Tina Beliveau: Building A Strong Financial Foundation Toward Freedom
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In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson and Vlad Kats, we chat with Tina Beliveau. Tina is the founder of The Beliveau Group of eXp Realty, where she has serves over 100 clients each year and over 800 since the team was formed in 2014. In addition, she has served as a Team Leader and General Manager for multiple locations at her previous brokerage. In addition, Tina is the host of the "Tina and Jo Show" podcast with Joanne Bolt, discussing how they created and maintain their real estate empires. In her free time, Tina enjoys spending time with her husband and their 3 dogs (and preparing for a baby on the way).
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Tina was, is one of the most productive, and a top producing real estate professional in the entire Maryland area.
- She got her license in 2005. She been in the industry for 15 years now as an agent.
- Tina built The Beliveau Group as a top producing team, who at their peak, did 175 transactions in 2016
- One way Tina strengthen her financial position is she shaved five to seven years of the 30 year mortgages she had, one of which was her first property which is now a rental.
- She was consulting a lot of agents, Tina would notice how few of them wanted to be completely in tune with their cash flow with having a profit and loss statement, with properly structuring their business as an S corporation, or an LLC, or whatever the case may be.
- Once you're netting $100,000 or more in real estate commissions, it makes sense to have a tax team and a financial advisor
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro and overview on Tina’s career
6:16 - What does freedom mean to Tina
8:45 - What are some of the mistakes that Tina made along the way.
13:58 - Mistakes that other people make on their ways to reaching their freedom goals
21:34 - Tina' advices to the listeners
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the real 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. Hi, Mike Swenson here with real freedom, you know, this episode of our real freedom stories is going to be a little bit different. So recently, we had an event called freedom con. And on there we had some wonderful guests that share their stories, and some of their tips and successes on their journey towards financial and time freedom. In this particular episode, we're going to hear from Tina Beliveau, and she's going to share more about her story and her journey. So we're going to pick up in the middle of event, and we hope you enjoy it.
Mike Swenson
So Tina, Tina was, is one of the most productive, and a Top Producing real estate professionals in the entire Maryland area, I've had the distinct pleasure of working with her shoulder to shoulder for a number of years. And in one of the real estate offices that we we found that we took that to number one real estate office in terms of growth and profitability in in the kW system. Tina is just an amazing human being who is always always always up to really big things. And it's, and it's a again, it's, it's gonna be awesome hearing your story, because I think I don't think enough people have heard it. So Taylor, let's just start off, I put humility in your pocket, just give us kind of like a rundown of some of the accomplishments. I know, I didn't do your justice that you've had in your life, and like how you got to where you are now?
Tina Beliveau
Sure. Well, thank you for your enthusiastic introduction.
Mike Swenson
I have to keep it low. People may think I'm weird.
Tina Beliveau
I loveit. Well, I just want to acknowledge I'm glad to be here. So yeah, I've been in the real estate industry since I was 18. I'm a I'm a Baltimore locals. And in Maryland, I've always been here and never left. And I got into the business when I was a freshman in college. Previously, I had been scooping ice cream at a friendliest location, if anyone's familiar and little did I know that when somebody offered me an opportunity to be her assistant that it would like literally impact the trajectory of my entire life by getting into the real estate industry. So that was just a gift. And I worked for her all through college as an assistant and got my license in 2005. So I've been in the industry for 15 years now as an agent. And I've had a wild, awesome growth filled up and down journey that whole way. In 2007, I graduated from college with a degree in marketing and said to myself, this really ties into the freedom thing, too, is, you know, I could go work in an advertising agency and have more of a cap on my income.
Tina Beliveau
Although I loved what was said earlier by Brian that, like, you can build wealth with any income. I took a lot of notes for what he said. But either way at the time, I said, or I can, you know, make my own destiny and you know, build my own business. And then I decided to go full throttle into real estate just before the market was changing, which was also a gift because I and I loved everything that Veronica had to say of you know, cutting your teeth in a tough market makes you tough, it makes you strong. And that was a huge gift as well. So built my business as a solo practitioner. And then in about 2013, my business was really bursting at the seams, with how much I was doing about 60 transactions a year as a solo agent. But it was like 80% buyers, this is really time heavy. So when we start to talk about those like four quadrants, and like where my time was going, I wasn't feeling just the burn of needing more leverage. But I also just wasn't that efficient. And there were all these different ceilings kind of appearing at the same time. That was around the time when I met Vlad.
Tina Beliveau
So yeah, that was seven years ago. So um, took some team building classes started building a team grew really quickly. And one thing that I might loop back to more as we talk about wealth and money is, you know, there was a great model put forth to me of how to build a real estate team, what to pay people how to compensate your agents, how to keep your expenses in alignment. And for whatever reason, I'm not even exactly sure why. But I think maybe just naturally I'm a little bit conservative. I follow that financial model really well, which is the only one of the only reasons that I was able to get out of production in 2016 and have been out of production pretty successfully with some ups and downs in between for four years now and still maintain a 30% profit margin in my real estate business. So it's funny, like all of that was really made possible by expense control and a business structure that made sense.
Tina Beliveau
So I was just feeling grateful for that as I was thinking through what I was going to say today among many other things. So built my team at At our peak, we did about 170, trans 175 transactions in 2015 2016. And then got the opportunity to learn the brokerage side of the business, which really opened up a whole new world, expanding my mindset, my leadership skill set, my recruiting skill set, and my consulting and coaching skill set, got to work with flat and a lot of really amazing people. And today, I am now out of the brokerage business, per se, and working in ESP with my real estate team and doing a bunch of other really cool things. Actually, I was counting up my streams of income right now. It's currently six of them. And three of them are new this year. So I'm just kind of interesting, looking at how that's all evolved over time.
Mike Swenson
That's cool double this year in the urine over yet.
Tina Beliveau
Yes.
Mike Swenson
So it's a Tina, as you as you kind of, you know, reflect on your journey. And, and, you know, and I often forget just how young you are, like, age wise, and because, you know, they're working with you for a really long time, and you're just wise beyond your ears, years. And years, is, so like, What does freedom mean to you?
Tina Beliveau
Doing what I want, when I want it, and no one telling me that I can't do that. It's, it comes from like, deep inside. Like, I love everything that Devin just had to say, by the way, and like he does all that amazing values work that you learn through NLP, and maybe some other modalities. And every time I've gone back to specifically my career values, I want to have control over my time and my destiny, I want autonomy. And I want like a wide berth to build and create whatever it is that I want to create. And I find that I tend to always come back to those values over and over again. And sometimes I found myself in situations where I signed up to work in modalities where those values weren't met. And I could do it, but there was that friction, and I'm now back fully in my values, which is kind of tough to stick to that. But I now like more free than I've ever been.
Mike Swenson
And I know you've done a lot of work, if you will, though it probably doesn't occur as work. I don't know why we even say it. It's like a lot of work to discover those. And yeah, and alignment. So it's sort of verbalize rather than just felt.
Tina Beliveau
Well, I think sometimes too, it's like you don't know that your values are being violated until it's it's like you don't know boundaries being crossed until it's been crossed. And you're and I'm like whoa, like, I'm mad, I'm not happy. And then that's like the like a red flag to say like, well, what's happening here and what's really under the surface versus like blaming someone or something external, and doing that inner work and being willing to look at it. Like even last year when I you know, made a major shift and left Keller Williams and left the role that I had so much success, and it was very comfortable to be like a little star in what I was doing. Um, and it was hard for me to admit that deep down even though I was having the like, the ego and the accomplishments on the surface, that deep down, it wasn't actually meeting my real values and needs. And yeah, I don't that's just put something to admit.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, that's a really good point. So when you look at when you look at just like freedom and freedom journey, what have been some of the mistakes that you may have already kind of like indirectly pointed some, but some of the mistakes that that you know, you've made, I know, I'm asking you, I kinda have to be like vulnerable or admit your flaws, but like, what are what are some of the mistakes that you've made along the way?
Tina Beliveau
Yeah, no, I like I have a list of mistakes here and be ready to tell you about all my mistakes. I think, you know, the one thing that comes to mind first is on that same mindset front of like, what do they teach you like you can't receive with a closed hand. So I feel like there's this paradox with money, and money mindset where, like, if I'm not willing to live and put money out there, and I think about this a lot with like, donating, then like, there's no channel to come back. So like I am a big believer in giving even like, whenever I have like the inspiration or the feeling like I should give my time or my money I do sometimes you know, the amount might vary and like so I feel like there's a paradox with also being like judicious with our thinking and you know, not spending money we don't have but for me it's like I actually have to give credit to the woman who got me into real estate Kathy stone.
Tina Beliveau
I don't remember exactly what she said but I just remember she like modeled this message of like, give and then you will always receive and I hadn't picked that up really until I had met her and I don't know that just kind of set the course for like the way that I built my business and have a fired a lot of the opportunities that have come to me because it's like all give, I've given my time and all like a lot of my ideas, my best practices, my systems, my checklists, like I've given it out and built relationships and those relationships have become the platform for everything. So the mistake is that there are times where I forget that and like, I just like, tighten up psychologically, and feel like I have to clamp down.
Tina Beliveau
Or I'll go into negative thoughts like negative self esteem thoughts, and then you know, the referrals stopped flowing, suddenly, like, everything's like crickets with my team for weeks. Like there's these little like external signals. And we used to notice that when we recruited together, like I would see that, like, the flow of my self esteem internally would manifest and how many people were attracted to the brokerage, and it's really annoying to be like, I'm, this is like all coming from me. And like, the less that I manage my mindset, the less successful I'm going to be. So I would say that is like the perennial thing, there's lots of like, little tactical mistakes, but I would say it's all that like managing me, defines it makes or breaks everything, basically.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, I think I think a lot of people overlook just how much we manifest the world in which we live in. Right. And it's it. I mean, that's really cool, especially following you know, Devon's conversation about mindset, you know, because like freedom lives, both internally and externally. Right? Like, there's the freedom mindset, and then what does freedom look out here in the world, whether it's Missouri rotties, or beach houses, or what or passive income, whatever it is, right? Like, it's whatever is here is going to be manifested out there. So it's really cool that you know, that you brought that up, because I think a lot of us wait to see the thing manifest, when we're kind of like coming from that scarcity mindset to say that,
Tina Beliveau
Yep, you know, you'd like kind of just spit that back Really? Well, I think the other mistake that I would say is, um, and it's a learning experience, I think, for anyone who owns a real estate team, or recruits agents, or even just like a buyer agent, with other agents under you, whatever. Like, when I first had my first big, like turnover in my team, I actually underestimated the cost of losing. And then replacing onboarding, training and getting back into production, a strong sales person, I think I had even sort of this like attitude of like, it's fine all replace them, I'm providing a lot of leads anyway. And those times when that happened, there would be some times like six to 12 months for me to catch back up in my business.
Tina Beliveau
So like on a tactical level, I would say that I really underestimated the cost of losing a good producer, even if there was nothing I could have done to stop it. Or even if they were maybe not a match in certain ways, there was still like a significant cost to that. And that's been the case for me and 2020, kind of a second go around with that and being like, okay, and that's when I have to return to my positive thinking, and also my long term mindset. And not be if I'm obsessing about every year, always being better than last year, and always beating myself, it's fine. That's just not like a super empowering way for me to run my life and run my business.
Mike Swenson
So now let's let's shift to others, because you have a lot of experience with people like as a, as a real estate professional, you and your and your team have served, like over 1000 I believe, customers, then you also, you know, as a as a, as a team leader in legacy you've brought on hundreds of real estate professionals, you've consulted hundreds of real estate professionals. So what are some of the mistakes that you see other people do? or other people make? on their ways to reaching their freedom goals or just freedom in general?
Tina Beliveau
Yeah, well, I think, I mean, that kind of relates, well, to some of the things I was thinking of sharing like to answer your question, but I'm gonna like, rephrase it, just a little bit of how I'm looking at it. Like I was thinking about the things that I've done, I have really strong networks for my age, and for what I've done, and I was thinking, like, what are all the things that I've done to get there, and then a lot of those things were things that I see other people resist or that I've resisted in the past. And I'm sure you know, discover another thing I'm currently resisting that I'm not noticing today. But I think like when I was consulting a lot of agents, I would notice how few of them wanted to really just be completely in tune with their cash flow with having a profit and loss statement with properly structuring their business as an S corp, or an LLC, or whatever the case may be. And like just having a tax team and a financial advisor, like I feel like once you're, you know, netting $100,000 or more in real estate commissions. It's an end before then it's Time to look at all of that.
Tina Beliveau
And I think that people have different limiting beliefs of that might be too expensive. Who am I to do that, maybe later thinking about money makes me emotional. And sometimes that's all like operating unconsciously, like there was somebody I remember, I was like, it took them, I think five years to finally incorporate, and they were paying way too much in tax, but like they just weren't ready. So I think and that was very much like a fear base loop that I observed over and over again. So one thing that I've kind of done to level up over time, is I've had a profit and loss statement from my real estate business for a really long time. And somewhere around three or four years ago, I said to myself, and then to my CPI, like, I want to know where all of my dollars are going, I want a p&l for my household. And I'm way too busy to do that myself. So I know he runs a personal p&l for me every month. And we look at every dollar we look at our savings rate, we have a net worth statement that gets constantly updated every single month. And it's the best money I've ever spent.
Tina Beliveau
Because I've I've been watching my net worth increase month after month, year after year. It's gradual, but it's there. And I also do this like monthly goal sheet. Some of you guys are familiar with the 411 tool. But if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's fine. Just it's a monthly goal tracker, and I have some different columns. And in my financial area, I am measuring how much money did I net year to date. And where am I in regards to my net worth goal. And I just take my statement, and I update it once a month. So that's just an example of something that's like a little habit that I've built it start with started with just managing my business and learning those expenses. And then it's built and built in built from there. So that might be overwhelming to some people. But like, you've just got to measure it. And you can't just look at your bank account, because that's like the end of the line when it's like way too late to know what happened or make changes in a timely manner. So I think that's something that anybody could work on.
Tina Beliveau
Another little thing I you know, I'm grateful for the lender that I had, when I first got into the business, he was very education oriented. And I just we did a lot of first time homebuyer seminars together. And just like little things where he said, you know, make sure you just pay your mortgage payment every two weeks, and then you end up paying an extra month, every year, and you just pay your mortgage down. And I've had that habit and I've always paid a little bit extra towards principal in my mortgage. So I've shaved off like five to seven years and both of the 30 year mortgages and my first property which is now a rental, and then the property that I now have. So I think that's like something that's like painless, like you just get used to it. So again, installing little systems of things that you can do, and you don't even notice, like when that kind of thing is in place.
Tina Beliveau
And then the other thing that I am grateful to my dad for is my dad was a business owner, he he worked seven days a week for my whole upbringing, and kind of modeled that you, you work hard and you trade your time for money. So I'm grateful to my father for teaching me work ethic. And then on the flip side, he didn't necessarily leverage himself through others. And that's been why I've spent so much time in education and coaching to learn that because it's, it's actually not intrinsic to me to delegate or necessarily hire people. But I learned the work ethic. And I learned like first and foremost, save for retirement. And I think most real estate agents that I would meet through recruiting and consulting meetings, hadn't set up a retirement account. And you can do it, you know, online through like any financial institution that you pick, generally, like at no cost. And that is one of the smartest ways to build wealth over time. So there's no mind.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, that's really awesome. I mean, that, that right there can you can like, you know, feel a conversation, right? Like, there's, like, well, I'm just unpacking in my head what you said Tina, is freedom. Freedom takes discipline. That's one. And I've seen you over the years, like be really, like really paying attention to your, to your house numbers into your business numbers. You always like walk around them remember in the legacy, like they're, they're lying around. And it's and you're absolutely right. Like I don't see a lot of real estate professionals or small business owners do that, because they're like, just kind of like running or grinding it out. Like, like both Brian and Veronica pointed out. And it takes discipline not to be in the grind all the time.
Tina Beliveau
Yeah. Yeah, I now have it set up where I update that goal sheet at 9am. On Monday mornings. It's actually the first thing I do in the week. I used to have a mindset that at that time, I needed to be catching up on messages and like getting into the work for the week, but just for me in the way my Are we close? I'm like, No, that's actually the most important thing at the beginning of the week. So like I, you know, I did that today. And, you know, there was one thing that came up even with what Brian was talking about of, like how those like $150 a month could compound and I like looked at those numbers and screenshot and sent to my husband and, and said, You know, we're saving every month through like, we buy mutual funds every month through our financial advisor, among many other things that we do to build wealth. But I was like, we're not saving enough. Like, and you know, I don't blame my financial advisor. But I'm like, when's the last time we evaluated? Like, how much of that like we're even saving? So I just kind of wanted to, like, reflect that back to you guys. Like, I don't know, if you have like, a month, an amount you've been working on saving per month, but like, Can you raise it? I just hadn't thought about it.
Mike Swenson
For years, it got the compounding effect is a is a real is a real thing. Like that's, and that's it works with money. And it works with habits. Right. And it's a you're a clear example of that, where you started early. Right? And by the way, if you haven't started yet, there's never too It's never too late to get started.
Tina Beliveau
Right. And then you started, you know, compounding both your finances, and then your skills, right within the finances within your freedom. Okay, so as we wrap up, and you know, they'll probably be a question or two. So Mike, I hope that you're monitoring the q&a chat or the chat.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, if somebody wants to put any questions, I'm monitoring it.
Mike Swenson
Yep. All right. Cool. So Tina, what advice do you have to, to the listeners? And to the viewers? No, I'm saying listeners
Tina Beliveau
I'm doing I think the thing that like I took from reflecting on my journey, and again, I'm no financial wizard, yet. I'm like, Okay, let me give myself some credit for the wealth picture. But it's what you just said, is, it's been one habit that I could handle at a time, whether that is, you know, a savings tip that you heard today, or maybe you needed to hear again, that you need to incorporate or, you know, reach out to that accountant about the p&l like, it's just installing one thing as a habit. And then when you feel like that is you don't have to think about it. And it's really like, just natural intrinsic to you, then What's the next one? And what's the next one?
Mike Swenson
Wow. Okay, that's, you know, that's really cool. Because it's like, it takes that advice into like a granular, like, take action, take action, now take a small action. So that moves you forward to your, to your goals.
Tina Beliveau
Could I get actually there's one more thing I thought of that I learned, actually, then Kenny's win mate gift thing last year. And I may give a different interpretation than what he actually taught. But what we learned in the class was to print all of your monthly statements. And I do that I print everything, like all my credit card statements, and bank statements monthly business personal. And then it was like a system of using three highlighters. So green would be like, keep it, it's fine. That's what it should be. And it's there, red, highlight something I need to cancel like all those subscriptions that get us that's like a great place to find those dollars we're talking about. And then the third color, I don't know what he actually taught.
Tina Beliveau
But what I've been doing is stuff that I need to investigate, think about renegotiate, etc. Like work on it and come back to it. And I've also found that sometimes I'll put those statements to the side and then like pick them back up like a few days later to do like, whatever I needed to do. And then I noticed even more that I like totally missed the first time, like just didn't see, like, Oh, I missed that. And actually now that I think about it, I really haven't used that since I last looked at this. And then doing it every month like you just catch more. So I see Jesse wrote that, you know, they diligently track everything. And I was like, that's actually how I've done it is I just print the statements and look at them. I'm not like, I don't know, like putting things in spreadsheets and like spending a lot of time I'm just like looking at a piece of paper and making marks.
Tina Beliveau
You know, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, like thank thank you for your contribution to our viewership here. Thank you for your contribution to real freedom. Where can people find where can people get in touch with you or find more information about you?
Tina Beliveau
The best two ways to find me are on Facebook. Just search Tina beliveau. And you can click follow or private message me or on Instagram at Tina beliveau easy. Thank you.
