Wherever you are and whatever you do, overcoming low self-esteem can lead you to bigger breakthroughs. The same is very much true when wanting to achieve success in real estate investing. Tackling in this episode a special topic that affects a lot of women who are held back from getting in the real estate game, host, Monick Halm, sits down with Kimle Nailer, owner of Nail-Rite Construction and founder of Positive S.I.S.T.E.R.S.—an organization designed to coach women in discovering their inner essence of beauty and strength. Together, they talk about overcoming low self-esteem in the business as a key to finding and creating success. Kimle shares her own story of rising above the low points she experienced in her life and encourages and empowers women to keep their self-value high, to be fearless, and to be confident in all aspects of their lives. At the end of the day, your self-worth dictates your net worth.

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Overcoming Low Self-Esteem And Creating REI Success – Interview With Kimle Nailer

On this show, we bring you incredible women real estate investors who are kicking ass and taking names, and our guest is no exception. We have an incredible guest, Kimle Nailer. Our topic is particularly interesting because we’re going to be talking about something that affects a lot of women and keeps them from getting in the game or it keeps them from being as successful as they could be, and that is low self-esteem. If you fear that you’re not good enough to be a real estate investor, if you fear that you can’t be successful, if you fear that because you’re a woman or because of the color of your skin or some other factor, you won’t be taken seriously or worse, you’ll be taken advantage of. If you have any of those fears and concerns, then this show is for you.

Our guest, Kimle, is a successful heart-centered entrepreneur who used her life story of overcoming low self-esteem due to the dark color of her skin as a compelling message to help others transition from living in the shadows into confident businesswomen. She is a dynamic speaker, a bestselling author, and a spiritual intuitive life coach. In addition, she’s a serial entrepreneur who has founded Positive S. I. S. T. E. R. S. to coach women in discovering their inner essence of beauty and strength. She’s also leveraged her corporate background to launch a real estate investment company, Fairport Investments and a construction company, Nail-Rite Construction Company. She has a lot of businesses. She’s passionate about helping women succeed and I am thrilled to have her with us. Welcome, Kimle.

Thank you for having me on the show. I’m excited to join you.

It’s a pleasure. I’m excited to have you. I know a bit about your story. We’re doing a book project together. It’s a book called Wealth for Women: Conversations with the Team That Creates the Dream, Kimle is one of our featured women in there and she has an incredible story. I’m excited to share it with everyone. Kimle, can you share with the audience how did you get started in real estate investing?

I had a unique experience having the pleasure of working in a law firm. I’m from Detroit, Michigan and had moved Chicago. I was dating a guy and engaged to marry, although it did not happen. I relocated. He was helping me find employment and he referred me to work at this law firm. He was dibbling and dabbling in real estate and he said, “I’ll let you work for my attorney.” His attorney also practices, but he specialized in real estate investments, all of his clients are these real estate investors. Here I am naive, going to the game and learning the game of filling out the applications. All of a sudden, I would see these purchase agreements come across the desk for one price.

A couple of weeks or a couple of months later that same address will come back across my desk and it was for sale, sell them for three times as much, twice as much, extra $50,000, $60,000 and I’m like, “I need to pay attention to this process. What are these guys doing?” A whole salary is earned in a week. I got started that way and the attorney was gracious, we’re bringing it to his office he called his classroom time, “Come on into my office, it’s classroom time.” He would sit down and tell me about these investors and how they were pulling these deals together and he was educating me. I returned to Detroit and that was exactly what I jumped into.

What was the first investment that you did?

My first investment was a property that I purchased with my Discover card. The City of Detroit was having a tax auction. I didn’t understand anything about the tax sales and all that good stuff we have before all the little home studies and I went, “I want to buy some properties.” I remembered how I saw it happening in Chicago. I went down there with a girlfriend. I dragged her along. That day, I purchased a property with my credit card. I won the bid for $4,800. It was a three-bedroom rent that had been built in the late ‘60s and this is ‘95. I was like, “I got a newer property,” and that’s how I got my feet wet.

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Where are you now? That was ‘95. It was quite a few years later.

That was 1995, quite a few years later. What I did is I continued that process. I will buy and sell. I did a lot of flipping. I also did some holding at capital portfolio so I had income, which I could replace the income I would earn if I was working and I continue to buy and sell. I still have a nice portfolio of properties. Most of mine are single-family homes. I’m looking to venture out into maybe some multi-units, but right now it’s a portfolio of single-family. I’m not only doing it for myself, but I’m helping others. I became a licensed builder in September of 2017 so that I can employ my services in the rehab and renovation to other investors in the area.

That’s your Nail-Rite business. You help investors in the Detroit area, how do you work with investors with your construction company?

My construction company was in existence more in the commercial space. I do the residential also with my business. There are a lot of investors who’ve come into the area from other parts of the country, even other parts of the world for that matter. They’re looking for partners to work with them, to help them assess markets, help them with the renovation, manage costs, manage timelines and give them a benchmark of what the ROI could potentially be. That’s been a great marketing business that I’m excited to explore and had some fun with so far.

I want to go and talk about the self-esteem issue. You had to overcome low self-esteem yourself but tell us a little bit about where you were and then how you overcame having low self-esteem.

What’s amazing is a lot of times as little girls, we start developing ideas and images about ourselves based on experiences and reactions of others. I have a poem that I wrote, “I was black before black was beautiful so compliments of me were not that plentiful.” It didn’t take me long to realize that I was not being beautiful on another side. I was between two sisters who were much fair-complected than I was. Here I was a little dark girl in the middle. I always heard, “She’s cute. She’s pretty.” No compliments ever came to me and my mom and I’m sure her loving care she would say, “You don’t want to wear that color that makes you look even darker.”

This was a bad thing, avoid it by any means necessary. You began to develop this and internalize it. I was also a brilliant child. I was smart. I got teased for being smart and dark. It’s one of those things that you start drifting away from reality. You begin to settle that life will never be good for me and you make that your home. Therefore, relationships, the zeal and zest to do anything or dreams, they don’t exist. People might find it hard that I own many businesses. There was a point in time where I had no desire to do anything. It was challenging finding a gentleman show some affection to me and I was willing to take whatever came along because no one had liked me.

Even though I didn’t feel that by that you read about in the romance books you wanted your heart drop to be going, I was going along with it and I ended up relocating to Chicago. It was a devastating relationship. It was not for me. It wasn’t a good fit. Me being already not feeling good about myself, I’m in a strange city. I don’t know how to compare to these other people in this big city. It started escalating and I found myself in a real amount of depression. I needed to be medicated to maintain my daily living experiences. On that depth of despair, I discovered there were more than the stats and the details and the circumstances that were happening in the present world. As I started going through some counseling and therapy and discovered a lot of my ideas about myself that created this environment for those types of experiences, and that was an eye-opener to me. I’m like, “How did I get here?”

Fast forward, I’m coming into my own. I’m starting to realize I can have more. I am more. I started doing a lot of readings, did a lot of professional development sessions and begin to explore and reinvent myself. I wanted more. I no longer wanted that life that I thought was my destiny. I was excited to find out, I had a say in how the rest of my journey was. Up until about 36, it was before I would say the light fully came on and I was ready to take on my journey and take on my life. Nothing could stop me at that point. I love to tell people. I became a teenager. I started living for the first time. I took it on full speed in my head.

Maybe the life mission that if I can help any young child, boy or girl, live a life of happiness and fulfillment and not subject to low self-esteem and low self-worth, that would be my mission. I started mentoring in the schools, which helped me see the light come on in people’s eyes and that feeds my soul because I remember when my light was out in my existence. I’m excited to not only have a story for myself but bring it to others. I discovered while I’m helping these young girls, their moms need it and that’s when I started a movement to help the women and the moms as well.

It is such an epidemic in this country. It’s the low self-esteem that many women face, especially women of color. It’s when we get messages by looking at magazines and TV about what is beautiful, what is not, what is worthy and what is not and often that doesn’t look like us.

It’s your sense of worth, your inner essence of beauty. What I’ve done because I can say that, I also have an advertising background. There is nothing in the media that made us feel beautiful as a woman of color. Thank God we have the Black is Beautiful Movement but this has all coming about in the last several years. Before that we had no reflection of ourselves. If you wanted to be a star in Hollywood, you had to be half white. If you thought you had a good chance, everybody wants the light-skinned version of us. I’m excited to see this meltdown and this permission that black women are giving themselves because women suffer from low self-esteem of all racist. It was even magnified with us because of our hair textures. There was no product for us unless we straightened and felt better. It’s important that a woman’s self-worth and self-value is in its proper place because it truly dictates her net worth and what she’ll pursue economically.

It’s true. Your self-worth dictates your net worth, you being able to shift that. You said a few things that you did in order to change that and I want to highlight those for any faces going, “I can relate to the story and not feeling I’m good enough and not feeling confident enough to go for what I want.” One of the things that you did was first, you went to therapy, you read books and you went to self -development, personal development training. What are your favorite books on a particular self-development training that freely move the needle the most for you.

There’s a book called The Dance of Anger. I don’t recall the author’s name right off hand, but it’s called The Dance of Anger. They have a series of books, The Dance of Intimacy. The Dance of Anger, I encourage most women to read because anger turned inwardly results in a lot of depression. A lot of us are depressed in what we feel about ourselves, what’s happening around us and this anger that we don’t feel we can change. It consumes us. We start engaging in these behavioral patterns to survive it, to try and feel we’re worth something. It can be devastating to us. It is not adding any value to us.

That was the most important book because for the first time, I got to get a mirror of my thoughts in a way that I never had, and I felt that I was mad about a lot of things. When I began to address The Dance of Anger and how I related to people, it changed how I related to myself. Out of that, I learned to give myself permission that I was the one who had embraced other’s thoughts and ideas about me and that helped me release the anger. It wasn’t their fault. I agreed with them. I didn’t have to. As a little girl, I didn’t know that but as a woman I do. As a woman, 50 plus, I’m like, “I don’t care what you think.”

You're not going to be out there by yourself. Your desire will orchestrate everything and everybody that you need. Share on X

The Dance of Anger and then is there a particular personal development training that made a big difference for you?

She’s also an author, Rhonda Britten. She’s a great person I’ve worked with for a lot of coaching and the follow-up. I do a lot of her coaching training for the coaching that I provide. She used to have a television show called Starting Over and she would allow you to say whatever was in your way until you were ready to move past it, and then you graduated out of this house. I read a lot of her books, how to have those confident conversations, how to have those fierce conversations that you don’t want to have, how to position yourself for your tomorrow and a lot of her work was transformational. She had what’s called Fearless Conversations. Those are conversations with yourself and others.

A lot of us, as women as we’re building our confidence, we need to have those conversations. When a contractor doesn’t want to pay you and he wants you to go along with it and understand you can stand and say, “That’s not going to fly. I need you to do a little bit more. You got to dig deeper into your pocket.” You have to be able to be a confident woman to do that. You can’t struggle with, “I’ll take what they give.” No, that’s not acceptable. Go back and see what else you can do, try again. I’m sure there’s something you can do. Everywhere there’s a day you get what you need or a little closer to what you need. It’s important in this space of real estate because a lot of the players are males and you have to be confident.

Talking about your real estate investing career, the question that I always ask our guests because I find that this is where you get the most gold, the most wisdom is, what was your biggest mistake in your real estate investing career? What did you learn from it?

One of my biggest mistakes was not properly structuring the real estate and by that, I mean protecting the asset. Everything was in my name. All of my loans were in my name. When the market declined and the real estate market was going in a downward spiral, I went down with it because I had not properly protected the assets separate from me. Not only did that cost me personally that I had to rebuild, but that was also one of the biggest mistakes I would say that I made. Now I keep it distant and that’s why we have Fairport investments as a parent company, so everything falls under the umbrella of something separate for me. I started building business lines of credit so I could do the financing through the business. Whatever happens to the business at the end of the day, my personal life isn’t devastated. My home isn’t on the line. My credit isn’t on the line and inability to purchase cars if something happened because everything is tied to the business. That was one of the biggest mistakes that I learned and I know differently now. Keep a separate book of business.

You’re the first person to talk about that and it’s crucial. You’re going to be one of the panelists at my Wealth Through Real Estate event that’s happening in Los Angeles. I was preparing a section about that, preparing training about protecting yourself, thinking about structuring your real estate investing so that you’re protected. It’s funny that you brought that up. I was like, “I was writing about that.” The flip side of the biggest mistake, what are you most proud of?

What am I most proud of from my real estate venture is the first property that I invested and I gave to my parents. I realized that my dad was a young man from the south. He did not have an education beyond sixth grade. You have to look at the time in which he was reared. This is the ‘50s to ‘60s. There’s no education for black men, black people in general about financial matters and I was like, “It’s possible that one of you may outlive each other.” That could be a cut in your income with you on social security or your retirement, especially if it was my dad who had worked and my mom never worked. The odds are men oftentimes predecease their spouses and that was the case of my mom and dad. I’m proud that my mom’s life was not changed when her income was reduced because of that one rental property that she had for twenty plus years that allowed her to stay at her home until her transition after my dad’s departure.

To what do you attribute your success?

 

I attribute my success to many things. There’s not one thing that helped me. First and foremost, it was an English teacher, when thirteen years after graduating high school, I decided to go back to college at the age of 32. I came from a rural area of Ohio and a small school where my graduating class was six students. I was about to venture out into this world of college and education. You can imagine what their college campus looks like and my English professor gave me the confidence that I needed because I was frightened. At this point, I’m still working my way through my esteem issues. I didn’t know if I was smart enough to go back to college because I came from a small school. Could I even make it in college? My English teacher would mark up my papers some awful with all these red marks. It wasn’t until the end of the semester that he finally told me that my first paper wasn’t A-paper, but if he would have let me know it wasn’t an A-paper, I would have not done my best. He wanted me always to bring my A-game.

That’s where I attribute the key to my success. I make sure I use my A-game because I’m smart enough and capable enough that my C-game looks brilliant to some versus my A-game. For me to have real success, I need to know I’m 100% in it. I attribute to him first as my first teacher to help me be the success I am now, to always look that she’s my A-game. Secondly, I had a mother who put me on a pathway early in my journey of looking inwardly to spiritual awareness and God and the universe and love and peace. I’m grateful to have a good balance. I know how to have the external world and the internal world. I’ve learned to blend the two to be fully divine and fully human and that’s a great thing to attribute to my success for my intuition guides me well in business.

We have this intuition. I call it our life GPS, it always knows the quickest way to get us from where we are to where we want to be. The trick is to trust it and to follow it. What advice do you have for a woman who’s starting out in this field?

I would encourage a woman to make a decision. This is what I’m going to do to change my destiny. That’s the decision I made. At the time I made that decision, I was clueless. I worked at a law firm, but I never did it on my own. Now, I’m a whole city away. I’m in Detroit. I’m going to auction because I know real estate changes the game. It was the decision. First, I’m going to do this and still okay with learning as you go. Now, it’s a whole different platform. Get a course. I don’t say you have to take one of these long extensive courses. Purchase some courses to get the mindset of real estate, so you understand property, property value, the lending process, and the appreciation, the evaluation of properties, market analysis, no comps and market comps.

Understand some of that terminology so you can think the game and you know that you’re winning on paper before you ever get started. Make the decision to get started and then get you a good real estate broker, you tell them, “I want to become an investor. Give me some properties that I can look at and start practicing the market analysis.” Look at what’s selling in this area. You can use Zillow to get an idea and start looking for something to buy. You can start right on your computer, look at areas that you want to buy.

If you see a lot of abandoned houses like in Detroit, take some addresses, go home, Google them, find out who owns it and see what it would take to get that property. Look and see what are sold in the area. Is there an opportunity? If that house is $15,000 or $20,000 and you can sell it for $30,000 and $40,000 or $50,000 and $60,000, what would it take to put some money in that and sell it? Somebody who’s living in the neighborhood wants to buy yours. I would strongly encourage someone else to follow that process and just getting in the game. Otherwise, that analysis paralysis will spin on you forever, “Can I?” “Yes, you can, make the decision. Let’s do this.” Look at this great community. You have Monick to participate in. This is huge. I would love to have known you guys years ago.

I’m happy you’re part of the community and sharing your brilliance with the rest of the ladies. Everyone can learn from those who have gone before and have someone to share with. There’s always more to learn and you can always grow. I love this advice that you’ve given me to make the decision. You have to take action. That ultimately is about taking action. You need to get educated and you want to learn enough so you can take effective action. Once you get going, you need to be able to jump. Sometimes you’re not going to know every step you need to take. It’s not going to be fair, but you have the leap and the net will appear.

That is true. I encourage women that you’re not going to be out there by yourself. Your desire will orchestrate everything and everybody that you need. I’ll give an example. I wanted to get into this. I remember going to a fundraiser event. My cousin was there with me. I pulled out a form to buy a house. She was having a conversation with someone who happened to work for HUD in the real estate market. In Detroit they used to put a universal lock on all the HUD properties, it was one lock. He was there at this event. He was like, “I’ll take you around.” He started taking me around to see these HUD properties, which would have been low discounted properties. He graciously gave me a key. I was not even a broker. I could go look at any HUD property I want to look at and say, “I want that one.” I would tell my broker, “Write it up.” I was like a happy kid in a candy store, pick that one and that’s how it got started. That was a step, an action, a decision and then that person appeared to me.

Let the miracles happen in your life. They're waiting for you to make a decision. Share on X

I remember the first property I bought that have occupants in it and I needed to evict them, “I didn’t know about the eviction process.” I went to the court, served the 30-day notice. Someone sitting in the room asked me had I done this before? I’m like, “No, I’m totally green.” He’s said, “Give me your mailing address. I’ll mail you all the information you need for if you ever have to evict somebody.” I never had to evict, but one other person maybe in my twenty years since ’95 or how many years that is. However, he gave me the whole key and in case I ever had to do it. It educated me. That’s the beauty of making the decision. Let the miracles happen in your life. We’re not used to them but trust me, they’re waiting for you to make a decision.

That is the goddess’ way. That’s what you desire. You set the intention and then you are open to magic happening. That’s what happens when the right people show up. Things appear and they get done. What is the best way for people to reach you and find out more about what you do?

People can reach me at my email, which is a [email protected]. If you’re looking for any support with building and construction, by all means, give me a call or send me an email. Also, you can call me at (313) 402-4997, that number will reach me whether you want some support with building your life, so you can be prepared to go into the real estate industry or if you’re ready to start building. I do have a website called PositiveSisters.com. If you want to have a free complimentary conversation with me, you can register on my site. You can sign up for a complimentary 30-minute session and we can explore some things with you so you can start making your next steps and make that decision, so your magic begins.

[email protected], (313) 402-4997 or PositiveSisters.com. It’s time for our famed end of show trinity. That’s a brag, gratitude and a desire. Ms. Kimle, what’s one thing you’re celebrating? We want one to brag.

My one brag is, I’ve secured the largest contract for my commercial business. I’m redeveloping a retail space, 54,000 square feet. We’re about wrapping that one up with a few days of painting. We did the drywall and painting and a lot of the carpentry in the facility. It’s a big box retail store. That’s exciting and that’s my brag.

Well bragged.

I’m looking for some more opportunities. I want to focus on the retail niche market for the commercial space and continue to do that with some of the mix, where they have commercial retail on the first floor and then maybe housing above it. Let’s see if I can get all the contracts for the commercial spaces.

What’s one thing you’re grateful for?

I’m grateful for this community, Monick, to meet the other real estate goddesses. I cannot wait to get to LA and meet you ladies face-to-face. I’m excited about that. In addition, I have two gratitudes. I am celebrating the anniversary of my Positive Sisters organization. We have been doing our annual events to empower women to feel good about themselves and to uncover your inner essence of beauty. We’ve been doing it since 2008. We’re celebrating and we’re renting out Cobo Center, a big convention center. We’re renting one of the rooms there in the heart of the city downtown.

That’s beautiful, congrats. Last but not least, what’s one thing you desire?

At this stage of my life, with all the things I’m getting to enjoy, I would love to have a mate, someone to share all this fun stuff. As I embark on planning to do more traveling, I’m looking for companionship. I’m looking for a husband. I desire a husband, the universe, hear that very clear. I desire a husband to enjoy the next phase of my journey.

So shall your desire be or better than you can imagine.

I’m anticipating how God’s going to bless me. I love the way it happens.

We look forward to hearing more. I look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles.

I can’t wait to meet you, Monick.

It’s going to be awesome. Ladies, join us at the Wealth Through Real Estate event that’s happening in Los Angeles. We’ll start with a book launch and book signing before the event officially starts for our book. We were talking about the Wealth for Women book. You’re going to learn how to do real estate and how to do it in a goddess way. It’s going to be bananas. It’s going to be so great. I hope to see you there. Go to WealthThroughRealEstateEvent.com and use the code GODDESS for a great discount. Join us there and it’s going to be a party. I look forward to seeing you, Kimle, and I look forward to seeing you out there. Join us in our next episode.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Positive S. I. S. T. E. R. S.
• Nail-Rite Construction Company
• Wealth for Women: Conversations with the Team That Creates the Dream
• The Dance of Anger
• The Dance of Intimacy
• Zillow
• [email protected]
• PositiveSisters.com

About Kimle Nailer

Kimle Nailer is a “developer” on many levels, in every sense of the word. Her calling and her life’s work, have always been about building, transforming, and bringing about positive change.

Her professional experience has included employed positions designing and managing research projects in the automotive, healthcare, and advertising industries. She has managed multimillion-dollar projects and budgets.