EP 61: How to Build 4 Businesses Spending 30 Hours a Week with Brie Schmidt

Welcome ladies to the Real Estate Investor Show, providing inspiration, strategies, and insight to empower women investors to live balanced and financially free lives. Now here are your co-hosts, Liz and Andresa Guidelli.

Bri Schmidt acquired her first investment property back in 2011. Then in 2014, she decided to leave the corporate world to become a full-time real estate investor. Bri owns about 100 units of investment property in addition to running 3 other businesses, all while making time to be with her friends and family. On today's episode, we cover so much with Bri, including the importance of becoming bankable, the number 1 tip to get financing in place, how boundaries allow you to get more done and how saying no allows more peace in your life. Welcome back, ladies. This is Liz.

And this is Andresa.

Welcome back to The Real Estate Investor Show where we're, we interview amazing women investors in this business. And we also throw in some mini shows where we're really trying to help you lady investors kind of just take more on in terms of your business and take more on in terms of balance in your life. And, you know, really trying to achieve freedom of finances as well as a peaceful life. You know, and you can have both. It just takes a little work and figuring that out, right, Andresa?

Oh yes. It takes a lot of work. Sometimes it seems easy on Facebook or Instagram, right? When we look around, but there's, there's a ton of work that goes behind the curtains. And that's why we're interviewing such amazing ladies because we want to know what is working for them and what's their secret sauce.

That's right. And Bree, welcome to the show. We're so glad to have you this week.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Yeah, excited to jump into Bree's story. She's got a really amazing story as well. And before we kind of jump into that, we'd like to kind of get connected to all of you and appreciate all of you listening and all that good stuff. But Andresa, what's happening for you? What's coming up for you?

I want to talk about like when you're meeting somebody one-on-one, is your first time connecting with that person and Lately, I have found that I am like really selecting, not just because I feel that I am the last cookie on the jar. I just feel that I'm respecting my time much more. And I want to make sure that the person is getting what they're looking for. So before I meet, I want to be very clear what exactly they're looking for. If they're looking for somebody to explain how wholesaling works or anything like that, I'm not the right person. For them. And so it's just a waste. So my, my tip for, for the ladies that are listening to us, uh, when you are looking to meet somebody, be very clear with that person what you are looking to offer and what you're looking to get. It must be a win-win situation. We mentioned in a couple of episodes that picking your brain is just not a good strategy if you're looking to connect with somebody. Try to ask a lot of questions and try to understand what the other person is looking to get, what are their needs, so it feels that it is just a win-win situation for both. And do that before you schedule the conversation, um, one-on-one. I think it's just prime time. Otherwise, if it is just a chit-chat call, it's fine, but one-on-one is just prime and That's what I will tell the ladies out there.

Yeah, yeah, no, and you give your, you know, you have to remind yourself of that because you can sometimes get sucked into helping and that's all great, but you also have to be mindful of respecting your time too.

I can actually jump in on this topic.

Yeah, I'd love to hear your perspective. I'm sure people reach out to you all the time, Bri.

And we'll kind of get into this later. I just refuse to do in-person meetings. I started doing that about a year ago. Uh, and it's awesome. So I work from home. Uh, I said, I run, I run 4 companies. I completely work from home. So for me to have to get ready and do my hair and do my makeup and then drive over to you, that, that 30-minute meeting, which never ends up being 30 minutes, ends up being 3 hours of my time. Um, and I just cannot justify that. Even if you're someone that is looking to hire me to be your business partner or to work with you, You know, I generally do not accept them in person. I will gladly do a 30-minute phone call. And you know what, I can, in that 3-hour timeframe, I can do 6 phone calls back to back, versus doing an in-person meeting. And of course, you have to screen. Like I said, I get the same thing too. Like, hey, I want to wholesale this property in Florida. I have no idea. Why would you, like, what are you talking about? So it has to be, I always have to pre-screen even before I accept a phone call. Yes. Doing that and being more selfish with my time and looking at it as every hour with you is an hour away from my family. Yeah. Explain to me why I'm giving up an hour with my family, right? And I need to justify that in my head. It's been the greatest thing. It has cut down the time I have spent being so stressed about trying to do it all because I'm just, I'm not doing it all and I don't care. That's fine. I'm being selfish. I'm putting my family and my priorities first. And that's what it is.

Yeah, 100%. And I heard from another business coach another day, he was saying that he does not believe in unscheduled calls. And I start— if I get a call, it's like, either I don't have your number, if it is an emergency, this person is going to call me a couple of times. And if I answer, if there's like a specific question, hey, I want to just understand comps, Well, there's a thing called Zillow MLS. You can totally go there and get that for yourself. It's just not like, I'm just becoming very, very conscious about how do I spend my time. And I don't want to be rude to anybody. But I also want to respect me and my family. As you said, Ray, it's taking from my family, not from nobody else. And when you have that perspective, you kind of say a lot of nos, and it's okay.

Yeah, I say no 90% of the time, to be honest.

Love that. I love that. I think that's such a great thing for all people, especially women, to hear because we don't have to please people. It's about what your priorities are and keeping those in check. I love that. And we're going to get into that because I love what you have a lot to talk about with what you call lifestyle investing, which we're going to get into. That definitely is something I wrote up as something we really want to explore with you. But as we like to do, as we transition into your story, you know, and the ladies listening, I think it's so helpful to hear how you started, you know, because there's always a story, there's always a, you know, there's always a reason that women get pulled into this. You know, I don't think everyone just wakes up and I want to, you know, buy rental property. I mean, some people do, but I don't think everyone does.

I don't know anyone that's done that.

Yeah, I don't either. It's usually a process. So, it's a process.

No, they dream about like being at the beach.

Right, right.

Having a margarita, not—

Right, right, right. So for you, Bri, what compelled you? You know, what was it for you that pulled you into this, in this business of investing and building this great portfolio that you have in businesses?

Sure. So my, you know, I was a normal corporate worker, right? I used to work in advertising sales. I absolutely loved my job. I've been doing it for about 9 years. I got to travel all over the country and my whole goal was to be a female executive. Like that's where I saw my path. I will be a director of some sort of sales division throughout my career. And that's what I wanted. So real estate had always been kind of a side interest for me. I always just liked looking at real estate. It was a fun thing to do. The time, this was back in 2011, my husband and I were, before we got engaged, we're planning the engagement and now we're gonna get married. And first comes love, then comes marriage, babies, houses. Like it's all these things you have to think about, right? So we live in Chicago and, you know, Chicago is a pretty expensive market where the housing stock is less than 20% single families. So single family homes in this market, you know, go for $200,000-$300,000 more than a small apartment building. And we've got plenty of these small 2 to 4 unit apartment buildings. So that was always our plan. We would buy a building, we'd live on one floor. As we needed more space, we take out some walls, we would now make it a two floor house. And then eventually we would take out some more walls and make it a 3-floor house. And that was just kind of what we were going to do. And that was the plan, buy one, you know, and then rent out the units and then, you know, grow into it as we needed. About less than a year after we bought our first property, my father passed away and he had a very aggressive form of cancer. It was very quick. But what really messed with me is he had died literally one day before he was supposed to retire. And I just sat there and remembered all the times my dad talked about, "When I retire, I'm going to go do this. When I retire, I'm going to go do that." And here I was in my late 20s being like, man, I watched this man, you know, work until his 60s and work for this life that he had wanted and then never got that life. Right? So it kind of just changed my perspective. It wasn't immediate, but I remember sitting down with my husband and being like, okay, how do we not work? Right? How do, like, not that we don't want to not work, but how do we live the life that we want in our 30s and not wait until our 60s? Because what happens if we don't get it? Right. And we looked at a couple of different options. We looked at becoming coders so that we could work from, you know, wherever. We looked at learning that. We looked at a bunch of things and, you know, real estate had already, we'd already owned this property. It was pretty easy. It made sense logistically. And so we started to look for another property. And then we looked for another property. And then eventually it just completely took over my life. I was completely obsessed with it. I ended up buying like 18 properties in 9 months, quit my job, and then, you know, decided to go all in with it.

It is freaking addicted.

It's like crack.

It really is.

That's what I tell people all the time. You know, it's like this adult game of Monopoly. Yeah.

I always tell people that when we are in a meeting or something, we always ended up talking about real estate. And I was like, I need to kind of like cut that off and talk about something else. But it's a lot of pleasure because I really love that.

So that's why. Here's the thing about real estate, because I know we were just talking about events. You know, Liz and I went to the same event last year. And I was explaining to my husband why I pay for my own airfare, pay for my own hotel, and essentially work for free for 3 days. I'm exhausted. And I can't talk because I lost my voice. And the thing that I've figured out about it all is real estate investors, it's not a job for us. It's a lifestyle decision. Yeah. Right. So when you throw a bunch of people who are passionate about how they choose to live their life, right, about passionate about waking up every day and not actually working because what they do is not considered a job to them. You throw them a bunch a bunch of room and then you add alcohol. 12 hours later, they will still be talking. So, it is like, it is nonstop talking.

It is. There's so many things you said I want to kind of dissect a little bit. I, you know, with regards to the 18 properties in 9 months, that's really impressive. So, like, walk us through that. Was that, did you have, there's so many different philosophies of, you know, find the deal and then the money will follow. Did you line up your financing first? I'm curious, how did you dice, how did you get that in place so you can move so quickly.

Yep. So I lined up the financing first. I own those properties myself and did not raise capital to invest in those properties. It was capital that I had from a— the third property we did was an estate sale. We bought it, it was a total piece of work, and completely rehabbed the house and then was able to pull cash out of that house about 7 months later. And then use that capital to, to invest. That bought us the first 10. And then the last half of it was money I borrowed from my brother. I borrowed money for 18 months from him to use as down payment, and then was able to pay him back. And that was just a private, you know, between him and I thing. So I'm a big believer in you have to have the money first, right? Yeah, I, I could never imagine like finding a deal and then trying to find the money. But I'm also a control freak. So that's kind of part of the the problem, we'll call it, you know, call it a problem or opportunity.

Yeah, depends on your perspective.

I've learned to leverage my faults, right?

Yeah.

So how we worked out with a bank, it was very interesting, actually. I, you know, I was investing out of state. So the properties, I live in Chicago, the properties are Milwaukee, it's about 90 miles away. It's not like it's that far. And I could not find anyone to work with me. So I had a, I had a set of properties I'd already kind of looked at, I had in mind, I think it was maybe 7 or 8 properties. I had like the numbers down. And I literally just like sat there with Google and called every single potential bank in the world. Like after 30 calls, like no one would work with me. I was still too new. I only had 3 properties under my belt. I only been doing this for like 3 years at this point. And I was out of state. So like I was, I mean, I was posting on LinkedIn like, who wants to give me money? Someone's got to give me money. And it turned out someone responded to that LinkedIn ad.

I love that.

And said, hey, I've got a commercial broker. Let me send this over to him. And then if he thinks he can work with you, he'll give you a call. I remember the guy called me on a Sunday morning. He's like, hey, I've got someone that's going to work with you. It's going to cost you. Right? It's a 2, it's gonna cost you 2 points to broker this relationship. But after that, you're welcome to use them. I've already sent him like your tax returns, I've sent him information about you, the portfolio, he says we're good. And I only get paid if this deal goes forward. Fine, what else am I going to do? And that's the bank I've used the entire time. So I have 18 properties that I personally own. And then I have another 10 with partners. And we've pretty much used this bank the entire time. They're very— so I had to learn from them as well, what their criteria was, how do they underwrite, right? And learned to— so that way, when I was looking at deals, I put it all into a metric that they were going to use to see like, hey, they are going to approve this. Is this above a 1.2 DSCR? Is it above a certain cap rate? So that was kind of made the relationship a lot easier was I wasn't even bringing them things that they weren't going to lend on in the first place.

That's huge because I feel like in so many ways, the banking relationship, people talk about, you know, obviously equity and having the down money, but the banking relationship is really, gets under, it doesn't get discussed enough, I don't think, personally.

It's incredibly important.

It is, it's everything. I mean, you really can't, I mean, so, you know, it's where you're gonna be able to grow. And so, what do you think, ladies listening to this, do they need to have in place so you are bankable?

So depends on which way you're going, because I've like, I've done residential and commercial, those are two different worlds.

Sure.

But the thing that's universal, in my opinion, is understanding banking guidelines, right? Understanding underwriting things. Like, there's so many things that I've learned along the way. Like, hey, once you get to 5 properties, you can't cash out refinance on any property that you don't own or occupy. You know, and if you don't know that, and you've got equity sitting in your properties, and you're like, oh, I'll eventually get to it. Well, once you buy 5, you're SOL. You know, what are you going to do, sell a property to get your equity out? Like, you do things that you need to know. And I find it very— that's on the residential side, just so you know. You know, what are seasoning requirements? You know, people are like, oh, well, I'm gonna go, you know, rehab this property and pull cash out. Well, what's the seasoning requirement? You know, If you have a hard money loan that's due with a huge balloon in 5 months, and the seasoning requirement is 6 months, what are you going to do? These are all things that I think are very important. And that helps you understand, right, how to reposition yourself. Another thing is debt-to-income ratios. That's on the residential side. That determines how much loan you'll get approved for. And I always explain it to people to understand, you know, I was getting a loan a couple of years ago, doing a cash-out refinance or something. And the lender had said, you know, your equity position allows you to pull out, let's say, $100,000. But based on your debt-to-income ratio, you can only pull out $50,000. And I was like, cool, I'll pay off my car, then we're good to go to get the $100,000. He's like, what do you mean you'll pay off your car? I said, well, my car, I owe $6,000 on my car. It's a $400 a month car payment. That equals $80,000 in approval according to debt-to-income ratios. I'll pay off the car tomorrow, give you the, you know, clean note, and then I can get approved for $80,000 more. And he was like, oh, I've never thought of it like that. Like that, you know, like, it's all— these are all things that, like understanding, right, will help you position your ability to grow.

Hmm, I love what you're saying. And I want to dissect a little bit because I think that that's such an important point. You're not going to waste the lender's time if you really focus on only sending them deals that match their requirements. And in the past, that have given me like less than 24 hours approvals and term sheets, which made a difference of me getting the deal or not.

Yeah.

Having that, doing the homework, and I could not emphasize that even more. And I'm very thankful that you mentioned that. Because That is a homework that you can be doing even before start looking at anything. Talk to several lenders, compare. Oh, okay, this is like origination fee here is 1%, here is 3%. Oh, they do require a reserve for the monthly payments, or they don't have seasoning fee period, or don't. Every single thing. And if you don't know that, seek for help.

Yeah.

Other people that did it and say, hey, quick question on this here. Does it sound like something that's normal or not? Because that's gonna make a difference in you might getting a property or not, depending on how fast you can get those things done.

Yeah, I mean, I think to me, the number one most important thing to start with is understanding financing. What you're approved for, what that means, how to change your approval, right? Understanding debt-to-income, all that stuff. And then kind of planning out your timeline, right? How are you going to— hey, my goal is 10 properties. Awesome. How are you going to get there? Right? How much cash do you have? What kind of loan terms can you get? Again, understanding that like once you get to 5, the down payment requirements change, the credit requirements change. There's different things that come into play. These are all things that you kind of need to understand. You know, when are you gonna go into commercial? 'Cause once you get to 10, then what? You know, if your goal's 20, you gotta go to commercial. What are those terms like, right? How do you get approved for that? These are all things that, it's free, right? It doesn't cost you anything to learn and it will help you get there faster.

Yeah, and also how your employment situation's gonna impact your bankableness.

Yep.

If that's such a word. I mean, I remember, you know, so many people talk about, I'm gonna quit my job and invest in real estate. And that's certainly a path, but, you know, so many times they wanna see the personal guarantee. They wanna know, are you, they're not just investing in the deal, they're investing in you. And they wanna know, are you gonna pay back the loan? And how do we mitigate our risk, right? That's what banks are in the business of. And I remember when we had like, we had our portfolio and we were kind of getting to, you know, we were growing and getting to a different phase. And I remember, you know, at that point we were like, okay, not only do we, we were in the phase of, okay, we've kind of tapped our own finances and our own resources. Now we kind of have to kind of position and start looking at bringing in some partners. And I remember one of the first partners we had, it wasn't just about the money. It was actually, he had a very high-paying job and it became such a helpful part of our business growth because, you know, we had great credit, but neither of us had, you know, W-2 income. And that made a difference with this particular bank. So it becomes less important as you grow your portfolio, you know, obviously, but when you're in that, okay, I gotta get here and I'm here, those are the personal guarantees and the employment actually becomes having someone on your team, that becomes huge. So, people just like, oh, I'm just gonna quit my job and, you know, they're gonna be, you know, be bankable. That's tough. That's a tough one unless you got a ton of cash, which is awesome, but some people don't.

So, I didn't hate my job like a lot of people are like, oh my God, I hate my job. Like, I can't wait to quit and do real estate. I wasn't like that. My intentions were never really to quit my job and to do real estate full time. It just got to the point where my real estate had become such an obsession that it was distracting me at work, right? My heart was no longer in it. But I had asked my bank before I even, before I even considered putting my notice in, will this affect my ability to move forward with more houses? At that point, we had just bought 5. Okay, so the other 13, I was, you know, still planning on buying, and they had said no. I'm like, you sure? Because I'm going to quit my job. And they're like, you're good. Like if they would have said like, hey, this is going to be a problem, I would have stayed. You know, hands down the W-2 thing, especially when you're getting started, is so important. Also, again, things people need to understand when you do quit your job, you have to have 2 years of that income on your taxes for it to count. So like I started another business, I quit my job in July of 2014.

Great point.

I started another business in August of 2014. I, so 2014 was like a couple of months of income. 2015 was my first full year, but you know, it was still like my first year in the business. And then 2016 was like my first full like 100% year. It wasn't until 2018 that I was actually able to use 100% of that income from that business because I had to wait 2 full years. Um, and that was when I had my 2016 and 2017 taxes done. So understand that it's not like, oh, great, you know, I'll quit my job tomorrow and get a loan. It takes 6 years to build up that income to be able to use it. 100%.

And you mentioned that right now you have several businesses. Tell me a little bit more about each business and how you divide your time growing them.

That's a great question. So, I have just under 100 units. In the Chicago Milwaukee market. That's business number one, is that portfolio. I also own my own brokerage company. We've got a team of investor agents in Chicago. I'm one of the top 10% of real estate agents in the Chicagoland area, and then manage obviously a couple of other agents on my team. I'm the co-founder of the Midwest Real Estate Networking Summit, which is a 2-day conference in June in Chicago for real estate investors. It's like 400 real estate investors that I coordinate because, you know, it's fun. And then I also am one of the co-founders of TurnkeyReviews.com, which is a website for out-of-state real estate investors. I also have a monthly meetup group I've been running as well. So those are like my 4 main businesses. And I work less than 30 hours a week. So that has been something that, like you said in the beginning of the call, it's taken time to get there. It's not like I woke up one day and was like, man, I just want to work 30 hours a week. I've had to learn to be very selfish and to put myself first. So one of the things I do is that I just don't accept in-person meetings. I will gladly do a phone call. Again, if the topic is relevant to me. So I always ask like, hey, what did you want to discuss in this call? Email it to me. So that I can see like, hey, I can skim through the questions and make sure that what I will be able to contribute to the conversation is going to be valuable. You know, if you're talking about flipping or wholesaling, things I've never done, I will just respond back and say, you know, I'm probably not the best person. Sorry, that is what it is. I work from home as well. So that makes it a little bit easier is I don't have to get ready. I don't put makeup on, you know, like I don't have to put pants on. You know, videos are from the chest up, right? So this part looks great, this part's yoga pants, right? So it allows me though to be more efficient. I schedule everything. I also, you said earlier, people just randomly call you. I find it so rude when someone just calls me and starts talking. You know, we have to have an appointment. I have to know what the appointment is going to be about. Again, being selfish with my time. I've also tried to limit the amount of what I consider my time to be as non-revenue generating. So that's a couple of different things. People always talk about delegation, you know, and I, I've seen people who like will delegate out their entire business. I'm actually not a fan of that. I'm still very involved with almost everything in my business. Yes, I have property managers that handle the day to day, but I don't delegate out every little task. But what I do do is I've gone through, it started off a couple years ago, where I kind of at the end of each day wrote down what I was spending my time on, right? I worked 8 hours today. What did I do today? Right? And then kind of kept track of that for like a week, and then reflected on it and kind of categorize things, you know, I spent 6 hours last week on marketing. I hate marketing, right? I'm basically illiterate. Someone has to write stuff for me and do copy for me. So like that, I'm going to hire out. You know, I spent 4 hours last week on accounting. I actually like accounting. And I still do all my own accounting. Even though my properties are managed by managers, I take all their information and I put it into my own database. And that lets me understand things. So we just had a situation where, you know, I got a bill for fixing the flooring. I'm like, didn't we just fix the flooring 6 months ago? Like I knew that off the top of my head. I remembered that. So by me looking at it, glancing through a report that they provide me, I'm not gaining that information, that insight, but by me doing it myself, so I still do that stuff. So every week I wrote down what I was spending my time doing and then reflected on that. You know, again, a lot of the time is spent doing crap, you know, things that are unnecessary. And I just stopped doing that. That was part of it as well. And then I schedule everything out. You know, if I'm doing, I do phone calls, right? I had a block yesterday of maybe 4 hours where I just had back-to-back 30-minute phone calls. Boom, I'm done for the day. I'm done for a few days actually. That's just how I schedule my life. But again, making my family a priority and looking at that perspective of every minute doing something else is time away from my family. Right? So what is it worth to me? And I said, I try to keep it down to about 2 hours a week of non-revenue generating things. Right? So that's when taking a phone call to help someone else out that I don't know, that would kind of fall into that sort of category.

It's a great, great, a lot of great points there. I mean, having, making a list of your revenue generating activity and your non-revenue generating activities is a huge polyaha for people. I mean, that's like, I'm like, I gotta do that after our call. Just started. I'm like, I gotta do that. Like really get clear. I mean, I know it in my head, but do I have like a list that I have put together and I can really zone in on that? Like, that's awesome. You know, that's a great suggestion. The other thing that I love what you said is about if you want to make a change in your life, diary what you're doing today. I mean, people have said that about, you know, I've talked to people about, you know, food. They're like, what do you eat? I'm like, well, I can tell you what I ate today, but I don't really know what I ate yesterday. But if I had written it down, I've been like, oh yeah, I did. Oh yeah, I had that piece of chocolate too. Yeah, I forgot. I have to have a little chocolate. But you do, you have to write what you're trying to shift around down so you can reflect. I love that concept too because it's very, God, people don't, one, actually track anything, and number two, reflect on it and then make changes. That's—

It's super important. Even like with personal finance. I remember when we started, it's like, hey, how are we going to afford houses? Budgeting, right? That's number one thing. You can either make more money, which is hard for most people, or you can cut back on your spending. And I remember we used mint.com, which is a great website. You can load in your previous transactions. And my husband at the time looked at it like, "You spent $800 last month on fast food." And he was like, "No, I just get things like every once in a while I go and get things off the dollar menu." I'm like, "That's $800 a month." Right? And like, you don't, when it's a couple of bucks here and there, you're not really thinking about it. But when you start tracking it and you start seeing like, oh, like Starbucks is a big one for people too. You know, I've had friends who are like, oh my God, I'm spending $500 a month on Starbucks. But it's that process of seeing, right? And then deciding, being aware of it, right? And I'm not saying like you can't have Starbucks, but maybe once a week and now it becomes a treat. That's the same sort of concept with your life. And with your schedule, prioritizing things as well, you know. And I follow the Getting Things Done method of organization. If you've ever read that book, I was too busy to read the book, so I bought the Cliff Notes off of Amazon. You're funny. But it's a time management thing. I've been doing that for a few years and it's been life-changing.

Okay.

I love, I love what you're saying. And it boils down to awareness.

It is. It is. Mm-hmm.

It's just being aware of what you're doing. And I think that a lot of people don't track because they're like, "No, I don't want to even know how much I spend on Starbucks or anything else." But I believe that if you're committed to bigger things in life, if you want to really create exceptional memories with your family and you want to do different things, those are the moments that you're going to get down. And really understand your finances. And we're not talking about anything complicated. We're talking about tracking your expenses. And pretty, pretty simple math. I'm very curious to understand your mentality when you started and when you are right now, because a lot of people that are starting, they, they're trying to get ready to get ready. And they buy 1,000 first year, maybe they take too long. What do you think in your case made a difference regarding your mindset?

I don't know.

You don't know that?

But I did absolutely no planning, right? I just like went and did it. I didn't, I said, I still, I didn't even look at accounting systems until I had like 26 units. And then was like, damn, I can't be doing this in Excel. I was do something and then figure out the details later, which was good and bad, right? I definitely lost a lot of money because I didn't have systems and processes in place. So we were somewhat disorganized and I am an extremely organized person. I was like, oh, well, we'll figure it out. And I could have planned a little bit better, would have been a little bit easier to keep track of some stuff. But I don't know, like, there wasn't anything different or mindset. It was just like, hey, I'm doing this and just go do it. Right. You know, I think one of the things that not only investors but people in general have is doubt, right? So I mentioned before, one of my businesses is I'm a real estate agent, right? And my business is all investors. And my, my pitch, or the thing that I always say to people is, listen, my job is to educate you enough to make your own decisions, right? When you're making an offer on a property, if you're up at night worried, you know, how am I going to pay for this? This is the right decision. My answer to you is you're just not ready yet. And that's okay. It takes time. It takes generally 6 to 9 months for a client that's working with me to get to the point where they are 100% confident in making that offer. But at the end of the day, I am not talking you into it, right? I'm not the one who's up at night worried about that stuff. I sleep like a baby. So be— it's okay to take that time. But when you're talking about years, we know, then we're getting into like the whole analysis paralysis thing, right? And, you know, you might need to shift your expectations, right? If you're not finding a deal in this market, and it's been a year, right, then maybe the thing is the market will not deliver. What you would consider to be a deal. So either adjust your expectations or change markets, right? But don't just sit there and wait, you know, like, oh, I've got to find— it's gotta be perfect. Nothing is perfect. Wait till you're a landlord, right? Not perfect. It's messy. You know, we were just talking about— since Chicago was -50 last week, I had at least 9 clients who had pipes burst. You know, landlording is not perfect. I had someone drive into my house and knock my house off, or like the cinder block is falling over on the foundation. I've had someone blow up my garage. You know, like there's all these things that happen to being like as a landlord. And if your expectation is like, hey, this is good, it's gotta be 100% perfect, like, oh man, it's gonna be a stressful life for you.

And I think what you're saying is so important. It's like you're continually course correcting, right? So it's like continuous like improvement. And I think, okay, I did this. We're going to shift here and then we're going to, you know, move on and just go make it happen, you know, versus, you know, overthinking it or what have you, you know, which I think—

You have to, you know, I said I've shifted multiple times throughout the business. What I, when I started this almost 8 years ago and where I thought I would be is night and day. And it's gone in a good way. But I said I've just kept myself open to opportunity. You know, I always thought I was going to be managing my portfolio like hands-on. And then realize I don't like it. A, it's not a good use of my time. B, and my time, the money I spend on property management is 100% worth what I gain in being able to focus on other businesses that are higher revenue generating per hour for me. So why would I, you know, spend, let's say, $25 an hour managing properties when I can make $200 an hour being an agent? You know, it just doesn't make sense.

Um, okay, well, think of it, right?

Understanding, you know, and understanding where your skill sets lie. Um, that's another big thing, understanding what you're not good at. You know, there's a million things I'm not good at. I don't even try to do them anymore, because the time it takes me to do it is probably triple what it would take someone who likes to do those sort of things. And it's not worth me stressing out, or, you know, when I can just pay someone to do it. But marketing for me is a big one. I am awful. This event we have coming up in June, my business partner on the event is, he's marketing by background. And instead he edits these videos and like makes all these graphics and like writes all this stuff for the website. And every single time I'm like, man, it would take me like 2 weeks to do something half as good. But that's his specialty. Like, and that's what he's good at. And luckily, you know, when it comes to a partnership that we complement each other in those aspects.

Beautiful.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I mean, and that's so important is it sounds like you've really, in order to have these multiple businesses and be able to work which, how, you know, however long you wanna work and put those standards in place, you know, having those partnerships and being able to see that, right? And saying, because you can't, I find people often ask us and I'm sure both of you get this like, you know, I need a partner and will you be my partner? I mean, I've even gotten just like, it's like, I don't even know the person and they wanna partner with me.

What's your name by the way?

But if you dissect that, yes, it's a nice compliment, certainly. However, what the challenge with any of that approach is that if you have not done the actual work on what am I good at, what am I not good at, what do I bring to the table, what are my gaps, all of it, like it's a serious self-evaluation and business evaluation as well, because there's things that we do well in our business and there's things that we don't do well. And if you don't—

And that's okay.

And that's okay.

Yeah.

It's more than okay because— I forget the story. It's a great, great story about all these animals. And it's basically what happens in the story. I'm going to totally butcher the story, but I haven't read it in a while. But the animals are all in the school. It's the animal school. And they're just forced to, you know, basically take all the same courses. And the one, like, the elephant's really good at something, you know. And it's just a cute story to show how when we spend time doing things we're not good at, it actually takes away from developing like your core genius is what the whole point of it was. But people often don't, you know, think about that, you know. So, um, no, I love that. I love that, um, I love that concept. I love the, the boundaries you put out, Bree, because I think as, as investors, as women, as people, everyone can, you know, really, really learn a little bit more about that and get better at it, practicing it in their life. And you Sounds like you're doing an amazing job at it.

Well, I think one of the challenges— so I'm not a mom yet, but I've got friends who are moms and know something about parenting. But we didn't grow up in a world of Instagram or Facebook where everyone's posting how perfect their lives are. And it just terrifies— like, the parenting part does not terrify me. What terrifies me is the mom groups, right? Like, having to associate, right? Like, oh my God, you don't feed your kid gluten-free? My kid eats his boogers. I don't know. That sort of lifestyle, right? But I think that we try to be perfect and we try to emulate this life of, you know, everything is perfect. My child's perfect. My house is perfect. My husband's perfect. And there's no way I would ever even attempt at that sort of thing. And I think that is something that women need to understand is Hey, like there's that movie with Sarah Jessica Parker. Like, how does she do it all? I'm like, why would you want to do it all? I don't want to do it all. I really don't.

Yeah. Good perspective.

Why? And understanding that, like, and that's not only okay, like, that's my choice.

Yeah.

You know, I don't want to do it all. Hell no. That's exhausting.

Yeah.

100%.

Good perspective. It's a really good perspective. And what, where do I want to spend my time and what if I put my time here?

What?

What happens then? Like, where is it going to— something's got to shift, you know? And I've done that where I'm like, you know, I really like to keep my house tidy. And, you know, we just moved recently. So I'm just trying to keep up, you know? And I'm like, no, it's going to just— dishes are going to stay in the sink and I'm getting to the gym because that is more of a priority than the dishes. I'll get to it. It's not going to stay there for a week, you know? But it's okay that I'm leaving the house with an untied— like, it's for me, that's something in my— I have no idea where that came from, like a past life. But I have this like crazy, like, I got to keep my house tidy. Tidy every minute of the day. I have no idea. I got, you know, going to therapy on that one. But regardless, I'm like—

I'm like you.

Yeah, I'm getting better at like, I see specks of things on the floor. I'm okay. We had a Super Bowl party recently and I'm like, this house is a disaster, but I'm going to the gym because I just ate like the entire taco nacho dip. So I'm like, I got to get to the gym.

The robot vacuum has been awesome in my life.

I've just heard that from someone the other day.

I wipe everything on the floor and I set it, it goes off at like 4:30 in the morning. So by the time we are up, it is done. I run it like every day in my house and just wipe everything on the floor. At night, I kind of just walk through and like, you know, I'll put stuff in piles and wipe things on the floor and then the robot vacuum cleans while I sleep.

The RoboVacuum. I gotta get that on, I gotta look on Amazon on that. You're the second person in the second day that has told me about that.

I don't know how I ever survived before it because I'm super anal too, you know, and my husband is a really messy eater. I'm sorry, he's gonna hear me, you know, like it's mind-blowing, right? Mind-blowing. Like peanuts, like all over the floor, just all over the floor. We actually have like a little handheld vacuum to like vacuum him while he's eating them. Oh my gosh, that's another level. And like now I just don't stress. I'm like, sweet, leave it on the floor, the vacuum's gonna clean it up tonight.

Yeah, we got that. Oh, that's great. So that's awesome. Well, Bri, thank you so much. You've been absolutely amazing. How can the ladies listening learn more about you and learn about your amazing event coming up in June?

Sure. So I'm on BiggerPockets, Bri Schmidt, as well as LinkedIn. Those are probably the two places to connect with me. And then the, the summit is in June, June 1st and 2nd. It's a two-day event. It's one of those, you know, No one on stage is selling this get-rich-quick crap, right? It's all real investors that are sharing their life experiences with investing, the good, the bad, the ugly. That's kind of the premise of the event. And we like to try to find investors who don't have Cinderella stories. You know, last year, our keynote went from 4,000 units to $26 million in debt, and then built himself back up again and started a new business. Like, how do you come back from $26 million in debt? I don't know. I couldn't do it. So that's the event. It's MidwestRESummit.com.

So let's go to our fabulous 3 questions now. The first one is, what's the most transformational book you have ever read?

For me, it would be Getting Things Done, which I mentioned I would spread the cliff notes. It's an organizational method. But it really helped me de-stress and to set my day, my week, and my life up in a way that I'm not worried about things. So one of the things in the book is they, they said they spend so much time worrying about what needs to get done or trying to remember what needs to get done. By writing it all down, it takes away that mental energy. And that was a really impactful thing for me.

That's a great aha. The second question is, what's the most powerful routine you do to create a financially free and balanced life? And I think you mentioned that, but let's see if there's anything.

Yeah, I'd say awareness. Well, awareness, Awareness, when it's said within business, finances, all those things, is really important. I also am not one of those get up at 4 o'clock in the morning type people. I sleep, I don't set an alarm clock. I don't have kids, keep in mind. I sleep till when my body tells me it's time to get up, generally around 7, 7:30 in the morning, because I feel that when my body decides it's time to get up, I am 100% ready to go for my day. I am not exhausted. I am not trying to do a million things at once. I'm focused 100% on my business and that allows me to accomplish things quicker. Beautiful.

The last question is, which woman, famous or not, has inspired you the most?

I don't know really. I would have to say probably Oprah, just because she's obviously accomplished so much and in so many different aspects of things. I can't imagine, I don't know anyone that's done more than she has. And she's a Chicago girl. Yeah, right? Awesome.

Well, Bri, thank you so much for being on our show. Thanks for sharing all your nuggets of wisdom. And thanks for all you're doing for the investor community, what you're putting together in June, and hopefully get a lot of ladies out there and, you know, to join in the event. So, thanks for being on our show.

Yeah, of course. Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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