100: Realty Mogul CEO Jilliene Helman Empowers Investors to Build the Real Estate Portfolio That’s Right for Them

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Welcome to win the Women Investing Network. The podcast where you can learn from successful entrepreneurs, business leaders and real estate investors who are winning in business and life. Learning from others is the fastest way to grow your skills, gain knowledge and avoid pitfalls so you can win. Join your hosts Jason Hartman and Rich dad author Sharon Lechter. Sharon is a business mentor, international speaker and best selling author. Jason is a self made multimillionaire investor, entrepreneur and highly acclaimed thought leader. Together with their successful guests, you'll get the tools you need to win.

Welcome to this segment of the Women Investing Network. I am your host Sharon Lechter and I have a new friend I get to meet today and to share with you and excited to what she can about what she can share and her history sounds so exciting and I think it's really important to really listen carefully on how she got started because real estate investing is here to stay and the richest people in the world either made their money through real estate or hold their wealth in real estate. So it's no time like the present to start figuring out how you can add real estate to your portfolio. And Jillian Hellman is an incredible example of a success in real estate. She's the founder and CEO of Realty Mogul, a digital platform for investors to invest in. I love what she shares vetted real estate deals because it's so important to make sure that you are working and investing with trusted individuals and trusted companies. So welcome Julian. I'm so happy to have you here.

Thanks so much for having me today Sharon.

Well, you've been featured as an expert on all kinds of different networks and Realty Mogul is ranked as one of the best one stop shops for real estate crowdfunding. So tell us, let's start with how you got started. Let's talk about little Gillian.

So I was lucky enough to grow up in a family where I had a lot of exposure to real estate. So my grandfather, prior to me being born, built an apartment building in Los Angeles. My mom was in luxury residence residential real estate. Growing up my dad owned some industrial and commercial office for his businesses. So we sort of talked about real estate around the dinner table. I was always fascinated by real estate and when I turned 16 years old and I got a driver's license, I started driving out to the property that the family owned and helping in any which way. Not to say that property management is the most glorious aspect of real Estate investing. But I really got my start learning real estate from my family. And then after I went to university, I went to work for a bank. And while I was working for the bank, we actually acquired two different banks during the 2008 financial crisis. And I was involved on those sort of SWAT teams that went in to acquire those banks. And I was involved in sifting through all of the real estate assets that were in those portfolios. They were FDIC assisted transactions. So they were government assisted takeovers of failed banks during the recession of 2008. And I really just got more exposure there, continued to be really interested in real estate and then started looking for passive investments. So started looking for real estate syndication, sort of the old country club network. And they were very, very hard to find. And that was part of the inception story of Realty Mogul was how do we bring that country club access to a wider variety and a wider swath of investors to get exposure to real estate. Because as you talked about, Sharon, a lot of the wealthiest people in the world either made their money in real estate or kept their money in real estate. And when I was working in the banking environment, I was working in wealth management. So I worked with very high net worth clients. And it was the same story, right? Many of them had either made their wealth in real estate or kept their wealth in real estate. And so I thought there's got to be a way to provide broader access to this asset class. That just makes so much sense that I deeply believe people should be diversified into.

Well, I love it. And I think one of the, as I said, one of the most often questions I get is, you know, how do I get started? I don't have a lot of money. I can't buy a property on my own. So, you know, from a standpoint of somebody asking you that question, and obviously you really were at the forefront of bringing real estate and crowdfunding together in the same space. So talk a little bit about the inception of Realty Mogul. And you certainly have had huge success. I mean, the. And it's probably even more than this now. But I show that you've invested over 750 million with your members and over $4 billion of real estate nationwide. And so it's really. You've walked the talk and you've created the success and you've created the opportunity for other people to invest. So share a little bit about the inception and how it's grown.

Yeah, absolutely. So the inception was really because of a political change. So there was a new piece of Legislation called the JOBS Act. And that really opened up this concept of crowdfunding, this concept of individual investors being able to pool their capital and make investments in real estate. The first deal that we ever did was a duplex in Compton. So going back to sort of the advice of getting started, like, get started, right? There's no time like the present. You've got to get involved in some way or another. You know, that first deal that I did on my own, this deal in Compton, it was $110,000 transaction. It was structured as a hard money loan. So the inception of the business was we were in the hard money lending business. We no longer do hard money lending, which we can talk about in another podcast. But the advice is really to get started. One of the beauties of crowdfunding, and this is sort of a shameless plug. So whether it's with us or with another platform, I don't care. But you can get started with a very nominal amount of money. Our minimum investment is $5,000. So if you have $5,000, you can get invested. You can start reviewing the quarterly reports. Even if you don't have any money to invest, you can start your education. Right. I think that that's where it really starts for real estate investors is starting your education. There's so many books, there's so many podcasts. If you sign up on our website as an example, you'll get a notification every time we do a webinar. Well, we do a webinar for every new. So you might be able to sit in on 50, 60, 70 webinars this year, and you're going to learn a tremendous amount around how that property is being underwritten, why the location makes sense, why the business plan makes sense. So I think that it's around getting that education. For me personally, another piece of advice that I give entrepreneurs is go meet 2,000 people. And they look at me like I'm a little bit insane. And I sometimes will show them my CRM. I met 2000 people when I started the company, and I have a CRM with notes on every single one of those people. Where did I meet them? What did we talk about? You know, what are they interested in? Are they investors? Are they lenders? Are they real estate entrepreneurs? So what bucket do they fit into? And building that network is really, really critical in real estate. So those are all sort of things that I think can help people get started in their journey.

Yeah, I love that. And I think it's really important that your network.

People that want to invest in Real estate. If they are not hanging around with real estate investors, they need to figure out a way to create that environment so that they can get that exposure and lear. Exactly. The best way to do it is find other people that provide those opportunities and resources. So tell me how people can find realty Mogul and find you. Gillian?

Yeah, you can find us online. So we're@realty mogul.com and you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm at Jillian Hellman on LinkedIn. Just ping me and let me know that you heard me on the podcast and I'd be happy to connect.

So is there a particular type of investment that you're looking at these days?

You know, one of our core values is to empower the investor and part of that empowerment is choice. So we look to provide a variety of different investment opportunities on our platform, from multifamily to self storage to industrial to office and retail. So we're really looking for choice. That being said, the most common investment or asset class on the platform is multifamily. So about 65% of the dollars that have invested on the Realtor mogul platform has been invested in multifamily. There's been over 19,000 apartment units that been posted and I think that that'll still remain a very, very big part of the choice or the offerings on the platform. But you know, we want to be a place where people can come build a diversified real estate portfolio.

And from a standpoint of location, are you centralized in certain areas or certain states? Are you pretty much spread across the country?

We're spread across the country. We've made investments or offered investments into over 30 different states. We've got a diversified team, so we've got people in local markets. You know, we're boots on the ground on every property. So someone from our team go step foot on every single property as part of, you know, the minimum qualifications and the minimum guidelines to be able to post a transaction on the Realtor mogul platform. But we're geographically diversified and so if.

Somebody'S looking at, you know, how they get involved, what kind of return are you looking at these days?

So every deal is different. You know, you just, you think about return on the risk and return spectrum, right? For more opportunistic deals or more development deals, there's going to be higher projected returns and for more, you know, core cash flowing deals are going to be lower projected return. So the best way to see sort of what we're looking at is to sign up on our website. It's free to create an account so you don't have to pay anything and you can start to dig through transactions. Right. Typically for development, we're looking at investments that have the potential to return an 18% IRR or higher because we feel like that's the appropriate risk adjusted return for development. Development tends to be the highest risk bucket in real estate, but we also have investments that might be projecting a 10 or 11% projected return that are more cash flowing investments with less potential upside appreciation. So it really runs the gamut. And it goes back to that idea of empowering investors to build the real estate portfolio that's right for them. Not every investor should be invested in development. Right. There's certain investors that it doesn't make sense to take that level of risk. And similarly, there's investors who maybe want to take more risk and don't want to invest in core opportunities as an example.

And I love that. And I think it's really important to educate yourself on that. And I, you know, the thing I want to highlight as we talk about this is the ability for whoever is listening to this podcast that you, you can get started in your investing in real estate career with as little as $5,000 with Realty Mogul. And that's something that should be a great goal for you. And the goal with that 5,000 is also the education that comes along with it to be able to immerse yourself in the webinars that Jillian's talking about, really just looking at the deals within the site and learning the numbers. The numbers tell a story and you have the opportunity to look at it. So I think it's fantastic. I want to congratulate you, Gillian. You're very young and you've built an incredible organization. So kudos to you and I'm excited. Anything you want to share about the future of Realty Mogul for us, we're.

Going to keep doing what we're doing. You know, just show up every day with 100% of what we've got to give. That's sort of my motto. And so keep doing what we're doing, keep empowering investors, keep offering choice. You know, real estate is such a massive industry and we're still such a small piece of it. So, you know, continue to march forward and do more deals and offer more deals and just be involved and sort of be in the middle of the flow of real estate deals.

Well, one of the things I talk about is one of the best investments from a standpoint of inflation and depression opportunities is real estate, because People always need a place to live. So it's really important to understand that when somebody's investing with a personal financial planner, they talk about diversify your assets. They're usually talking about across paper assets like stocks, bonds, mutual funds. When I talk about it, it's across paper, real estate, intellectual property, businesses. So real estate's a very important asset to have in your portfolio. And I just want to thank you, Jillian, for making it available and possible for people to be able to get started in the crowdfunding aspect of realty mogul. So I appreciate you.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. So all of you watching and listening to this segment of the Women Investment Network, know that you can find Jillian on LinkedIn or realtymobile.com, and if you have any questions for me at all, if you want more information on real estate, I'm doing a real estate seminar in another month or so, but reach out to me infoheronlector.com because we're here to support you and give you opportunities for you to find your next best investment. So thank you so much. Have a beautiful day. And until next time.

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