Ep. 70 How To Find Your Bliss Through Real Estate With Moneeka Sawyer

Welcome to the Next Level Income Show. It's our goal to raise your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. You can get a free copy of our book@nextlevelincome.com just click on the book link. Also, if you're an accredited investor, check out the Invest link to learn more about our Self storage fund as well as other institutional quality real estate opportunities. You're in for a treat. Today, Monica Sawyer is going to share how you can choose bliss and use real estate to help you achieve true happiness in your life. Monica Sawyer is the blissful millionaire. She reached her financial freedom by turning $10,000 to over $5,000,000. Working only 5 to 10 hours per month with very little stress, she is now on a mission to help as many other women as she can do the same. Today's show is sponsored by the Airbnb Kickstart course. My wife and I started our first Airbnb here in the last year and we've come to love the ability to earn more money than we would if we had a long term rental. If you're interested in starting your Airbnb business with little money, scaling your Airbnb business, or just learning tricks about the industry in general, check out our airbnb course@nextlevelincome.com Airbnb that's Air. The letters BNB Air and you'll get a 20% discount code. Monica, welcome to the show.

Hello there, Chris. So nice to see you again.

Oh, great to see you as well. I had such a blast on your podcast. I love your energy and I just, I told you, I just had to have you on our show and share your story with our listeners and our audience. And for those that don't know your amazing story, maybe you could share a little bit about how you came to be the blissful investor you are today.

Yeah. So there's kind of two stories that marry when I was 21, but I'll just do the real estate one now and we'll get to the other one. But basically, my story in real estate began when I was three years old.

Three years old.

My parents came to this country as immigrants and newlyweds. They had just had an arranged marriage and they had $200 in their pocket. And my dad had heard that the golden ticket to wealth in the United States was to buy real estate. So that was their ambition. And so then when I was born, you know how parents are, right? New parents are filled with love and joy and hope, and they want to give me the very best life possible. So they started saving all their nickels and dimes. And then when I was three, they bought their very first rental property. And of course they were focusing on cash flow, but also in the California market, there was a lot of appreciation. Focus. So fast forward 15 years. Now I'm 18 and they pay for my college education through real estate. They did the same for my two sisters. Isn't that awesome? So they did the same for my two sisters. And I got through college, I went to tc, Berkeley, came out during a recession. And I remember being so filled with fear, like, how was I going to get by? How was I going to do this adulting thing? And I thought about real estate. But I kind of was like, no, thank you. Because although I had seen what it could do for our family, I'd also seen my dad having sleepless nights because rent's not coming in. Getting calls at 2 o' clock in the morning for the toilets. Right. We've all heard these horror stories. Well, I lived it with my dad and. And so I was like a no, thank you. My focus since I was a very little girl was to live this idea of bliss. And we'll get into that in a little bit. I did not want something in my life for the long term because I viewed real estate as a long term career. Right. Even as an investor, I viewed it as a long term thing. I didn't want something in my life long term that was going to make me miserable. So I was like, no, thank you, I don't want in. And I remember night was sitting with my dad at the dinner table and I was scared. And he said something to me that night that changed my life. He said to me, you know, Monica, everybody has fear, everybody has stress, and everybody has money issues. Do you want poor people money issues or do you want rich people money issues.

That's so good. Wow.

And of course my first thought was, rich people have money issues. What? You know, they're just better money issues.

Sometimes bigger, sometimes better.

Yeah, that's right. Anyway, so at that moment I decided, okay, if I was going to have stress in my life anyways, let's pick my poison. So I did head into the real estate path. And over time, my focus translated into that business, which is why I'm now called the Blissful Millionaire. Because I've streamlined my business and created systems so that my life can be truly blissful. So that's kind of how my journey has been. Does that make sense?

Oh, it's so good. I was just telling somebody that the other day, like, you're going to have problems. You want rich people problems, you want poor people problems. And I think Robert Kiyosaki says something like that too. And you said it, and it's true. The other expression I like is that if you can write a check for something, you don't have a problem anymore for that.

That's right.

So I love how you can take a different look at it. So was your dad's career 100% real estate or did he do something else? Was he.

No, it was just his side hustle. So my dad was an engineer, my mom was a doctor, and they ran this business. They had some point, I think. My dad had 22 doors. He always bought nice homes in the Silicon Valley. And I've followed that path. I do executive home, but he has nice homes with large rents. And he just did that as a side hustle. And for me, to be really honest, like you talked about in my bio, I five to 10 hours a month, that is not. Was never, until recently, my main job. It was just my side hustle. I was in corporate, I was coaching, I was doing all this other stuff. And this thing just kind of made me rich on the side. I mean, it's amazing. That's the thing about real estate. It can kind of just make you rich on the side without thinking about it. I mean, you think about it a little bit, but you know what I mean, it's not like this obsessive thing.

Yeah, that's a terrific way to talk about it. And for me, for you, it's turned into something a little bit bigger than a side hustle. But you can still go back to that and do it, which is wonderful. So many people, the people I coach, it's like, how do you take this and turn this into another passive or active stream of income, depending on how it is. So you said you started with $10,000 and turned into $5 million. Let's hear a little bit more about that.

So you know that I graduated during a recession. I had no money.

And Was this like 2000? When was this exactly?

We're not going to talk about that. I'm an old lady.

I graduated. Okay, well, I'll stop you there. I apologize for that. But I graduated in recession too. But I was scared at first with real estate as well, because both my parents lost their jobs in the recession because they were both in the real estate industry in the early 90s. And that was the first time it kind of hit me. And I'm like, well, this isn't good. So I can relate a little bit, but I'm sorry, continue.

That's okay. That's okay. Well, now that you know my age, I can actually go back. Yeah. So in 1987 or 89, when the laws changed for non owner occupied homes, the tax breaks changed. I don't remember what year it was.

I think it was 87, but don't hold me to that. Anybody?

So my dad completely freaked out too. I mean, he had to readjust his whole real estate business. And you know, this is true. Real estate goals, laws change, it's still a good investment. And I think this is the thing that I really got from my dad, is that you have to be resourceful and be able to pivot. Don't just expect that everything's going to be taken care of. The government's going to take care of you. You know what I mean? Like, you have to be resourceful, you have to be a little bit flexible. And you need to. And this where bliss comes in. You keep a level, your level emotionally and mentally so you can make good decisions and pivot. And actually, quickly, before I answer your question, forgive me, I'm on a tangent, but let me explain bliss. Is that okay, what I mean?

Oh, absolutely. Because I say people think that, like, if I'm successful, I'll be happy. If I find the right person, I'll be happy. If I find the right job, I'll be happy. But I like to say you have to be happy first, and then you'll be successful and have what you want. And that's one of the reasons I wanted you on to talk about bliss and what it means to you and your business.

Yeah, thank you for that. I always tell people we can't control what happens outside of us, but we must control what happens inside of us. That's where bliss comes from. And so bliss, from my perspective, is a deep sense of joy and contentment and the confidence that you can handle anything that comes your way. So it's really about emotional mastery and emotional resilience. And so when we talk about real estate, what does that have to do with bliss? Well, Warren Buffett says, if you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.

Ooh, terrific line.

Right? So bliss is such an integral part of building a business and also having that business not take over your life. You want it to be a joyful experience. Everything you do, you want to support that and have that bliss support it. Right. It's a circular thing. So that's really kind of my perspective on how I built my business and why I've done it the way that I have. But to answer your question, so I decided to go into real estate. I made very, very little money, started saving 10% of that. Have you read the book the Richest man in Babylon?

I have, yeah. And I think it's on my bookshelf back there. It's one of the few I keep a hard time.

I love it. Yeah, it's tiny, right? It's like this big. Really changed my life. I was saving 10% and so then I met the guy who's now my husband and he had a very similar. So when we got married for gifts, we asked for money and then we took all of that money. We didn't buy a car, TV or sofa, we bought a house. So that's how we got started in your Mary residence. We put 5% down. You can put as low as three and a half percent. Right? We put 5% down and we bought our very first place. You get lower rates, you have to fill out. It's just better. It's a write off, right? So we were paying less than our mortgage than we would have in rent. So it was great. So we did that. Within four years, that house would appreciate enough that we could take out the equity in that house and buy another one. So we upgraded to a nicer home, decided to rent this one out. So we took an equity line, use that as a down payment, bought the next place. Now that one appreciated. And I took out another equity line and I bought houses. But you can kind of see how this goes, right? That's actually how the thing built. So it's not like I was on it constantly. My beginning to end to retirement happened in about 15 to 20 years. But if I had really been on it, like watched every single, oh my gosh, we could do it right now and been really on it. I probably could have done it faster, but for me it was kind of, I call it the lazy woman's way to real estate. Right. It just kind of waited for things to appreciate and I kept my real estate money in real estate.

I love it. And that's again, our stories come from totally different backgrounds, totally different coasts, and yet we had a very similar strategy. I did a very similar thing. But you mentioned you focused on executive properties. And I actually, when I was reading, when I was preparing, I was like, I don't remember us talking about this when I was on your show. Can you share what do you mean by an executive property? Because that's Something that's. I don't hear that thrown around very much.

Yeah, so I didn't start there. Okay. This is how my strategy sort of happened. So David and I bought a nice home in a decent neighborhood. It was not the end game. This is something to remember when you buy your first home. This is not your end game. This is your starter home. Buy some that will increase in value. Location is important, but it being the perfect home for you is not right. So we bought a home that worked for us. We house hacked. We rent a bedroom so we could pay the mortgage, and then when we moved out, we bought a nicer home for ourselves, and we rented.

So you guys were renting. So you were married and you were renting a bedroom out.

Yes, we were. That's the only way we could afford it.

There you go. So if you're. If you're listening. Yes. If you're listening and you're married, you're like, oh, we don't want to do this. These are some of the things you can sacrifice and make big gains.

That's right. And it was only for a short period of time. We only had to rent a room out for two years. So two years out of. We've been married now 27 years. So the first two years, we made a little bit of sacrifice. Right. But it was worth it because we could own that home, and that started our career. Right. And that's what's retired us with multiple millions of dollars. Right. Okay. So we started there, and then I took the equity, bought a nicer home for us, and I rented that one out. One of the things I realized with that one, even though it was a nice home in a good location, I was now renting to people, and I did not like the people that were interested in the house. It's not that I didn't like them. They were great. But they were not the kind of people I wanted to do business with. I was an executive. And so with them, they were constantly, like, breaking the lease. There was no pets. They'd get pets. There was no this. They wouldn't pay rent. Right. Because there was this impression there was a differential between us and you. Right. We are poor. We have to rent. You're rich. Look at all these houses. You've got differential. And you saw that differential show up in the way that they took care of the house and the way that they treated me. And I was so, like, over it. Interestingly, I sold that house because I was like, I don't want to be dealing with this. My Husband was like, you are going to regret that. And I did. We bought it for 200. It's now worth one point. Whatever.

I know. It's like you never. Yeah, you always regret the properties. It's like you always want to. You own as much as possible.

Yeah. So anyway, so that was one of the things I learned that was not blissful for me. A decision that I was going to start doing business with people that I liked doing business with, that would treat me with respect, would treat my homes with respect. And as I evaluated that, I felt like the people that I had the most rapport or with were people like me, they were executives. So I made a decision that the homes that I rented from now on to be houses that people enjoyed who were executives. So I chose the renter first. Right. We talk about a marketing avatar. It was my tenant avatar. And then started to purchase houses that they would like to live in. So that's how I chose it. So they're mostly. Not all, but they're mostly executive homes. But I will say that even the ones that are not executive homes, entrepreneur have been there, which is interesting. Right. Because they still have very much that same mentality that I have. Right.

Yeah, I love that. And I think the lesson is I talk to different investors, I talk to people in strategy calls, coaching clients, and everybody, they say, oh, I want to do what you do. I said, well, let's talk a little bit more about your background. Fuquan, a friend of mine was just on the podcast here a few episodes ago. He focuses on Section 8 housing and it's totally different than what we're talking about. And he's super, super successful, but he's very comfortable in that niche. He likes those kind of hairier projects. And he just bought. I have to go back and listen to podcast. He paid like $10,000 a door or something for this project. So obviously in this market where they're selling for $100,000, $200,000 a door, there's a lot of upside there. So again, like you said initially, if you master your emotions, if you have good self understanding and know what you like and where your talents are and where your background is, you can make money in all kinds of areas of real estate. Monica, you've written three books and I've only written one, so I feel a little like I got some catching up to do. But maybe you could tell us about the inspiration for each of those. Is Choose Bliss, your latest book? That's the one I have here.

I haven't Choose Bliss Is my original book.

That's your original one. Got it. Well, that's the one I have. So maybe you could share with the audience your three books, kind of who they're written for and why you chose to write them.

Yeah. So Choose Bliss was original because I had been a Life coach for 15 years, and there was only so many people I could coach personally. There was only so many people I could reach. I had discovered. So I was an executive life coach. You can tell this is kind of like the kind of people that I like to get along with. Right. So as an executive life coach and what I found, we called in because businesses were suffering. And what I would find is that it wasn't the business was suffering, but the really big issue was these guys, because in those days, it was all men. Things unfortunately changed now with these guys, even though they had, like, the amazing business and the amazing house and the beautiful wife and the cute kids and the dog, and they were miserable. Right. And so they had their inspiration for their businesses. And so I came in and taught them how to be happy, how to make that life the dream life that they were really looking for. It wasn't the stuff. Right. It was what was happening inside of them that was not satisfied. So I trained them on that changed so many lives around. And I realized that I wanted to get this to a bigger audience. And so that's when I wrote Choose Bliss to take all of those strategies that had worked in my own life and worked for my executive clients, put them in a book, and get them out into the world. So that's what this was written for. It came out at a time there was an election going on, and there was a lot of frustration on both sides. And that's always true. Election. There's all of this stuff. So I traveled the world during that time to help people, to stabilize. Right. It's always so challenging every four years. So it got a huge reception. I got to talk. I got incredible amounts of fan mail and questions. And one of the questions that I got most was, Nika, how can you be blissful when you're broke? Right. When you've got poor people problems?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And I realized that I had already taken care of that. Like, my dad had already set me on that path. I wasn't rich, but I knew I could take care of myself. I never doubted my own capacity to take care of myself, take good care of myself, get the medical care that I need, do the things that I need in life. And so that's when I decided you know what? I've got this expertise in teaching people how to be blissful. I've got this expertise in real estate, and that's why I married the two. And I started my podcast, Real Estate Investing for Women. And then I noticed, like, there are a lot of people that don't listen to podcasts, but they're still interested in. In the conversation. Right. And so that's why I created the book Real Estate Investing for Women. It's a compilation of the guests that got the most listens and got the most response from my audience. So that's why I put that together. And then there's another book called you'd're Amazing. Itty Bitty Blissful Real Estate Investing.

Yeah, I like that. I'm looking at it right now.

It's so cute. A publisher, the Amazing Itty Bitty Publishing company, requested that I put one together. And so that's why I wrote that one. And I have to say it's amazing because I often will work with realtors and they give this book out. It's so concise. Like, it gives you so much of, like, what I do and what I think and how to be blissful. Like, and it's 35 pages or something, so I'll read that.

I can do 35 pages for sure.

On top of that, right? Yeah, exactly.

And if you're listening, we're going to show you how to get Monica's. It's got a free download. What I did to build my million dollar real estate portfolio. We're going to put that in the notes as well and put that in there along with links to all these. And no, I think it's amazing, like your story that you've married the two. And look, I spent 18 years in the medical device industry. You mentioned guys. Like I say guys because I'm from kind of the northeast, Maryland, it's above Virginia.

I figured you're like, I say guys too.

Yeah, we say guys, but it really was guys. And the medical industry has been dominated by men. And the world has changed a lot in the last 10 years. And again, it's amazing that anybody, male, female, rich, poor, you can start off with a couple thousand dollars in any background and end up a multimillionaire, which is why I love your story. All right, so you've written three books, executive coach, real estate investor, traveled around the world. How do you balance it all? And does your bliss get stretched sometimes trying to do that?

It does. And that's the thing that I think there's a false perception that bliss me happy all the time. Bliss means that you're deeply content, that you have a predisposition to being joyful, but it doesn't mean that you don't have problems, challenges. It doesn't mean that you don't have access to the full emotional range. I get really angry, really depressed at times, really overwhelmed. I also get euphoric. And anytime that you're on either end of those ranges, it's distracting. Right. So bliss is what I call our home base. That's where you want to come back to and live most of the time. And so, yes, of course, I get stretched. And when I get stretched, I start to look at what is it that I'm doing that's working and readjust. There's a funny word that you used, Chris. Balance. I don't actually believe in balance because balance is two different things. There's too many parts of our life that require tension, right?

Absolutely.

Bliss is where you're spending the most of your time doing things that bring you joy. And that is going to change in different parts of your life. Right. When you're younger, you might be more emphasis on your career, then you want to have a family, and there's more emphasis on your children. And then you're retiring and you're like, oh, I kind of want to just travel. Right. Or preparing for that. Right. Or getting the kids through school or whatever. Like, our lives change, our priorities change. Always understand what your core values are. Those don't change. Well, they might change a little bit. Right. But your top 10 are going to stay in the top five or top 10. They just may move around a little bit based on your sort of life circumstance. Right. Like I phases of life. Right. Do you have young children? Do you have kids going to college? All of those things. Right. So you want to know what your core values are. You want to build a life around those core values. And when you start to notice you're off balance, like it's not feeling good, you're not blissful, you're not wanting to go to work, in earning, we're going to bed early, whatever. You're taking afternoon naps because you're depressed. I do that. You take a look at that and say, what is it that's not aligning with me? How have I changed? How is this not aligning with my core values? This is actually really hard because most people don't live their life that way. And most people don't respect, like, they don't understand why suddenly you're starting to say no. To things that you used to say yes to. Right. And the people that you love. Conversations. It does, right? So the people you love, hopefully you can have conversations and they'll adjust with you. There's some flow. There's a lot of people that aren't going to be okay with it. Your career might have to change. Right. So, yes, those emotions, that emotional range is there to guide you. It's as if they're messengers for you. Pay attention. This is what's going on. So you look at those things, you adjust, and then you come back to your bliss. Equilibrium.

That's awesome. So look, you guys just got a. You guys. There you go. Just got a free coaching session from the pro here. And thanks for pointing out, because I like to say that too, like whether you're an athlete. Whatever it is we do as human beings, we're not always in perfect equilibrium. Balance. We're eating, we're not eating, we're awake, we're resting, we're training hard, we're taking days off. And that's how we're built to be. So, yeah, that idea of balance is really a bit of a misnomer, and it throws people off because they think that everything's always supposed to be the same. And really, that's not how we're designed to live as humans, let alone just in the world we live in today. So we talked about your books, your career a little bit, your investing, your podcast. Monika, if people want to get in touch with you, if they want to learn more about any of those things, what's the best way to find you?

Yeah, you can find all of it@blinvestor.com blissfulinvestor.com so that'll have. Yeah, that has the download at the top of the page. So that's how you can get sort of my story really transparent of where I started. I bought a house just before the crash in 2001. I bought another house just before the crash in 2008. Still, I've been very successful in industry, and I want people to really understand you don't have to be perfect. You just have to be consistent. And you get to see that through that download. You can actually take that as a manual and create your own business out of it so that download is available. Then you also get to see my podcast. The books are down at the bottom, so you get to know there's some coursework on there. I just released a TedX. Hopefully that'll be up soon.

Oh, awesome.

So I know you know what the TEDX is called I want to know. It's who is the boss of you? I just love it.

Yeah, that's good. And that goes to the core of talking about bliss and mastering your emotions and doing that. All right, so you have all this experience working with executives. You've been around the world talking to millions of people. If you can go back and give yourself advice at 25, what would it be?

Keep going. Don't give in to your fear. Pay attention. See what it's trying to tell you, but keep going.

Beautiful. I'm going to leave it at that. Monica, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your story with our audience. You can learn more about Monica her story@blissfulinvestor.com and we're going to have all the links in the show notes for you to check out. Thank you so much. Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.

Sam.