Life Lessons and Adventures: A Mother of Six's Path to Success in Real Estate

It was my manager who lived on site, and she just said, jill, it's on fire. It's on fire. And I live, like, less than five minutes from the property. And so I just said, I've had fires of properties before. And so they. Like, I wasn't getting too. I wasn't getting too worked up about it. And I said, make sure everybody's out of the building. We'll get this handled. It's not a big deal. Threw on some street clothes, and by the time I got there, it was a way bigger fire than I had thought it was. Flames were pouring out of the windows. People were jumping from the third story. It was a big deal. And so it. Ultimately, it shut the whole property down.

Welcome to the Rise, Shine, and Redefine podcast, where we explore personal growth, relationships, and transformative mindsets. I'm Karen Meininger, your guide and ally on this journey. Imagine a space where your true beauty shines, where every challenge is a step toward your best self, and where family and personal development intertwine. As your BFF for mindset mastery, I'm here to share insight and laughter, to guide you through the highs and lows, and to celebrate your journey towards authenticity and fulfillment. Join us as we redefine what it means to live beautifully, love our journey, and embrace our true selves. Let's Rise, Shine, and Redefine together.

Welcome to the Rise, Shine, and Redefine podcast. We have an extraordinary guest with us today. She's a mother of three, six, a successful real estate broker, and an adventurous spirit who has turned countless challenges into triumphs. Please welcome Jill Sarcone.

Yay. Welcome.

I'm so excited to have you here. And your mom is six. Holy. Like, please tell me your. Your ways, because I can barely survive with one.

Oh, you know what? They're easier in numbers, genuinely. And all the kids are fairly close in age. And so it keeps things pretty. You know, they're. They're kind of built in friends for each other, but, yeah, they are, what, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 19.

So, yeah, it's much easier to do that in order. Right. Like, you're like, okay, let me do age order.

Got it. I. And they all have birthdays that are pretty close to each other. So, yeah, I have to think about when they're born and how old they are.

I love that. And so how many are boys and how many are girls?

So we have four girls and two boys.

Okay. Okay. And they. And do they all get along? Is it. Do they make your life easier or is it you Never know what you're gonna get.

They are, I'm gonna knock on wood when I say this. We're pretty blessed. They are very easy, self sufficient kids that, you know, so far we haven't really had to get on anybody for grades or behavior or anything like that. Like, they just, it's different. Like they like our 15 and 16 year old, one of them likes to drive, one of them refuses to drive. Our 19 year old didn't want to get her license until she was a little bit older. She just. They just don't want to drive. They don't want to do the things that we used to do when we were that age. But yeah, they're, they're a pretty good, pretty good group of kids.

So. Yeah, well, now we have like Uber and we have other ways to get around where I feel like when we were growing up it was like, oh, if you wanted to go somewhere, you needed a car.

Oh, 100. So I'm their Uber now.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So you've owned over 100 single family homes. I have hotel. Well, sorry, including hotels, commercial spaces, bars. Okay. If somebody wanted to get into real estate and like, as a busy mom and like get into real estate, what, how, what drew you into real estate? And then if you could kind of give a tip on how to get into real estate for maybe somebody listening who, who would love to, to kind of have a passive income or maybe change their career. What, what, how did you get into it and what are some tips to kind of get into it?

So my dad was a real estate broker and I never in a million years thought I would get into real estate. I was moving from Boston back to San Diego and I stopped in Iowa on my way to see my family. And I had been traveling for quite some time and my dad was like, just stay put and get some money under your belt and let's buy a house. And it was when the market was really good to flip houses. And so I stayed and we, you know, bought a. I think at the time this house was so, this was like 20 years ago. The house was maybe $50,000. And I think we put like 20, 25,000 into it. But, you know, he, he made me do all of the work on my first flip. So like I learned how to like do plumbing and like solder, you know, pipes together and set toilets and lay tile floors and hang ceiling fans and just stuff that honestly is so practical that everybody should know how to, you know, do that kind of stuff. But got this house all remodeled Turned it from a two bedroom into a three bedroom. So we increased the value that way. And when I sold it, you know, I was 24 years old at the time, and that was the most amount of money I had ever made in my whole entire life. And I just, I had. So I had fun doing it with my dad. I had fun, you know, learning all that new stuff. And, and it just. So I wanted to do, you know, another one and then another one, and it just slowly grew into, into a real estate portfolio. You know, we, we started off flipping, but then when the market changed, you know, all the financing changed for people and it was harder for people to get loans. And so we always had a plan A, plan B and plan C. Plan A was to flip it, plan B was to rent it, and plan C was. I was gonna move into it. We only had to do that once. But so the, the flipping turned into owning a bunch of rental properties. And then, yeah, just then that turned into. It's kind of like Monopoly. All the single family homes turned into apartments, which turned into hotels and motels and storage units and bars and everything.

Oh, my God, I love that analogy. So on, on your first investment in your first flip, how much money did you end up making off of it?

We made $21,433.

Oh, okay. And so, and so what did you do with that, with that profit? Did you reinvest and that's when you reinvested into another. Or how did, what did you do with that, with that profit?

Well, so, and this is a whole nother story, but I was able to buy all. Not all. I would say probably 95 of my single family homes without putting any money into it, just on financing it creatively. So I took that money that I made with that first flip, and I paid off all of the credit card debt I had racked up, put some in a savings account. I bought my first vehicle, and that was it. You know, it was just, it was like the first time I had kind of felt comfortable with money in my life. And. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, I love that. So, okay, wait, I want to back up. So, okay, I want to get into real estate. I don't have any money. And you just mentioned there's creative ways that you can finance to get into. To get into it. What, what's a tip that you might have for our listeners of. Okay, I really, really want to get into real estate, whether it's a primary home, whether it's an investment property, whatever it may be. What are some creative Ways that people can start using financing to their advantage without being so much money out of pocket.

Well, the, the best advice my dad ever gave me was to be nice to bankers.

I love that.

But you know, just create the relationships. I use all local banks. I don't do any, you know, like I don't use the bigger banks. And the, the way you can borrow money changes all the time. So when I got into the industry, you used to be able to borrow 80% of either appraised as finished value or the assessed value of the property. And so, you know, for easy numbers, let's just say that this property, once I was done remodeling it was going to appraised for $100,000. I knew I could buy the property for 50,000, I would get $30,000 to fix it up and I would be at my 80% threshold and I would have no money into the deal myself. They've changed that a little bit now. And so what I've done is I've utilized the equity in some of my. Well, I've utilized the equity in some of my properties to establish a line of credit. I also what one of the investments I have is with a cash value life insurance policy that the bank has given me a line of credit off of that cash value. And so now I'll go buy these properties for cash, remodel them with my own cash and then I go put the loan on it afterwards and get all my money back.

Oh, this is great tips. I'm going to use this because I'm, I want to buy, I'm looking to buy another investment property also. I don't necessarily know where yet, but it's on the, it's on the agenda. I mean this is, this is great. So you, so you built up this real estate portfolio. You have these hotels, you have these homes, you flip, you've done all the things. And then there's this fire. Yeah, you had a fire on one of your. Was it your hotel?

Yep, there was a local 140, 142 unit hotel. Had a bar in it, a restaurant in it, swimming pool. Like it was a, it was a good sized property. And I got a call. Gosh, it would have been January 4th to. In the middle of the night. And I almost always sleep with my phone on silent for some reason I had it on that night. And it was my manager who lived on site and she just said, jill, it's on fire, it's on fire. And I live like less than five minutes from the property and So I just said, I've had fires of properties before. And so they, like, I wasn't getting too. I wasn't getting too worked up about it. And she. I said, everybody, make sure everybody's out of the building. You know, well, we'll get this handled. It's not a big deal. Threw on some street clothes, and by the time I got there, it was a way bigger fire than I had thought it was. Flames were pouring out of the windows. People were jumping from the third story. It was a big deal. And so it ultimately shut the. It shut the whole property down. And in order to rebuild the property, we would have had to have brought it up to current code, which means Sprint, you know, sprinkled the building, done fire panels in each building, and it just, financially didn't make sense. So we ended up tearing the property down.

Oh, my goodness. And so. So this fire happens and you tell your kids about it?

Oh, yeah, yeah. It was all over the news. So it was kind of hard.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. So. So. So you're managing your own disappointment and your own frustration. Frustration and I'm assuming panic. What. How are you able to keep yourself together in that circumstance and then also keep your kids calm in that circumstance?

I. I get more upset by tenant issues than I do by big issues like that. And so there was nothing I could do about the fire. It was. Yeah, I mean, we. All we could do was keep fingers crossed that the insurance company was going to cover it. You know, it was that big of a loss. And so, you know, I just continued on, continued on daily. And, you know, the building was 98% occupied when the fire happened, so we had to find all of those people, new homes. Like, that was the most stressful part about it, was trying to relocate these people. You know, all of these people wanted back in to get their property, but it was so dangerous for them to be in there that we couldn't let them in. I mean, we had some pretty, you know, like, we had one woman who was staying with us whose daughter had passed away and had been cremated, and she had the ashes that she was going to be spreading in the room the night of the fire, and she wanted back in to get those. And the fire department wouldn't let anybody go back in there. And so it was just, you know, we're trying to sneak in and get, you know, significant items like that for people like you. Just people really have, you know, everything they own is in these rooms because it was an extended stay hotel. And so that was the hardest part was seeing what the fire did to other people.

Yeah. I mean, it's huge devastation and hopefully nobody got hurt. Did anyone get hurt?

So very, very minor injuries. So like when they jumped out the windows, like they had stitches or there were a couple broken legs, things like that, but everybody got out safely. We lost a few. Some people had some pets in there that got lost, but, you know, for the most part, we were pretty darn lucky.

Yeah. That I don't even have words. That. That is so insane. And, and I'm just really curious, like as a mom and this dress and you're handling all these things, but I'm sure you also need to be present for your kids. Like, how did you balance all of getting them new homes, like, figuring it out, managing their emotions and then also being present with your kids? Like, how did you. Like, like, please tell me your ways.

Because, you know, it was, you know, for the first, probably month after the fire, I probably was not as present as I needed to be with the kids. You know, I was working way longer hours and, and whatnot. But, you know, you just. I used it as a learning lesson. I'm like, kids, we don't play with fire. We don't leave candles burning. That's. They never officially determined the cause of the fire, but that's, you know, and I. Everything I do in real estate I try and use as like a learning lesson for the kids. You know, guys, you had your smoke. Like, this is why we have smoke detectors. You know, this is why you do things like that. So I don't mind when they. I'm always on my phone, you know, I. Home office. And when I'm picking the kids up from school, I'm still on business calls, but I'm able to pick my kids up from school instead of them having to take the bus or walk home or something. And that's just one of the things that has to happen in order for me to have a flexible schedule like that. And so everything that happens, I just try and use kind of as a learning lesson with them.

Yeah, I, I think that's great. I. I just noticed when I'm working all the time too, like sometimes, I mean, I have a six year old, so he. It's like you need to get the work done, but then you also want to show up for your family and it. And it's finding this like work life balance where it's like, well, how can I do both and be like five people at the same time?

That's very hard. I feel like I wish I could clone myself sometimes. And, and yeah, no, I, I do get, I get busier than I would like to be a lot. And I have to remind myself to just stop. And, you know, even if it's five minutes, if I'm spending five quality minutes sitting there talking to the kids, that's better than, you know, two hours with them where I'm on my phone or I'm doing something like, I just, you got to dedicate just little, little bits of time.

And I, I a thousand percent agree. Like, five minutes of full presence is better than two hours of just being there but not being present. And I incorporate something called PNP time with my son, which is play no phone. So it's like, phone has to go away. I, it's 15 minutes and that's it. And, and that's really all he needs is just, hey, my mom is present for me right now. Yeah, they remember that. And it's just something that I incorporate. I can take 15 minutes out of my day to be fully present.

Yep, I love it.

And it's just kind of, kind of works. And now I only have one. So dividing 15 minutes with six kids turns into over an hour or two. But yeah, no, I, I just. Being a mompreneur and balancing it all and trying to build and trying to do all the things can be really, really overwhelming. And just. It sounds like you, you kind of have a system in place for being able to manage all of it.

Yeah, Yeah, I get up at about 4 o' clock in the morning and do. Because that's the only time of the day where I can return emails, you know, respond to everything without my phone blowing up. And I get, or anybody else in the house being awake. And so I, I get a lot done. But I also, again, I finished my day a little bit earlier because I do, I get my kids from school, I take them to their sports. I, you know, I, Yeah, you just, I just put in a few more hours every day.

Yeah, but I really feel a lot of joy and passion in all of it. Like, you're with your kids, you're with your work, and, and you, you seem to be lit up like your energy on this podcast. If you guys watch it on YouTube, you'll see it's just, there's like an energy about you that feels alive and I love that you're able to do all the things with. And I'm sure there's a lot of overwhelm and burnout at points, but at the end of the day, it sounds like you're really doing what you love.

I, I do, I do love what I do. I do. And, and I, I, I find plenty of fun time to get away with my kids. So it's, I don't just work all the time, you know, I, yeah. Just have to balance.

Yeah. Yeah. But I. There. So, so tell me about, There was a moment where you were giving it all, it all up. You were selling all of your real estate. You were done, you were over it. Tell me a little bit more about that and a little bit more about your dad.

Yeah, so my dad was my, my business partner and we, you know, did pretty much everything together with the properties. And then he passed away in 2014. And so I then bought the portfolio because it got his part got left to my mom. I bought the portfolio from my mom because she didn't want anything to do with it, and I was managing it anyway. And so I just, at that point I had, I think, 75 single families. There were the four hotel motels. And it just, my mom again, wanted, just, she wanted to sell. And so I wasn't having as much fun doing the real estate as I was when my dad was alive. I didn't have anybody to, you know, like, when something good happened, I didn't have anybody to pick up the phone and share that success with. Or if something, you know, negative happened, I couldn't just call my dad and say, you know, oh, my gosh, I'm so frustrated. You know, a tenant did this today or, you know, the city rental inspection didn't go well. I didn't, like, I was just kind of on my own. It wasn't as fun to buy properties anymore because there was nobody to share, you know, the art of the deal with. And so when my mom started talking about wanting to get out, I said, you know what? We decided to list the whole, the hotels, motels. And then I listed my single family portfolio. And I wasn't going to let somebody just kind of cherry pick off one or two. I said, somebody's got to buy the whole portfolio or I'm not doing it. And it's everything sold. I didn't think it would, but somebody, you know, bought it all. And I then told myself I was never going to own anything that had plumbing in it or because I just didn't want to deal with people anymore. I really was like, down and out because I just. What I had loved real estate so much, and then it just wasn't fun for me. So I decided I was going to try and buy a different type of property. So I bought some storage units, like some dry storage and some boat and RV storage. And after about a year and a half, I was so bored out of my mind because they didn't need any work that I just.

That's my kind of property. I want, I want that. Give me the property I don't have to do any work on.

I love it. But I didn't have any. I think I found out about myself. I need interaction with people, and so I was not interacting with anybody. All that would go wrong was somebody would forget their gate code and they might call me or the gate would break and I knew how to go fix it. So I'd drive out there and like, I wasn't even. I wasn't working with contractors. I wasn't. Wasn't doing anything. And so, yeah, I just, I really wasn't happy with, with what I was doing, real estate wise. And then to kind of bring myself out of that funk. My daughter had her bat mitzvah. And you typically get a decent chunk of money when you have a bar bat mitzvah from other people. And I told her if she could, you know, save X amount of dollars, I would help her buy a single family house as a rental property. And then when she turned 18, I would sign it over to her and she could either sell it and, you know, take the money and go to college. She could take the money and travel. She could keep the property as a rental property. She could do, you know, whatever she wanted with it. And I just saw how much fun she was having with that. That it was like, it just kind of brought me back to life with real estate. And so then I started buying stuff up again.

Oh, my gosh. I, like, want to cry. I'm just like, oh, what a proud moment to just see your daughter. Want to kind of like step in her, in your shoes and what an amazing role model you are. She saw that you were able to do it. She saw the value in it. And then now here she is at 13 years old. You know, yeah, let's. Let's buy property. I mean, that's, that's incredible. And so how old is she now?

She's 16.

Okay, so she's got two more years before you sign it over to her.

Yeah, well, and so I sold it to her on a contract, right? So, like, okay, so she's technically pay, you know, she's technically paying for it right now. You know, on paper, she's too young to actually own it, but when she turns 18, you know, I'm gonna send her into the bank to talk to a banker and she's gonna have equity in it already. She will have been on time with all of her mortgage payments. You know, she'll be able to prove that she's, you know, kept the city rental certificate and been able to get the tenants and you know, when there's a vacancy, she goes and cleans it. And so it's, it's all around a really good lesson. It cash flows every month, but I don't let her take any of the cash flow. I make her put it into a savings account in case there's a repair that needs done to the property. So she'll have a pot of money also at the end to if something happens.

I mean, what an incredible life lesson. Like in reality, like you don't learn that in school. I mean this is, this is like real life. She's 13, getting a property, learning how to manage it, learning how to take care of it, learning how to make payments on time. I mean, I barely learned how to do that when I got to college. I was like, oh, I have to pay for things. And to be prepared for life in that way is so valuable. She's going to be so far beyond everybody else on just living life and having those life skills, which I don't think we, we really teach our kids. And that's something I'm hoping that to help moms with too is, is hey, start teaching them life skills now while they're young. So when they go out into what we so and so called the real world, they're able to handle it and able to have the resilience for whatever comes their way and be able to manage and juggle. Because as busy moms, we're managing and juggling all the time and we're in burnout and overwhelm.

Yep. So what's funny saying that is all of my kids are wired differently. So my 16 year old Ellie, she is looking at that like I don't. Her brain works differently. My son Jack also has a house. He had his bar mitzvah last year. And Ellie works, you know, well, she only has one job now, but she had two jobs that she'd work. She will clean apartments or houses for me. She babysits like she is motivated by the dollar and she wants to keep her rental property. Whereas my son Jack, who's 15, he.

Wants the quick fix.

I'm telling him, I'm like, you need to get out of the house and go get a job. You're old enough now, like, it's, it's time. Because he never has any money. And he's like, mom. He's like, why would I go get a job, you know, making 10, 11 bucks an hour when I can just sell my house when I'm 18 and I'll have, you know, 30, $40,000. He's like, so it's, it's kind of backfired a little bit with, with him that way, but it's, he's just smart enough to realize how much the home will appreciate and, and, and whatnot. So. But he's gonna go get a job.

You're like, he's getting a job. I don't care. You need to work. Okay, so I love this. Like, so you got out of the real estate, you sold the portfolio. What did you do in between? Like, okay, so you saw the portfolio. I know you got back into it because of your daughter. It kind of reignited the fire in the real estate world. But what were you doing in between that time of when you sold your portfolio and then you, you started back up again with your daughter?

Not a lot. I. Not a lot. I was going to do a 1031 exchange. So after. So I bought the storage units, and then when I sold the storage units, I was going to do a 1031 exchange.

Okay, so, so what's a, what's a 1031 exchange? Just so people know what that is. Yep.

A 1031 exchange is. So if I. Again, I'll just use easy numbers. So say I sold the storage units for a million bucks and I made a $400,000 profit off of it. If I go buy like, kind property so I could go buy an investment, you know, like a, an apartment complex or a bigger set of storage units or something that was income producing, I could defer my capital gains on that. So I make $400,000, I go buy another property. I don't have to pay taxes on that 400,000 and you can keep. It's a great way to continue to build equity. And instead of, you know, paying the government, you know, 33, 40% of it, you know, whatever it ends up being, you can keep that, that equity and, you know, just reinvest.

Do you have to buy. Okay, so you profit $400,000. Do you have to buy a property that is higher value than what you profited or like to, to use a 1031 exchange so you not have to.

But whatever, whatever you put in your pocket, like cash wise, you're going to pay taxes on it, Right?

Right. No, I understand that. But if, let's say I make $400,000, I want to buy a million dollar property, I want a 1031 exchange. Am I deferring that full $400,000?

As long as you put that $400,000 into the next property that you're buying.

So I would have to do that four, well, 400 as a down payment. Correct.

You could take. So 400,000. Say you want to put a hundred thousand in your pocket and only put $300,000 down on the next deal, you're going to defer your taxes on that 300,000. The hundred thousand you put into your pocket, you're going to pay taxes on that.

Got it? Okay. Okay. So if you just fully put whatever profit you make into the next property, then you can do the full 10:31 exchange. Nice. Okay, so we did, so you did a 1031 exchange with your storage unit?

No, I did not. I ended up buying a life insurance policy that, you know, like I had mentioned earlier, had a cash value because I didn't know what I wanted to do and I didn't want to just go, you know, buy something to buy something. So I paid my taxes on it. And then I bought into this life insurance policy and got that line of credit. And now that I'm, you know, I probably went a year and a half, two years without buying anything. But now that I'm ready to buy, I, it was a good way for me to have a life insurance policy for my children. It was a good way for me to, you know, I'll be able. This certain life insurance policy I bought, it obviously has the line of credit on it, the cash value, and then it will also pay me back once I turn a certain age, you know, and if I don't turn that certain age, then my kids are just going to be doing very well. So it'll benefit me or it'll benefit them, you know, someone's gonna get the benefit.

Yeah, no, I, I, I think it's great. I think there's so many little nuggets in here too, because you're trying to, if you're trying to invest in real estate, there's different ways you can go about it. You can, you can get financial, you can use. What am I looking for? Like, more like get financially creative with borrowing money. You invested in a life insurance policy that you're able to take a line of credit on. And there's all these different ways that you, you can really go in and start in real estate. If you have A kid party, and you make some money off of it, or they make some money, you can get them into the investment. And it's really impressive. And I just really love the life skills that come with real estate, because, like you said, it's not just like your son just wants to sell and make his money and call it a day, but your daughter is like, oh, learning. Learning all the processes that come along with owning a business and owning real estate and being able to handle it. And I just. I think it's so beautiful. And I really want to honor you and being able to role model that and support your children in that way of really showing up and creating a life for them that brings them joy. So I just. I just really want to honor you on that. You're very. So. So talk to me a little bit about when things started to change for you. You got in a really bad car accident with a friend. And I don't want to bring us down this negative path, but I think it's really important to show how we can. We can come out of the negative biases we have on ourselves.

Yeah. So I was. I've always been kind of like a free spirit or whatever, but my. After my senior year of high school, I was. I really didn't want to go to college, but I was told I was going to college, and so I was going to go up to Iowa State. And that summer between high school and college, about 10 days before school started, I was with a friend of mine, and it was the middle of the night. We were in a fast sports car, and we were on a backcountry road, and he wanted to see how fast he could go. And he could go very fast. And we ended up crashing, and he ultimately ended up passing away. He did not make it. And so it was just like, I couldn't believe that that had just happened. And I walked out of the accident with not a scratch on me. I had some gasoline burns under my eye because the car flipped and whatnot, but I literally walked away without anything. And so I just remember being at the hospital. Hospital, and his parents lived in Omaha, and so they had to drive in, knowing that their son had passed away. And when they showed up at the hospital, they're just the sweetest people. They came up and just gave me such a big hug and said, you know, we're so thankful that it was him who passed away and not you, because he never would have been able to live with himself. And I just. Like, I was 18, and at the time, I just Remember thinking, if I do not do something productive with my life or live my life or whatever, I will not be honoring these people. And it just sort of changed my mentality. It just. It didn't sort of. It really changed my mentality. And so I ended up, you know, going up to Iowa State. And I just. I didn't like college. I didn't want to be at college. I wanted to be by the ocean and surfing every morning and. And I just wanted to work. And so I decided just to quit college and drove out to San Diego. Just moved out there. I ended up getting a job crewing on yachts, like privately owned yachts. And then, yeah, just. It kind of all. It just like I was kind of following my heart instead of following what the smart path was, because I had no idea, you know, once I was done surf with my surfing venture or whatever, like, what was I gonna do with my life because. Because I wouldn't have a college degree. And 20 years ago, you needed a college degree to get a good job. Yeah. So it just. Basically, it turned into. My first job out in San Diego was waiting tables at a place called Sammy's Wood Fired Pizza. And I met this gal who used to come in every day. She's like, hey, why don't you come work for me at the staffing agency? And so I went to go work for her, and I was making like $15 an hour, which was again, like, at that time, that's the most money I had ever made. I was used to making like $9 an hour. And then I moved to a new place in San Diego, and my neighbor owned a staffing agency that placed crew onto private yachts. And so it was the same line of work. It just. It was like everything just kind of was falling into place. So she asked me to come work for her. I went and did that. And then I saw all these job orders coming across my desk. You know, they needed a stewardess or a deckhand or, you know, something. And I just asked, I'm like, liz, can I please go work on one of these yachts for just like six months? So I know what it is. I'm doing, like what I'm staffing here. And she's like, yeah, why don't you go take a short term job? And so I. My first job, we were San Diego down to Mexico, down to Costa Rica, went through the Panama Canal, and then back up the other side. And I loved it so much. The owner of the yacht was from Arizona, and he developed one of the first Retirement communities down there. So you can imagine how much money he made. And I used to just sit up every night and just talk to him about, how did you do this deal? What do you. You know, just. It was like the connections I was making, you know, kind of. I just was getting a different set of knowledge than I would have gotten in college. And. And I liked it. I enjoyed it. I was listening. I was absorbing everything. And, yeah, I just. I decided in Ed Ropes. Ed is his name. Ed Robeson. He did not have a college degree. He just had a good idea. And so I decided I could just have good ideas someday. And I never went back to college.

It's so interesting. I feel like entrepreneurs don't. I mean, I'm not saying all entrepreneurs, but a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't go to college. True. Because there's, like, a passion. There's this light that it. There's like a fire that lights you up to it. And there's also this, like, I'm gonna prove everybody wrong that they thought about me. There's like this, oh, you don't think I can do it? Watch me. Yeah, right, right. Watch, watch. I'm gonna have six kids and be a very successful business owner. I'm gonna do it. And it's empowering. And. But. But the building part, and we didn't really talk about that, so I'm in the process of building my coaching business, and it's a lot. And it's a lot of hours, and it's a lot of energy, and with no money. Right. So you're doing all this work and you feel like, at least for me, and I don't know if this resonates with you, but. But you're doing this work. You're growing. You're. The friends that you have aren't really getting it where you are because they're. Maybe they're partying or maybe they're staying the same, and maybe they're not growing. So you're in a different space of growth and education, and you're learning and you're consuming the content, and you're getting educated and you're meeting the people and you're traveling the world and you're trying to absorb all this information, but you're not quite in that success category where you can be with that new group of friends who are maybe the multimillionaires or whatever success looks like for you. So you're just in this very lonely, lonely place because you don't fit in with your old friends, but you're not at the success to fit in the new friends yet. And that's kind of where I am right now. It's like, okay, like here I am trying to build, build, build, build, build. But then what I did here was, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get there, as long as you get there. And I love this because my gap feels so big right now of, okay, how do I get from, you know, where I am to where I want to be? But just little increments, little 1% efforts, every single day is going to add up. So in five years from now and five years from now for your kids, they're going to be so much further along because they're putting in the effort or because I'm putting in the effort and you're just shifting those 1% to be 1% better every single day. You're going to get there. So anyone who's listening, who's feeling stuck or like, I can't buy real estate, I can't do this, I can't do that. It's whatever you're telling yourself, that's what's going to happen. You have to believe it's possible. And when your friend passed away and you got to live, you knew, wait, now I have, I have possibility in my life. Who am I going to live for? I'm going to live for myself. I'm going to make, I'm going to make him proud. I'm going to show up, I'm going to do everything I can to live my life to the fullest. And it is just such an honor to be able to recognize that you're able to do that and really persevere. And I know you have this love for travel. You, you worked on the yachts, you, you met some impressive people. And now I know you mentioned you were going to bring your daughter to Indonesia.

Yes. So, yes, my kids all have the travel bug which, you know, I, I hope that if they take one thing away, I hope that, that they realize that it's a big world out there and they should go see it all. So, yeah, I've, I've taken, this is my 16 year old daughter, we went over to, I took all my daughters over to Paris last April on just a little girls trip and that was super fun. I took them to like Israel and Egypt. I took my son and my daughter who had a bar and Bat mitzvah over there, just, you know, as like a, as a gift to them. And then my daughter just told me my 16 year old last summer, she's like, mom, I want to go teach English to children that don't know how to speak it. And I'm thinking, okay. And so I just didn't think she would follow through with it. And I said, if you can find the program, I will help you get there, so you can go do it. And so next day, she, she comes downstairs with all this information she had printed out, and she found Indonesia to go to go to Bali. And it was a program. She knew how much it cost, all that stuff. And I said, there's, first of all, there's no way I'm gonna let her go to Indonesia by herself. But I said, I will. I'll go over there with you. You're gonna have to buy your own plane ticket. You're gonna have to, you know, get, get into the program, get a plane ticket. She learned how to line and get a plane ticket. She learned how to, you know, register herself for this stuff. You know, I'm having her figure out how to get from the airport to where we're going and the logistics of everything. And then I'm gonna go travel while she's working. My husband's gonna go over with me, too. But it's again, it's like, I don't want the world to be a scary place for them. I want them to have the confidence of I can rock up in a country where they really don't speak English. Like, it's, it's, it's not like, you know, going over to Paris where a lot of people speak English, like, you're, you're going to a third world country. And I want them to know how to get through an airport and find their gate and, you know, just little things like that. So, yeah, we're going to go over to Indonesia. We leave here and two, two weeks to the day, spend a couple weeks over there. And yeah.

So I love. How long is this program?

Her program is 10 days.

Okay. Okay. I love that. I mean, what a, what a valuable, I mean, what an. You're just such an amazing mom. Like, I, I, I just love everything you're doing and everything you're showing up for, and I want to be like you. And I hope to inspire my son to travel and to learn the skills and to even learn some entrepreneurship. Even if they don't want to be an entrepreneur, they. You learn the skills to create this in your life. And, and again, I'm going to say it again, just the more resilient you can be, the happier you're going to be. And I Know, as moms, we want our kids to be happy and, and the way you do that is through creating resilience for them. So Jill, where can people find you if they want to connect with you? If they want any tips, they want any advice on real estate or traveling or whatever is hitting you up? Where can people find you?

People are always welcome to call me. Do you want me to give my cell phone number?

I'll put her phone number in the show notes.

Okay. So people are always welcome to call me. I have started a property management company called Best Property Management and they can log on to the website if they'd like. That's www.bpm DSM. So like Best Property Management, des moines.com and my email's on there. They can reach out to me on Instagram or Facebook. Jill Sarcone is all you got to type in. And yeah, you can just reach out to me. I love helping people get into deals, so I would be more than happy to help anybody.

I think it's great. I'm so excited. And you're also really quickly before we, we close off, you're starting another business, right? Creating a, for, for midterm rentals, basically. Is that right? And want to create a platform for people who are traveling for short term and finding them housing.

Yeah, short term housing, you know, for like an Airbnb, like a vacation that those that's really easy to find but for people that are traveling for work that want a little more just something a little bit different. There's really only one or two platforms out there right now that, that do that. And so looking to basically start a company that, that places people into short term housing without a it. Short term housing that's fully furnished that allows them to have the flexibility with their job. You know, they might have a 12 week job that only lasts nine weeks. And so they need landlords that are flexible with them, you know, on that time frame. You know, some of these people want to have a whole house. Some of these people only want to rent one room. You know, they're just, are all different price points. And so, yeah, just trying to put that platform together right now.

Yeah, I love creating opportunities for, for other people. It feels so good inside, right? You're like, oh, I gotta create. I helped you create an opportunity. And I don't know, there's just so much those kind of things light me up. And it sounds like it lights you up as well. So if you could give one tip, one takeaway for our listeners, something they can do in their Life to create more. More joy. What would that be?

I would say take the trip. Like, figure out a way. I listen to so many people and take the trip. Doesn't necessarily have to mean traveling. It can mean with your business venture or with, you know, just like, go on the experience and do it. I've listened to so many people, you know, talk about what they want to do, and if they spent half as much time just doing it, they'd be successful. Instead of just, just talking about it, do it.

Right. It's like imagine if all that time you spent talking about it, actually doing it, how much more fulfillment you would have in your life. Yeah.

Yeah. And some of them work out and some of them don't, but it's all, you know, you just, you learn from everything and just do it. Yep.

We always, we read this book, sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. And it is so valuable in life. Right? Like failure. Not failure. Failure is knowledge. Failure is empowerment. And it's just keep doing it. Keep throwing mud on the wall and you will find your way and you will find what sticks and create the life of your dreams.

100%.

Well, thank you so much, Jill. It has been such a wonderful conversation. I love everything you shared and I can't wait to connect with you again.

Nope. Thank you for having me.

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