Latest / REL Freedom Podcast / Laura Gisborne - Running 9 Businesses Starting At 23 Years Old

Transcript

Laura Gisborne - Running 9 Businesses Starting At 23 Years Old · REL Freedom Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: like probably somebody else who might be listening to this I didn't know anything about real estate investing.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I had a house.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: My husband and I got married.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: He had a house.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: We turned his house into a rental and he moved into my house.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean, that was step number one.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Then he said I can buy you a diamond or we can buy this empty lot next door.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, let's buy the dirt, we can buy rocks later, which we did.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: It took time, but you know, it was like that one thing left.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And then, as soon as that house was, that next house was built, we leveraged the equity in that house and bought the house next door.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: So now we had three houses.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Real Freedom Show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, Mike Swenson.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Let's get some real freedom together.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Hello everybody, Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom, talking about building real estate, leverage freedom and helping people to build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, Mike Swenson.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: If you want to get started on your journey to building wealth through real estate, check out our website, freedomthroughrealestatecom.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of good information on there to be able to help you navigate and decide, maybe, what your path might be, what your next step might be.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: But today's guest I'm super excited.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: We talk a lot about how real estate can have multiple streams of income within the industry, or real estate can be one of multiple streams of income with other industries, and so today's guest is a great example of that.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: We've got Laura Gisborn on and she has had you can correct me if I'm wrong nine businesses with real estate being one of those pieces, but Limitless Women really is your brand and I'll let you share more about that.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, you have a lot of things outside of real estate and it's because of real estate that's really helped you grow.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: So, if you're somebody listening to this, that is outside of the real estate space right now.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: You're a good example, laura, of what people can accomplish, and really it's about building systems, and so that's kind of one of your main pieces is mastering systems, so we'll talk a lot about that and a lot about how you're able to navigate all these businesses in addition to real estate.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: So, laura, we're so excited to have you on the show.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you, and I love that you love systems.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited to find a fellow systems geek because we're a little different than the rest of the world most of the time.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely so.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: For people that don't know, you just share a little bit kind of about your background and we'll dig in.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, as you said, I've owned nine companies.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: When you say that, it sounds like I've owned them all at the same time, which is not the case.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It's usually three, sometimes four things going on at one time, while you know raising a family and doing life and being a wife and dealing with the dogs, and you know the stuff that we do, right.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and so I'd say you know I won't take you back all the way, but it's funny just because the systems conversation for me is often.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I always say God had a bigger plan and my first job was at McDonald's.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: And I think about the power of what you learn as a young person at McDonald's.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I worked there for several years and I was really excited because I moved up from being, you know, just a cashier to like a team leader.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: You know I was all proud of myself.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: But you know, everything is very, very systematic and if you don't understand, you know as a kid, you don't have to really understand much, you have to follow the system.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: So, as I was growing in my journey and I married into a family business, so we were in the restaurant business initially, and then restaurants led to real estate and then my husband said you know, I think we should do something with this wine business.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Next thing, you know, we had a winery.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, one thing led to another is a thing, but having retail and having operations and having team I couldn't have done what I've done without having a lot of help.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Of help and in order for those folks to follow through on the mission and the vision of whatever business we owned required them to have great systems, to have it be really clear and streamlined.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: And I think in real estate we're talking about whether you're doing real estate as a salesperson or as a broker or if you're doing real estate as an investor, approaching that with systems.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: What are the revenue-generating activities that are really going to help you move your business and your family and your life to that goal that you want to have?
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: It has a lot to do with that, I think.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Absolutely as entrepreneurs.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: A lot of times they get sucked into the business because they want to do everything Sometimes, if you want it done right, do it yourself type of mentality and they really get sucked in.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: And you're a great example of somebody where it's like how can I have others help me or put those systems into place?
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: It could be people systems or technology systems or you name it.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Then you can really multiply your businesses because of others, versus feeling like you get sucked in and trapped because you want to do everything yourself as the solo entrepreneur.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think just so many good books come to mind when you were saying about multiple streams of income.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I think about Robert Allen's book.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Multiple Streams of Income was one of the first books that I read.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: That really shook my tree, if you will.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: As a young person, it was like this is making me think differently.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Right, and like you, I grew up in a family where nobody in my family had gone to college, so it was kind of like go to college, get a good job.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I went to law school.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I didn't really promote that much because I'm not an attorney, but that was always like the path this is if you can just get there, you'll get there.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: And again, I always joke, say God had another plan.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: One of the books that really comes to mind that I want to bring back here, mike, is this Robert Kiyosaki is really well known for Rich Dad, poor Dad, which is a great book for anybody who's interested in entrepreneurship, and the next book that he wrote was called the Cash Flow Quadrant, and in that I don't know if you've ever read that book, but just to simplify it right now, that whole mindset of like how am I going to do this?
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: How can I get it done, let me get my team out of the way and do it right.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Do it by myself is really a self-employed mindset, right?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: So we all start out as employees like mine was at McDonald's and then we move into being self-employed, if we get lucky, and a lot of people are, again, highly educated.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: They may be doctors or lawyers or accountants.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: They are trained, but if they're not working, they're not making money.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So the idea of owning businesses is really where your part is coming in.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: When you're talking about freedom, you know financial freedom can be achieved in lots of different ways and I think that that's you know.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I don't have one size fits all for that.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I think there's lots of paths.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I personally love real estate.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: We know that statistically, historically, the three ways people have made millions of dollars right, her pound financial freedom has been in the stock market, in real estate and in owning a business, and so for many years we did well with business ownership and we did really well with real estate.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: We didn't know anything about the stock market.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: And now my husband's retired, so he sits around and watches Kramer all day and thinks he knows everything about the stock market.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: But so far so good.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: But it's an interesting thing.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So real estate as a path to financial freedom is one piece.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Having time freedom requires you to have some independence and think like an investor instead of thinking like a self-employed person.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: And at the end of the day I mean when people first hear financial freedom, they think, like you know, be retired and sit up with my feet up all day and not do anything.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Or it could just be the freedom of choice, right, like, you're still busy, you still have your hands in a lot of things and you're doing charity work, you're helping others, and so, even though you have the financial freedom, you're using that gift to pour into others and multiply in other ways and give back, versus just hey, now I don't have to do anything.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: What am I going to do?
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Because a lot of the people I know that have retired get bored after a while because it's like, well, I have so much time, I don't know what to do.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: And so they take up a hobby or they take up something else to fill their time.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I would imagine anyone who's listening to your show is listening because they have a desire to grow.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: You know those of us that are seekers and God's imbued in us that desire to continue to grow.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I don't think that really goes away, provided that you're healthy.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: And I can tell you that because during COVID I was in a head-on collision and that really led to a series of.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I always say I was arrogantly healthy for 54 years.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I just was like I was that person who went to the doctor like check, check, check.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I don't have any of these things and I wasn't trying to take it for granted.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I really do value my health and I give gratitude for that every day.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, I didn't realize what it was to be diagnosed with several different diseases and to have that kind of stuff going on.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: So, as I'm speaking to you now, I've just come out of a medical sabbatical and I took almost two years off.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: But we didn't take any new clients in for our consulting business, our leadership training, because I really needed to have that time to heal.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: And I'm telling you that whole story because it was very much a wake up call for me.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: And you know, here I am today.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: So being on the other side of that, after multiple surgeries, you know, spinal fusion and all this crazy stuff, and really coming out of it and and and going to prayer.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Am I done, you know?
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Is it time for me to retire?
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Am I meant to be, you know, just sitting here?
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I don't have any grandkids yet.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Am I supposed to, you know, just keep doing my volunteer work?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: What would you want me to do?
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: And the message I got was to keep moving with what we've created, with Limitless Women.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: So, a little bit more than 10 years ago, I started to be asked to be a speaker.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I wasn't a speaker, I hadn't read any books.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I was like I think you have the wrong person.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: No, thank you, thank you.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I think you know, god, you're the wrong person.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Choose somebody else.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: But they kept coming and I've learned to listen.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: So I started speaking, started going, and what we decided to do is create this business to empower business owners by having them have the opportunity to partner with nonprofit organizations, because the biggest objection we get in philanthropy is someday when I'm wealthy, I'll start giving, and what we know is it doesn't work that way.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Right, it's at that place.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: That principle is not I didn't make this up right it's this whole idea of tithing we give in response to what we have and we actually give when we think we don't have it to give, and we become expanded and stretch in our leadership.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: So that's the place where I said, okay, let's try this, let's have an event right.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: You and I were talking about events.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I'm just like gosh, if we could just raise $10,000, we'd be so excited.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: We had 50 people come and that first weekend we raised $35,000.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, we're onto something right.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Then we had the next milestone.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you this because, as investors and as people that are looking for financial independence or financial freedom, it doesn't happen in a big windfall.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: It happens in incremental choices and choosing milestones right.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: It's a way of almost systemizing your goal setting, if you will, right.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: So you're going to say, okay, this is the next level.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: So the next level for us was could we, over five years, give away $250,000?
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And we got to the five-year mark and we were over 600,000.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: So I said, okay, lord, show me how we can give our way to millions, we can reach millions of people with impact and we can generate millions of dollars for charity.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Show us how to do that.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean, and that's I think you know.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: For me, as I've gotten more mature, the more I learned to listen, the more I asked to be shown and the more I pray to be obedient, which I did not know to do when I was young.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I was trying to do it all myself, you know the easier it gets, so to kind of set the foundation let's talk about the real estate space.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: first, talk about what you've done in terms of investing and acquiring properties and that sort of thing, and how that's then set up your opportunities to do other things too.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say, you know in retrospect, mike, if I were to go back, there were some things that I did really well, some things that I didn't do well, and I think that's just the reality of life, right, when people say you know you've had nine companies, often they think I've had them all at the same time.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I've sold six of those.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I had a business failure.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Nine minus six is three.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I have two companies that I'm running right now.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: We have one that we opened and closed within six months.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: It was a retail operation that didn't work well, but that's the reality of business.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: You've got to be willing to try some things and move forward.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: So, like probably somebody else who might be listening to this, I didn't know anything about real estate investing.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I had a house.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: My husband and I got married.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: He had a house.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: We turned his house into a rental and he moved into my house.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean, that was step number one.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Then he said I can buy you a diamond or we can buy this empty lot next door.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, let's buy the dirt, we can buy rocks later, which we did.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: It took time, but you know it was like that one thing left and then, as soon as that house was, that next house was built, we leveraged the equity in that house and bought the house next door.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So now we had three houses on one street, right?
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: So it was like rolling and rolling and rolling and we weren't making a ton of profit at that point, but during that time I'll tell you this was a great thing that I did, and I don't know if he's still doing this we went to, I went to, scott didn't go with me.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: We went to invest.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I say we because we both invested it.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Right, me going, I had to do the homework, but our investment we spent $6,000 to send me to a real estate bootcamp that was hosted by a gentleman named John Burley and that was in 2004,.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Right, so this is 20 years ago and I'd never spent that kind of money.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I went to college, I got scholarships, I earned my way, I worked the whole thing.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: But that was the first time I was like, okay, $6,000 for a one-week thing, and it was terrifying and it was so smart because that next year our revenue that came in from real estate was over 200,000.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: So I learned so much and one of the things in that that I learned?
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I learned a lot of things from John Burley.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: He's a great leader, but one of the things that I learned was, like no negative cash flow.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So that's a place that I think is also a red flag.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: A lot of time people they're like oh, I'm going to buy a property and I'm only going to lose a bit of here and I'm going to wait for the equity.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, you really want to look at your numbers, know your numbers, systemize that stuff right up front.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: So you know we've done everything from, you know, long-term rentals to real estate development, to building stuff, to separating properties.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: You know buying bigger lots and moving into smaller chunks and selling them.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: That way, we've done a lot of remodeling, a lot, a lot of remodeling.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And we've done that in our own homes, where we've moved into a home, lived there for two years and then sold the home we lived in it.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: While we were remodeling, my son I think he was probably like nine or 10, was having a birthday party.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: We're like, don't step in the hole.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: We had like a piece of plywood over the floor.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: You know like something was coming apart, and so that's where we were able to sell a property.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Take that $500,000 tax-free capital gains tax-free, I mean, it's an amazing thing for however long it lasts.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: We've done that multiple times.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what else?
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: We started short-term renting a property in 2013.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: So there was before the rules and regs, and before Airbnb was just kind of getting started.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: It really weren't where they are today.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: It's one of our favorite stocks.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: We're like, hey, we love Airbnb, but I think that we rented out that house for five years and during the time, the laws were changing around us, and so it was really one of those things I'd say from business.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: We've been blessed a lot of times to be early adopters, to be innovators, to be doing the things that other.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: You know, scott and I got married 10 weeks after our first date, so we have this little card that says those who say it can't be done should move out of the way of the people who are doing it.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: So, anyway, I hope that's helpful in some way.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Telling you my life story.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: But that's one thing led to another.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: We were doing some.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: You know, I was volunteering, I was on the school board, I was coaching soccer.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I was doing all these other things while we were just living life.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: As I hear your story, each one of those things isn't necessarily like an overly glamorous thing, and so I think, for a lot of people, when they're like building time and financial freedom to real estate, they think it has to be this huge planting your flag, like, look at this amazing thing that I've done.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: But it's all these little, small moves add up to when you look back and see, oh my gosh, I've done all these things.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: But it's not like, hey, we're going to buy 20 rental properties this year or we're going to do this.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: It's just a small move, a small move, a small move.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And then you've got time to look back and say, wow, we've done a lot with these series of small, somewhat less glamorous moves that add up to something really great.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I don't remember who I heard say this, Mike, but I think it was a really great thing.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I heard somebody say that, like, do the things on the weekends.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Like if you have a nine to five job and you're looking to move into some more of an independent lifestyle whether it be entrepreneurship or being in real estate, as an investor or even as a salesperson do the things on the weekends.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: That will get you to where your life Monday through Friday is what you want to do, Because most people like work Monday through Friday and then they just pass out on the weekends, right, they just gel, chill and they don't really want to do anything.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: And I think that that's the difference we're talking about.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Being a bit of a seeker, being a person with a high personality, is we've always looked at opportunities as gifts and and and we're also I think you know there's another, there's another.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: I would say in my experience, it's not quite a true conception that entrepreneurs are people that really love risk.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I think that entrepreneurs are people that are willing to take risks and learn how to mitigate risks and really look at their, you know, leverage themselves and leverage their time, and I think that's a little different than most folks that have a real job?
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I've never worked in corporate and I think that's a little different than most folks that have a real job.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I've never worked in corporate, you know.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I just I worked.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I worked at McDonald's.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: I worked in a law firm as receptionist, the secretary, while I was going to school, and you know, one thing led to another and then, all of a sudden, once I was, once I landed while I was doing that, I was working as a waitress and putting myself through school, and so, you know, I ended up marrying someone who owned a restaurant and the next thing, you know, it was like one after another after another thing took me that path, but I never really went to work for a nine to five job after I was about 23.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it sounds like real estate never has been for you the main thing, because you've always done these other businesses in addition to real estate, and so I think it also hopefully encourages people to see, like I mean, it can be a full-time thing, but you don't have to and you can still build something very great while still doing what you're doing outside of real estate.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what I think.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I said this to Scott the other day I think real estate is the best savings account in the world, personally.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: I mean there's again all these sayings and you've had all these interviews and whoever people are listening they've read the books right, but you know there's they would say, like the great thing about dirt, they're not making any more of it.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: You know, this is what we have.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: I like, for our own experience, when we had we had those three rentals that I was telling you about, like when we got married, we did that over the first few years that we sold those and took that money and invested it into the wine business, because what surrounded us as a tasting room ended up becoming a winery with a wine club that was licensed to ship wine to 37 different states.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: So I had a full-time business manager.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: That was her job was like keeping track of all the rules and the regulations and the 250 members that we had at the time, and so real estate worked well for us to do other things.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: And then, as we sold those businesses, we kind of moved back into real estate.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Almost Sometimes it feels like our piggy bank.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like what's the highest and best.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: When we looked at buying houses here, I told you we bought a few houses in Bastrop, where we are now, which we're on the east side of Austin, and most people don't know where Bastrop is, but you will, because Elon Musk has moved all of his stuff here, so you'll start to hear more about Bastrop.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: But when we started to look at that, we looked at, you know, what's the best use of the real estate right now?
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Is it to do long-term rentals or short-terms?
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: And short-term is, you know, is more profitable for us.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, but there's management.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: It's not like it's a freebie, you know.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: It gives us something that we get to play with it.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's fun.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: So talk a little bit, then, about the systems either within real estate or in some of your other business, like I said, whether it's people, technology, whatever that might be.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Talk about your mindset around that and how you've been able to put those systems in place to grow versus getting sucked in like we kind of talked about previously.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, you know I have a whole business school about this, so let me just see if I can put it really short and succinct Do it all in your life's work and do it all in three minutes.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: In a summation, right, everything you've learned in the last 35 years.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Tell me right now, five minutes go.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: So I think that the system, every business in every industry, has what we call pillars of business.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Right, because we work with people all over the world right now and what we find is that multiple industries whether you're running the big events that you were doing with 5,000 people, or you're doing your own business, or you're just working as an independent contractor, maybe in somebody else's brokerage, wherever it is, you're gonna have some systems.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: So the first system in our world is around your mindset, is around your leadership, right, and corporations spend a lot of money developing their management teams and helping people stay on track.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: What happens often in the entrepreneur space, in small businesses and I would say even in our world, a lot of micro businesses, right, because we support women is that what happens is that there's no structure of support.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: So I think that leadership and mindset is something that has to constantly be cultivated.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: We need to figure out again how do we take care of our bodies, how do we take care of our minds, how do we keep ourselves on track?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: What's missing for most businesses I'll tell you, this is the secret sauce of our world is between pillar number one, which is leadership, and pillar number two, which is marketing.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: No one in the small business space that I'm aware of really talks about how important it is to have a mission, how important it is to have a vision for your work, how important it is to have core values and a culture, because when you're a party of one, sometimes you just think like, well, I'm just going to do everything that needs to be done until I can build a team.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: But here's the deal as soon as you want to magnetize clients and team members to come to be a part of your organization to move everything forward, that mission and vision and culture is really what becomes sticky Make sense.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: So we do a lot of that work when we're doing private work with people.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Then we go into the marketing.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Again, marketing only works if the message is targeted.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: You may be having the greatest syndication in the world, but if I'm not looking for it and I don't have a problem, I'm not your client, right?
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: So how do you get to the right people with the right language?
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: It always comes back to that place of the deeper, foundational pieces.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Great marketing leads to sales with ease If you market to the right people at the deeper, foundational pieces.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Great marketing leads to sales with ease If you market to the right people at the right time.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Sales is not complicated.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Problem solution is how all business works.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: All around the world, sales generates revenue.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: You got to know about your numbers.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: You got to learn about finance.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: You got to learn about no negative cashflow if you're doing real estate investing.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: You got to learn about can you leverage?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: If you're going to leverage, what is their profit there?
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: What's going to be the overhead?
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: What's going to cost for management?
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: What's going to cost for all those hidden things?
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Like we just had a septic system go out.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: It was $3,000 in a two-year-old house, by the way.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Hello, stuff happens, right.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: So you're going to like, figure those kinds of things out.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: What are your questions?
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: You know your finance.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: That finance is how you start to pay for people to do the do, right?
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: So if you need someone to do property management, who's going to pay for that?
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: That's going to come out of your sales, right?
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, these are the kinds of things you're doing either your rental income, if you're doing real estate, or your sales, if you're in business, or if you are again doing real estate sales as a salesperson, what's your commissions?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: How do you have a consistent marketing machine that's bringing in consistent revenue versus the financial rollercoaster that I see a lot of realtors in, right, how do you get out of that world?
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Think like a business owner.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Once you have your team there, then you're really looking at how do we streamline operations, how do we increase profitability?
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Because here's the other big conversation in business which is like how do we get to that first million?
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you you can spend a million and one to get to a million in gross revenue, but you still don't have any money in your piggy bank.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: There's a problem there, right?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: So, understanding systems and teams and operations, but all of those pillars your leadership, your marketing, your sales, your operations, your team, your finance all those need structure.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: And for us, the seventh pillar we teach is around legacy.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Because here's the deal.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know how old you are you look really young, mike but I'm going to tell you that this piece around legacy as something I'm going to think about when I hit my 70s.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: It's too late.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: We're all leaving our legacy right here, right now, whether we want to or not.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: You know, we're kind of leaving our energetic footprint, or fingerprint, on the world.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: So what does it look like to lead a life that you're really proud of?
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: What does it look like to incorporate impact and giving back?
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: If that's important to you Because of my faith, it's very important to me.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: But I wonder for other people that feel lonely or feel like they don't have purpose.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: There's nothing to help you feel better than to actually be in service to another human.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: It's the greatest gift we get to give.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: That's awesome and, as you're sharing all that, I think about people that talk about I'm just a simple person, I don't need to have a lot, and the thing that's always sat with me for that statement is I heard somebody say imagine at the end of your life you sit down and you meet the person you could have been and see like, did I optimize the gift I was given in my life?
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: You know, did I do the most with what I had?
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: And really that legacy piece is big and you don't have to have kids, because a lot of times people think legacy is kids, but it's no, it's impact, it's helping others, it's charity work, it's all this stuff.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: So if you build everything you could ever want for yourself, great.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Now go take those talents and do it for others and make this world a better place and leave more of an impact for other people.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: And so for people that maybe are thinking like I'm simple, I'm small, I don't need much Think about that, of how you could have helped others and maybe didn't because you didn't maximize your opportunity with the skills you've been given.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think I think this has been again an incredible education.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: The last decade has been, the last 57 years have been incredible education for me and I and I and I would just say that as our work started taking us outside of the United States right, and I know you know this because you're doing mission work that had you outside of the United States I didn't know how good I had it.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Right, and I feel I consider myself a well-educated person.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I'm very well read and I, you know, when I was in South America in the jungle with folks who are living in you know, thatched roofs and and women are dying in childbirth because they don't have any access to resources, and and then when we were in Cambodia and talking to people who had lived through a civil war where a third of their country had been wiped out.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just sometimes it's hard to gain perspective of how good we have it, and I always say you know, I grew up.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I had a tough childhood by American standards.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: However, I had running water, I had access to free education.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: You know I had opportunities.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I was born white.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Let me just tell you, I was born white.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: There's some good things.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I was born in this generation in the 1960s, where women in the United States were not allowed to have a checking account without a man's signature before, I think, 1970, if I've got the dates right.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: So you know, there's so much that we have in the way of access to resources and yet our, a lot of our programming tells us that we're not enough and there's more, and if we just had more, we'd be more.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I find that the inner work is is so much more rewarding.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: The outer work is not that complicated and I don't mean to be arrogant about that, but you know you can make more money by reaching more people, so you can figure out systems and scale.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: What's the richness of life, I think, are the experiences and the connections.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I love what you were talking about.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: You've done all these podcasts, mike, and you have all these new friends and all these relationships that I mean.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: That currency for you over the course of your lifetime is priceless.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Real estate agents, are you tired of letting the busyness of your real estate business get in the way of your real estate investing goals in your financial future?
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to announce that we've created the Real Freedom Investor Agent Tribe to help you.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: We've got a ton of content, educational tools to help accelerate your learning curve and get you on the right path to hit your investing goals.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: We also have a mastermind tribe of people just like you on the right path to hit your investing goals.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: We also have a mastermind tribe of people just like you agents that want to grow their own portfolio and encourage you and cheer you on along the way, as well as some private, one-on-one coaching.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: So go to realfreedomcom click on the store.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: You'll see the options there.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: We're so excited to be able to help you.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I've priced it super low, so price can't get in the way, but did want to have some skin in the game for you to help with that accountability.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: So go check it out realfreedomcom click on the store.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: We're excited to connect with you and excited for you to connect with your tribe of real estate agents investing trying to build their financial freedom.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's a great ending spot here.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: We covered a lot in just a short amount of time.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: So thank you so much, laura, for sharing For people that want to learn more about you and the work that you're doing.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: How can they do so?
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So limitlesswomencom is the way to find us.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: You can Google me and I'm Google-able.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: How cool is that?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: We didn't have that when I was a kid, so that's kind of a cool thing.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: You can find me.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I'm all over the web.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: So limitlesswomencom is where you can connect with me or find me on one of the social media channels, and always happy to connect and support you however I can.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming on and sharing.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: It was a joy.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Best of luck to you and your future in the event that you've got coming up and raising more money for charity.