Ep. 76 Retiring At 27 Through Passive Income With The Money Honey Rachel Richards

Foreign welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to raise your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host Chris Larson and get your free copy of our book@nextlevelincome.com, just click on the Book link. If you put your address in, I'll even send you a free copy. Also, if you're an accredited investor, check out our Invest link. Here you can learn how to gain access to our new Self Storage Fund as well as other institutional quality real estate opportunities. Retired 27 making only $36,000 a year from your day job? Don't think it's possible you're going to want to listen to the Money Honey Rachel Richards in this episode to learn how she ran retired at 27 after only making $36,000 a year in her W2 role. Today's show is sponsored by Money Insights and their Investment Optimizer strategy. In my book, I share how I use the same strategy starting over a decade ago to invest my money in two places at one time. This strategy has been used by the wealthiest for generations for estate planning, minimizing taxes, preserving wealth, and increasing stability for their investments. Now you can do the same thing. In addition, you can build a plan to build an emergency fund, pay for college, fund a business plan for retirement, and ultimately optimize your total financial picture. To find out more information, check us out at the banking link@nextlevelincome.com at the age of 27, Rachel Richards quit her job and retired, living off $15,000 per month in passive income. Rachel is the bestselling author of Money Honey and Passive Income Aggressive Retirement. She built a real estate portfolio of 38 rental units by the age of 26. She's a former financial advisor and has been featured in CNN as well as Business Insider. By making the topic of money management fun, entertaining and simple, Rachel has helped thousands of millennials work their way out of financial despair. Rachel, welcome to the show.

Hey Chris, thanks for having me.

Absolutely. And I'm so happy we finally got to catch up. You got to tell the audience you've been traveling around the country for how many months now?

I know. I think five or six months now.

Wow. So for those of you that aren't familiar with Rachel, we met, we talked, I don't know, probably about six months ago, and Rachel's telling me, hey, we're selling our house and we're just going to travel for the next four or five months. And I was like, that is amazing. So tell the audience a little bit about your travels and how you got to do it.

Yeah, so I grew up in Kentucky and then we moved to Colorado Springs about a year and a half ago, lived there for a year and then we just decided there we had that we both work remote and we have this opportunity where we could just travel around the country and we could do it right now. And so what better time to do it than when we were working remote and kind of during COVID and we don't have kids, so we decided to do it. We sold half of our stuff and put half of it in storage and we sold my car and so everything that fit into my husband's pickup truck is what we took with us. And we have been living in Airbnbs for basically the last six months and we went all around the west coast and it was definitely an amazing adventure.

Oh, I love that. So, so many people are listening and are like, oh, I'd love to do that, but I can't do that because I've not traveled that long. But I did a three week trip into the Grand Canyon a few years ago and I was so nervous before the trip. I was afraid like to be able to check my emails like, like what's going to happen? Was it nerve wracking, like getting prepared.

For that A little bit. We didn't change our lifestyle a ton, so we were both working the whole time. It's not like we took six months off of work or anything. So he works remote, I worked remote. We still had WI fi and everything in our Airbnbs. We weren't going into any super remote areas, so our lifestyle kind of stayed the same. But I will say I think a lot of people see other people traveling around the company and they're like, oh my gosh, that's so glamorous. That's amazing. And I wish I could do that. There were definitely aspects of it that were not glamorous and that were super stressful. And I don't know if we just had bad luck with our VRBOs and Airbnbs or something, but something went wrong at every single place that we stayed at. So yeah, like arriving and the weather was in the 90s and the AC was broken, like that happened at two of them or arriving and we were locked out and we couldn't check in and like, so they, they had to find us a place to stay for the night. So just things like that happen over and over again. I think we had bad luck but after a while it just became stressful feeling like we didn't know what we were walking into. So it did get old after a while, but obviously still so grateful we got to experience that.

Yeah, no, that's amazing. And yeah, I love what you said before the show. You're like, Andrew and I are pretty tired of Airbnbs. We're just ready to be home.

Yeah. You have to share the realistic side of things as well. It's, you know, all what it appears.

To be for somebody who used to spend 70 to 80 days or 80 nights in a hotel a year. Yeah, it's like, you know what, it's nice to have your own bed and do that. Yeah. We have a couple Airbnbs and we unfortunately we had a leak from one of the toilets. Brand new house, the toilet leaks. It shorted out the hot water heater. So here we are going on vacation and we're half an hour away from the house. Fortunately, we were able to turn around, but, yeah, we had to call an emergency plumber. So.

Oh, man.

If you're listening and you're like, that's why I don't own real estate. You know, there's advantages and disadvantages and there's ways you can, you can be a passive investor. But Rachel, we talked about in the intro, 27 and retired, 27 and financially independent. What were you doing? How did you do it?

Yeah, our journey started with building passive income in 2017, and I was 24, 25 at the time. Before that, we didn't have really anything going for us except for a full time job. And by 2019, we built up a huge real estate portfolio. All this passive income. And I quit my job. And I always clarify because I get this question all the time. People always assume I'm a trust fund baby because we built this real estate portfolio so quickly. So I always tell people I'm not a trust fund baby. And I never made six figures from a job or a career. I started off only making $36,000 after college and then my next job I was making 32,000 and then my next job I was making 42,000. So by no means was I in this six figure, high paying job. But in 2017, early that year, we were both working full time, just normal jobs. We didn't have any other income. That year we purchased and invested in our first duplex. And this was in Louisville, Kentucky. The duplex was $100,000. So people in California are probably like, oh, my gosh, what are you talking about?

Yeah, their Tesla costs more than that.

Yeah, yeah. So that was obviously a Big advantage. It's just that we lived in Louisville, Kentucky, which is a very low cost of living place. It's an affordable place to invest. And I definitely recommend, if you do live in an expensive city, you need to be willing to invest out of state. And now that we have our rentals in Kentucky, we're traveling all over and living in Colorado. It is easier than I thought it would be to have to be a long distance landlord. So be willing to invest out of state. Now people ask, well, where did you come up with the down payment for that first duplex? So besides the fact that we lived in that city, which was affordable, we also both graduated without student debt, which was a huge advantage for us. I sold Cutco cutlery. Have you heard of Cutco knives?

Rachel? I sold Cutco.

You did? How did we not know this about each other?

I know, I know. And it was an amazing experience. People make fun of me sometimes, but yeah, it's like, it's like a fraternity or sorority, right? It's like people that sell Cutco get it. So you were doing that now, did you do that? You did that through college?

Yeah, right after I graduated from high school, I started selling knives. Mom hated that at first. I mean, she was not thrilled about the idea of me selling sharp objects to family and friends, but.

And it's kind of door to door, right?

Like a little bit. It's not strangers. It's all based on referrals. You ask, you know, your friends for recommendations. But yeah, I mean, you're going into people's houses and I can see, I can see.

I can see being a parent being a little.

Yeah, for sure.

A little nervous, but, yeah.

But once she saw how much money I was making, obviously then she was always super supportive and it was a great opportunity. So I paid my way through school on my own, graduated debt free. My husband's a veteran, so he used his military benefits to pay for school. So we both graduated debt free, which was a big advantage. And then the third thing that really helped us is that I had my real estate license, and that actually helped us scale later. So initially saving for the down payment, we were also just very frugal. So even though I wasn't making six figures, I saved like, half of my income. So even before I met Andrew and I was single, I was living off something like $1,500 a month. I was saving half of my $36,000 income. So even after just a few years, I had over $10,000 saved at a pretty young age. So by 2017, my husband and I each had 10 grand saved. We pooled that money together to get to our $20,000 down payment. And that's how we purchased that initial duplex. That's how we got started, and that's how the real estate investing began. And later in 2017, I self published my first book, Money Honey. And that was the other passive income stream. So we had the rental income, we had the royalty income. We focused on growing those two passive income streams as much as we could. And then by 2019, we had, I think it was 10 grand a month in passive income. That's when I quit my job and we counted ourselves as financially independent.

That is awesome. So listening to those lessons that you talk here, you say, you know, keep expenses low. That includes debt, like, have it, you know, and if you're a parent and you have children and you're considering this, these are valuable lessons, I think, as well, to kind of instill in them. Number two, and I talk about this in chapter three of my book, Shameless. Plug there, but have an opportunity fund. Have. Have a place to put your capital for it. And then number three, you had a side hustle, so you had another, as you were writing your book, another source of income aside from your job and the real estate that you did. I think those are. Those are three awesome lessons that you have there.

Yes. Thank you.

Let's go back to Cutco. And I don't. I just don't want to talk about Cutco, but I just finished another podcast, and it was with somebody who has a relationship with Robert Kiyosaki. We're talking about some of the lessons from rich dad, poor dad. And I think it's interesting, you know, you hear about rich dad, poor dad, and this just popped into my head. Talk about the four quadrants to talk about owning real estate, talking about becoming a business owner and an investor. One of the big things that Robert talks about, and this really made an impact on me, is your first job. Go out and get a sales job. Can you talk a little bit about how being in sales, being, again, selling knives, having to cultivate those relationships and do that. Do you think? What kind of impact did that sales role play on your future success, do you think, Rachel?

It had a huge impact. And here's the thing. My first job actually was at American Eagle, right when I turned 16.

And I apologize.

American Eagle, it's like a clothing company.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So I. I'm a little older than you, so I missed that. You know, I might have missed a little bit of that. And I'm. And I'm an engineer, so we're not the most stylish people, so.

Yes, you are. So I grew up in a household where we just didn't have. There wasn't a lot of extra money to go around. My parents were l paycheck to paycheck. And compared to my friends, we grew up in this very wealthy county. So I always felt like. I always felt like we were poor, even though we weren't. We were a middle class family. But, you know, my friends were getting brand new cars, my friends were. Families were going on trips. And we weren't, we didn't have any of that. So I felt like poor and we didn't have enough money. Money was always a stressor in our family. So right when I turned 16, I wanted a job so that I could afford clothes and to go to the movies with. My friends. Started working there, definitely. I remember feeling frustrated right off the bat of working all these hours and getting paid like $200 every other week. Oh, yeah, remember specifically like a $216 paycheck, you know, being paid minimum wage. And when I first had the opportunity with Cutco, there was no hesitation on my part. I was doing the math, adding up the commissions. And it was the first time I'd been exposed to a job where the harder you work, the harder, the more money you get paid. And I knew I could outwork anybody. And that's exactly what I did that first summer. I'm not an extrovert, so I would say that being a salesperson doesn't come naturally to me, but I forced myself to learn. I forced myself to learn the techniques, the words to say, the body language, how to approach people, how to cold call, how to handle rejection, how to drop down, how to do a sales pitch, so many amazing techniques and then all the other stuff, because you can go into management training with Cutco. So then it was about leadership, managing other people, public speaking. You know, overcoming my public speaking fear was huge for me at such a young age. I mean, I was in. I was a freshman in college learning these things. And I will say that when I was graduating from college and doing the job interviews my senior year, the thing that's helped me stand out from my peers was not my 3.99 GPA and it was not my impressive academics and extracurriculars on the college campus. It was my sales experience with Cutco. And because of my Cutco experience, I had like five job offers. Where some of my fellow peers had a hard time finding a job when they graduated. So I am forever grateful for Cutco. I'm still involved with the organization, actually. I have a finance course for the reps now. So it's a lot of fun. I mean, I love the Cutco organization. Yeah, it's really cool.

That is awesome.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

No, I think it's fantastic. And I think, you know, it is sales. It's. It's like anything else. It's a skill set. You know, you can argue the same thing with poker. You can argue the same thing with being a surgeon. It's a skill. You develop those skills. And it's also communication. And if for anyone that's out there, I think learning how to communicate better, whatever you do, going out and having a sales role. And I think. I think Robert Kiyosaki talked about starting, like a network marketing company like you said. Oh, go, go work for an hour. Marketing company. Learn the sales techniques. But I love Cutco. And my guess is you made more than that. $216 on one sale at some point when you were working.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I made. I think I've made $1,000 on a single sale for sure. And I made 10 grand that first summer, which was enough to pay the tuition for my first year.

That is awesome. That is awesome. I love that you mentioned that helped you get your first job. What was that first job?

I was a financial advisor starting out, so I majored in.

So now people are listening to say, not fair. You had all the financial knowledge. That's how you are.

Yeah, it was definitely helpful to have that background. And my thought at the time was I was very passionate about helping people with money and investing. And I was a finance nerd for as long as I can remember. Literally started reading books about finance in middle school and was obsessed with it and all during high school. Yeah, read Rich dad, Poor dad in high school. So I. I majored in financial economics. And with the sales background, I figured being a financial advisor was the dream job for me. It was perfect thing for me, but I already kind of. It took me a while to figure this out, but like I said, sales didn't come naturally to me. I'm an introvert. So although I could be good at it, it was always forced. And at the end of a day of cold calling or doing sales appointments, I've just never been more mentally drained in my life. So I did that for nine months.

Energy for you to.

Yes, yes, exactly.

That's hard.

Yeah. So I did that for nine months, and then I gave that up. But the passion for helping people was always there for helping people with finance. So I always wanted to figure out how to do that. And it wasn't until a few years later that I finally figured that out and wrote the book. And that's where Money Honey came from.

Yeah. That's awesome. So where'd you get that nickname? Because that's. That's. Is it Maria Bartiromo? Is she the original Money?

Yeah. Which I didn't know until after I.

Yeah, yeah, it's nerd, too. So I was like. I was like, oh, my gosh. I was like. I was like.

I know.

I was like, that's Maria Bartiromo.

Yeah.

I think she was on maybe csn.cs, cnbc first, and then she was. I think she's on maybe Fox. Fox Business now. I don't watch TV anymore, but. Yeah. So where'd you come up with that name?

Yeah, she's the original, for sure. But I just wanted something that was catchy and that rhymed and people would remember and. Yeah, so I came up with it, not knowing that she had already taken that name, but it really stuck. So now people know me as Money Honey Rachel, and call me Money Honey all the time. So it's fun.

Well. And you don't look like a finance nerd, to be fair.

Thank you.

Although I don't even know what a finance nerd looks like.

Yeah.

All right, so I want to go back you mentioned, because I think I can relate a lot. Growing up, very middle class. What to say? Straight down the lane, middle class. So aside. Aside from school, you said you were reading those books in middle school. Is that how you learned those lessons? Was it the desire to just kind of be more like your friends around the neighborhood or what really drove that?

Yeah, I think so. Because it was hard feeling like the odd one out. It was hard growing up seeing my friends have things and then my family struggle. And I remember thinking, you know, I don't want to end up like everyone else, struggling with money. I didn't want to have to operate on a strict budget or borrow money from family and friends to make it to my next paycheck. I wanted to be different. And I realized at some point that what I did then would either set me up for wealth or for poverty. So I started taking things very seriously, even at a very young age. I was just. I was such a finance nerd. I think the first book I read was in sixth grade. And it was a Motley Fool's guide for teens, how to have more money than your parents ever dreamed of or something. And I was like, that sounds awesome. And I was reading it at summer camp, and all the other kids were, like, going down the water slides. I was sitting at the pool reading this book. That's so funny. But I think it was just this motivation to achieve financial independence and not have to be dependent on anybody. And I wanted to be able to take care of myself, but also to be able to take care of my loved ones if they needed my help financially. I had a lot of fear. I didn't want to ever have to be dependent on somebody or be constrained by finances. And they say fear can be paralyzing or motivating. Luckily for me, it was very motivating. And it just. I think it's just really the reason I've been so ambitious and so driven to achieve what I have achieved. And it's. It's still motivating. Even though I've achieved financial independence and beyond, I have more wealth than I ever thought I would. It's still there. The fear just has never gone away. It's definitely a lot smaller. I definitely have a much more abundant mindset now, but it still drives me to this day.

Yeah. And I think that's common in people like us, that you start off, and if you're listening now and you're going to start nodding your head up and down, you save and you save and you save. And I was listening to a podcast with Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. And I quote some of his stuff in my book. And I'm listening to this podcast, and he's talking through this. When you spend your life saving and doing that, and that's really your entire adult life, you do that, it's hard to learn to then spend and enjoy it and get away from that fear. And that's one thing that Ramit talked about. I just heard this last week. So it was very impactful here. In recent history, you have to learn. You actually have to learn to spend the money after you saved it. And he says, after you've won the money game. So it's a skill to save, which you've mastered. And then I think it's also a skill to learn how to enjoy it. And I just bought tickets for the World Series last weekend for myself and my two boys, and it's more money than I've spent ever on any type of event in my entire life. And it was Scary to push that button. But I'll tell you what, it was one of the best things I've ever done.

That's amazing. And I 100% agree. I had a 50k launch this summer. I launched a new online course. So that was a huge achievement for me. I mean, that's. I can't believe I made that amount of money with this new launch. And so my friend was like, what are you going to do to celebrate? And I was like, celebrate? Like, what do you mean? She's like, aren't you going to celebrate? I was like, oh, I guess I should. I've never really celebrated any of my milestones or accomplishments this entire time. She was like, well, you should go do something nice for yourself or buy something. And I was like, okay, maybe I should. There's this, like, these rings that I'd always admired online. I'm not even a big jewelry person, but I finally went and spent the money on the rings and did this whole, like, Instagram live reveal. And, you know, I was like, building it up. And I was like, okay, I'm going to tell you all how much I spent. And everyone was expecting that I had spent like $10,000 on these rings and I spent like 2,000. But for me, I was almost embarrassed to say how much I spent on these rings. I was like, I can't believe I spent this much money. But they were like, girl, you deserved it. You, you know, you need to celebrate these milestones. And it's definitely something I'm working on and getting better at. But, yeah, it's important to celebrate and reward yourself.

Absolutely. So, yeah, if you've won the money game, the challenge that Ramit threw out there was, take a hundred bucks, Just go spend it on yourself. Then he said, if you have a bigger net worth, multiply that number up. So, yeah, go enjoy it and do that. But if people are saying, okay, I want to win the money game, Rachel, let's talk about that. And by the way, if you're listening, we're going to teach you and. Or we're going to tell you how to get all these resources from Rachel mate, how to get her book, how to get some free bonuses that she's going to give away to you today. Let's talk about your favorite passive income strategies that you use to build that passive income and what you talk about in your. I'm looking at it right now. Your passive income starter kit.

Oh, absolutely. There's so many passive income streams. I first thought real estate investing was the only way, and it's still my favorite, which I will talk about. But in my book Passive Income Aggressive Retirement, I talk about 28 different passive income streams. So trust me, if real estate investing is not for you, there's tons of opportunities out there for other ways to build passive income. Royalty income, portfolio income, ads and E commerce, coin operated machines. Those are all the five big categories that I outlined. So there's tons of different ways. But real estate investing is absolutely my favorite way because there's so many other financial benefits than just the passive income. So the way I see it is that there's four financial benefits. You have the passive income or the cash flow. Then you have the equity buildup because your tenants are paying your mortgage for you over time. So after 30 years you own a property free and clear, having only paid the down payment. That's enormous. Then you have the tax benefits, depreciation being a huge one. And finally now this one I count as a bonus. You can't always count on number four being there, so it's just a bonus. But finally you have appreciation. So if the value of the property increases over time, that's appreciation. That's even more wealth that you can accumulate just by owning real estate. And you don't even have to have the 20% upfront. You can invest with 0% down if you have a VA loan, 3.5% down with an FHA loan or as little as 5 to 10%. So having I guess that could be a fifth benefit is leverage and using other people's money. I get so excited about this, but there's so many benefits and you don't even have to have a lot of money to get started. And then you have all of these financial benefits and it's really, in my opinion, it's the everyday man and woman's way of becoming a millionaire, of becoming really, really wealthy. More men and women have become millionaires through real estate than through any other industry.

Absolutely. And look, most people that are listening know my story, but $3,000, I bought my first property, it was about $100,000 with $3,000. And people might say, well I, I don't have good credit, I don't have this. I had my mom co sign on the loan with me. I have a coaching client, he just put an offer on a property, he found a partner and he needed a couple hundred thousand dollars, but his partner wanted to have wanted. He didn't have the time, but my coaching client had the time, so find a partner. So if you say, well, I can't get a VA loan. Maybe you have a partner that can get a VA loan. You don't have the down payment. Maybe you have a partner that has a down payment if you have the knowledge, the strategy, the time, or even just the ability to go find that. So there's always a way to do it, and don't worry if you can't do it all by yourself, Right?

Absolutely. There's so many ways to invest without having a ton of money. House hacking, wholesaling, the BRRRR method, finding a partner. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Yeah, absolutely. And you just spent months traveling around, staying in Airbnbs. I think that's one of the most amazing ways right now to do that. So, Rachel, like I said, we're going to give away or we're gonna share all this, all these resources. Tell us a little bit more about your programs that you have. You got a coaching program, and I believe you're starting a new Mastermind. So this podcast is coming out in about a month at the beginning of 2022. Tell us about this new mastermind you have going on.

Yes. Thank you, Chris. I'm really excited about this mastermind. It's called the Fire Mastermind, which stands for financial independence through real estate. So the Fire Mastermind.

Not retired early. Yeah, because that's.

Yeah, I changed it.

Yeah.

So it's through real estate. It's actually the second year I'm doing it. I changed it a little bit this year. But this is for basically ambitious and aspiring real estate investors who just want to make massive moves and start investing in real estate next year. I remember having a lot of fear and being frustrated when I wanted to invest in real estate, because you can really be overcome with analysis paralysis because there are so many ways to get started. There's so many strategies and methods, and it can be. It can feel very overwhelming. So I just wanted to give investors a space where I taught them the methods, and then I give them really personalized advice of, hey, just focus on this, do this, and then give them a small group of people who are committed to taking action. So I'm limiting this to 10 slots, and I will be teaching. You know, I'll do monthly trainings, bringing guest experts, and my goal is to have everyone invest in their first property by the end of the 10 months. So that is what it is all about. I'm very excited.

Yeah, no, I love it. And I've. I was reading down through it here. I think it's. It looks fantastic. It looks really good. So if people want to get your book, if they want to learn more about your coaching, your mastermind, because you have other coaching as well. What is, what does that look like?

Yeah, I do offer one on one coaching and if anyone wants to learn more about my programs, you can go to moneyhoneyrachel.com that's my website, rachel.com.

We'Ll share that in the show notes here.

Yes, thank you. My other program is more of a group coaching program. So that is my rental property bootcamp that also will open and launch in January. I've done this before. It's a live 12 week basically group coaching program. But when I asked aspiring real estate investors like, what are your two biggest obstacles, your two biggest struggles, they told me two things. Number one, it's hard to find good deals, especially right now. And number two, they didn't know how to analyze deals to know whether it was even a good investment. So basically this bootcamp teaches you how to find and analyze good deals. That's all it teaches. I wanted to focus on those two specific things. So I talk about how the nine ways to find off market deals. Because if you're only looking on the mls, you're not going to find anything. So I'm always.

He's like LoopNet, they're all taken. I'm like, you can't loop net.

Yeah, right. It's like get off the couch. Thank you. Stuff. Looking on the mls, you have to get out there and be willing to do what others are not willing to do if you want to find the good deal. So I teach how to do that like in a lot of detail. And then I walk people through my cash flow analyzer, which is a spreadsheet that I've taken years to tweak and it just tells you whether it's a good deal or not. So that is what I teach over a course of 12 weeks.

Yeah. No, and look, I've talked to several of your clients and Rachel's clients love her. Yeah. Check out her resources and if this is something that's a fit, it's certainly worth checking out. So Rachel, I'm a little challenged here because normally I say, hey, if you can go back to your 25 year old self and give yourself some advice, what would it be? I feel like you're a little bit wise beyond your years, so I'm going to ratchet that down a little bit. If you had to go back to your 21 year old self and you're in college, what advice would you give yourself back then?

Honestly, I could answer for 25 pretty easily. So I'll stick with the original question. Yeah. Because here's the problem that I had a few years ago was being too cheap. And so we already talked about, you know, you can be really good at not spending money.

Yeah.

And that was actually a big problem for me. When you take anything to the extreme, it's bad. When you spend too much to the extreme, that causes problems. When you spend too little to the extreme, that causes problems. And so there's a difference between being cheap and being fruitful. I was too cheap in many ways that ultimately hurt me and cost me a lot more in the long run. So, for example, there's this, and I'll tell the short story version of it, but there's this property management story that I always share. It's so embarrassing. But when it came time to hire a property manager, we were at like 27 units or something at the time. And my husband and I were both still working full time. I'm writing books in the evenings. We are acquiring real estate and managing tenants on the weekends. Like we couldn't manage them on our own anymore.

Yeah.

So we needed to hire a property manager. Instead of going with a reputable property management company in town, we hired these two people that have been working for us and doing cleaning for our building. And we trusted them. Yeah. I see your facial expression. You're like, okay. No, you're fine.

Try to hold by it.

No, you can see where this is going already. Yeah. In hindsight, it's like, how naive were we? They always worked so hard. So we were like, let's make them employees of our company. We can save a little money, we can train them, blah, blah, blah. Started off great, and then about six months in, my husband Andrew went to collect rent from our on site lockboxes one weekend and noticed that a lot of money was missing. And it turns out they stole $6,000 of rent that weekend. And we found out they'd been squatting in vacant rooms and units in our properties for almost a year.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

So horrible. Just what a violation of trust and what a big learning lesson. I look back on it now and just think, how silly were we? It's so obvious in hindsight, but I share that mistake in the hopes that others will learn from it. And the moral of the story is, don't cut corners. When you hire a property manager or a contractor, you don't just go with the cheapest person because it's the cheapest person. A lot of the times that's a sign that they're not going to do good work. And so being cheap can end up costing you a lot more money in the long run. And I continue to have to learn that lesson, too. So I just wish that I could tell myself that a few years ago. For sure.

I think it's a fantastic lesson. And I think if you expand on that, it's being cheap. It's the same thing as somebody like you or I that's an individual producer that's used to doing everything themselves. They move along themselves. They manage their properties themselves. You can't scale that. And you have to learn how to go from doing everything yourself to being able to find the who instead of the how. And that's been my theme for the year is who, not how.

And it's right. Dan Sullivan, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's fantastic. But it's a real challenge. So I think, you know, being too cheap, thinking you should do it all yourself if there's people that are that are smarter than you, that are better at things than you. But it takes a challenge to find those people, especially in today's market. But Rachel, it's been awesome seeing you here. Thank you so much for sharing your story with the audience. Again, we are going to share all the resources we talked about moneyhoneyrachel.com we'll make sure that's in the show notes, as well as how to learn more about your Fire Mastermind, which sounds amazing. Coming up here at the start of 2022.

Thank you so much, Chris. I really appreciate you.

Absolutely. Rachel, great having you on. 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.