MI347: Women Invest in Real Estate w/ Grace Gudenkauf & Amelia McGee

24:58And last time around, our 30 available spots filled up pretty quickly. If you're interested in our next cohort, which will be even smaller, you can join the waitlist at theinvestorspodcast.com slash intrinsic value community. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash intrinsic value community. Support for the show comes from public.com. You're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic option plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and public gets that. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously.

25:36On Public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there. Plus, industry-leading yields on your cash with no fees or minimums. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com slash T-I-V-P and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash T-I-V-P. Paid for by Public Investing, full disclosures in podcast description. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor, and I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on.

26:16But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investors Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors, and now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with. With my How to Get Started with Stocks course, you can master the principles of excellent lifelong investing with valuable insights for both beginners and pros. The course covers 10 different sections, beginning with the basics of what a stock actually is and how the stock markets work, to strategies to optimize your retirement savings, how to pick great companies for the long term, what to look for in ETFs, and how to monitor your investments, plus so much more.

26:55To begin getting smarter about investing, just visit theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. Amelia, let's get into that. I really am super fascinated at how you've built this community. Wire stands for, tell me again, just for our listeners? Yeah, it's Women Invest in Real Estate. Okay. And then tell me about the retreats. How did that come about? And where are you doing it? How are you structuring it? I think my wife is actually a mental health therapist, and she talks about doing retreats a lot.

27:41And I'm very interested to learn more about how you guys have done the retreats. We started the free meetups in February of 2021. And then we hosted our first retreat in February of 2022. And it was really created out of selfish necessity, I would say. Grace and I were both looking for a retreat for female real estate investors. And so one day I just texted Grace. I said, Hey, we're going to be hosting this retreat. She said, Oh, no, I'm not really so sure about that. And I said, Oh, well, I already sent out the email invite. So we're doing it. We had no idea what we were doing. But again, I think we just have a little bit of reckless confidence and that we can get things done when we set our mind to it.

28:27So we sold out of that retreat within a couple of days because it was so needed. Women in real estate really want to connect with other women in real estate, especially younger millennial investors who haven't quite made it to multi-million dollar status yet because we're all going through the same problems. We're facing tenant issues, funding issues, contractor issues, whatever the case may be. And just having someone to talk to about it is so powerful. And so these are 20-person retreats. We've hosted six sold-out retreats now all across the United States. There are generally about 20 women.

29:02And we all stay in one super gorgeous mansion Airbnb for three or four days and network, learn, connect. It's a super fun time. Grace and I are great hosts, if I do say so myself. So that's kind of what a wire retreat is. That's such a great idea. So it's at an Airbnb. Are you bringing in speakers from outside or is it mostly the two of you that are leading the retreat or how do you guys do that? We keep the conversations and the masterminds at the retreat as collaborative as possible. We're not there to preach at people, although we do lead some of the masterminds. But you'll find that if you get any group of 20 women in real estate together, there are so much knowledge already there in the room, just waiting to be shared, that the best things about our retreats is just what you learn just talking to people and having conversations.

29:57That's so cool. So how often are you doing them? And when is the next one? Great question. So we did four in 2022 to 2023. And we were like, man, we might need to slow down. So we're doing two a year. The next one is September 5th through 8th in Salt Lake City. I'm not sure when this episode is coming out, but the waitlist for that is open. We open registration for the waitlist before anyone else gets access to it. And our last retreat sold out in 12 hours to the waitlist only. So you have to be on it if you want to get in. Super fun. These are for investors that have done at least three deals because we really want you.

30:39It's not where you come and learn how to invest in real estate. It's where you come and you network with people that are already doing it just like you are. They're so much fun. Highlight of our year. If you want to get on it, go to Wire. You can find the waitlist, but we would love to meet you there. So Grace, you've also got this podcast that you're doing. And I think initially you approached BiggerPockets. They turned you down. So I wanted to hear a little bit about the backstory of that. When we first started, Amelia and I were like, there's nobody fun, young and female talking about real estate.

31:14We need to do that. And so we kicked it around for a year or two. And we were doing YouTube for BiggerPockets. So we told them, hey, why don't you have us be another show? You don't have any demographic like this. We're really fun. We're funny. We keep it real. And they were like, great idea. We're not ready for it. Why why don't you guys do some more YouTube? Which thank God they said that because about a year later, we ended up launching our own podcast where we're in control of what we get to do and say and record. But I think the lesson learned is shoot your shot, ask what you want to ask.

31:50You never know who's going to say yes. And we didn't let them say no and deter us. And now fast forward another two years and we've written a book for them. So it all worked out how it was supposed to be. But it is funny that we shot our shot and they were like, no. Tell me, I mean, you guys have so much going on. Amelia, talk to me just about how your time is being spent. You've got these retreats you're doing. You've got the podcast that you're doing. I think you said it comes out twice a week. You've got your own portfolio that you've got going on. So talk to me about just how you're spending your time.

32:24Yeah. A lot of it comes down to calendar management too, just batching what we're working on. So Grace and I will film our episodes on two days of the week. Property management for me and asset management has become less of my day-to-day just because I've hired that out now to an internal property manager, which is great. But we work on WIRE four days a week, just content planning, planning for any courses that we have, retreats, the podcasts. And then we both take one day a week on Tuesdays where we don't do any work for WIRE and we specifically just do asset management for our own portfolios.

33:02So everything to do with our rental properties gets done on those days. And that's kind of how we balance it out. But it's kind of crazy. It's kind of wild some days just running around doing what we can, but we try to kind of calendar block and manage it that way. Grace, do you have more in the works in terms of content creation, like a newsletter or anything else that are in the works for WIRE? We have a team. I think that's also a huge piece is that we have a team for real estate. we have a team for wire. We just hired our first full-time person. We do have a newsletter that comes out every week, I believe.

33:37And we have people behind the scenes working on the sponsorships and the Instagram and editing our podcasts and all of that. And there's no way we could be doing everything that we're doing if it was just Amelia and I. How are you monetizing the podcast? Is it sponsors that you're seeking out that have signed up with you? Yeah, we're really lucky that, first of all, we have a very niche audience just like you do. And we've been able to work with some really great sponsors that are real estate specific who have sponsored our episodes or meetups or anything like that. And are a great match and fit for our audience.

34:12We're very, very protective of the people in our community and making sure that we're only recommending things that are incredible and useful. But we've worked with some awesome sponsors. I wanted to take a step back and talk about how and when you eventually both left your W-2s. At what point did you have the income, the passive income to leave and say, I'm done with regular employment. I'm going to focus on real estate and wire. Amelia, can you talk about that? So bought my first property in October of 2020. I ended up quitting my full-time job in June of 2021. And I remember specifically having conversations with Grace about it.

34:52Like, I want to quit my job, but I think I'm going to wait another year to six months because that salary is so much extra money that I can use to buy more properties with, all of the things. And during that time, I actually switched jobs. I switched companies. I got a really great offer from another company, which had like a 20 % raise. So I made the switch there about two weeks into that job when they actually started to expect things from me and I was out of the training process, I was like, I just can't do it. My passion isn't here. My brain is somewhere else. So I actually left. This is a crazy story.

35:30I left my laptop, left my badge, left everything at my desk, went home one day, wrote an email to my supervisor and my manager and just said, I'm done. I'm not coming in tomorrow. I am going to pursue real estate investing full time. And I texted Grace and said, I quit my job. I did it. Again, I can be reckless. But if I had been in that position for a long time, of course, I would have given them two weeks. But I was still kind of training. They weren't expecting things from me. I didn't have clients I was working with yet. And hitting send on that email was probably one of the scariest moments of my life.

36:08Because once you send an email that says, I'm quitting today, there's no taking that back, really. I said, I left my laptop at my desk. I'm not coming in tomorrow. I'm so sorry. I didn't want to waste any more of your time. I'm done. So that's how it went. It's scary, but did it feel really good too? You're on to this next chapter that you've been building towards anyway, right? This was going to happen eventually. Yeah, it felt so good. I would say that my cash flow from my rental properties. Also, just to give you a little insight financially, wasn't quite what I was making at my full-time job.

36:45It didn't quite match up. But I knew that with 40 extra hours in my week to focus full-time on real estate investing, I could make up for that money very quickly. And even if I couldn't, I could go be a bartender. I could wait tables. I could donate plasma. There were so many other ways that I was willing to scrap around and make money that I knew that I could make it work. Grace, what about you? You're working as an engineer. I imagine you're pretty strategic. How did you formulate your plan to leave W-2 employment? Well, first of all, I want to say I was absolutely not making the passive income to match my W-2.

37:26It was a leap of faith. I had a little bit of a different story around the same time as Amelia switching jobs. My first job was remote out of California. So I was in purgatory for six months to a year, not knowing should I move. And that's when I started to invest in real estate. And I finally decided, I'm not going out to California because I will not be able to do any real estate out there. So I let my team know that I was quitting. I only lasted 10 or 11 months maybe. And I knew it was leap of faith. I had an emergency fund. I also wrote out my worst case scenario. Do I need to bartend? Do I need to do this?

38:03Do I need to move home if this happens. And I knew I was going to have to wholesale or do something extra to make up for that cash flow. I think that worst case scenario, what is the worst that can happen here? And to your point, Amelia, you can always go bartend or be an Uber driver or do whatever to make enough income to have enough to make it till you've actually built your portfolio. Once you left your jobs, talk to me a little bit about the financing? Did you find that harder or was it not really an issue because you were doing more creative financing? For me, it wasn't an issue because I'd already been building relationships with small local banks.

38:41And I was also partnering with my parents and a couple other people. So they were able to show their W-2 income to secure loans for us. But actually, the bank never even questioned it after I quit my job. And one other thing that I did want to add for anyone out there listening. Like Grace said, we both had big emergency funds. Neither one of us had any consumer or student loan debt left. So we were also in a great position there. And neither one of us have children or anyone else relying on us, or even neither one of us even have pets. So it was easier for us to make that leap, I would say, than someone in a different situation than us.

39:24And when you're young, it's such a good time to take risks like you both have done. Yeah, I agree. A lot of people ask how I was able to quit so early and it was because I was so young. I was less than a year out of college. I was still living like a college person. It is so much easier for me to take a chance than if I have a full mortgage and two car payments and two kids. That's a completely different story. But I did want to add a couple of things about the financing. I also didn't have any issues the first two years because I already had a relationship with the commercial bank and did commercial loans where it's more about the asset, not you as a person.

40:00And also I did learn creative financing with a purpose. I did creative financing because I knew I was going to be quitting my job. And that's why I went all in on that. And actually the only time I've ever had issues with financing was about four months ago. We bought a primary residence here in Arizona and two and a half years into having a job with having a full-time business with absolutely no issues financing any of my rental properties. I actually had trouble with the bank here in Arizona of getting on the loan. And so they ended up just putting my partner on the loan because it was, quote unquote, too hard to figure out my self-employment, which I thought was hilarious.

40:41Let's get into a little bit about the book. Amelia, talk to me about the book, how that came about, the title of the book. It's going to be released here real soon. So talk to me more about how you guys got started on the book. The book is called The Self-Managing Landlord, More Profit, Time, and Peace of Mind with DIY Management. And it first started, just to give you a backstory, I think a year or two ago, two years ago, Grace, we also pitched a book to BiggerPockets. We are going to shoot our shot no matter what. Hey, to be fair, they said no to the podcast, but let's talk about a book. We talked about the book.

41:21Both parties agreed there's really no meat on the bone here. Maybe another time. We couldn't quite land on a topic. So we didn't move forward with that. Well, turns out a year later, they sent us an email. They said, remember when we had that conversation about writing a book? Well, we have a really awesome idea that we think you guys would be perfect authors for let's set up a meeting. And we were so giddy. We were like, oh my gosh, what's the topic going to be? We're so excited. It's going to be fun. and they said, it's going to be about how to self-manage rental properties. And we were like, oh my gosh, that's the most boring topic on planet earth.

41:57But we were going to do it no matter what, honestly. That is how the process started of writing the book and Grace can give more insights, but that's the background. I do want to hear about the writing process. How did you guys divide it up? How did you structure it? Did they provide some coaching for you. I mean, it's your first book ever. Talk to me about that process. So the second that we realized, let's talk about self-management and systems and processes behind being the CEO of your business, we really started to get behind the idea. And we started with a very thorough 10 plus page outline that they then approved.

42:36It was split up into two pieces, the how-tos of self-managing, renting, leasing, evictions, maintenance requests, and then the how-tos of running a business. Banking and systems and processes and procedures and checklists and quick guides. Then we started to get really excited. We did the whole first manuscript in six weeks. They reached out in July or August of 2023. It's now outpublished April of 2024. So we did the first manuscript in six weeks. They gave some edits, actually ended up rearranging the chapters because Amelia and I had split it into... She was writing about the how-tos of management and I was writing about the how-tos of the business.

43:16And then now the final layout is more into four parts, setting up your business, the actual parts of management, which you can skip if you feel like you already know that piece, difficult situations, and then ending with how to continue to build upon your portfolio without buying more, how to continue to operate as the CEO and delegate maybe to an internal manager. So I think it's a pretty darn good book and it really applies to a wide audience.

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44:44If something piques your interest, just start listening. No hard feelings. I'll be waiting for you back here. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor, and I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on. But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investor's Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors. And now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with.

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47:09All right, back to the show. Let's get into the difficult situations. What are some of those difficult situations that you wrote about that you've experienced yourself? Talk to me a little bit about that, Amelia. you? Good question. That's a whole can of worms. That's just part of being a landlord. There's going to be difficult situations. It's a customer service-based business in our opinion, because the tenant is very much our customer. They are paying for a product, which is their home. But difficult situations, anything to do with tenants, non-payment of rent, maintenance requests, tenant issues with other tenants, inherited tenants, because inherited tenants, you didn't get to screen them.

47:53You didn't get to onboard them. They aren't used to your rules. We can tell specific stories if you want to get into that. Yeah, do you have like a horror story that just comes to mind real quickly of like - I can start with one. Yeah, go ahead, Grace. A story I told in the book is how I got desperate for a renter in February in Iowa. If you know anything about Iowa, nobody wants to move in the middle of winter. So instead of having a very strict procedure that I could follow and know exactly what I was going to do and what my requirements were, sorry, and what my requirements were, I got emotional and desperate.

48:30I found a tenant willing to pay what I wanted and move in immediately, which that's a red flag. And so I dropped all of my rental requirements and didn't do a background and credit check, which now is very standard and streamlined in my business. What do you know? Six months later, she's been evicted for non-payment of rent. She never had any intention of paying rent. And that was a great lesson to learn of if you don't have systems and processes and you just run around making emotional decisions, barely keeping your head above water, you are not in a headspace to make the best decision for your business and you're going to get burned.

49:07Amelia, I want to hear a little bit about both of you, your tech stack, how you are managing the rentals in terms of just the technology used to streamline things and make things more efficient? The most important part of your tech stack is your property management software. We would recommend from day one, you start with one. We both use Tenant Cloud, but there's probably literally hundreds out there. We would say that what they need to be able to do is sign e-leases, collect rent, auto-assign late fees and have a really robust maintenance request system. Those are huge in-tenant messaging system.

49:48Because the goal is to be able to keep everything as systemized and in one place as possible right from the get-go. So your property management software is huge. The second thing that we both use, because we do a lot of midterm rentals, which are 30-day stays that are furnished for traveling nurses usually, is some sort of calendar management software and messaging software. So we use what's called hospitable for that. And that's huge. It automatically talks to our cleaner. It sends messages to our tenants. It keeps a calendar because we're onboarding these tenants from Airbnb, Furnished Finder, Facebook Marketplace groups, word of mouth.

50:30So there's not one centralized system to keep track of your calendar. So we are huge on that. What are some things I'm missing, Grace? Those are my top two. We do love our project management system. We use Monday and both wire and our own real estate. You don't have to do that. If you're just starting out, you just need to have some sort of system. So if it's checklists and Google sheets, absolutely use that. But we're at the point where we've got very dynamic businesses with lots of acquisitions and turnovers and dispositions happening. So when we can auto-populate a checklist that we've created specifically for our business that has assigned to people in our business with due dates, that's how the day-to-day gets done.

51:10Nothing gets missed, nothing is late, and everything is done the same way every time. Grace, how did you turn over property management? You're doing it yourself initially. At what point did you explore turning it over to a property manager at all? Or how did you make that transition from managing it yourself to farming it out? A year and a half in, I bought that eight unit I talked about. And it was managed previously by one of the quote unquote, premier property managers in the area. And automatically upon acquisition, there was so much value add in the mismanagement. It was under market rent, pet fees weren't being assessed, there were broken down cars in the parking lot.

51:49So I was like, if this is what management is, I am never hiring this out. But I knew I couldn't do the day to day forever. So about three, four months later, about two years in, maybe a year and a half in, I hired 10 hours a week hourly for somebody to help me with all the paperwork. So the leasings, the turnovers, handling maintenance requests. She helped me for a year. It was incredible. It was the best$800 a month I ever spent. And I was like, I have a taste of this freedom. I need more. So after a year of her, she went her own way. She had a great job offer. I flipped her into a full-time position of project and property management.

52:30So I now have a full-time W-2 employee who does probably three quarters project management and a quarter property management. So I have way better quality service. I pay probably a third to a fourth of what I would pay a PM company. And I have the quality control because I get to set the procedures. Amelia, did you have a similar... Did you transition in a similar way or was it different for you? Yeah. So Grace pushed me for a long time to hire someone because I did not do that nearly as soon as she did. So kudos to her. My portfolio was at 36 doors, which were a combination of midterm, long-term.

53:09I had a short-term Airbnb rental in there. And I knew it was time to hire out when me being the property manager was literally losing me money. The money that I was going to be spending on a property manager would actually save my business money in the long term because I wasn't doing that job as well as I could because I was trying to do so many things. So I'll give you an example. One thing that was costing me money was on my turnovers. I was so busy, I couldn't prioritize my turnover procedures. So a tenant would tell me they were moving out in 30 days and I'd say, okay, I can handle that in 30 days.

53:48I would totally put it out of sight, out of mind. And then when the 30 days rolled around, I had nobody to take over the lease and it would sit vacant for a whole nother month. A month of vacancy, it really kills your cashflow for the year because there's nobody paying that$1 ,000 in rent or whatever the case may be that month. Right off the bat there, I was losing$1 ,000 a month. So when I hired a property manager, Now our procedures are, as soon as we get a notice, we list the property for rent. We do a pre-move-out walkthrough about two weeks before they move out so we can make note of any repairs that we need to have our handyman or our painter come in and do.

54:27So then the day they move out, the minute after they're out the door, our handyman comes in, he makes those repairs. We've already pre-listed the property. We've already been doing showings so we can get a lease signed immediately and get someone moved in. You both have talked a little bit about being the CEO of your company. There's a book called The E-Myth, which talks about working on your business versus working in your business. And you want to get to the point where you've farmed everything out. Say more about that because you go into it in the book, it sounds like. How do you think about becoming the CEO of your own portfolio?

55:05I think Amelia's example just said it best. If you're stuck in the day-to-day, you cannot be proactive enough to keep up your income and keep your expenses down because she couldn't look up from her business and think about how to cut down on vacancies. So working on your business would be finding new deals, making new contractor relationships, increasing your rent or changing your rental strategy to make more money. Working in your business is sending over paperwork for tenants, handling maintenance requests, dropping things off in person. It's all that day-to-day stuff that keeps you from looking up and being able to see the bigger picture.

55:45And the other thing I want to point out is you don't need to be good at everything. You should focus on what you're really good at. I'm good at finding deals. So when I'm able to hire out the property management, now I don't have to dread property management. And I get to spend four times more time on finding good deals to fuel my business and make myself more money. Yeah. It's like the 80-20, the Pareto principle. It's like, what are the 20 % of the activities that are driving 80 % of your profits and focus on that, right? That's 100 % it. I wanted to go into a little bit of Amelia, how do you see your strategy changing over time?

56:24Do you think you'll just continue with your current strategy? Or do you guys have future goals that you want to take it to a different level? Oh, boy. That's a great question. I have one that we want to do. We want to syndicate a wire house, a wire retreat house in 2025. Say more about that. How would that look? Yeah. So for anyone out there listening that doesn't know what syndication is, It's basically where you raise funds from private investors to invest in a property, a large multi... Whatever it is, you raise outside funds. So we spend a lot of money on renting out the retreat houses. And we're like, what are we doing?

57:12Let's just buy our own or build our own house. Let's fund it using all women in the wire community's money. They'll make dividends on that money. and then we save paying all those fees to other investors. Plus, we do real estate full-time. We know how to run Airbnbs. We know how to run short-term rentals. We'll just rent it out when we're not using it for our own retreats. That is a huge thing on our list. And Grace, I was going to say, I've always been of the opinion I want to be a small and mighty investor. I don't want a portfolio that's hundreds of thousands of units because at some point, you lose sight of why you even invested in the first place, which for me is for very passive income to be able to live a life outside of having to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week.

57:58I have a lot of hobbies. I need to be self-employed. But I want to build a very small but mighty portfolio. But Grace and I have talked about that syndication part. Are we going to move into... We have an amazing community of women investors. Are we going to buy bigger deals and use private money with the women that are in our community. So that's something we've been talking about lately, but not sure where that's going to go. Well, once you get the wheel or the ball rolling too, like more and more opportunities open up to you. At some point, you have to figure out what you say no to, right? It's like you have the no list.

58:34Well, I think, Amelia, where you're able to marry those two concepts is we're not willing to work 40 hours a week on a syndication. We are willing to build a great team who can run it for us, and we can stick to what we're good at and keep our time freedom, make money, and be more passive, but also lend our expertise to the project, which is what people are investing in. We're not saying, I'm going to go work 100 hours a week to run 90 syndications. Yeah. You have no desire to do that, correct? No. So it's more about lifestyle, using real estate to build the lifestyle you want, right? Right. We don't want to manage a syndication, but we can definitely raise the funds for one because that's our area of expertise.

59:19It's finding deals and it's raising money. So we can hire out the rest. We can do what we're good at. Now with wire, are you in multiple cities or how? There are groups that are almost like a franchise. There are different cities. Is that on the drawing board at all for you guys? We've talked about that many times. We don't currently have in-person chapters, but there are lots of groups who do it and are great at it. For us, we're really focused on our free Facebook community and cultivating amazing relationships there. And also we run our retreats. And then I'd say our third thing we're really focused on, which is also virtual, is our CEO bootcamp, which teaches you everything you need to learn to run your business and not be in the day-to-day.

1:00:06So while we'd love to get in person, it's not on the next 12 months docket, but it might be in the future. Amelia, I just wanted to hear, just in thinking back of building your portfolio, is there anything you would have done differently or mistakes that you made that you wish you would have corrected at some point? Just like somebody that's listening to this, what would you advise them to don't do this? This was a mistake I made that I could have avoided. Something like, that? I would actually say my biggest mistake when I started real estate investing was not house hacking. And I know that's kind of a weird answer, but I'll share with you what house hacking is if you've never heard of it.

1:00:47It's basically where you buy a property and you rent it out. So either if you buy a duplex, you live in one side of it because you get a lower down payment with an owner-occupied loan, you're usually going to get a better interest rate. And if you live in one side and rent out the other, a lot of times the person living in the other unit will probably be paying enough rent to cover the entire mortgage and insurance and property taxes, if not cover all of it, cover most of it. So then you're living rent-free and the money that you could have been spending in rent or would have been paying rent somewhere else, you're saving that money and using it to buy another property in the future.

1:01:27It's such a powerful strategy. I wish that I would have used it right out of college. Grace used it, which is amazing. But other than that, another thing for me is just not documenting what I was doing the first time around and reinventing the wheel every single time I would do something, whether that was onboarding tenants or creating a lease or maintenance requests. That's so important because you want that passive income. You want that time freedom. You need to start documenting what you're doing so you're not doing it over again every single time. So you can create a system that you can then just replicate.

1:02:02Yeah. I love the house hacking idea. I interviewed the FI couple. I don't know if you are familiar with either of them. They're a couple that invest in real estate. And they said, basically, exactly what you did, Amelia, just that house hacking is the way to get started in real estate. Do that, learn, cover your rent, and then you can start building from there. Grace, How about you? Is there anything looking back on things that you would have wished you would have done differently? I agree with Amelia. I call it the sit and think. When you go to do something you've done 100 times, and because you have nothing written down, you sit and you think, hmm, what am I supposed to be doing right now?

1:02:40I wasted so much time and effort the first two years scaling doing that because I wasn't able to step into a CEO mindset and systemize things. So if you're just getting started, like Amelia said, start a simple Google Doc. It can be bullet points of when you're buying a house, what are you doing? You're reading over the Ulta, you're scheduling the wire, you're checking your due diligence, just writing out everything so you can do the same thing every single time. It saves you so much money. And Amelia and I, for example, love to forget to buy insurance for our rental properties until the day of closing.

1:03:17So that will never happen. That's a huge disaster waiting to happen. But don't do the sit and think, get systemized. So you're doing all this to create the lifestyle you want. I wanted to touch on a little bit, Amelia and Grace. What do you guys like to do outside of real estate? I am a very mediocre pickleball player. I love hiking. I love climbing. I'm probably even more mediocre at climbing. But anything outside is very fun in Arizona. And I also would say I'm a huge reader. That's awesome. I just was out in Joshua Tree doing some bouldering and it's so beautiful. I love the desert. So I'm kind of jealous that you've made the move from the Midwest to Arizona.

1:03:58And pickleball is awesome as well. It's such a good game. Amelia, how about you? Yeah, I would consider myself an advanced pickleball player. I love it. She beat me 11 to 0 once. Oh, man. So I love pickleball. I love traveling. That's something that Grace and I are both really passionate about. We do a lot of traveling. I just love being outside. Craft beer is a hobby of mine as well. Making it or drinking it? And I'm also an avid reader. Drinking it. I'm really good at drinking it. That's awesome. I used to work at a brewery for seven years. It's like a fun side hustle part-time job. And really anything, board games.

1:04:37I am in a Neogram type seven. So if you're out there listening and you know Enneagrams, so is Grace. We're always down for an adventure. We're always down to try something new. So lots of hobbies. That's cool. Since you're both readers, Grace, is there one book that has made a huge impact on your life or something that you... Like your most gifted book? Do you have something like that? Recently, 10X is Easier Than 2X by Dan Sullivan. That was huge. And I will say the reason it was huge was because when I read it, I sat down and And I read it slowly and I did every single exercise in the book. Normally, I like to read things really quick and be like, I'll do that later.

1:05:16But it really is so much more impactful when you do what the book tells you to do. Say more about that. I'm familiar with the book. I've not read it. What's the main idea? What's the main takeaway? The main idea is that if you attempt to 10x something, by default, it's always going to be easier than trying to double your effort. And the reason is, is because when you go to 10x something, you have to be revolutionary in how you're approaching it. Because to 10x, your profit or your output or your rental portfolio is massive. So you have to think massively outside the box, delegate massively, be super attentive to detail.

1:05:54And even if you fail by half, you still 5x it. And it's also basically saying, what are the 10x things that you've done in the past? For me, a 10x was quitting my job. in wire it was throwing the first retreat and appreciating them and knowing that there are different waves that you go through where a 10x might happen and they get bigger and bigger i'll have to check it out it sounds uh i i've definitely heard about it and many people have recommended it so i'll definitely have to give it a read i'm a huge reader too but uh amelia how about you what's uh one book that's made a huge impact on your life and career mine's the boring answer of Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

1:06:34And I know it's kind of a controversial book these days. But it just opened my eyes to the world of entrepreneurship, like I said earlier, and just making your money work for you. Whether or not I apply the same principles that they preach in the book is irrelevant to me because it was the pivotal turning point in my life to start thinking in terms of being an entrepreneur. Yeah, it's a great book. I mean, I don't know that there's any controversy about the book. I mean, the author itself. The author. Right. Right. He's not everybody's cup of tea these days, it doesn't seem like. But this has been a lot of fun, ladies.

1:07:14I really admire what you've both done and the portfolio you've built. You've got so much going on in terms of content creation. Say a little bit more about Grace, how people can get in touch with you, how they can learn about the book, the wire. Just go ahead and give a little plug for what you guys are up to. You can find Wire on Instagram at wire.community. Wire has two eyes. Also, womeninvestmealsay.com. And then me personally at grace.investing on Instagram. And that's where you're most active is Instagram? Yeah, that's probably the best way to get a hold of us. I'll let Amelia share her handle as well.

1:07:52Yeah, mine is Amelia Joe, R-E-I on Instagram. And then if you're interested in purchasing the book, It's available on biggerpockets.com. And it's titled The Self-Managing Landlord. Like I said earlier, it's a beautiful blue cover. So if you're looking for it, that's what it looks like. But we would love to meet you on Instagram if you want to join us over there. Very exciting about the book. Congratulations. You've got such a great life going on, things that you're up to. So I really, really appreciate your time. I'll put links in the show notes to everything that you're up to. BiggerPockets does such a fantastic job in terms of publishing their books.

1:08:31They're so well done. So I'm sure it's going to be a great book. Really well. I hope you sell a ton of it and just wish you both the best of luck in everything that you're up to. Thanks, Patrick. Yeah. Thanks for your time. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Millennial Investing on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on our episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only.

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