WIN 12 - The 5 Business Languages with Jessica Hickey

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 our hosts, Elizabeth Embry and Jason Hartman. Elizabeth is a seasoned real estate investor, experienced corporate executive and skilled mentor. Jason is a self made multimillionaire investor, entrepreneur and highly acclaimed thought leader. Together with their successful guests, you'll get the tools you'll need to win.

Welcome to another exciting episode of the Women Investing Network. I'm your co host, Elizabeth Embry and today our guest is Jessica Hickey. She's the CEO of of Ten29 Consulting and author of Stop Pushing Getting Decisions Made in the five Business Languages. Jessica has a really interesting background of managing real estate on an enterprise level on a massive scale. She worked in the real estate department for Microsoft and as you can imagine, the company is huge both nationally and internationally. And so she had the opportunity to do really extensive scales of project management and real estate management across certainly the Pacific Northwest. And it's really interesting all of the challenges and decisions that she faced. She's now able to apply to her customers today who are architecture firms or real estate companies or other business companies with her extensive program and COO management experience and the way she breaks down what you need to do in order to make effective and timely decisions, because that's the biggest killer of delivering any large scale initiative. And so the fact that she has a systematic way of breaking these things down was really interesting. It's a great book to read and I really enjoy talking with her. So a decision that I've recently had to make is should I sell my house or should I rent it out? And that's a decision that a lot of us come to over time. And that honestly, one of the ways that real estate investors initially get started is they decide to keep their home and turn it into a rental. It's a tough decision, but it really comes down to dollars, but also comes down to your comfort level. Both your comfort level with being a landlord and a property manager, if you will, but also your comfort of, for instance, somebody else living in your home. So I've got some helpful tips on things to think about as you're breaking down the facts associated with making this decision. So what are the things to think about? Well, the first thing that you should be thinking about is the rent to value ratio for your area. So we've Talked about the 1% being the appropriate mark, for anything that's 1% or higher is a good potential rental from both a risk and a reward perspective. So for instance, in the Midwest you can buy a house for $100,000 so you can rent it out for $1,000 a month. That's 1%. Here in the Pacific Northwest it's, you know, in the, near the Seattle area it's around 0.3 or 0.4%. So less than half of that 1%. So for instance, if you have a million dollar home, you're probably going to rent it out for 3,200, you know, maybe 4,000amonth and that'll cover the mortgage, maybe it'll cover the property tax, but it probably won't cover your maintenance reserve, the rent ready or the property management numbers that you have to be thinking about as well. The next thing that you need to be thinking about is demand. So what do people actually typically rent? So the market may be hot, but the market may be hot for one bedroom, one bath. So if you have a five bedroom, four bath house, the demand for renting that may be a lot longer, you know, may be slower, it may take you longer to rent than if you had a one one. So that's something to take into account when you're looking at your vacancy rate and your potential profitability. The thing that you need to be thinking about is it's not just mortgage that you need to cover. You have to be thinking about your maintenance reserves, the cost to get it rent ready, the advertising, the screening, any potential legal action. So for instance, one of the things you absolutely must be thinking about is what's the cost of eviction? How long does it take? What are the laws and processes in your local area, even within your city? So for instance, within Bellevue, the, the laws are different than they are in Seattle. Seattle has got very tenant favorable laws where Bellevue is a little more landlord friendly, not a whole lot, but a little bit more. But in rural Washington they're very landlord friendly. So it just depends on what the laws are within your area. But you've got to take that into consideration because you know, you may screen the best potential tenant and they look amazing and then some horrible life thing happens and now all of a sudden you're having somebody living there that can't afford to pay the rent and they may or may not move out on their own. So you've got to be thinking about these things. Also the property management costs, the property management costs are not only you know, if you hire somebody, what is it in your area? 10%, 12%, 8%, 5%, whatever that cost is. If you're going to be managing it yourself, you need to be thinking about the time and the knowledge that you have. How long is it going to take you to get up to speed with being a good and effective property manager? Now, people that are enthusiastic about getting into real estate, this is a no brainer. You know, they'll find the resources, they'll read three or four books, they'll get connected with their local real estate housing association. You know, they'll get the right legal forms and they'll just dive right in somebody. It's like, oh my gosh, this is just one more thing. I'm already working, you know, a 12 hour work day. It's going to take them longer to become effective as a property manager. And so it's something to think about from a time perspective. There's also application fees, there's legal requirements of you cannot discriminate against tenants that are, that you're screening for your property. You need to understand what the laws are. If you have a property manager, they're potentially charging you additional for lease up and lease renewal. They're also probably charging you a percentage on maintenance. And so those are just all things to think about if you're going to self manage. Do you want the tenant to know that you're the actual owner or do you want to ask? Some of my friends do say no, I'm just the property manager and actually not talk about the fact that they actually own it. So there's a lot of nuances and complexities. We'll get into self managing in more detail on a later episode. The last thing to think about if you want to rent your house is do you want somebody else living in your house? Now when you sell it, it's no longer your house. You know, you don't, you aren't necessarily thinking about it in the same way. If you still own that house and you've got somebody else living in it and you're seeing, you know, when you're doing the rent readies or when you're dealing with a maintenance issue, you're seeing how they're treating that beautiful perfect cabinet that you spent hours and hours making decision on and months seeing them get built and installed or whatever. And if you're emotionally tied to the house, seeing a renter in there could be potentially upsetting to some folks. So just that's something to factor in there. Okay, so let's break down the cost of actually selling the house. So what I did Was I? Actually, based on the recommendation of my real estate agent, I did a pre inspection and a sewer scope. And the reason why I did that is because I didn't want any surprises coming up when people put pits on the house and then do their inspection. I wanted to have everything pristine and ready to go for somebody to just fall in love with the house and move in. And so I got a pre inspection and then I actually moved out so that we could do all of the repairs and the preparation without any interference. So for instance, refinishing all the hardwood floors, replacing all the carpet and there was nothing there, including pets, because a lot of people are allergic to pets. And so if you've had, you know, in our case, we've had three dogs and two cats living there over time, over a 12 year period. You know, you really want your house pet dander free. And so just getting it ready and pristine, it takes money and time. It takes a chunk of time depending on how long you've lived there. And then your real estate agent cost, in my point of view, it's worth every penny. Your real estate agent has contacts, they have context of the local market, they know how to advertise. They may have buyers already in the queue. You know, they've got the contacts for the drone operator, the video person, the person that's going to stage it, the people that are going to plan the party for the open house, all of those things, they really know their field. If you want to sell your own home, there's a whole lot of stuff to think about. And I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying just be really cognizant of all of the things that you have to think about. So for instance, what are the legal requirements for actually selling your home? So if you're not going to have an agent, then you're going to need a real estate attorney. If you're going to try to sell your own home, how do you do the advertising and get it effective now in some hot markets, you know, you could probably throw a stone and find a buyer. Seattle literally has the shortest inventory in the US right now, were the highest in demand. And so it's not a problem finding a buyer. It is a challenge, always finding the right buyer. And so my agent, reba Haas with ReMax, you know, I've known her for a dozen years. I know that she's on top of her game. I know that she knows how to get stuff done. I referred people to her in the past and they've been happy. So for me, I have a relationship with her. I'm more than happy to pay the 6% for her to do her job and the person representing the buyer to do their job effectively. It's worry free. I'm no longer involved in any kind of emotion when negotiating. For me, that's the right decision. Other people may decide to do for sale by owner and then so that'll impact your financials overall. Another thing to think about is the tax implications. So if you've owned your home for a long time and it's appreciated quite a bit, you need to be thinking about the capital gains and that may or may not impact your decision. And so again, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a cpa, I'm not a real estate agent. So do the research on your own, work with your local experts. But the tax implication for selling a home that you've lived in for two to five years before the sale is 250,000 tax free. But if you're married and filing jointly, then you have up to $500,000 that you can have as capital gains, tax free. You can also leverage the receipts for the repairs, for the remodel, for anything that you've put into the home to bring that number up. So you could exceed the 500,000 with appropriate documentation. But again, work with your CPA to figure out what that is. The other thing to be thinking about is what's the sentimental value of that home. So for instance, if you're moving temporarily and you want to move back, do you really want to live in another house, or do you want to keep that house, rent it out for a while and then move back into it? Were your children or other family members expecting to inherit the home? And so all of those factors play into that. Should I sell, Should I rent my house out? For me, the biggest decision, biggest impact to it is I could actually leverage that money for something else. So if I was going to own a home and rent it, I could buy seven houses outright in Little Rock, Arkansas, for instance, for the profit that I all make off of my house. Or I could buy 20 leveraged properties if I could find somebody to loan me money on, you know, at a decent rate on 20 properties. Right. So you have to just like, what are you going to do with the money? Also plays into those factors. Right. So lots of decisions to be made. But now you're armed with some of the factors that you need to be thinking about as you're making those decisions. Hopefully you can leverage this conversation when you make that next decision. And most important thing though, the most the best piece of advice I can give you is don't worry about timing the market. Don't make these decisions based on are things trending up or trending down. If now is the time for you to go and you have to make the decision of whether you would rent out your home or sell it, don't delay that decision because you're worried about how the market's turning or tipping or what have you changing. Just make that decision. Make sure that you feel fully armed with all the questions, work through the math, work through the emotion, and then move forward and enjoy your future. And now our guest, Jessica Hickey.

Jessica Hickey, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. Super excited to have you here to go through the bio, the information that you have on your background, it was pretty exciting. I mean, you've been working with some major firms in the Seattle area and certainly have been driving your own consulting firm for a number of years. And you recently published a book called Stop Pushing Getting Decisions Made with the Five Languages of Business. And as I started to read this, was really excited about the five languages and how you can apply them to really get the most out of conversations with business leaders in project settings, etc. Can you just give us a little bit more about your background?

Thanks, Elizabeth. Great to be here. My background is centered in engineering, so I have a background in engineering. I worked for years in project management and moved into operations management with a professional services firm later in my career while doing a bunch of other services in the company and then liked that so much that once I got the operations stabilized at that company, I decided I wanted to go on my own. So almost nine years ago I went out on my own in the concept of a chief operating officer to go kind of a COO to go model. And through all of that and with a little stint inside of a technology consulting firm, I really started to gather the information and coalesce the information that led to putting the book out.

So I love the fact that you've got these really strong areas in your background. I've worked in technology and in real estate both. And I can tell you it's not always easy for women. So how did you prepare yourself for going down that path for education and how did you build your skills in these traditionally very male dominated spaces?

Well, it was interesting. I wanted to be in construction from the first day that I worked. I stepped onto a construction site as a what they call an administrative assistant. Now And I wanted to work my way up and met some challenges and basically bounced off them and said, I'm not going to let you stop me. This is where I'm going. Engineering ended up being where I went through because I happened to be in an area that didn't have a degree in construction management. So I went there instead. I've been the only woman in the room for a very long time, so I've had to learn how to communicate with men, stand on my own with men. And I was really lucky to have some really great mentors and what I call pseudo mentors because they didn't know they were mentoring me. That gave me the opportunity to learn to be curious, to ask questions and really show that I was willing to figure it out. I was really lucky.

Talk to me a little bit about your real estate background as you were helping to support these companies doing these large scale, massive programs. Do you mind sharing that?

No, not at all. Biggest experience was in when I worked with the corporate real estate group at Microsoft. I had the chance to not only manage projects but to do a lot of through working with everybody in the department because there were a lot of real estate specialists there learning how to look at leases, do presentations to executives on making a decision for expansion or contraction or consolidation of sites, to really understand what landlords provide and what they don't provide. What's the difference between these different types of leases and when do you buy a building and when do you not buy a building? So it was really interesting and obviously in the world of technology you're trying to explain real estate and construction terms to people that develop software. And so that translation piece became another part of the learning and how to be a really great consultant helping people understand. Yes, this little tiny thing that you think is easy does cost as much as a three bedroom house.

Isn't that amazing? Well, and one of the things that I'm aware of with the Microsoft campus, it's really spread out. I believe that was because of a height moratorium or something like that in the location. So you must have been dealing with acquisition and build out of a massive amount of real estate.

We were, I was, when I was there, we were in the middle of what they called their grand slam projects, which was they were named after golf courses, which I thought was really funny because I don't play golf. And my one big project on campus because I worked all over the United States for Microsoft was over half a million square feet, three buildings, a cafeteria, central plant. And they, we were going great guns and it's really interesting because you can look at. If you go down 156, I think it is, and you look at the sets of buildings, they're three stories until you get to the Bellevue city line, and then they get to be four. So there is one campus that's actually split by the city line, and it's tall on one side and not on the other. And we had to deal with all of that compliance. It's pretty funny. I think they're starting to. Redmond is starting to look that. It's one of the things that Microsoft pushed is, hey, we need. We don't have the land anymore. We need to go up.

Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. One of the things that you talked about when you were introducing yourself was the fact that you had some, in essence, overt mentorship and some. What did you call them? Accidental mentors.

Pseudo mentors. Yeah, they were accidental. Pseudo accidental. Yeah.

Okay. So I think that that's fascinating because I know one of the things that the women listening to this podcast are really looking for is how build their skills and how do they navigate those waters. So talk to us a little bit about your mentoring experience, both as a mentor and as a protege.

As a protege, what I found is that everyone is willing to help. And again, I was through my entire career, almost always the only woman in the room. I asked questions, I bounced ideas off of people. Well, what do you think about this? How does this work? What would you do here? And they were great teachers. Not knowing that they were really my mentors, my actual mentors were very informal. There was a guy when I worked for the state of California who had been around for a very long time and had seen every single type of situation you were going to get into when you were running a project. And he was basically a mentor for everybody. He had the answer. He would say, here, go think about this. Try this. And he gave me one of the best pieces of advice I ever received, which is, if you don't know, tell them you don't know, and you'll figure it out and come back with an answer. It's okay to say that. They're going to know. You're full of it if you don't say that.

Yeah, that's a real credibility buster, isn't it? I find it fascinating, the courage to say, I don't know. It's definitely learned, I think.

Scary. Absolutely scary. But the thing is, in engineering, you can't possibly remember everything, so you have to say, I don't know, right off the top of my head. But I know what book to find it in or this one little piece of information. So it's not like saying I don't know and I never will. It's I have to go back, back and find it and I'll come back and I'll get you the answer. What I found in developing mentoring programs for places that I worked and being a mentor for both my university and with women inside of where I've worked, that one of the biggest challenges that women face is one, they are afraid to ask for a mentor because they see it as some kind of they're broken somehow, which is not true. They're looking for people to talk to and get advice from, which is not being broken. That's being smart. The other one is that women who are asked to be mentors often worry that they don't have the skill to be the mentor. The skill or whatever they say to themselves, what do I have to offer? It's the experience. And as a woman mentor, you get to learn from the people that you are mentoring just as much as they learn from you.

Very cool. And I think you touch a little bit about the optimal ways to educate and to learn in your book. Let's go into those five languages of business and how our listeners might be able to apply them in what they're doing both in their business and in their everyday life.

Let me go back for just a second to the key to the book. The book is designed to be one more tool in the kit of tools for communicating within business or even within your family or anywhere else that you need to get people to decide. And it's about getting familiar and being open enough to understand how is the person across from me taking in information. Now, as somebody who has gotten people to decide to spend a lot of money when they don't really understand understand construction, this has been key. So there may be more languages. I may discover more. What I found is that you could pretty much bunch the languages that you're going to deal with at work or the people that you're going to deal with at work speak five languages, the language of vision, strategy, execution, finance and change. And if you can put what you are trying to communicate in terms of those types of languages, and the book's very clear about what they are, how they look and goes through a process of here's where you might use this language and how and why. If you can put what you're saying into the language of the person sitting across from you, then they can absorb it better and make a decision faster.

So how do people go about discovering.

What'S going to resonate with that person that they're talking about or talking to? Sorry.

Well, the book actually talks about. Here's what you're listening for. So one of the easiest languages. Well, not the easiest. Let's hit the language of vision. Everybody has a primary language and there are certain secondary languages. So the CEO's language is the language of vision. That is what is his or her vision for where the company is going, what direction do they want to go, what markets do they want to seek? All those things. And so if you can put the decision, or lack of decision in terms of if we do this, this is how it supports your strategic vision, not how much costs or how important it is to this person over here in this department. But this is the impact on the vision. If we don't do this, this is the impact on getting into that new market or bringing a product to market faster or whatever they're thinking about. So there's something in the CEO's head is about where are we going? It may not be overtly written down, but they're thinking about it. Same thing as with the COO in the language of execution. They want to know, how is it going to get done? What resources do we need? And they will be interested in how much it costs. However, if you have something their primary language is around, how do we get it done? How's it going to affect how the company runs? Will it make the company run better, smoother, more effectively, more efficiently? They're thinking about those kinds of things. Now. If you think about the real estate or construction language, I might be coming to someone and saying, well, you know, we need to extend the flashing around the parapet of this building and it's going to be $100,000 and they're going to look at me and say, huh, I don't know how to decide on that.

Is that good?

Is that bad? I don't know.

Yeah, you can see their eyes kind of glaze over. But if I can go to them and saying, hey, we need to, there's a thing we need to do on the roof that will protect the building and make the building last a little bit longer. And if I'm talking to the cfo, I can say the return on investment is that we get a 20 year life out of the roof instead of a 10 year life. And that saves us X amount of dollars over the life of the FAC. The CFO is going to go, oh, I get It.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I like how you can find ways to make sure that it resonates so that it doesn't. It's not foreign. And as you point out, they're more likely to go along with your recommendations or, you know, or make a decision, get to a decision faster.

Yeah.

And I don't, you know, my goal has always been to help people understand what am I solving for them. And I'm trying to get something done on a construction project or in any kind of project, what am I solving for them, as you know, or how. How am I helping them solve for the decision that solves the problem or takes care of the cost or whatever the situation is. And this takes a lot of practice. I got lots of clues from a former manager of mine. I've spent a lot of time when I've been on the side of doing marketing proposals and sending things to customers or clients to say, buy us or hire us. And a lot of time looking at it and saying, this piece in here is interesting, but how is it going to help them make that decision? Why is it important to say that? And spent a lot of time revamping proposals that went out from our company to really have it resonate with the client.

That makes a lot of sense. One of the things that I saw that was interesting in your book was the fact that you have a Venn diagram, how all of these different languages, your execution, vision, finance and change, all intersect with strategy. Can you talk a little bit more about that concept?

Well, strategy, to define strategy in the way that I look at in the book is strategy is a carefully devised plan of action to reach a goal. So underneath all of those languages is I need you to make a decision. This is what the decision is, and this is how we plan to get it done. So strategy underlies everything. Everybody's going to say, what's the plan? What's the plan? Or what's the strategy? So that's an underlying language across all of the people underlying all of the other four languages. That's why the Venn diagram is put the way it is. It really does underlie. So you're going to hear a lot of, well, how are we going to do that? How will that happen? What's the plan if it doesn't work? All of those kinds of things.

So one of the things that you had talked about earlier in this conversation was that you're at the C level, right? You're a COO to go type person. You've got a lot of strategic vision, execution experience, but that you also, when you're, you started, you were that young engineering person doing early project management concepts and then working your way through the system. So for our listeners, let's say there's somebody that's more on that junior level that more that project manager, newer project coordinator type role. What are some of the things that they should be thinking about as they try to apply what they're learning based on this conversation or in your book?

Well, always be curious, ask questions. It's kind of one of those things around, well, what if I'm annoying? You'll know. But it's always on the goal of continually learning, and that includes continually learning the people around you. How do they hear? What information do they take in? So this is related to the book, moving up and going on from project coordinator or project engineers, looking at what's next, what do I need to learn? What do I need to know? What does it look like? And asking. As consultants, we don't get to work unless we ask. So as people within the company, you're not going to move unless you ask or show that you're ready or show that you're interested in it. It's really continually learning, learning how to communicate with people, being curious about what's next, taking opportunities to form informal mentoring relationships. Really basically, there are lots of stories about women or people actually who have been promoted because they had an informal relationship with somebod above them, you know, their manager, their manager's manager, and they came in and bounced ideas off of them, asked them questions, got information, you know, that's kind of the comprehensive view of moving up and moving around.

Well, I like the fact that your experience and your background is really varied because while you started in real estate and construction and facilities planning, you really.

Are applying your skills to, I would.

Assume, virtually any type of industry.

Is that accurate?

It's true because I'm a business consultant. Business is business is business. The business may produce something different or do something different. So it might produce a widget, it might build a building, it might provide a service. But business basically runs the way it runs. My passion is helping things work better, either people or decisions or companies. And so the varied exposure has been really great because I get to bring ideas in that maybe a company's never heard. And I also learn from the company that I work for. And it's really fun. Well, how did you do that? Okay, well, what happened there? Hmm. I wonder. This can be applied somewhere else. Let's store it in the back of my head and maybe it'll show up a little bit. But I have to laugh when I work with my mentees at the university. They're looking at their resumes and it's a lot of sweat over their resumes. And then I look at mine and I say I look like a millennial. I haven't been anywhere for a very long time. I have kind of an itchy foot because I'm curious and I'm hey, what's the next thing you know?

You mentioned mentoring through a university. Which university is that?

I belong to the mentoring program at San Diego State, which is where I did my engineering degree.

Very good.

Jessica, is there anything else that you wanted to make sure that we covered? We've talked a lot about your background and your book, the foundational languages of Business that you can use at really any level. What else do you want to share with our listeners?

Well, I think it's important for everyone to have a solid understanding of business. And one of the things I've been working on is looking at when you transfer from being the worker bee to ownership, that there is a whole purview and view that you need to have. And that's when you really need to concentrate on looking for different mentors in the company on how do the people in this new group speak and what is it that I'm doing? What kind of impact does it have on the business overall? And just encouraging people to know that many people, not everyone, many, are striving for being on the leadership team, being in management, having a company, being part of ownership, all that kind of stuff. Just be aware that the view changes when you move into ownership. And the book can help. Really. Mentors can help inside or outside. It's just being aware that there is something else going on in the company besides just what you're in charge of.

Yeah.

Now that's great perspective.

I couldn't agree with you more. So, Jessica, do you have a website that people can find more about you or maybe tap into your services?

Www.1029consulting.net that's 1029consulting.net.

Perfect. Okay, so Jessica Hickey, president of Ten29 Consulting, Inc. And author of Stop Pushing String, Getting Decisions Made with the Five Languages of Business. Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you, Elizabeth. And just a reminder to everyone that's available on Amazon.

Terrific.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to the Women Investing Network. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the show on itunes or the platform of your choice. You can find the show notes and resources for today's episode@womeninvestingnetwork.com remember that guest opinions are their own and information is of general nature, so be sure to consult appropriate tax, legal or other professionals for specific advice.