wasn’t seeing any women. It came as this divine down low this mission to bring women into this field and create Real Estate Investor Goddesses. This mission to help one million women create financial freedom through real estate investing. I have this big mission and this big ‘why’ and it’s compelling. It drives everything that I do.

REIG Monick | Real Estate Investing Goddess

Wealth for Women: Conversations with the Team That Creates the Dream

I went to work with this coach, Desiree DuBois, and she does this training in The Power of Seven. I went in and we started talking about all of these different ways that you could potentially reach all the women that I want to reach. One of the things that she talked about was podcasting. I went, “I could do that. I love to talk.” It felt like, “Let’s try this.” I had this big why and then I got on this path. At first, of course, nobody knew about it. I was making these and before, I wasn’t even doing interviews. It took a few months before we started to do interviews for this. I’d put it out there into the Ether and three or four listens and then it’s got 8, 10, 20, 30, 40, and then I got in the hundreds and that turned into thousands. It took a long time. They talk like it’s like a hockey stick. It will start to grow. I don’t even know if I’m in the hockey stick yet, to be honest, but it has started to ramp up.

It took a long time, well-over a year to get there. That big ‘why’ is a big reason why I kept doing it. It felt like, “This is one of the best ways I can think of to reach people.” The other reason is that every once in a while when I was about to go, “Why am I doing this?” One of you would reach out to me either at a live event, sent an email, a comment and tell me what this meant to you and how it was inspiring to you, and that would keep me going. It’s almost like you were tapped by the Divine to talk to me at that moment to keep me from not quitting. Any of you who’ve done that, thank you. You don’t even know what a difference it’s made.

The last reason, other than that big why and hearing from you that this has mattered to you and made a difference in your lives, it’s the women that I have met on this journey. As I’ve put it out there, a lot of people were like, “I didn’t realize there were a lot of women to interview.” What did I put it out there? Different people are like, “You should interview this person or that person,” or they reached out to me and said, “I love your show and I do real estate. Would you be interested in interviewing me?” I’ve been poking around and I’ll see somebody and I’ll invite them. The women that I have met have been incredible, as you can tell from all of the interviews if you’ve been reading. They’re generous, they’re real and they show up with sisterhood and I have loved them.

I did a compilation book with many of them. I called it Wealth for Women: Conversations with the Team That Creates the Dream. It’s available on Amazon if you ever want to check it out. A lot of them have been speakers and panelists at my events. I’ve gone and spoken at their events and have become friends with many of them. I keep meeting more cool badass women. Between my ‘why,’ you out there, let me know that this matters to you and these incredible women that I continue to meet, that’s what’s kept me going. That’s what’s kept me on this journey and that’s all we’re celebrating 100 and no signs of stopping. Thank you.

Brag, Gratitude, Desire

I’m going to conclude with the trinity because that’s how we end every time. The trinity is a brag, a gratitude and a desire. I brag that I have done 100 of the Real Estate Investor Goddesses. I brag that I have shown up to the microphone and to computers all of these times, especially when I felt like not doing it and it’s made a difference. We have over 40,000 downloads so far and climbing. I’m getting a little emotional from this that’s why I bragged that. I brag that I’ve done this and I brag that I continued to do this. I am grateful for everybody who has read, all 40,000 of you or however many of you who keep doing reading these. I’m grateful for each of you and I’m grateful for my guests as well for showing up and generously sharing their time. I’m super grateful for my readers and my guests.

I desire to grow. I desire this to touch a lot more women and men who have been touched by what we’re doing here, I desire to hear from you. I desire for you to send us a message, either comment or you can email to [email protected] and maybe put in the subject heading, “Real Estate Investor Goddesses Podcast.” Let us know what this has done for you. That definitely helps us. Subscribe and put a review, especially if it’s a positive review. Otherwise, email me. Otherwise, if you have a five-star review, we’d love to get that too. My desire is that you continue to show up and provide you value. That’s my trinity.

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