5 Year Plan to Financial Freedom with Anna Kelley

Transcript:

Anna Kelley  0:00  

We want to live life by design. So when you finally get there, you have to ask yourself, Am I really living life by design and enjoying my financial freedom? Or am I just a slave to more financial freedom that's going to cost you know, cost me a lot more hours to get there. So,

Taylor   0:15  

what's going on guys? This is the passive wealth strategies podcast. Thank you for tuning in. I'm your host Taylor load and today our guest is Ana Kelly. Today we're going to talk about how she achieved financial freedom by investing in real estate. She set a five year plan which we're going to cover today, you're going to learn about how you can set a five year plan and successfully execute on it like she did and achieve your financial goals. So lot of fantastic lessons in this episode. As a quick note, I learned after we recorded she pronounces her first name on on not Anna called her Hannah and that's a couple of times so certainly I apologize to her about that. I apologize to her after after we recorded For those listening, it's on and Adana. Sorry about that.

But for those of you who don't know me, I'm your host Taylor. I'm thanking you for tuning in. I am a real estate investor multifamily syndicator, a busy professional and what I like to say a certified busy person, I love investing in real estate and cash flowing assets and talking to others about how they can invest in real estate even if they don't think they can. This is a great episode. If you're someone who has limiting beliefs. If you believe that you're too busy to invest in real estate, just listen to on a she's going to disabuse you of that notion. Without any further ado, here we go with honor Kelly, and thank you for joining us today.

Anna Kelley  1:45  

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be on the show with you.

Taylor   1:48  

Happy to talk with you again. We just met at the Mid Atlantic summit said we got to get on a call do a podcast together. You've made some really awesome progress as a real estate investor over the years and you were just too telling me about that. For our audience? Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your experience?

Anna Kelley  2:05  

Sure. So I started out interested in investments. About 25 years ago, I did private banking for a large bank. And I had a lot of clients who we pulled about traditional investments like stocks, bonds and mutual funds. And they kind of piqued my interest because a lot of my really wealthy clients owned real estate, and told me that they made better returns in real estate than the traditional types of investments. We were trying to sell them. And so I started dabbling in real estate by buying a little condo instead of paying rent and house hacking. And I flipped my first property about 16 years ago. And then 13 years ago, I decided, you know, I need to start buying rental real estate and having some cash flow come in. And so I started buying rental real estate thinking I was going to be able to retire really quickly from that. And then the market crashed and await and kind of slowed down my progress. And so in a nutshell, about five years ago, I created a five year plan to exit my job and retire from a big life insurance company that I worked for. And I needed to create a passive income big enough to replace my six figure income, and then kind of save up a bunch of money so that I could do that. And I retired from my job of 20 years at AIG just this May. And so I've been retired just for a few months and have really shifted my gear primarily to multifamily investing.

Taylor   3:26  

So that's, that's great. Do you think that so you recently left your job? Do you think that if you had at any point made a five year plan you would have been able to retire earlier or did you have to get to that point?

Anna Kelley  3:42  

I had to get to that point and and really the reason is because when I started in oh seven it was the height of the economy. Not a whole lot unlike it is today, and money was easy. I bought my first property with 10% down and they let me put that 10% down on a credit card. So I mean, I got no money down into a commercial building, I bought a four unit building with like, 3% down to live in. And money was pretty easy. And so I thought, I'm going to be retired in no time because I had little two little children and I wanted to be home with my kids. And so that's how I got started into this. And when the economy changed, you know, nobody could have expected that that was going to happen. We had just started a business, my husband and I, he's a chiropractor, and we started that business in oh seven, with almost three quarters of a million dollars in debt. So to start a business, we thought, well, we'll do the real estate on the side, and the business will be doing well in no time. And, you know, we're going to be rich within a year or two. That's what we thought, honestly, and the economy crash. And at that point, I almost lost my job. I could not get any more real estate loans because I worked for AIG, and they were in the news every day literally. And so my job was viewed it as unstable. We had a lot of debt and I was really a risk. Two banks. And so I thought that I'd be able to find a way to, you know, do some creative financing or find any lenders that would lend to me and they basically told me no and slammed the door in my face for about three and a half years. So while I had a five year plan early on, everything that I knew to do, basically shut it down. And I will say I didn't know about syndication at the time or much about it. It was just kind of starting to, you know, people talk about it early Oh, nine, but we were so busy just trying to support our family and stay afloat, keep my husband's business afloat, and, you know, keep my job that really we just kept the few rentals we had, and just kept improving them and hoping eventually we could raise the values enough and the banks would start saying yes. And basically about five years ago, when I went finally back to a couple banks and said, Look, I've had these properties for several years. I've never been late on a payment. I just want to use the equity to buy more can I can I take an equity loan as a down payment on another? They finally said yes. And when they did that, I knew Okay, I'm kind of Back in business, I can use some banks and use some seller financing types of models and start growing my portfolio again.

Taylor   6:07  

So yeah, you went, you're in a difficult situation. And it had to get to the point where you felt you had the bandwidth to maybe double down or triple down on the real estate investing that you are doing. So it wasn't necessarily viable when you were keeping the business afloat and raising your kids and managing the couple of rentals that you had at that point. So it makes it

Unknown Speaker  6:31  

exactly,

Taylor   6:32  

exactly. So what's in your portfolio right now? What do you have?

Anna Kelley  6:37  

So my husband and I own 70 units that we own 100% of here in Central Pennsylvania, there were about $7 million. I own 200 units with two partners that we've actually just bought in this last year, and they're here in Central Pennsylvania. Those are a JV ownership structure, and then I'm a general partner and a co sponsor. are on 250 units in Atlanta, Georgia. And then I'm invested in like 1500 units passively with retirement funds.

Taylor   7:08  

That's great. So you have a pretty diverse portfolio. And what are you looking for moving forward? Because in the amount of time that you've been investing, there have been a couple of market cycles. And you said earlier that you feel we're at a peak right now. So what are you looking for, that you feel is going to ride out whatever difficulties might be coming down the road?

Anna Kelley  7:32  

Sure, that's a really good question. And I will say this, a lot of people say that apartments are recession proof or that self storage is recession proof. And the reality is there is nothing that is recession proof, you can invest in certain types of assets that are more resilient to a recession, and that tend to do better than other assets do during recession. And those are the kind of things that I'm focusing on. So because I have most of my experience in residential housing, whether that be a single or a small multifamily are large multifamily investing in housing where people lives, that's what I'm really more of an expert at. So I feel like I'm more malleable staying in that space. And so I'm looking for multifamily housing that have a couple of characteristics. One, I don't want it to be Class A brand new to I don't want it to be Class D or Class C minus. And really even Class C by most standards. I want to be in an area that's a Class A to B area that has really strong schools, and a really diverse economic outlook. So lots of different diverse employers, I want hospitals. One study that was really interesting after the last recession and several previous recessions is that the areas that did best were those that were really close to a big anchor hospital. And so I like to invest in areas that are really close within like 15 or 20 minutes from a big hospital system and where you have Mac manufacturing and trucking and technology, education all types of diverse employee So that if any one employer base or anyone industry is hit hard and the recession, you're not going to lose a big part of your tenant base, and the town isn't going to go down. So I want to be in a really resilient area. And I want to have great school districts and I want to be in slightly middle to above average income areas. So it might be a Class A to B area, but I might be buying a Class C building that doesn't have all the amenities and all the bells and whistles of a new building, but it's a couple hundred dollars per month less rent than the ones with all the bells and whistles that are a new building. Because of people that are high income earners in class a housing are hit or they're laid off because they make the most money. They're going to move down to class B type asset and just pay a little less rent but stay in the area. And those that are MBAs might move down to see buildings but they still want to stay in those school districts because they want their kids to stay there. So I like a to be areas strong school districts, little bit older house With less amenities where I can charge a rent that is lower than what the newer properties are and where people are going to stay no matter what happens in that economy so that's personally what I'm looking for. And then some self storage if they're in the right area with the right supply demand dynamics and and the right market saturation.

Taylor   10:24  

Okay, so that's great. I invest in multifamily and self storage as well. And I agree with a lot of I'd say all of what you what you just said, particularly that nothing is recession proof. They have different you know, different asset classes at different degrees of recession resistance. Absolutely. But there's, there's this idea out there of x class, whatever it is, is recession proof, and that's just, it's just nonsense. Nothing's recession proof, it doesn't

Anna Kelley  10:53  

exist. And everything's also very regional. I think I kind of hit on that in terms of areas that are diverse. But you look at areas on, you know, either coast or in the really big cities or the tech hubs that were hit really hard during the last downturn, because the housing of those areas tend to really swing they have big upsides and big downsides. I don't like to invest in those areas, I prefer to be in like really stable areas that don't have a huge swing and their values in residential housing, when there are, you know, highs and lows in the market. So depending on where you invest and where your target market is, you might be much more recession resilient than other people's and but investing in other areas of the country.

Taylor   11:35  

Absolutely. So that's what you're looking for now and looking for moving forward. I wonder if we could step back and talk about your five year plan so that if anybody out there that's listening is in your shoes from five years ago or anything like it? How can they learn from your experience and your plan and maybe you know, replicate that for themselves? So let's go through it. What Tell us about your your five year plan because it worked.

Anna Kelley  12:05  

You know, for me personally, what I had planned to do was I looked at where am I and I, when you're working full time and you maybe have a family and kids, you really can't afford to be flying all over the country looking at big syndications and trying to partner on deals. Now granted, you can find a way to do it through syndication, and I'll set that aside for now just because my five year plan didn't include large apartment buildings that included small bolta units. But I looked in my area and said what's on the market that I can actually compete for, that I can get with little money down and that I can maybe buy with creative financing. And then in my area near Hershey, PA, it's still fairly rural, and there's not a lot of supply of big apartment buildings. But I could buy four unit apartment buildings really fairly inexpensively compared to where I could buy them elsewhere in the country. And there weren't a whole lot of people buying four unit buildings. So most people were buying singles and flipping them, or they were looking for like duplexes and triplexes. And not a whole lot of people would buy four unit buildings, they've kind of sit on the market for months and months at a time. So I thought if I could buy a four unit, I have more economies of scale than I have with a single or a duplex or a triple. It's not quite commercial, but I can still get commercial financing and, you know, 20 year loans on them, and I can still go to a small regional bank to take them down. So I focused on the four unit apartment buildings and I would buy a four unit, we'd update all four units, just like you would on a larger multifamily. And we'd raise the value of that property by raising the rents and making them nicer. And then what I did is I would take the equity from increased from the the value increase, and I'd go to the bank and I'd say Can I take a second mortgage, using the equity that I've increased in that building as the downpayment, so they would either give me 100% financing on the next property and put a second lien against the first or they would actually do a second mortgage on the first property. Give me the cash and let me use that as a down payment for the next one. So I methodically bought primarily four unit apartment buildings, raise values cashed out and use it as a down payment for the next one. I did have a couple flips of single families there in the mix because if something came up as a foreclosure a single house that I could buy you know, for 50 or 60 grand that I knew would be worth 122 150 after we would just buy that put in the sweat, sweat equity and then do the same thing keep it as a rental and then take the equity and use that as a down payment for another four unit apartment building. And I just figured out I needed about $150,000 a year minimum in order to retire and so I needed to buy enough multifamily units to allow me to replace that income before I pulled the trigger to retire.

Taylor   14:48  

Nice that's a smart strategy. You don't hear a lot of people talking about that specific strategy you know you normally you hear about why just refinanced and then got that money out and when Look for the next property, whatever it might be the typical burger method. But it sounds like you did something slightly different working with your bank to maybe make a transaction easier or something like that sound like it worked out a little better than most burst situations.

Anna Kelley  15:17  

Yeah, they were happy to just say, hey, we'd love for you to keep the mortgage with us, we see that it's worth this much more. Let's just give you 100% financing on the next one and put a second lien against, you know, the existing property. So it worked out nicely. And I didn't have to pay as much for the refinance costs as you would with the burn on a single family, for example. Make sense?

Taylor   15:37  

Yeah. That's very smart. So how many of those I mean, if you obviously had some kind of numbers in mind with this, you had your five year goals, that's a number in terms of time, but your number in terms of number of units that you need or something I think you said that you and your husband own 70 units. Did I get that right?

Anna Kelley  15:59  

Yeah, at the time. We had 60 My plan was in four years to buy 12 units per year because I already owned 12. At the time I created my five year plan, I bought those 12 you know, before the crash or right about that time, and then I just set on them. So I had a lot of equity built up for five years that I couldn't touch. So I had those 12 units and use that is my initial equity, but I planned on buying 12 units a year for four years, that would get me to 60 units and then a year of taking all the income from those units and using it to pay down the debt that I had acquired to remodel them and and save about a year salary. So that was my plan was 12 units a year and then actually live on the my salary and put all the money toward pay down and savings the fifth year.

Taylor   16:45  

Wow. So that's great. And I think something that most people might run into if they're thinking about this is that Kiyosaki saying don't ask yourself or don't say I can't afford it or I don't have the money. Ask yourself, how can I afford it? And when you're saying something like, I'm going to buy 12 units a year, myself, and most people are going to say, I don't have the money to put 20% down on 12 units a year for the next four years. But so, in that strategy, did you have that plan in mind? I'm going to go through this financing process and value and everything like that, or did you figure it out? Along the way, I guess, how much of the path Did you have figured out for yourself before you did it? And how much of it? Did you figure it out? along the way?

Anna Kelley  17:36  

Kind of a mixture of both. You know, I learned that I can't depend on my job because I worked for AIG. And I was told like every year your departments probably next to be laid off. Y'all need to start thinking about other jobs, you know, and five years ago, when it really put like a fire under me, they said, Okay, our department is now being sold. Everybody should start thinking about what else you want to do. And I'm like, I live in rural people. I've got a six figure a year job that I'm not likely to replicate here from rural PA, because I got that job in Houston before I moved here. And I knew that being an entrepreneur and having your own business like my husband did wasn't necessarily the right way either, especially in healthcare when we didn't know healthcare was going to collapse and change and you know, all of that. And I knew that real estate was really the only thing that I could, I could control like 80% of I could find deals and I could figure out creatively how to get them funded. So I knew I would have to utilize every possible means of financing properties, seller financing hard money, loans, banks, business credit cards is zero percent. I wouldn't recommend everybody run out and do that if you're not really really good with money, but having a financial advisor background I was very, very careful and cautious, but I played the zero percent balance transfer game. I built up LLC that I could get credit for, and I just decided come hell or high water I'm about to lose my job and I better figure this out and ask myself exactly what you said with Kiyosaki, not there aren't any deals or on any money, but how can I make a deal? And how can I find the money? And how can I get it done. And I was just very determined that I was going to hit down the doors until I found the money. So I partnered on a few. I went to the bank for a few. I did seller financing for three in a row, which was like amazing. I couldn't believe these retiring limp landlords agreed to let me buy a property with 10,000 down. And then I bought 10,000 down because I didn't have it, you know, I had no money and $700,000 in debt, and four babies. So if I could do it while working full time and having no money, anybody can do it. If you have the determination and the persistence that you're going to figure it out as you go.

Taylor   19:46  

Absolutely. I love that is something that you see all the time on these online forums. If you're involved at all real estate forums, people are like, Oh, I can't invest in real estate because XYZ and you know, I'm a teacher, whatever. or something like that, or I can't do it? Because, you know, I've worked 40 hours a week well, so do a lot of people have done it. So yeah, open up your eyes and see the people who have succeeded at that plan.

Anna Kelley  20:13  

Yeah, yeah. And the reality is in the United States of America, we still have so much opportunity. And it takes years to get there to create your own business and start your own business. It takes years to save up enough of your salary. But there is nothing like real estate to grow well, you just have to be resourceful. And whatever you don't have if you don't have time, or you don't have money, leverage other people's time and other people's money, partner on deals until you can figure out a way to get them on your own. So there's no excuse about why can't somebody can at least get in the game. You might just all have a different path and how to get there depending on what your own time money and skill set is.

Taylor   20:50  

Absolutely. Now regarding managing your current portfolio, you have larger multi families which there's no way you can possibly self manage the two Hundred unit property? At least I don't think so. But in your personal portfolio that you built up over the years, are you self managing? Do you have property management, you have a mix? What does that look like? And how did you get to the point where you are in terms of managing those properties? Sure.

Anna Kelley  21:16  

So I have a mix. And what I will say about this before I even, you know, delve into the details is, there's really no one right way, not only to buy property and to own property, but to manage property. It really depends a lot on your your area where you live, what the property management options are for you and what your family dynamic looks like. So from my own portfolio of 70 units, my husband and I actually still self manage those seven day. We are in a rural area. We don't have great property management options. We've had some property management companies that we were not real thrilled with. And my husband's in a position where as a chiropractor, he owns his own business, and really We're in a small area, so he can see all of his patients three days a week. And then two days a week, he basically takes care of any maintenance issues or whatever comes up with our properties. We made them turnkey, we renovated them so nicely that truly not much goes wrong with these properties. And we've got a lot of really great subcontractors in our area that we have good relationships with. So when I say we self manage, you know, we get a call, if somebody has a leaking toilet, my husband can check it in five minutes and maybe change the guts. If it's beyond that. He calls a plumber and the plumber comes and they take care of the issue. So it's easy for us in a rural area where we have really strong relationships. It's a tight knit community to self manage and then rely on third parties to help us to get the work done. With that said, My 200 units that I own with two partners that we've bought in this last year. One of my partner's has his own property management company. And so we have the benefit of he has a back office team that you know, collects checks enters the accounting enters everything in the app folio which we use And handles our investor reporting, where I may I manage the on site property management and maintenance staff. And so I will check in through AppFolio, and basically an asset manager. So I'm managing the property manager, the maintenance and making sure that they meet our business plan. But I'm not there on site every day. So that's easier for me to do on those 200 units than it is for my husband and I to self manage or 70. And then the ones in Atlanta, are 250 units. I'm the primary asset manager for those and so I manage a third party large management company that's in Atlanta. And I do that from afar, but I have a daily call with them a weekly call with them. I'm looking at reports and we're working through it together. So I've seen the gamut of ways that you can manage your properties and I'm actually involved at a different level with each type of asset.

Taylor   23:51  

Wow, that's impressive. And we talked about Asset Management on multifamily properties in the past and you know, From the outside, people might think well, doesn't the property manager just handle it? Like, no, you really have to oversee them? And make sure sure the plan

Anna Kelley  24:07  

for sure.

Taylor   24:09  

What are the next five years look like for you? I mean, I would assume you have another five year plan for yourself, what does that look like?

Anna Kelley  24:18  

I'm going to give you an answer that's probably going to surprise Taylor. But here, here's the thing. So I worked 70 to 80 hours a week, literally for 12 years in order to get to the point of financial freedom. And you get to the point of financial freedom when you retire. And because you're a very driven person, like myself, you're like, Okay, what's next? What am I going to do? I'm going to go bigger, I'm going to go greater, but the reality is I worked as hard so that when my kids walk into the door at 3:05pm every day, I am wife and mom and I'm 100% focused on them. And what that means is that my drive and my you know, desire to collect more and create all this legacy wealth has to shut off every day at three o'clock. The other thing that I've kind of sacrificed on the way to get here That I haven't really given myself enough time to take care of myself. So I'm really committed that from my day, from eight o'clock to 3pm, I'm actually spending an hour making healthy meals, I'm spending an hour working out in the gym. And then I've got like five and a half to six hours left per day that I'm committed to work. And so my goal for the next five years is to grow my multifamily portfolio or whatever other asset class I decide to invest in as large as I can, in the most healthy way, the most wise way, buying the right assets, especially if we're heading in toward the downturn, to where I can make as much progress and create as much wealth as possible in five to six hours a day. And if I can only look for deals for two hours a day because I'm asset managing these other, you know, 520 units, then I'll look for deals to day, two hours a day, or I'll network with other people to potentially partner on. So I don't really have a number plan because I've reached that level of financial freedom where I'm really focus now over the next several years was just being happy and having, you know, joy in life and and finally feeling what it's like to work 35 hours a week, instead of 80 hours a week, because I have no no different for the last decade of my life. And so, you know, I'm not going to buy property just to buy property or have a certain number of units just just have a certain number of units. But I'm always looking for deals and being open to new opportunities. And, you know, I'm evaluating for four deals next week, and I've got other people that have brought me deals to think about partnering on and I'm looking at those, so I'm always open opportunity, but I'm really not putting a number that I have to meet in any way shape or form over the next few years, at least not at this point. Also not knowing what's going to happen with the economy.

Taylor   26:45  

Nice. I mean, it sounds like you're I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like your five year plans are, you know, get the kids into college and live my life like you said reduce the amount of work you have to do and it's it's You know, you're just you're you got to where you want it to be. So what else? What else is there then just enjoy it You made it happen.

Anna Kelley  27:10  

Yeah. And you know, we always talk about passive income. Why do we do real estate because we want to create passive income Why do we want passive income because we want to live life by design. So when you finally get there, you have to ask yourself, Am I really living life by design and enjoying my financial freedom? Or am I just a slave to more financial freedom that's going to cost you know, cost me a lot more hours to get there. So, you know, to your point, I have a son who's a junior in high school, so he wants he's talking about college and he's like, you know, Mom, I think I really want to do real estate I want to be a real estate multimillionaire too. And I know you can teach me in a couple of years why go to Scott college and spend six figures for degree when I don't know what I want to do. So we're like, you know, the next two years we're really pouring into him and teaching him finance and real estate in the business and that's more important to me then you know, buying another hundred units. property. With that said, I've also created a company with one of my partners, and we're very actively looking for deals. So I'm definitely not like going, I'm retired, I'm going to sit here and eat bonbons and not do anything anymore. Like I'm still going to continue to grow. But I'm just making myself kind of rein it in and not forget why I worked so hard. And that now that I have this financial freedom to really be purposeful about spending the next five years or so focusing primarily on my children in the evenings and pouring into them, and then just seeing what comes and making wise investment decisions, you know, during that few hours a day that I'm willing to do it.

Taylor   28:35  

Nice. Well, if I can give you a little bit of a hard time. I mean, it's 537. Saturday, and you're talking to me, podcast,

Anna Kelley  28:43  

just for you.

Taylor   28:45  

Well, you're still working hard as is. Yeah. That's still on. Yeah. So that's great. And congratulations on everything you've achieved. And I'm sure that your you know, the next five years are going to be great no matter what direction you take it. If it's If it's getting your son, turning him into a multi millionaire then fantastic.

Anna Kelley  29:05  

Absolutely, yeah. Cool. And never underestimate the amount of work that you can get done in a few hours a day really, you know, if you work very strategically and wisely, you can still accomplish a lot more than you think that you can

Taylor   29:20  

a strategic plan and you to do you. Let's dig into that. Do you have a daily checklist or something like that? Or do you write a list? Or how do you do that and stay focused and not get distracted by Instagram?

Anna Kelley  29:33  

Yes, I actually time block. And you know, when I worked for AIG, I was a, like a Senior Project Manager for a lot of these financial projects. And so I had to be very, very disciplined with time and scheduling and project planning. And so I'm really, really good at doing that and being disciplined. But when I left my job in May, and I had my day back, it was easy to just be like, what am I going to do today because you kind of get out of that routine in this spot. So I time block my schedule. So what I've recently started to do is I've started to say, Okay, listen from three to five till nine. I am at sports with my kids. So I need an hour a day, you know, in quiet time in prayer, and then the Bible, I need an hour a day in the gym and I need an hour a day to meal prep. So I've got five hours left for today, let's say that I can work I've time block that day so that I've got 30 minutes to one hour segments for finding deals, for networking, for investor relationships, for asset management, for handling current tenant issues and for listening to a podcast or reading a book. So that's how I have my time blocked. And I'm committed that during each of those times, I'm that's all I'm working on. And so I have some set goals for the year for you know, I'd like to develop, you know, 100 new investor relationships. I'd like to review you know, a deal every single day. So if I can put in the activity to make progress, and each of those areas that's important to me that I know will yield results and yield, well, then I'm going to be successful. So I don't have like, I have to buy 200 units this year. But I have, I'm going to look at so many deals a week, and I'm going to call so many brokers a week, and I'm going to call so many investors a week. And I make sure that during that time, that is exactly what I'm doing. And then there's some malleability in there. So for example, if you know Taylor says, Hey, can you do a podcast on a Saturday, I'm going to go Yes, I'm going to do it on a Saturday and I'm going to, you know, not do it on Monday and I can go out to lunch with a girlfriend or something like that, but I time block my time. And then I have like three to five things that I want to accomplish for that category for the year and for the month and for the week, and I just tick them off as I go.

Taylor   31:52  

So it sounds like you're, you're obviously still you're going through the steps and everything. So these are proven steps to produce results. And maybe you're less focused on the result and more focused on the X key execution at this point. But it's almost a I don't want to say certainty, but it seems very likely that the steps will continue to produce, you know, results in terms of buying properties and things like that, as long as you keep doing them, but you're less concerned about closing on those properties and just focusing on just keeping doing the work and making it happen just at your own at your own pace and on your own time.

Anna Kelley  32:30  

Yes, and you know, I've done business consulting and so I've been very involved in every kind of program you can imagine for goal setting SMART goals, big hairy goals, you know, every kind of thing. They need to be, you know, written, they need to be measurable, they need to be attainable, they need to be repeatable, etc, etc. But most people's goals are very arbitrary. And what happens is you either really exceed them and then you're like, now what, or they're too big and you can't achieve them and then you feel deflated and defeated and then you give up too early. So we put the These concrete numbers as guide rails, but they can have some, you know, unforeseen consequences to our actual ability to make progress and to be successful. And so I feel like it's better to I'm doing the self experiment, you know, create the guide rails and create things that are going to motivate you to take the next step. But Your goal should really be a, they should have a meaning and not be arbitrary. So your goal should be I'm going to grow in every single area every single day. And I'm going to put you know, full throttle when I'm focused on that to get to accomplishing something big and not setting limits on myself, but really just continuing to achieve by continuing to see growth as fast as you can in every area and you get a lot more joy and a lot less blinders on as to what you need to do and it allows you to be more creative, and the results just come so for me it's been kind of enlightening to be able to goal set this way through time blocking and and focus on growth. Rather than an arbitrary number that makes some people also make really stupid mistakes, like, I've got to buy 1000 units this year. But what are you going to do, you're going to focus to close deals no matter what it takes to get those thousand units done. And the economy may hand you a super expensive deals that aren't going to cash flow that aren't going to do well. But you're so focused on the goal that you have the blinders on that keep you from making wise decisions. So that's just an example where an arbitrary goal might not be a good thing.

Taylor   34:28  

It's a very common arbitrary goal, though, at this point, or seemingly arbitrary goal to say, I'm going to close 1000 units this year and other 2000 or something like that. That might not be the greatest goal to have. I mean, our goal should be doing good deals, wraps delivering a volume of deals.

Anna Kelley  34:46  

Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Taylor   34:49  

Okay, so we're going to take a quick break for our sponsor. All right, Dana. I've got three questions. I ask every guest in the show. Are you ready?

Anna Kelley  34:57  

I'm ready.

Taylor   34:58  

All right. Number one. What is the best investment you've ever made?

Anna Kelley  35:03  

The best real estate investment I ever made was my first jv 73 unit multifamily apartment building that I did last year, which really gave me the confidence that I could go bigger and multifamily and springboarded me to start buying a lot bigger properties to create that much more financial freedom much more quickly than I had done it on my own.

Taylor   35:22  

Cool. Cool. On the other side of that, what is the worst investment you ever made?

Anna Kelley  35:29  

The first property I flipped, I sat on it for a year made every mistake that you could lost my shirt. Last 10 grand lost a job in the process and learned a whole lot about taking risks and taking on too much when I didn't have the money to be doing it.

Taylor   35:46  

Wow, did you use a hard money loan for that or something like that where you're paying the interest all the time by yourself like what are some of the specific mistakes you made?

Anna Kelley  35:57  

I didn't even know about hard money back then. It was it back in 2003 we got a traditional mortgage on a house. We didn't know the role of location, location location. We bought it facing the parking lot of a grocery store, but it wasn't like a really cool urban area that was like re gentrifying, and lots of walkability and bars and restaurants and stuff. But the summer started and the trash cans started to absolutely Reek, hundred degree weather and Houston and the house smelled like a dumpster. And every time someone came to see that house, it was like you wanted to vomit because it smelled so bad. So that was like a huge learning lesson. I hired illegal contractors who I didn't know that, you know, weren't here legally. They didn't pull permits. They messed things up. We had to redo it. I mean, every mistake that you could make Taylor I made that.

Taylor   36:49  

Wow. Look at you now look at

Anna Kelley  36:52  

That's right. That's right. I didn't stop. I didn't let it stop me. So that's good.

Taylor   36:56  

That's what matters. And my favorite question. The end of the show is what is the most important lesson that you've learned in investing.

Anna Kelley  37:06  

Only do good deals with really good people never pursue a deal with someone that doesn't have absolute integrity and just trust your gut on who you work with and who you partner with.

Taylor   37:20  

Nice, nice. I like the I like to trust my gut. It hasn't steered me wrong yet, but you never know. But it's been good so far. So yeah, that is great advice. if folks want to learn more about you about your business, where can they get in touch with you?

Anna Kelley  37:35  

Sure, you can email me at info at Rei mom.com and I have a website which is Rei mom calm or on Facebook, creating real estate wealth that last with our web on Rei mom.

Taylor   37:49  

Nice. Nice. Well, thank you for joining us today and all the great lessons and congratulations on you know leaving your job and achieving everything from your five year plan. And then you'll have the next five years go go even better than the last.

Anna Kelley  38:04  

Thank you so much. It was so nice to be your guest today.

Taylor   38:07  

Happy to talk with you on this Saturday evening. Thanks for taking the time away. And yet Once again, thanks for all the lessons everybody out there. Thank you for tuning in. You're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review on iTunes. Very big help, you know anyone that could use a little bit more in their lives. Please share the show with them and bring them into the fold. I'd be Have a great day. Have a great rest of your week. We'll talk to you on the next episode. Bye