Jennifer Beadles - Working With Investors To Build Your Dream Life
LISTEN TO FULL EPISODE ON:
While most people in her office wanted to work in traditional residential real estate, Jennifer was able to capitalize on a huge niche....working with investors. She quickly became the investor specialist in her office and built a large network of investor clients. After making her first purchase at 21, she saw a path to building the life she wanted. Through flips, BRRR's, developments and acquiring 265 properties in 7 states over the past 15 years (and getting a general contractor's license along the way), she was able to retire her husband and travel the world with him and her daughter. Now he works on helping agents that want to develop their business working with investors as well as helping investors level up and grow their portfolio. If you're looking to build the life you want from working with investors, or investing yourself, this episode is a "must" to listen to.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Working with people to gain more success is the beauty of Real Estate.
- Leadership is figuring out how to succeed through others.
- Having the right operator actively participating in your business can accelerate your growth
- Success depends on the choices you make and amount of work you put in
- Designing your own lifestyle as an investor
- Be a person of impact
- Helping every client get where they want to go based on their goals
- Getting to buy your own rental properties is the greatest benefit of an agent
- Finding and structuring deals where investors can earn passive returns
- You don’t need to be an expert, just understand how things work
- Make it easy but impactful
Timestamps
0:00 - Life of having financial freedom
3:04 - Start of Jennifer’s career
8:56 – Why it’s easier to be an investor today
10:59 - Jennifer in Seattle
12:24 - Operator vs Investor
16:45 – Set goals to be net worth millionaires
19:25 - Benefits of working with investors
24:25 - Analyzing investment opportunity
28:53 - Partnership opportunities
29:48 – The investor database
37:07 - Questions for Jennifer
45:11 - Putting plan into action
FOLLOW JENNIFER:
https://agentsinvest.com/
https://addictedtoroi.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-...
https://www.facebook.com/jenniferbead...
https://www.instagram.com/jenniferbea...
https://www.instagram.com/addictedtoroi/
https://www.instagram.com/agentsinvest/
SUBSCRIBE IF YOU'RE LOOKING TO BUILD WEALTH THROUGH OPPORTUNITIES IN THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY
✅ http://relfreedom.tv
GET STARTED INVESTING TODAY AND ACCESS OUR DEAL LIST!
📈 http://investwithelite.com
PARTNER WITH US ON BIG DEALS!
💵 https://eliteadvantagepropertieshq.com
BUILD YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT CAREER WORKING WITH INVESTORS
👨👩👧👦 http://eliteadvantageagent.com
LEARN ABOUT REL FREEDOM & HEAR MORE REAL LIFE STORIES
🎙️ http://www.relfreedom.com
FREEBIES: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FREEDOM FOUNDATION BLUEPRINT
💵 https://www.relfreedom.com/blueprint
LOOKING FOR A REAL ESTATE AGENT ANYWHERE IN THE US? FIND A TOP AGENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY
🏠 http://www.eliteagentreferral.com
JOIN OUR FACEBOOK COMMUNITY
👨👩👧👦 https://www.facebook.com/groups/relfreedom
SUBSCRIBE TO THE REL FREEDOM PODCAST
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rel-freedom-podcast/id1535281574
🎧 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xNDA3NjIyLnJzcw==
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5nXA5hLHbDzRwxypc2wLur
LET'S CONNECT
👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mswenson13
👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getrelfreedom/
👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@relfreedom
🏠 Minnesota Real Estate: https://www.eliteadvantageteam.com
Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Hey, Mike Swenson here. And before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions. If you're in real estate right now or you're considering getting into real estate, maybe you want to consider focusing on working with investors versus regular residential. You know, if you want to pursue a life of financial freedom, being able to align yourself in your day job of working with investors fits really well with then purchasing investment properties to build and grow your wealth to gain time and financial freedom.
Mike Swenson
And so today's episode is going to be an interview with Jennifer Beadles and she's done that started in real estate at 21 retired her husband and essentially retired herself through owning rental properties and focusing on working with real estate investors is her area of specialty. So if this is you, if it's something that you've considered about how investors can really help you, align yourself with your future goals of financial freedom, this would be a great episode for you. So with that being said, let's get into our conversation with Jennifer Beadles.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to The REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson, let's get some real freedom together. Welcome everybody, to another episode of The REL freedom podcast. And I am so excited to share my guest with you today, Jennifer Beadles, if you were to ask me, who is probably the most influential person to where our real estate businesses at today, it is really because of her I am a product of her vision of working with real estate investors and how in her belief, it's so much better working with investors versus kind of your regular residential buyers. And we'll chat about that today. But I'm just so excited to share that she has made such an impact on our business and on our team over the past 12 plus months now that we've been working together. So a little bit about Jennifer's she's been in real estate now for 15 years, purchased her first property at 21.
Mike Swenson
And well most of the agents were flocking over the residential business side, she was focused on the agent side. And so she quickly became kind of the the investor agent. And everybody that didn't want to work with investors would would give her the clients and so she really focused on that as a specialty. So over the years, she's done building developments, flips, burgers, she's got a couple of great groups that she works with a group of agents called agents invest helping agents to work with investors. And then a group called addicted to ROI of helping investors to build and grow their portfolio. And so just a wealth of information. You also have your general contractor's license, fun fact and own 265 units in seven different states. So that is the biography here. Welcome, Jennifer. We're so excited to have you on.
Jennifer Beadles
Well, thank you. Thank you. Wow, what a warm welcome. And yeah, a great introduction. Thank you so much, Mike.
Mike Swenson
talk about the kind of those early years How did that get started for you? Why get into real estate? And in? How did that start out for you.
Jennifer Beadles
So I bought my first home at age 21. And my intention in doing that is I really wanted to own assets. And so I thought what better way to start than buying, you know, my own home. At that time, there were zero down loans. There was a lot of, I would say opportunity to get loans and lending, you know, was really, yeah, kind of loose, I guess, if you will. But the first property that I bought, it was the land was zoned multifamily. And this is kind of a borderline tear down single family house. But I saw the opportunity to essentially move in as an owner occupant, fix it up enough to where I could put a tenant in there, hold it for a couple of years, tear the house down and build multifamily. So in doing that very first transaction, I learned a couple of things.
Jennifer Beadles
Actually, I would say within 30 days of closing, I had quit my job and essentially went full in to real estate. And so I realized one of the agent made a lot of money, showing me one else and essentially negotiating a contract. Yeah, I think he made like $7,500 on this, you know, sale. And then I just saw a lot of opportunity within the real estate space. And so I hired on with a builder developer. And essentially, we're a lot of different hats. I ran point on permitting, also on building budgets and kind of managing the subcontractors. We were doing spec home building for single family homes and then also a build to rent strategy. And so my first I would say two years was just heavy on the building and development side, which gave me a lot of knowledge and skill set in that area. And then I got my license in May of 2009. Not because I wanted to work in real estate sales, mostly because they wanted to use the commission for my own deals.
Jennifer Beadles
And so in that first six months, though, of having a real estate license, I bought a house tax. So that was another property that I purchased. At that time, I think FHA was 3%, down, and the Commission was 3%, down, so essentially about another zero down property. And then, in those first six months, though, I was able to sell six homes. And this is while working full time, so essentially, I made more money as a real estate agent not trying to actually sell real estate than I was at my full time job. And so the second that I closed on that house hack duplex, I should say, the second the next day, I quit my job and went full time into real estate sales.
Jennifer Beadles
At that time, though, it was 2010, where, as you'd mentioned, Mike, in the intro, a lot of agents we're getting out of the business agents that have been around for years and years, and we're used to maybe making you know, 50,000 to $100,000 a month, where suddenly, you know, not bringing in any income. For the first two years as an agent, I would say most of my sales were short sales, or bank owned. Yeah.
Jennifer Beadles
And so for me, as a young person, just getting started as a brand new agent, I saw the opportunity in working with investor clients, because I knew that I could locate great deals, mostly because I had the experience estimating renovations I knew how to calculate after repair value, I essentially kind of knew how to operate those types of deals. And so in that, those first few months as a full time agent, I'd actually built five single family homes. And so that was my way of building my own listing database. And then also of partnering with investors. So from there, I was buying at the courthouse steps, doing flips, you know, buying my own rental properties, kind of using the Commission, as my down payment, or, you know, my kind of seed capital, if you will.
Jennifer Beadles
And then and yeah, just had a really great time doing it, I saw the opportunity, as an agent to learn from my investor clients earn a lot of money in offering a service that no other agents were offering. And then, again, turning that income into income producing assets, which is kind of what where I'm at today, essentially, all of our rental properties pay for, you know, all of our monthly expenses, and then some, we now have the freedom with time and money to you know, travel the world live wherever we want be location independent. But it took a couple of years and some solid systems and processes to get there. It's
Mike Swenson
interesting, because I remember when I got into real estate, the team that I was on, they had talked about, you know, that recession period, and they're like, you know, it was such a different messaging, because people were legitimately asking, like, can you sell my home? You know, I don't I don't necessarily care what you charge, like, can you sell it because so many people couldn't even sell their house because of short sales and all that. And, and I know for me, my my wife and I had a townhouse and the value was half of what we bought it for. And we were the the beneficiary of the five year ARM.
Mike Swenson
And I remember my lender was my cousin. And he's like, are you planning on being there five years? Well, no, we just got married, we're moving in. We're not going to be there five years. Well, fast forward values plummet. We just sold that property in January, which would have been 14 years later, because we recruited and that's that's how I got into being a landlord was because of that, you know, but yeah, it was it was such a different time. And yeah, you had kind of a prime seasoning to be able to experience the benefit of working with investors at that time, because it was so prevalent.
Jennifer Beadles
Yes. And I would even argue that it's actually easier to be an investor today than it was back then. Because today, there's a lot of access to capital, we now have asset based loans, you can get loans directly in your LLC, rents are appreciating, again, it's, in my opinion, really easy to get in back then it was very difficult. Most everything was cash, even all of those new construction homes that we were building, the banks did not feel comfortable loaning on construction loans. Whereas today, you could essentially walk into any bank and say, I'm looking to build something, and they will give you you know, 9095 loan to cost. I mean, it's, it's, it's awesome. It's a great time to be an investor, but back then it was incredibly challenging. And so and then also, you know, rents weren't really appreciating. And so and rents were pretty low. So a lot of people say, I wish I could have been an investor back then. And a lot of times I say, well, it was incredibly difficult.
Jennifer Beadles
It's interesting because yes, the the properties were you know, considerably less than what we are today, the rents were also really low, it was actually hard to find renters, because renters were staying in the properties that they were not paying, or they might have been homeowners staying in their home not paying. And so I remember doing just a lot of incentives trying to find tenants for the properties that we were buying. And again, I would say most of those deals, you know, we weren't doing rent increases every year. Whereas today, it's almost like we're, you know, for on month to month with some of these tenants, we're doing rent increases every, you know, quarter every six months. So it's really interesting to point out just kind of the differences, a lot of opportunity back there back then. And then a lot of opportunity today. But again, I'd argue that today is much easier to get in, based on, you know, the availability of great debt terms, again, appreciating rents, price appreciation, and there's some significant differences.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And I should add to because I don't think I mentioned this, that you're in this, you were in the Seattle area at that time. Yes. For folks that might be curious of what area of the United States were you in? So Seattle? Yep.
Jennifer Beadles
Yes, yeah. So I was about an hour north of Seattle. And so for the first, oh, gosh, about nine years, we stayed local. So my husband and I, we had developed systems and processes that required us to show up and us to operate them. And there was a moment where it was actually Memorial Day weekend. And we had a big barbecue at our house, all of our friends and family over. And we get that call that every landlord dreads, and it was the sewers backing up, sewer coming up through the bathtub, you know, we need to get somebody over here to fix this right away. And it was Sunday night of Memorial Day weekend, right? So of course, all the plumbers are like not working everyone's everyone's out, it's my husband leaves, the barbecue goes over there to try to, you know, kind of sort this out, ends up finding a plumber and like an emergency plumber to come out for, like $2,000.
Jennifer Beadles
And he comes back that night after everyone had left. And he said, I think we're doing this wrong. He said, You know, we're we're thinking that we're, you know, buying all these properties to have freedom. But if I have to leave our family barbecue, then obviously, we're doing something wrong. And so that was the moment that we decided to invest outside of our local market. One is because we were so used to being operators. And there's a big difference between an operator and an investor, right an operator, again, you have to actively participate in the business. That was also how I was operating as a real estate agent, is I had to be working inside the business for the income to come in. And so, you know, it took us some time to kind of feel comfortable investing in other markets, especially markets we had never been to that we didn't know anyone in.
Jennifer Beadles
And we were essentially putting our trust and faith into these investor agents, and property managers to essentially be our eyes and ears, our boots on the ground, telling us that we were in fact investing in good areas that we were, you know, buying at the right price, because everything in Seattle was considerably more expensive than other states. And so sometimes, you know, we kind of have to temper that of if it's cheaper than Seattle, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a great deal. So we kind of had to reframe our investment criteria as well. And after we made that first investment, it was in Indianapolis, we bought a duplex for 155,000. Put about $19,000. And so we did a full gut renovation on our very first out of state investment deal. And then we had rented that property out I think it was about $2,200 a month, where the rents on that. So excellent price to rent ratio, fantastic returns. And we said, wow, we really had been doing this all wrong. My husband up until that point had been doing all of the work. You know, I would meet him with a bar with pizza and say like, Okay, here's, you know, here's our dinner and and then we realized that we really could scale by working with investor agents, and investing in other markets, where there were really great deals and and so that that sewer backing up on that moment allowed us to get to the next level of scalability.
Mike Swenson
Well, and it's it's a lesson that is probably more ingrained in people than they realize, like, you know, I was raised if you want to do it, right, do it yourself, you know, or that's how I believe I always tell people, I'm a recovering perfectionist, it's hard for me to let go. I've done a good job over the last kind of five to seven years of letting go of some of that stuff. But you know, even even just yesterday, so we you know, we had done a flip in the fall. And we purposely purchased Well, we didn't purposely but it happened to be within seven to eight minutes of where we lived. And so we ended up I'm taking on more work than we would have if the property was further away because we could.
Mike Swenson
And what it ended up being is now I was spending more nights and more weekends away from my family. So to try to do something to gain more freedom, I was actually getting less freedom because I was doing that. And we just looked at a property yesterday with another agent on our team. And it's about 30 minutes away. And my thought was, well, how, you know, like, how often would I have to come down here, but it's because I just naturally think problem, Mike enters the problem to provide the solution. And that's the hard part for people is to realize, Mike doesn't have to solve every problem himself, we need to find other people that do that. And so you're you're forcing your hand by being in Indianapolis, because you can't drive there and fix the drain, the drain backs up. And so that's the beauty of it, you're forcing yourself to have to work through people to gain more success down the road versus problem, oh, here comes Jennifer to go fix the problem herself.
Jennifer Beadles
Yes. And it's so much easier to just fix the problem yourself, I would say it's so much easier to be an operator than an investor or a business owner. Because typically, you know, as an operator, again, you know, I feel like you can be very successful, depending on the amount of work that you put in, you know, depending on the choices that you make, and, and things like that, but it's it's next level of leadership, when you're figuring out how to succeed through others, right. And so again, that's, you know, owning the system owning an owning a business. And, and yet, that's where the freedom is. And that's also where you're, you're not paying as much tax. And so it's really interesting.
Jennifer Beadles
So, you know, a big goal that my husband and I had had when we took investing seriously in 2010, is that we wanted to retire him by 2015. So we gave ourselves five years. And we said, we want to replace his income, he was making six figures, and the unit had great health benefits. I mean, it was an incredible opportunity, right for young for young people that we were. But we said we're gonna give ourselves five years, and we want to be net worth millionaires. Well, at the time, when we set that goal, we were actually cashflow negative on rental properties that we owned. And they were also negative equity, because we had purchased, you know, in 2007 2008 2009. And then, you know, 2010. And so everything that we had purchased in prior years was similar to you, Mike is not necessarily worth half, but considerably less. And so that was a stretch goal for us to say, well, to get to net worth a million, we have to cover the difference that we're already in the hole, you know, plus have some positive, and we were able to get there in four years, which is so exciting.
Jennifer Beadles
And but then once we hit that, again, it was okay, so then what does next level look like. And so for a lot of investors, I think you kind of have to think through that. of, you know, designing your ideal lifestyle. And then And then really kind of making decisions that'll get you to that. So Mike to your point of, you know, buying properties that are in your own backyard, if you're anything like Mike and I if you're listening, maybe that's not the best for you, if you've if you're somebody that feels like you would you know, drive across town to fix something, then maybe protect yourself from yourself and essentially, invest out of state and invest in areas where that wouldn't be easy to do where you can't drive around town. And so, so yeah, so now it's now it's great, we have renovations happening all across the US, we can be anywhere as mentioned, you know, for us travel is, you know, lifestyle to us. And, and so it's great, you know, we can write offers. In other countries, we can oversee renovations and other countries. And again, it's, it's a difference in, in our mindset, and then also at the systems and processes that we've put in place
Mike Swenson
for the person that's sitting here saying I've always wanted to get into real estate and never have because there's pretty much everybody is there. You know, I always say that. It's either people who are in real estate, or people who have thought about getting into real estate just seems to cover the entire population. If you're not in real estate, and then even if you're an agent, and you're still figuring out like trying to find my fit of what's going to be best talk about why working with investors is so beneficial for you or, you know, was in your early days and why so many people didn't want to work with investors. And you really gravitated to that because I think it's it's a it's a mindset shift. But at the same time, there's a lot of benefits of it that I've been able to experience this past year of working with investors where people might not necessarily understand that.
Jennifer Beadles
Yes. Oh, there's so many, so many reasons why. I think every agent should work with investors. But there's a couple of key things that that I should point out. So when I was working as an agent, I was closing anywhere between 65 to 100 transactions a year, working with really 20 to 25 investor clients. So if you can imagine the amount of clients that you need to work with to close the 65 to 100 transactions on the residential side, that's a huge database. That's a lot of marketing. That's a lot of lead generation. That's a lot of showing homes doing open houses. It's a lot of work. And we don't see as many agents closing, talking about solo agents, of course, closing that amount of transactions, because it's just so much work. I mean, you'd be working seven days a week, and potentially burnout,
Mike Swenson
you got a quick just to go back. So let's say the average person moves every seven years, if you want to do 100, closings, your database has to be 700 people, at a minimum, because that would entail every single person in your database chooses you. Now, maybe you'll get some double ends. Right. So let's just say, you know, and then also to you'll find some referrals through there. But yeah, I mean, rough numbers 700 people to get to 100 closings here, you have 25 people to get 200 closings, yes, yeah. And I'm gonna build deeper, richer relationships with those 25 people, because you're helping them with four homes a year.
Jennifer Beadles
Yes, 100%. And so I would say that the impact that you can have on a family of helping them build wealth through real estate, for me, that just was very fulfilling, versus working with a homebuyer who is going to be living in their home, I just didn't really feel like I had as much value to add there. Because it was, you know, one transaction, like, again, to your point, Mike, maybe they move five to seven years down the road. But really, I could see the direct impact, when I helped a family, get into a house hack, and then maybe live there for a year, and then they're ready to do their next one. But then they keep the other one as a rental. And so we I saw a lot of clients that were able to retire spouses pay for their kids college. And so again, for me, I'm a person of impact I want to do, you know, show up every single day and add the most value to the most amount of people that I can.
Jennifer Beadles
And so for me that was investing that was using the knowledge and the skill set that I had to pour into this small database of investors that I really never had to market to they were bringing in their friends, and they'd say, my coworker needs help, they don't have enough retirement, they're maybe 10 years away, can you help them build wealth for themselves? Oh, their parents don't have any retirement built, because they've been self employed, and the title and escrow business, can you help them and so it was just again, for me very fulfilling and very rewarding, to be able to have just this incredible impact, knowing that I was able to, you know, help these people improve our communities. In those early days, we were buying ugly properties, fixing them up, the neighbors would come over and say thank you, thank you, this property has been sitting vacant for three to five years.
Jennifer Beadles
And so there's just again, you know, exponential impact that we were having there. So then the other benefit I kind of alluded to when working with investors, you're not typically driving somebody around town every single, you know, evening or weekend after work. Most of the investor transactions as you know, Mike, there, write the offer first, and then we'll get inside. Certainly, if they there are tenants in the property, then we'll get inside, you know, after the property is under contract. So as an agent, again, you know, the activities are very different. We're not wasting a whole lot of time driving around town and scheduling showings, you know, trying to get into these properties. We're looking at it from a return on investment consideration. Did these numbers make sense? If yes, then we're going to write the offer and then go into the due diligence process. So again, I think, you know, running a high volume business, so much easier to do when working the investor side. Now, the difference though, is we're speaking a different language.
Jennifer Beadles
So you're hearing you know, Mike, and I say return on investment writing offers before you get inside, you know, we're looking at price to rent ratio. Again, this is a very different language than what we've been taught at the brokerage level, which is lead generation for clients. Here's how to do CMAs. Here's how to write an offer. No, where are we taught? You know, here's how to analyze an investment opportunity. Here's, you know, what cap rate is, you know, here's how to do any of these numbers. And so, so yeah, so I saw that gap. I started teaching agents at my local brokerage, I think it was maybe in 2012 2013, just because I wanted them to add this as a tool to their tool belt. So even if you're a residential agent, and you don't quite want to gravitate and focus solely on the investor side of the business, that's okay.
Jennifer Beadles
You probably still have a lot of investors that are currently in your database, that you're just not promoting this message to them and So I would do this at the at the, my local brokerage, the agents would come in and say they'd say, This is great. Can I just hand you my investors? Because I, you know, they they wanted to stay working on the residential side, which is great.
Mike Swenson
I think every, some people, too will see like, oh, you know, the average, single family home in the suburbs is x. If I'm, you know, buying an investment property, my price point is lower. And they see that as a short term loss like I could go sell this $400,000 house or buy this investment house for $200,000. I'm earning half the commission is the short sighted thinking yes, there. But but but the return is they buy four properties from you every year versus one, you know, and so it's that mentality shift that makes a difference. They just see it as you know, the average sales price could be less now the the other argument that you could come back with us, if it's multifamily, the the average sales price could be higher to short term rentals. Correct, right. But they just might see some flip is like, Oh, it's $100,000, I could go earn three or four times that if I sold this property in the suburbs. So that's why I don't want to work with them. Can I just give you all my my Investor Buyers?
Jennifer Beadles
Well, I think there's also this stigma that investors just want to lowball offers, they want to write a lot of offers, and kind of see what sticks. And that has not been my experience, I think in the expectations conversation that as agents we have with every client, we need to to prepare them for what they need to be, you know, offering essentially, in order to get to get the deal. Now, I would say I've worked with a lot of flippers in the past, I've also worked with a lot of builders and developers, it's a bit of a different strategy. But if we're talking strictly long term buy and hold investors, again, in my experience, they're not low balling, you know, it's they're ready to write offers, they're serious investors, most investors, especially if they're out of state, they're not going to be buying just one property in your market, they might start with one.
Jennifer Beadles
And then it's, you know, from an efficiency standpoint, they would want to buy multiple properties, right, so that they don't have it all scattered around. So again, so many benefits. And then of course, we haven't even mentioned the greatest benefit of all, which is you as an agent, you get this experience working with investors. And then now you're buying your own rental properties. So essentially, you don't have to be the expert, you can kind of understand how this works. help investors, you'll learn from your investors on on, you know, essentially the numbers. And then you go and buy your own rentals. And I want every single agent that may be listening to this thinking about how can I buy at least one rental a year, because that it's life changing?
Jennifer Beadles
As agents, we don't get a retirement account when it's essentially run around. And I've seen far too many agents that make a really great living, and unfortunately, have no assets to show for it, and have no retirement plan. And so this is this, how you do it, it does a great for tax savings. There's a lot of opportunity there. And so I'd love to see more agents gravitate towards this side of the business, and then also do it for themselves.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, I mean, where else what other career path, can you double dip your time where the thing that I'm doing in my day job is also going to directly benefit me. You know, and, and so you're spending your time analyzing deals, finding great properties for other people, you're now building your skill set to do that yourself. And to the point to where sometimes investors might think like, Are there is this agent just cherry picking and taking all the great the best deals for themselves, and I'm getting the the leftovers. But but it just shows how you can really play in the same sandbox that you're you're already in for your for your day job, you know, and so you're, you're double dipping, and you're able to get further faster, because everything you're doing is in alignment with where you want to go with your future.
Jennifer Beadles
And not to mention the partnership opportunities. So when I first got started, I didn't have a lot of money. I had actually spent the majority of my savings on that Laos, last house hack before I became an agent. And so all of the transactions that I had done prior to that are partnerships. And so my investor clients partnered with me, and essentially, I ran I found the deal, I kind of ran the deal. And then I got 50% of the profits. And so and then I turned that into, you know, bird deals, right buy rent, renovate, refinance, found a hard money lender that would finance 100% Because I had collateral and other properties would fix it up, essentially refinance that hard money lender out, they'd released that collateral, and then I was able to own 100% of the deal.
Jennifer Beadles
And so for those agents that are saying this sounds great, but I don't have hundreds of 1000s of dollars tucked away or maybe you know, my income is not where it needs to be. Again, by just having this investor database the investors will want to work with you if you're able to find great deals, and structure those deals to a point where the investor can earn passive returns. Really easy strategy to do. as well,
Mike Swenson
Another benefit that some people might might experience here and we talked about this is your database is completely portable now. So you know, we've seen agents that you spend all this time grinding and grinding and grinding, and you're building your database in a market. And then what happens if life changes, maybe a spouse or significant other has a job change or life happens, and you need to move home to be closer to family. And so you got to move well, now, your entire database that you've built of, you know, living and purchasing in this market is now gone. And you got to start from scratch. When you work with investors, your database is portable, because now, you know, if I decide that I want to move, my wife loves it in Minnesota, I would prefer to maybe not be here year round.
Mike Swenson
But if I wanted to that same database, wherever I find a good deal, I can now work continue to work with them. So those relationships that I've spent years and years building will now still buy a property from me in another state, if I'm licensed in that state, versus here, my entire database, you know, kind of goes away when I moved to another community. So as as life happens, or as freedom happens, and you want to move to other places, you know, getting out of Seattle and going somewhere else, that database is portable.
Jennifer Beadles
Yes. 100%. Yeah, I think that's the most exciting part of that. And that's kind of how I started agents invested as well as I had this large investor database in Seattle. And then when I started investing out of state, they said, Well, can I follow you can I do the same? And it was, it was just real, it's kind of fun story. I had an agent in Indianapolis, who was a newer agent, but we spoke the same language, he was an investor first became an agent. And so he Nokes knew exactly where the great deals were, he knew how to run the numbers, he had contractors to refer property manager to refer. And so I sent him one client from California, and that one client bought 10 houses in the span of like 3045 days. And so that he essentially, as a new agent, it's really difficult to kind of get started because you have to build up clientele and, you know, do all of these things.
Jennifer Beadles
But as an investor agent, you get in with the right investor. And, you know, he was able, I think he made like Rookie of the Year at his brokerage, as a new agent, just from these connections. And so there's just again, so much opportunity. And then I think on the investor side, if you're thinking this sounds great, I don't want to be an agent. But how do I find those investor agents, you know, we do a lot of work, essentially finding the markets, and then kind of putting the right teams in place. But I would say maybe less than 1% of the agents speak this language that Mike and I are talking about today. And so, you know, a lot of times again, we're kind of interviewing agents, we call property managers, we get, you know, agents by referral.
Jennifer Beadles
That's how Mike, I wasn't even looking. Minnesota, we connected, you caught on to the content immediately of, of, you know, finding an identifying investment opportunities that had double digit cash on cash returns. And so the investors, again, investors weren't really looking at Minnesota. But as soon as they see those opportunities, then, you know, They latched on to that now you guys have done, you know, a big business in Minnesota. And so, so again, yeah, it's, you know, just kind of calling around by referral is great. And, you know, just trying to find those agents that really understand it.
Mike Swenson
Well, and it's interesting, because, you know, the, the podcast, really was my first step towards kind of doing more in the financial freedom space, because I was still doing a residential real estate team. And when I, you know, I used to do personal finance blogs, like, as my side hustle, you know, this would have been before I was in real estate. So 10 years ago, I would, you know, I had a website about budgeting and, and that kind of stuff, and a network with the personal finance bloggers around the United States and that sort of thing. And so when I got into real estate, I just assumed that people were making money hand over fist, and I saw all these agents that didn't have retirement plans were barely struggling to get by, they just saw their real estate career as another sales job.
Mike Swenson
You know, I could go sling copy machines, or I could go sling houses and make 50k a year, you know, and it's like, oh, I made less than real estate. So I'm gonna go back to sell copy machines. And I saw like, no, there's so much more opportunity here. And people are just missing out. So when I started my own team, I was like, I want to have this podcast to be able to share this message with people of here's how you can build wealth and, and create opportunities in real estate. Well, the more that I spoke that language, then I was like, oh, we should be doing more of that on our and talking to my agents on my team about that. And I was like, oh, we should be doing more of that in our real estate business. And I saw, I'll sell residential real estate by day and do investments by night, and then it's like, oh, no, you can actually do that by day and double dip at Right.
Mike Swenson
And so that's where this this has kind of really evolved for our team is because I saw that same vision and I saw a path to be able to do that. And I saw somebody who was doing it at a high level, it's like, oh, this, this just clicks for me. And so I think that's where for that agent out there, that's like, I just am still trying to put those pieces together. If you if you dive in and work with investors, now, it just, you're just in alignment of your future goals. And so now, you know, talking about building wealth and real estate in the podcast, having my team working with investors on building real estate, talking to them about building their own rental portfolios. It's all in alignment now.
Jennifer Beadles
Yes, yes. And that's it's a really exciting thing, because then it doesn't feel like work. Right? And then you avoid some of the burnout that you can feel, or certainly I had felt when I was working with a lot of residential clients. And so yeah, it's great. I love it.
Mike Swenson
It makes me feel like Why Why didn't I? Am I that dumb that I hadn't put this together? Five years ago, you figured this out? Like, like, how did it take me to this point, but I'm glad I'm here.
Jennifer Beadles
Well, well, and I think that, yeah, I think that there's, you know, there's a lot of factors at play. Right now, there's, there's a lot of trends, you know, there's a lot of FinTech companies that are trying to put the real estate agent out of business. And, you know, there's a lot of kind of different opportunities, I think, to invest in real estate, that's not necessarily the direct ownership, which is what you and I are talking about. And that can be good. So it's, it's not for everybody, not everyone wants to build a large portfolio, and, you know, kind of operate that and be the investor in it. But I think the benefit is that the freedom at the end of the day at the end of the day, right. And so by finding these investor agents, and working with investors, as an agent, you can truly help people do that.
Jennifer Beadles
And so but, but I think it's a messaging, it's, it's that you have to, you know, have a voice, you have to do what you're doing like, which is, have a podcast, have content related to investing, to really stand out amongst the, I think almost 2 million agents that there are in the United States. And then, again, for the investors out there. You know, we're, I get a lot of questions related to how well how do I get started? How do I do this? How do I pick my markets? And so my advice would be swip, swap how for who? Who do I need to know, in order to get started?
Jennifer Beadles
Who can I talk to, that can help me figure out a financing plan? How to, you know, who can I talk to that could potentially bring the capital? You know, who can I talk to you that can help me identify markets? So again, that's a much more powerful question than how I think a lot of investors kind of get stuck in that. And same with the agents, the agents say, why don't how to do this. And so if you can think you know, who do I know, you know, talk to you my grade, or reach out to me, we could be to who's to help these agents really kind of figure out how to get into this?
Mike Swenson
Well, and it's been fun to see see our journey and how you've impacted that because, you know, we had a couple agents on our team that have never done a flip before. And so now we went through that process together. So now they have experience, and they're already looking at doing another flip, you know, I got to go to a property yesterday with one of those agents that's looking at the next deal. And then my other agents talking about, you know, working on that next deal. And so, when you expose them to those things, it's going to happen faster and more efficient, and you're going to do a better job at it. And so you have to embrace the suck, which is what I you know, a lot of people have said that you have to embrace that, like I, I didn't know what I was doing.
Mike Swenson
But I learned and I educated myself, and I spent a lot of time reading and listening to podcast and following other people and, and your program is fantastic to kind of show the how being a systems person like I see somebody who has created a good system that you can plug into and, and you just have to take that next step and keep moving forward. So you know, and what's nice is to be able to work with investors that that, you know, there's a lot of people that are brand new, but there's a lot of people that you know, have invested in other markets, and they've talked to me, well, they already know the basics.
Mike Swenson
They already know the language, they already know, a lot of this stuff that it takes a while to learn because they've purchased in 234 other states or other properties in the same state. And so the learning curve has already happened. So they come in at a higher level. So let's talk about the kind of the Freedom piece. So now that you've spent time you've done the hard stuff, you're still working and you're still growing. Now some of the freedom that you've been able to experience as a result of that.
Jennifer Beadles
Right. Well, let's see, we spent the last 18 months traveling, so my husband and I have a seven year old daughter and when we wrote out our goals in 2010. Again, you know, the first priority was to retire My husband, because at that time we couldn't really travel, his work did not his line of work was kind of, of the mindset of you don't take time off, because the team needs you. And I remember, there was a couple of times where we had actually, we had gone to Italy at one point, and took two weeks off. And his entire company was was upset that he had left and kind of like, well, how dare you take time off. And, and so we just realized that he was in the wrong industry. And, and, you know, in order to get that freedom, we needed to figure out how to get him out of that as as quickly as possible. And then the next stage was me. So the the downside of being an agent, is you really, truly are an operator.
Jennifer Beadles
So essentially, you know, I kind of I look at it as if I were to take eight weeks away from any kind of business operations with the income stay the same, they'll up or stop. And so using that gauge, the way that I was currently operating as an agent, is if I took eight weeks out that, you know, there, there'd be no income coming in. And so I really kind of had to figure out how to rework the business side. So again, that's, you know, kind of where we're at today. But yes, we spent, you know, during COVID, we were stuck in our home, just north of Seattle. And we said, why not, why not, this is the time to, to Purchase an RV, we had never been in an RV before. So it's kind of an interesting decision.
Mike Swenson
Learning curves
Jennifer Beadles
very much a learning curve. So we purchased an RV, and we locked the door to our house, and left for the first trip we had done was eight weeks, and essentially just kind of did a Southwest loop and came back and said, We want this to be our lifestyle. So we ended up selling that house, we still have quite a few rentals in western Washington, and spent the first nine months kind of traveling the US. And then as Europe opened, I told my husband that I'd like to go spend some time over in Europe. And so we spent four months last year, traveling Europe, we went to the Balkan region spent about a month in Italy, a month in Croatia, we were able to finally do the bucket list trip to Egypt, that I'd always wanted to go on in Greece and Turkey. And so, so again, yeah, we really didn't work in the business.
Jennifer Beadles
The business did seven figures last year, our real estate sales business did seven figures last year without me really showing up for for it very, very often. And then we were able to buy some apartment complexes, continue to grow our investment portfolio, sell some properties, all while kind of living this travel lifestyle. And so again, far different from when we had just gotten started. Whereas, you know, if we were investing locally, doing it the way that we had done back in 2010 to 2014. Certainly we wouldn't have bought anything or sold anything, because we weren't there to do it. And so that's yeah, that's the benefit of the freedom that we have now is we can truly be location independent, live in any country, be in any country, continue to buy invest, refinance, we've done some refinances as well,
Mike Swenson
yeah. And and to be able to impact others. I mean, you impacted me while you were traveling, I think the first I saw, maybe you were in Utah, or something like that. Yeah. And then while I was, you know, kind of going through the program, and learning about working with investors, and all that, yeah, you were in Europe, and your team and your systems and what you've built, were able to impact my business in a large way, still, while you're out, traveling the world, having fun with your family, and you can still impact others while you're gone. And I think that speaks to, we've said systems quite a few times, it speaks to the systems that you've built, the knowledge that you've gained, you put systems behind it, and then you've worked with and through others, to be able to do that. And somebody like me can plug into a program and have such an impact on my business, all while you're traveling the world at the same time. And so that that's a win win scenario, right?
Jennifer Beadles
Well, absolutely. And then it also shows what's possible. So the benefit, the direct benefit is my family and I get to enjoy Italy and Croatia and all these other countries. And we show other families that if we can do what you can't do, because we're not special. There's nothing unique about us. We didn't you know, I wasn't raised in a wealthy family. My husband certainly wasn't. And so if we can do it, then again, any agent can do this. Any investor can do this. And so we love sharing our travels as a way of again just showing what's possible.
Mike Swenson
It's not like you're like Oh honey, we're at the pyramids. I got this guy Mike that's got this question right now and and if you don't mind I'd like to get back to him you know right now and so yeah, it just speaks to the the systems that You've built and, and how you're able to impact others and still live that life that so many people desire to have. And so, you know, and the other thing that I see here too is you talked about planning and goal setting. It didn't happen by accident. It's not like you started one day. And now here you are like, Oh, I just kind of fumbled my way over 15 years to having this. It's intentional. It's systems, its goals. It's putting plan into action and holding yourself accountable to that.
Jennifer Beadles
Yes. Well, let me think it's designing your ideal lifestyle, as you would said, because you make very different decisions based on where you want to end up. And so in the beginning, when we hadn't designed our lifestyle, we were flipping, we were building new construction, my husband was working full time, I was working full time as an agent. And until we got very purposeful and intentional, then we said, well, are these flips getting us closer to freedom or further away from freedom? And it was a very clear answer that said, Well, we have to show up in order for these flips to continue to move forward.
Jennifer Beadles
So therefore, that needs to go. And what we found is that the more that we cut out, all that we were doing, both in our personal lives, and then also with our investments, and we could laser focus on value add multifamily, having the property manager, be the project manager, working with investor agents, following a due diligence checklist, which I'm happy to share with anyone who wants a copy. Then we found that, that that was really what unlocked that freedom. But when we were scrambling around doing flips, and all of these things, it was really, really difficult to leave, and or, you know, step away, because to your point, like I mean, there's so many things that go that go on in so many decisions. And so we just said, Let's just make it easy, but impactful
Mike Swenson
for folks that you know, want to learn more about you and what you're currently doing, how can they reach out or where can they go?
Jennifer Beadles
Yeah, so as you alluded to, we have two kind of very different but complementary businesses. If you're an agent listening to this, and you either have deals or you are really interested in working with investors, visit our website, agentsinvest.com And you can learn more about how we serve the agent community and how we're putting out that message. Every agent should be working with investors. If you're an investor listening to this and thinking this sounds great, I want that lifestyle. I want to retire my spouse in five years. Maybe you want to retire in five years or sooner. You can learn about more on our investor site at addictedtoroi.com
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on
