Inspire, Motivate, and Impact!

Welcome to Ladies Kicking Assets. Robin and I are back with another incredible guest, Katie Langford. She is such an incredible person. We had the. Well, we met in Pace Morbi's group and as we got to chatting and getting to know each other, I found out that she is doing incredible things. She is a speaker at different events. She talks on confidence and things like that. She is a real estate investor and she is really out there working hard to help other people grow, grow her own business and even, you know, move that out into others as well. So I am super excited. Have you as a guest today. We do want to remind everybody that we are not experts. We're not the professionals. If you hear something that you want to take action on, make sure you consult your, you know, attorney or CPA or something like that. But other than that, just make sure you subscribe and share and let's kick this sucker off.

I love it. Thanks, Courtney and Robin for having me.

Are excited to visit with you.

Well, yeah. So let's dig in a little bit. So I know you have run a ton of businesses. I, you know, as I was digging through even more of your information, you've worked at different places, you've started different businesses, and now you're in Dallas. And what does that. What is that real estate journey? What is that looking like for you right now? What are you working on?

Yeah, so it's super exciting. I will tell you. I'm an accidental real estate investor. Um, our journey, my husband and I, our journey in real estate Investing started in 2010. And I won't bore you with all of that, but in 2022, we actually had some big things happen in our life. My husband had owned a business for 20 years. He was able to successfully sell it. It's actually the year anniversary is this week, which is insane. And if anyone's ever tried to sell a business, they can understand that it typically doesn't happen the first. And it actually took four go rounds and many years in pivoting before he actually sold. And at the same time, I was running my professional development business and I was really burnt out of coaching. I had coached over 300 women in their career getting them to the place they were. I'd done it for seven and a half years and I thought, okay, something else. There's something else. And I really just thought it was going to be public speaking full time. And when my husband sold his business, he knew that he wanted to go on and do other things. He wanted to take the money that he was making and invest It. He'd always wanted to grow our real estate business. And I thought, great, go for it. But I was having nothing to do with it. I literally was like, good luck with that, Shane Langford. Let me know how it goes. And then I started watching him, and I started paying attention. And what I realized was everything that I wanted to do in my life, specifically around inspiring and motivating and impacting the lives of women, that this could be the vehicle that could help me do that and could help me help them accumulate wealth. And I'm a big fan of. You know, the fact is, um, the rules of life are the rules. I'm going to work to try and change them until the day that I die. But the truth is, is that people with money have seats at tables that other people don't. And so if that's part of the rule, then guess what? I'm going to freaking go with that flow. And so right now, our real estate investment business looks like a couple of different things. Most of what we're investing in is single family, although we're venturing into multifamily and hope to expand that into 24 and 2024 and 2025. But we really know that single family is our bread and butter. And so we're just getting people involved in that. And some of those are houses that we're rehabbing and turning over, like a fix and flip. Some of those were just wholesaling. My husband is building a wholesaling business, and then some of those are buying and holding. And where I come into all of this is that I am raising private money. As you talk about, you know, ladies kicking assets, and we talk about, you know, Courtney, your goal of keeping money out of the hands of the irs, right? My goal is to help women create and build wealth. So it's exciting. It's exciting to get women to the table in real estate. Because it's funny to me, when we look at realtors in our country, in the US Overwhelmingly, they are women. But when we look specifically at real estate investors, only 31.6% of real estate investors are women. And that's a number we gotta change. We gotta change it.

Why do you think that is? What do you think is contributing to that? Do you think it's because I know a lot of the women I talk to generally, the husbands have always maintained the investments or the finances and things like that. And there was always this, you know, the husband was the breadwinner, and they took care of all the stuff, and the women took care of the kids and those things. And. Which is kind of funny because women are actually inherently better investors and better with money than men are. And so I know that's a statistic that's been proven.

Yeah. And. And what I'm seeing with my peers, my sphere of influence, is that the women that I know and I run with, they have big jobs, right. They have big careers. They're everything from the director level to the C suite. There are other business owners, right. They are kicking t when it comes to their career. But just like when Shane Langford said, yeah, I'm going to go into real estate investing, I was assuming what most people assumed the average real estate investor looked like, right. I remember him saying, I'm going to go to a meetup. And I thought, I don't even know what that. Like, what is that? What are you talking about, a meetup? Now, I, like, totally know what a meetup is, but I remember thinking that every single person in that room would be a white man in khakis or. And a polo shirt. Right? Or they'd look like they just came off the golf course. They'd have a white button down. Right. I thought I knew exactly what real estate investors look like. And the truth is, you walk into those room and there are those guys, like, I'm not kidding, they exist. There's a reason, there's a stereotype, but there's so many other kind of people. And so I think when it talks to women, and specifically the women that I tend to work with and, and raise money from, they're doing two things, right? They are head down in their career crushing it, and they are head down raising their family, crushing it. And a lot of times she doesn't think she's crushing it. She thinks she's failing at one or the other. And if you're listening, you're not. You're a badass mom. You're badass in career. And so when it comes to all of this, I think that we have the HGTV mindset, right? We think, oh, well, if I'm not, you know, Joanna Gaines flipping a house, if I'm not, you know, Allison from Windy City Rehab, if I. If I can't do that kind of work, then I can't be a real estate investor. And the truth is, you don't have to do any of that stuff to be in real estate and be in the game. And so I think it's a lot of education, and there's a lot of misnomers out there about what real estate investing really is.

No. And that's really good. And I think no matter what it is, we all suffer with imposter syndrome. And you know, and even when I stepped into the investment world, I just thought, oh my gosh, I'm brand new. And look at all of these people that are raising $100 million and they have all these assets. And it was like really a little bit overwhelmin and because I think we have a tendency to do this across the board is, you know, compare where we are now to where people are in their 10 to 20 year journey. And. And we've got to stop doing that as well. And so those people had a beginning at some point in time too. They didn't just end up start in that spot.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, like so many folks, you don't, you don't start out understanding the word syndicating, you know, never heard of that term. I know, Courtney, we've had numerous conversations about this. It's one thing to be an investor, it's another thing to be a syndicator and raising capital and kind of understanding what hat you're wearing within each deal, you know, what do you bring to the table? Are you managing the deal? Are you, you know, raising capital? You, you know, all of these things, different pieces. And so there is this learning curve that takes place and aligning yourself with the right team and the right mentors and the right mastermind groups. You know, these are all integral parts and a part of the same, the same journey. You know, I think it's incredible when you talk about your husband being involved in this, because oftentimes you find there's not couples per se that are involved in a business together like this. It's. It's like one. And. And then that number's even less with women. And so anyway, I think that's kind of a unicorn there in your space with how you're doing that with. That's with the watershed companies. Correct that.

Yeah.

Well, I think what people have to realize too is, is when you go to these meetups and get plugged into these different things, investing can look like, you know, a thousand different things. Like just when you decide that you want to go into the medical field, there's anesthesia, there's labor, there's so many different aspects of the medical field. Well, it's the same way with investing. There's so many different asset classes and different opportunities and different ways to get involved. You know, we met in a group where people actually lend money to people that are doing real Estate investing, there's that. There's people that do buy and holds or fix and flips or wholesale or multifamily. There's so many different things and it's really just a matter of getting plugged in and figuring out, okay, which of these do I like? You know, what am I interested in, what does this look like? And really what I have figured out has worked really well for me, is kind of first of all, getting plugged in and, you know, being a part of these groups just to learn about the different things and what people are doing, but really kind of setting what that end goal looks like for me and reverse engineering through it to kind of get a game plan going. Yeah.

It's funny, Courtney, ever since you've you told me what your plan is, I've been trying to get crystal clear. And I was working through some of that this weekend, this past weekend, and I'm still not quite there because I think that it's gotta be a bigger stretch. But I think that the truth is, is that not everyone has an opportunity to really dig in the way that the three of us are. Right? We live and breathe this. It's the same thing. When I was in, you know, non profits and healthy human services and I was living and breathing the statistics around what was happening in poverty, what was happening around education, right? Like, I was living and breathing that. And then I would talk to my girlfriends and they had no clue. They were like, what are you talking about? I don't, I don't have time for that. Right. It's the exact same thing, is that so many of us, we are head down in what we do and in our life and we assume that everyone else knows this. And so what I really appreciate about what you all are doing and what I'm trying to emulate as I grow my side of our business at Watershed is that I can bring education and opportunities to women who have their head down, who are not looking at this every single day, who are not thinking about real estate every single day. You know, Courtney, before I met you, I hadn't even really thought of other alternative investments. Those were not on my radar. Right. And I still am not going to go and do all the research and things that you do that you know about, because I'm super focused on real estate. But I know that I can come to you and ask you questions. I know that I can get my education through you. And so I think those of us who are in these non traditional spaces, especially when it, it can help other ladies grow their own assets. Like, we can't be secret about this. We can't be like, well, I don't want to bring it up at a dinner party because I don't want to know. Like, I am unapologetic. Do you realize that while you're running your career and running your house, you have money sitting in your 401k in your IRA and they are screwing you when it comes to the fees? And did you even know?

Great.

You want to keep 75% of it. They're cool. You don't want to take a lot of risks. But there are other alternatives for you that you actually need to know about. Because guess what? I can show you the math. If you're just relying on your 401k, especially you ladies who stayed at the Same company for 20, 30 years in trouble, I'm, I'm telling you, these fees are going to eat into what you think is going to save you for retirement.

Well, and not just that, but then you have to hope and pray that the year you decide to retire, there's not a crash like we saw.

Exactly.

And now instead of being able to retire, you've got to work three or four or five or 10 more years to recoup what you've lost. Nobody wants to, I call that the, the 401 casino. It's like the casino, it's a gamble with what that's going to look like the year you decide to retire. And nobody wants to worry about whether they're going to be able to do that. And not just to be able to retire, but to be able to maintain their standard of living once they have. Are they going to have enough money coming in to where they're not having to change the way that live?

Absolutely. And right. None of us are guaranteeing anything because if the SEC is listening, we cannot guarantee that. We know that. Right. But there is a reason why 81% of ultra high net worth individuals, those people who have $30 million or more, are diversified across alternative investments. Right? And only 14% of mass affluent. Those people who have 250 to $1 million in net worth, only 14% of those people and only 29% of people who are 1 million to $4.9 million. Y', all, when you have all your eggs in one basket, it is a lot easier to break all those eggs. And so, you know, it's crazy. Like if you told me a year ago, I would be following things like the Fed chairs, the Fed presidents getting together to talk about interest rates and all of that. That just happened a couple of weeks ago. I'd be like, you're absolutely insane. If digging into my IRAs and the money that we've had with our advisor for the last 15 years, I'd be like, you're insane. But guess what? We cannot just have our head in the sand. And so many women that I know, myself included, I'd be like, yeah, go ahead and take care of that, Shane Langford. I'll make a lot of money, and I'll just believe in the end that it's going to be okay, and I'm done living that way. That is just not how I'm choosing to do it anymore. And I think that if you still want to have your head in the sand, oh, I really want to talk to you. But there are so many other things that you can do and be involved in, and part of it is just about picking your head up for a minute and looking around and going to people who are doing it and. And seeing what you can learn. And maybe you're the perfect person to stay in a, you know, traditional stock bond or mutual fund. Great. But maybe you're not.

Yeah, well.

And I think the biggest problem is that we aren't given a financial education, and most people don't realize that there are all of these other opportunities out there. And this was. I was speaking on somebody's podcast yesterday, and, you know, part of the platform that my partner Michael and I are working on is a platform where, you know, syndicators can come in and put all of their deals to get exposure to other investors. But investors can come in and go, okay, I need something with tax benefits, or I need something with cash flow, or I'm looking for something in storage specifically. But they can come in and search that. Because right now, you know, my opportunities are only available to people directly in my network. And we've got to find a way to get that information out and open it up to more people so that people have that opportunity. It's just. It's very limited and limiting right now.

Yes. So, Katie, you are a woman who speaks with intense passion and presence. So you are a highly confident individual. And I know you speak to confidence many times when you are doing public speaking or when you're speaking into someone that you're coaching. Have you always been this way? Has this just. Is this just the way you were made, or did someone give you one of those aha. Moments that changed your. Your lens on how you view the world and your life?

Yeah. So it's funny that you Asked this Robin, my last speaking engagement, Q and A came and I got almost verbatim this exact thing. I think it's a couple things. One is, I come from a long line of super tremendous, strong women. My mom was very young when she had me. But one of the things that she instilled upon me every single day when I was a child was, you can be and do anything if you set your mind to it and you work for it. And I grew up believing that.

However.

I have had my own crises of confidence. Multiple times I have lost all of my confidence. I have been in the depths of, the depths of grossness where I didn't think that I was worthy, where I didn't think that I could do it. And it's funny because, you know, those are the moments, those are the experiences that we don't share. We tend to hide. We, especially in the world of social media, right? Like, everything's great, everything's wonderful. We never talk about our failures. We never talk about the things that go wrong. And probably about seven years ago, I had left my nonprofit career, y'. All. I had climbed the ladder from entry level to executive in 12 years. I had a C suite title. I was the number two person at an organization. I was a go getter. And I left without a plan because I was so burnt out and I was so. My health was suffering, like all the things, right? And so fast forward, I'm going to be a coach and this is going to be great. And I am sitting in my office in our old house and I am thinking, you can't do this. Who are you, who are you to do this? Who are you to say that you can do this? What makes you think that you are worthy of this? What makes you think that you can replace your six figure salary by just like owning your own business, right? I was having every negative conversation you could have with yourself. And one of the things that I did was I said, gosh, I was beating myself up and I was crying and I was thinking, like, this isn't even true. Like, I have done amazing things and I have giant sticky pads in my office. There's one literally right there about two and a half feet away. And I grabbed it and I pulled out a red Sharpie and I wrote badass list of stuff I've accomplished because I wanted to remember the things that I had done. And I just wrote and wrote and I probably filled up five or six of those sticky notes and I put them all around my office. And I did that because I wanted to remind myself. And what I started doing was talking about doing this with people, right? Oh, I did this. And. And I renamed this school the Confidence resume. Because confidence is a muscle that we build over and over. What happens, though, is that we think that we have to wait until we're confident, until we go do the hard thing. And if that was true, well, it's not true. So sorry to burst your bubble. That's like saying, I can sit on my sofa and get better at doing push ups. Last week, I didn't do my push ups because I'm on a challenge with my. With my trainer. And yesterday, last night, I tried to do them and I was like, crap. I regressed, right? Because you have to do the work to build the muscle. And so I started thinking, yeah, but here's the cool thing, is that we have all been building our confidence muscles our entire lives because we have done things when we were nervous, when we were anxious, when we were scared. We have accomplished badass things. We've done things and failed at it. We've done things and completely crushed it. And so it's a tool that I use, and I actually have mine right here. Like, you write down all the things. All the things. And so when I come up against the next hard thing, because guess what? I'm going to, right? I have so much imposter syndrome in real estate. This isn't. This isn't the world. I've been. I had a friend the other day who's been in commercial real estate who does this hundred million dollar project calling me out like, hey, just be careful, hey. And I was like, oh, gosh, I did it wrong. I need to crawl back in my hole. And then I remembered, actually, all of these things. I took a job that I didn't feel qualified for. I was the first to graduate college in my family. I took control of my financial life. I started a blog back in the day, right? I asked for forgiveness when I wasn't certain that I deserved it. I've done hundreds of things that have built my confidence. And so when I remind myself, then I know I have the social proof and evidence that that's who I am. And so it's very easy to reconnect with your confidence. And what I love about this idea and this tool is that you can do this anytime, anywhere. So if you're sitting about to go into a meeting where you're presenting a huge project or your findings or your sales goals or what, like, damn, who am I? Go to the bathroom, sit down and remind yourself of five times that you were. You remind yourself of five times that you did do it. Relive those moments. Because our brain doesn't know if something's happening right now or if it's happened in the past or we're visualizing that and then walk into that room with those facts that, you know, that's who you are. And I've done this exercise with girls as young as 16, so I know that it works because I. That all of us have done this. And so I think it's both. Robin, I have always had a confidence because I was taught that. But do not get it twisted. I have lost it many times and I will lose it again. I know that I will. But I will always remind myself who I am and what I'm capable of.

That's right. Well, I really love how you mentioned, you know, Dennis Wheatley speaks to that about the subconscious mind in speaking in the now for your future because your brain can't decipher between the time period, if you will, and so be speaking in the now, you know, for your future.

Well, and they, they talk about that and think and grow rich, too. And so if you will sit and visualize, you know, one of the practices that I do are, you know, my one big, hairy, audacious goal that I have. You know, I think about that morning and I, I think about what that will look like and what that will feel like when I have hit that goal. And I think about it at night before I go to sleep. Because you're right. Your brain doesn't know if that's actually happening or not. And so you can trick your brain into thinking that that is that. And so I have not made one of those little confidence boards. I am so going to do that.

Because, yeah, we'll send it to everyone. We have a link we can include in your show notes. Anybody can download it and do their own.

Tell our guests, because we're running short on time, how we can get in touch with you, how our guests can access your confidence resume.

Yeah, I'll, I'll show you the link. We have it on watershed companies dot com. It's kind of hidden, but like watershed companies dot com forward slash confidence resume. You can find me on LinkedIn is where I'm most active. That's where I like to hang out with people and on Instagram. And of course, I spell my name super uniquely. Thank you, Mom. It's Katie with the C, C, A, Y, T, I, E, and then Langford. And that's where I'm. That's my name on everything. Katie Lankford. So, yeah.

Well, thank you so much, Katie. What an inspirational message you've really given us all today. I love the confidence resume and how that was inspired, instilled in you, but how you use that in the present time. And you're right, nobody really wants to talk about all the mistakes or the challenges that we've walked through. They always want to make everything look so fabulous. I think there's so much truth and people really resonate with that, with your message, and your story on how you morphed into real estate is really inspiring.

So I think some days I still can't believe it. But. But, you know, what I realized is it's the vehicle that can allow me to achieve all of my goals. And part of my goal is to inspire, motivate, and impact the lives of other women. So it just makes sense.

Inspire, motivate, and impact women. I love that. Yep.

I do, too. And something I read the other day, that I just loved it, he said, failure is the fertilizer to success. And I just thought, oh, that's so, so, so true. Because we learn from that, we grow from it, and we take it and. And go and do better. So. So that's awesome.

Yeah.

Thank you, Katie, for your time. And we know how to get in touch with you and our listeners do, too. And we are just really excited about everyone who's going to be listening to this message today. Thank you.

Yes.

Thanks, ladies.

You're awesome. Thank you for everything. And I can't wait to continue the conversations and see where. See what you do with all the things. Yeah.

We have big, bold things. We got to do them. Let's do them together. Let's team up with women and get there together.