A Bucketful Of Bliss—Real Estate Strategies Of The Blissful Investor

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com and I am really excited for today's guest. She is just a big ball of joy and energy and dare I say, bliss. But I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host before we talk to our guests. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd. Scott Todd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if not automating your Craig list and your Facebook postings, posting Domination.com TheLandgeek Scott Todd, are you excited?

I am.

Mark, ready to go?

I have to tell you in, you know, in the juxtaposition between you and our guest, you and I both seem like we're just have no pulse.

Exactly. Like, you know, look, she's already giggling and we haven't even started this whole thing. We haven't even say anything funny yet. Mark, that's the crazy thing is she's already laughing and giggling and having a good time. We, we must either be very entertaining or she's a lot of fun.

Well, let's talk to our blissful investor from blissfulinvestor.com Monika Sawyer. If you don't know who Monica Sawyer is, she is often described by people who know her as one of the most joyful people you'll ever meet. And you'll definitely after this podcast agree she personally finds her bliss through helping people live the life of their dreams filled with meaning, purpose and joy. She's dedicated her life to this calling for the last nine years and says they've been the best years of her life. So if you are around her enough, you often hear her say, I can't believe life just keeps getting better. And, and I'm so grateful that it does. She is the host of the very joyful podcast titled Real Estate for Women podcast. She is a real estate investor. She's got a multimillion dollar portfolio. Monica Sawyer, how are you?

I am so good. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

All right, Happy, happy. Monica, let's just rewind the tape. We're gonna try to ruin your mood at some point. Oh, I'm just kidding. It's like the bucket theory. Have you heard the bucket theory?

I haven't. Please tell me so.

Alright, so here's everybody has a bucket, right? And unconsciously, people who are in a great mood, their buckets are full and we all know who's got a full bucket. But if I'm my bucket's a little empty. Right. What I'll do is I'll try to do something to make you feel badly and dip into your bucket so I feel better. So that's the bucket theory. But I think your bucket is overflowing, so it's all good. But let's just rewind the table, Nika, and let us know how you started in real estate.

Ooh, I love that question. So actually, let me tell you a little story about my parents. Okay? So my parents came to this country with only $200 in their pocket from India as newlyweds. And they had heard that the golden ticket to wealth in the United States is real estate, which we all know, right? But anyway, so they came here and so dad was really inspired. He wanted to build a better life for his family, right? So he wanted to buy real estate. So they saved up all of their nickels and dimes. Mom would like sew the curtains for the house, the little cushions for the sofa so she as a woman could have a beautiful home. But they were saving every dime. And eventually they started investing. I was born, and three years after that, they bought their very first house. And then 15 years after that, they paid for my college education through real estate, which is amazing. Imagine starting in a brand new country with only $200 and being able to do that. So once I graduated from college, of course I wanted to follow my dad's footsteps. But one of the things that I had seen with my dad is he has suffered a lot of stress. And I know a lot of people who invest in real estate, they experience a lot of stress. A lot of people won't invest because they're afraid it's going to be stressful. Right?

Sure, absolutely.

So I had decided that I was going to do it differently than my dad. And so I created a streamlined system so that I can invest in real estate but do it blissfully, which means very little stress and very little time investment. I probably invest maybe 5 to 10 hours a month on my business. And I started with a $10,000 wedding gift. And I'm worth well over $5 million now, so pretty cool. And all because I followed my dad's footsteps. So that's my story.

That's amazing. Grumpy Scott. Todd, what do you think?

You saw me light up, didn't you? Like, I started smiling, I'm like, hey, whoa, whoa, what are we talking about here? So, alright, so how did you do it?

Me?

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I'm your buy and hold girl. So what I'll usually do is buy something that's distressed. I'm often buying REOs or things that people just don't want to fix up, they want to get rid of. I always pay retail. So those of you who think that you can'. Get good deals by going on the mls, you know, you can become a multimillionaire even if you just buy on the mls. And then I would fix them up and I would rent them out and I've got these great streamlined processes on how to manage your tenants so that they take care of the properties for you, which is one of my little tricks. And, you know, so. And how to maintain the properties and just how to take the stress out of it and give you the tools. It's kind of like what Mark was saying, you know, I'm filled up, right? So when a challenge comes to me, I'm able to approach that challenge as a puzzle rather than a freak out. So that's how I do it.

You know, this is really interesting to me because, you know, typically we don't see anyone on this podcast talking about ever, you know, buying retail, and then, you know, certainly we're always going to hear the tenant nightmare. Right. And one of the people, one of the reasons people love our niche so much is that we invest in real estate without renters, rehabs, renovations, or rodents. So you've got it, you know, you dangled it out there. I've got to ask, how do you take a tenant and give them that sort of pride of ownership where they want to take care of a rental home?

Yeah, it's all in the conversation. And I must admit, it's kind of the joy that you bring to the experience. So I now have a reputation in my area where I invest. So all of my investments are in the Silicon Valley. So just for people who don't know about the Silicon Valley, this is a market where people are really afraid to get into because they're afraid of the volatility. It seems really, really overpriced and expensive. And from my perspective, there is never a bad time to get in real estate. There's never a good time and there's never a bad time. But so I've just kind of kept investing in real estate in this area whenever I had the money to do that. And because of that sort of joy and excitement of being in the market, I bring that to my tenants. So whenever it's all about your approach, right? When you approach somebody and this is anywhere in life, whether you're looking at a wholesaler, you're looking at Partners, you're looking at tenants. You're looking at a lender. Who you are, when you show up is going to impact the way that meeting goes. Wouldn't you say that's true?

No, absolutely. So, you know, how do we take the Monique energy and joy and bliss and bottle it up and drink the juice for ourselves? The Monique juice. How do we get it?

Yeah. So actually, let me finish. Let me go a little further than here on this. So it's all about the attitude, right? By the way, to get the Monika juice, you buy my book, choose the power and practice of joy and contentment. All of my strategies and techniques and secrets are in there. But for me getting the tenant to have this pride of ownership so they take care of the house is how you show up and the conversation that you have. So I will have a conversation with anybody that I'm interested in, in renting a house to and just ask them, you know, do you. How do you feel about maintaining the property? Do you want your landlord to hand it all, or do you want the autonomy so you can make the decisions and it can happen as fast as you want it to rather than being dependent on somebody else? Usually their eyes light up and they're like, oh, my God, I get control. I'm not at your mercy. And that's how the conversation starts. And then we talk about expectations on both sides.

Right?

Right. Because you're not gonna say, hey, look, you can paint the whole house pink.

No, absolutely. They go through training, and actually, that's in my coursework. I talk about sort of all the training that I give my tenants so that I never get a phone call in the middle of the night about a leaky toilet or a light bulb that's not working or the furnace that went out. I mean, I just never get those phone calls. I get texts that say, this happened and I handled it and I'll take it out of the rent. Which is cool.

Yeah. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

I mean, I do like that idea.

Right.

Like, you know, Mark, I'm not gonna proclaim that I had this thing down, but when we were moving from Fort Myers up to where we live now, Tampa, we had to rent out our house for a while. We owned a house, and then we had to rent it out for a year. And, you know, we actually. We were very lucky because we had a tenant that they were realtors, and so they just got, like. Got the stuff done right. So, like, he calls me up one day. He's like, hey, the. The. The. You Know the vent is like hanging down. You mind if I put fix it with my screwdriver? I'm like, go ahead. Hurricane comes through. He's like, hey, you got some, you got some screen damage. I've already contacted a guy. He's going to send you a bill for 500. You good with that amount or he gave me the quote first and it's like $500. He went out and found a cheap guy to go do the work and it looked great. So, you know, it is, those people are out there. It kind of goes to like qualifications a little bit too. Right. Like, you know, if, if you ask the question, how do you feel about this? And they're like, no, you know, like, I expect you here within an hour to fix it. You're like, I'm out.

Right.

But I have a question for you. You said, do you think that any of that is predicated on the market that you're in? Like you're, you're in a higher end market.

Right?

Like the house that I rented was in a higher end market. It wasn't. I mean, like this was like a half a million dollar house or more. I don't know what your houses are, but it's a higher end market. Do you think that the higher end market brings a higher end person who will take care of the house versus like the lower end, which is going to trash it? There's got to be something there with the demographics.

Scott, I am so with you and thank you for bringing that up. Absolutely. When you're investing, pick your market. And that's one of the things that I talk about in my coursework. Pick a market that's going to attract the kinds of tenants you want to work with. Right. If you're totally okay with, I want to have a million, a million doors, and I don't care what kind of tenants are in there. It's just land. Then you're going to make a completely different investment than I'm going to make. Because I want to love my tenants, I want to love my properties, and I want my properties to go up. Like, each property of mine appreciates much more than 10 doors for somebody else who will be investing in a different market. That's lower end. Right. So I have more eggs in one basket. But it's a much easier process for me because of the kind of people that I can attract and because I have a lineup for my houses. Because there aren't many rentals in that market. Right. There aren't very many people that will pay $4,600 in rent a month that don't want to buy. Right. And so there aren't a lot of rentals in that market either. So there's not a lot of competition. So I get my choice. But yeah, that's part. One of the things that we talk about in my coursework is what kind of market do you want to be in and what kind of tenant do you want to deal with? And they are going to feed each other. Those decisions are important to make together.

So interesting. I mean, what a really cool model. What is the. I mean, I would think, Monika, the barrier to entry then into a Silicon Valley market or San Francisco market or New York market. These higher end, let's arguably say the highest end markets is going to be very, very high. Right. How do you sort of guide people in getting the money to do that?

Yes. So I am not a no money down person, so people do have to come in with money. However, there are really creative ways to get money. Would you like me to tell you my favorite strategy?

Yep, I bet it's blissful.

It is. So the very first strategy is own your own home. So you know, people can get into their own home with 3% down. Right. If you go with an FHA loan, okay, so you can put 3% down, then wait a few years, allow the property to appreciate, take out an equity line, and now use your real estate money for more real estate. You don't have to dip into your savings at all.

I like it. I like it.

What if. Okay, I gotta, I gotta throw the hypothetical. I gotta throw the wrench in it, okay. Like, yeah, just because I'm. I just want to be realistic because I know someone listening to this is going to ask the same question. That is an easy way to do it, by the way. But I live in Florida. Okay? Florida, they believe it or not, and might go back to the housing crash, Great Recession, whatever it was. But like in Florida, the most you can get on a home equity loan is like a 70 LTV.

Okay.

So I gotta have a lot of growth in equity in order to pull just pennies out.

Right.

Like, it's not as easy as like other markets where, you know, other things are going. I'm gonna be kind of a that skeptical person here, but essentially that that is an easy strategy. If things are going and if the banks want to play with you, what else do you have? Like, there's gotta be a different way to doing that.

Yeah, there are lots of different ways, but that's a really long conversation that's my favorite one that really easy people can kind of start to think in a little bit creative ways. I will say this, you know, in other markets, you're right. I'm in a market that appreciates beautifully. However, you know, in 2008, my market crashed. I live in a million dollar home and it literally went down $300,000 in three months. Right. So you have, it also has that kind of volatility, so it's not a cakewalk. Right. But you kind of weigh what it is that you want, how much money you can put in or want to put in. I mean, other simple strategies, right? You own a home, you put 3% down now you start to save or you start paying down the loan. Right. They're really, really simple, intuitive, common sense ways to do it. And then there are other creative strategies that we talk about, you know, when you have a longer time with me, if that makes sense.

Sure, sure. So, I mean, Monika, what's some of the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise?

Sell. Don't sell real estate. Just don't do it. Not unless you have a plan. Don't sell real estate to get cash. You know, for me, I'm a long term person. I want my real estate to pay for my retirement, which it will. I mean, I can retire today, but I'm having too much fun. So. So I don't want to do that. But I'm starting to move into more cash flow strategies so that it can replace our income. But just don't sell unless you've got a strategy.

So you know what's interesting about that, Monika, is it brings me to this plug of TLFolio.com because for our land investors that need cash and they're like, oh, I want to just flip cash. Flip, flip, flip. No, create the note. Sell 12 months of that cash flow, get your money out, redeploy it into another deal and have that 12 months of cash flow or that cash flow revert back to you in 12 months. Two bites of the apple, Scott. Todd, how come more people don't do that?

Well, I think that there are people that do it. I would say that the smartest of the group. Listen, I would say that the smartest of the group. I mean, I'm probably gonna make some haters when I say that. But, but I would just say, like, Mark, I agree with you. Like, essentially, if you can pull money out to redeploy, it's no different than the strategy we just talked about, using the home equity Line to pull it back out again.

Right.

Like you're going to pull it back out. You're not going to use your own money. It's amazing to me how many people actually want to go and, like, use their own money to buy real estate, especially land. Like, I just want to use my own money. Right. Like, it's over complicated.

So let the banks pay you to get rich. Let somebody, you know, let somebody else do that. Let other people help you to get rich. The other thing is that if you own the asset, you. You own the opportunities. Right? So like you were saying, you just keep turning over that note and you're getting a stream of income from that. As long as you own that note, you own that option. That option to do that. The second you sell, you lose that opportunity and all the opportunities around that.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Monika, just because you're the blissful investor, I've got to ask, right. What do you think of when you hear the word successful?

Oh, wow. Nobody's ever asked me that one. For me, success is about really fully living your life in joy. So, Ashley, you know what? Let me define bliss for your audience. Is that okay?

Absolutely.

So bliss from my perspective is this really deep sense of joy and contentment and this feeling that you can handle anything that comes your way, like absolute confidence. You can handle anything. And in my book, choose bliss, we talk all about emotional resilience, emotional mastery. So no matter what's going on in your life, you can always come back to this place of joy. If I am able to live in that place, I feel successful. No matter how much money I do or don't have, if I'm joyful, that's really what it's all about. So that's how I define success. Now. People can say, yeah, Monika, yeah, because you're rich. Yeah, but I wasn't always rich. Right. It took time and it took a commitment to myself to build the business in a way that kept me joyful. That allows me to feel really successful. I have a successful marriage of 25 years. I have a successful business, and I'm happy. And it's not the other way around. The happiness doesn't come because of those things. Those things come because I'm a really joyful person.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And sort of having that internal locus of control, that internal metric for success where it doesn't matter what happens externally is so critical. And it's too bad they don't teach this stuff in school. I know. I had to learn it the hard way. Scott. Todd, is this too woo woo for you?

No, I think it's very. Mark. I think it's very relevant because maybe not relevant. I think it's an important lesson because, you know, you do define success to be your own, right? Like, look there, there are people that are happy, you know, living off of, you know, $1,000 or $2,000 a month somewhere in this world. They're, they're able to travel or do whatever the heck they want to do. And they might look at somebody who's making more money but has no time to travel or no time to do what's important to them, and they might look at that person. Think of someone that's unsuccessful. A few months ago, I went to the dentist with one of my children. And I'm sitting there and I'm looking at this mound, literally like this. There was a mound, like, I don't know, like massive mound of checks from health insurance, you know, from dental insurance companies. And I'm like literally counting all of these checks and I'm counting, I'm like, like looking at like, holy cow, there's huge amounts of checks there, man. They're bringing in the money over here. And then I'm thinking like, yeah, okay, true. But they are tied to this office for 50, 60 hours a week. That sounds miserable. So you can't even, you can't even look at the amount of money that they're probably making and think like, oh man, I want that life. Because then that's not a core value to yourself. You got to find your core values and then, you know, then you can kind of build in what success looks like for you. It's not always about dollars.

Yeah. As a matter of fact, I was an executive coach for over 11 years. And so all of my clients were multimillionaires. They had amazing businesses, they had the perfect looking life, right? The big house, nice car, the beautiful wife, the two kids, a cute dog, you know, the whole thing, right? And they came to me. And the thing, the reason that they were talking to me is because they were miserable. You know, they weren't motivated anymore. They weren't passionate, they weren't inspired. And so once we were able to get back to that core, their core values, their core bliss, we were able to find a way for them to have and do the things that they wanted to do, but stay enough aligned with themselves that they could be joyful and suddenly their relationships improve, their businesses take off, they have a better relationship with their K. They're taking vacation, right? But it's really, if we lose sight of our core values, if we lose touch with what really makes us happy, no matter how much money you've got, it's not going to replace that, you know?

No, it's so true. And I'm, you know, finishing up the companion book to Dirt Rich, Coax the Cat, and it talks all about this and my journey actually through that. And so that's really, really interesting that, you know, you were able to see that and witness that firsthand, that what we all consider as quote, unquote, successful can really just be misery, you know, with nice sort of icing, hiding it internally. So, Monika, this brings us now to the point in the podcast we get to put you on the spot. I think your mentorship has been incredible. We love the energy, we love the joy. But we're going to ask you for one more tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable. Where the art of passive income listeners right now improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

Find out how I coached all of my executives to go from having everything to actually being joyful. And that's the book. Choose the power and practice of joy and contentment and you can get it on Amazon.

I love how audio. I love audiobooks.

It's not on audio yet. I'm working on that because I think you're right. That's what everybody says. So it's in the works.

And you've got a great voice. Monica, you should definitely do the audio. Read it yourself.

Okay. Thank you for that, Tim.

We know you have the time.

Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to find things to do that are really fun. You are so right.

All right, Scott, Todd, what's your tip of the week? Mark?

Check out this, check out this iPad app. It's called duet display. Duet display.com and it's 10 bucks. But let me tell you what's cool about this thing. You download this app onto your phone to your iPad. Not your phone, your iPad. And then you plug in your iPad with the lightning cable back to your computer. Like you're gonna charge it or transfer stuff. All of a sudden your iPad becomes a second monitor. Okay? So it's really, really cool because now you get like this second monitor that you could use. Like when you need a pop up second monitor. So think about like, I don't know, like if you went to, to boot camp and you needed a second monitor for something while you're presenting. Bam. Now you have. It's called your iPad but you don't have an iPad. But I do.

I do have an iPad.

Oh, you do? I've never seen it.

Well, because I don't. I don't really use it for business.

Oh, okay. Okay.

Yeah, I would definitely.

Created by ex Apple engineers.

There you go. That's a great tip. And, you know, I was listening to Gretchen Rubin who, like, does all this happiness research, and one of the things she was talking about was, you know, having like three monitors up and all this sort of computer real estate. And the thinking before was, hey, you should only be focusing on one thing at a time. Well, that is actually true. But it's nice to have sort of these. These extra monitors. I forgot the exact detail of it, but it does. It does sort of make you more productive to have more real estate space, actually.

Well, I think if you think about it, like, you know, maybe it's, you know, ADD or something like, you know, like, where all of a sudden this thought pops into your head like, oh, hey, I wonder if I have any email. And so then. Or I wonder if that email's come in yet. And so then, you know, maybe you have it in a tab or you have it somewhere else. But if you have a certain space where your email is, you don't have to, like, make it necessarily make the mouse movement. You could just glance over there because the email is always open. You don't have to worry like, oh, is there there? Or maybe, maybe you're looking for, you know, I don't know, like to see if your. Your website's down. You could just have it there or have the analytics there or whatever. It is always right there in the same spot. So you can just glance and know, boom. This is what's going on right now, right there.

Absolutely, absolutely. So my tip of the week is going to be learn more about Monica and how she has this incredibly interesting and innovative real estate strategy in all places, such as Silicon Valley. Go to blissful investor, blissfulinvestor.com and also check out our podcast, Real Estate for Women podcast. Real Estate for Women podcast. Yours truly is actually going to be on there. So, you know, it's going to be good.

I can't wait.

So there you go. So, Monica Sawyer, are we good?

We are so good. Thank you so much for having me on. I loved this conversation.

Thank you so much, Scott. Todd, Are we good, Mark? We're great. All right, great. Well, I want to thank the listeners and I just want to remind them the only way, the only way we're gonna get the quality of guests like Monica Sawyer from blissfulinvestor.com is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got a rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportlandgeek.com we're gonna send you for free the passive Income launch kit, our $97 course. So please do that. It really, really helps us. And do that again. Today's podcast is sponsored by TLFolio.com check it out there. And, Scott, you ready?

I'm ready, Mark.

All right. Monique is gonna be like, oh, gosh, are these guys geeks? One, two, three.

Let freedom ring. Not bad.

Yeah, not bad. Monique, you like that?

I love that.

Yeah. I don't know. I think it brings us bliss.

Yeah. I can see why. Freedom is it, man.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think what's more, even better than freedom for ourselves is helping other people find their freedom and. And hear their story and, you know, have them find their own personal bliss. I love it. So I want to thank you, and we'll see everybody on the other side. Thanks, everyone.