Empowering Women—Real Estate Isn't Just For Boys

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest, a big time real estate investor. But before we talk to our guests, I'd be remiss. I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, automating your craigslist and your Facebook postings. Posting. Com forward slash the land gig. Scott Todd, are you ready for this?

Mark? I can't wait.

All right, let's talk to Whitney nicely. Whitney started her real estate investing career after selling dump trucks. That's interesting. She flipped her first property in 2009, has been a machine ever since. She is a successful real estate investor and highly sought after strategist who helps others create and boost their portfolios. She flips, she flops, she buys, she sells, and she's awesome at it. Whitney is also impressive because she's empowered. She empowers women to dive into the real estate investment world in order to take control of their lives and finances. Whitney Leisley, how are you?

Great. How are you today? This is gonna be fun.

This is gonna be great. It's gonna be great. So let's, let's just rewind the tape here and let's go back to dump trucks. What the heck?

My great grandfather started trucking in 1939, so I am the fourth generation to be a trucker in my family. My mom is a mother trucker and I went to work for her when I graduated college.

That's great. So your mom's mother trucker, you went to work for her after college and then, well, what led you into real estate investing?

Well, throughout the years, decades, my family just kind of invested on the side. It was always just a side pot. We never like bought into the whole retirement scheme, but if we did, we wanted to have houses to fall back on so we wouldn't have to keep trucking. Our bucks have always come from trucks, but we wanted them to come from real estate too. And the only way that we survived the recession, trucking was because we had money coming in from real estate investments. So. And I was working at the trucking company then. And that's when I really realized that I needed some money coming in that I didn't have to go to work and clock in to get.

Scott Todd, what are your thoughts?

I mean, you know, how can you argue with that? I mean, passive income, like you know, you know, Mark, that's the thing that a lot of people don't understand is that passive income is great because you can live off of it. You can not live off of it. You can, you know, I mean, you can do anything with it, but it sure as heck makes it nice when you have passive income coming in that you don't have to worry about, you know, what's going to happen today or this month. It takes a lot of stress off. I mean, I see people starting businesses or running businesses, and everything is starting new every single month. And it's like, man, you guys are crazy. Why would you ever do that?

I agree. And one of the first pieces, you know, I was hanging out my mom's. I was watching all this stuff. I was riding on her coattails. But she's kind of an old and slow investor where she puts a bunch of money in and then eventually it comes back. No formulas, no strategies, no nothing. And I was at her office one day in between, you know, some things that I was doing. I was still in college, and she was depositing the rent checks, and I was like, why don't I have any money that comes to the mailbox every month? She was like, we had to buy something first. And, you know, this would have been a great time for her to sit me down and explain cash flow and talk about Robert Kiyosaki and, you know, all the guys and how we do this. But she didn't. She was like, go figure it out.

Now, do you like that approach, like, for your own kids?

I like the go figure it out, but I think I'd leave more breadcrumbs. My mom left plenty of breadcrumbs, but she's also. Did you see the picture? Like, there's this mom dog, and she's trying to teach her pups how to go up the stairs, and she just pushes them down and they figure out how to come back up. That is like a picture of my mom and how she taught me how to get started in real estate. She was like, go figure it out and then come back.

I like that approach to teaching, Scott.

I mean, I think so, too. I think you got to go figure it out. You come back, you kind of have some life lessons along the way, and then, man, it just makes you a much stronger person for sure.

Absolutely. People are like, oh, how cute. You work for your mom. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. I think a boss would be, you know, more lenient on me. Mom's like, sick day. What's that? Get in here.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so true, isn't it?

But now, you know, I don't work for her anymore. Our accountant came in the other day, and she was like, I just want everybody to know that Whitney has more houses than Kathy right now, which was a big moment for me. And it's really cool, too, because my mom and I invest in the same little area, so she's my competition and my mom and everything all rolled into one.

I mean, talk about, like, family domination, right, Mark?

Yeah, seriously.

We're well known on this side of town.

Why don't you guys just do deals together?

We do sometimes when it. You know, when it's mutually beneficial. But she, again, likes to get a bunch of money, go buy something and then rent it back out. And I like to do lease options and owner financing and not put any money in and just start making money.

All right, so. All right, so walk us through your model and tell us how you got started with that model as opposed to other models.

So I started in land. Y' all want to talk about land or you want to talk about weird stuff?

Well, you know. You know, a lot of people think land is weird, but no, land is amazing. I know, I know. Tell us your story, though.

Okay. So mom said, you got to go buy something. And I was like, all right, whatever. So I just happened to be hanging out at an auction one Saturday morning in December, and they were selling land. Everything was going for, like, 500 bucks, $1,000. Most expensive thing all day long, sold for 5,000 bucks. And I was like, you know, I've got $1,000. I could probably buy something. And that thought just kind of occurred to me. We were going. We had 90 lots A through Z, and we were in, like, the J or K lots before. I was like, this stuff's kind of cheap. I could buy something. So we were into the M counties before I found somebody. I was like, what are we selling? What is this? And he was just like this other auctioneer that was there that day because I was doing my apprenticeship. He was like, buy the next lot. And I was like, I didn't do any research. I don't know what it's gonna. He said, buy the next lot. So I did. I raised my hand, went back and forth. I ended up winning the bid. So for $1,200, I bought 1.07 acres in a failed subdivision in Decatur, Tennessee. I didn't even know we had a Decatur in Tennessee. I thought Decatur was in Georgia. So I learned some geography that day. And I became a real estate investor. And we cashed out later that week. All in all, done. Twelve hundred bucks. And the best thing about this deal, this is my very first, very first deal all by myself. When we got to closing later that week, there was something in the paperwork that says $69,000. And I was like, hold on, I don't want to get into something like get scammed out of my money or anything like that. And they were like, no. The lady that lost this land through foreclosure had agreed to a mortgage of $69,000, and she stopped making payments on it. But I got it tax tag and title for 1200 bucks. And the lady was one of the first 12 lots that sold in the subdivision when they originally sold it. And the first 20 lots got a deeded boat slip. So there's a marina in this subdivision, and I have number 12, even though I don't have a boat to put in my slip.

You know, you're. The way you got started in real estate is exact same way I got started.

Yeah.

Tax deed, auction, so.

Oh, this was a foreclosure auction.

Yeah. Yeah. So you've got your. You've got your property. Then what happens?

I just held it and I just wanted it because this was. This meant a lot to me. And you mentioned earlier that I really like working with women in. You know, a hundred years ago, by buying this land, I could have voted. Hundred years ago, by owning this property, I would have had some serious, like, status. And it just meant a whole lot to me. Even though it's 1200 bucks and women are totally different. It was just a really big moment for me to say that I am now a real estate investor. I can do this, and I'll figure it out. Even if I have this thing for 10 years and I sell it for 20 grand, so a third of what it originally sold for, I'm gonna make a huge return on it. And it's a great story to tell.

Yeah, absolutely. So then how do you make the transition from land investor into lease options?

Well, I started buying every piece of land I could find. I started going to the tax sales. I started to go into more auctions. I started looking around at just empty pieces of land. Because when you start to become a real estate investor, especially if you start buying houses, the first thing you notice is how many empty houses you're driving by every single day that you never paid attention. But when you start in land, you start driving by and just getting off the interstate, and there's just a Patch of grass and trees. Who owns that? And then you're driving down, and you're driving to your mom's house, you're driving to, you know, the store, and you're driving by all these lots that just have grass and trees on it. Like, who is paying the taxes on that? Why don't they build a house on it? Why don't they develop that into a subdivision? And so you start really noticing how many opportunities are out there. And with land, I mean, it's. There's just so much opportunity, It's a little overwhelming. That's why I switched into houses. But I started buying as much land as I could find, because I was buying it for $1000 or 1500 bucks or $500. And the next piece of land I bought, I paid $1,500. It was an inherited piece, and they just wanted to get rid of it. Used to have a house on it, but the house came down in, like, the 60s, and it just been laying. So at auction, I gave him $1,500. And my brother went and cleared out the underbrush, and I went and met our neighbors. And one of our neighbors on the left side, it's a big Fortune 500 company. A big, big fancy office and all that stuff. But there was a road that divided their lot from our lot. So I was downtown. This is when I was flipping houses. All this all happens at the same time. You know, a great big hurricane comes through, and that's when you get the best deals. So I'm downtown talking to the codes inspectors, flirting with the codes inspectors if we want to know the truth and trying to find out how I'm going to do this, and I'm flipping these houses. My mom and I just happened to mention that I bought this property off of Prosser Road. And they were like, oh, I just saw something off Prosser Road the other day. And I was like, that's weird, because there's nothing over there. And they're like, no, that road that divides you from your neighbor used to be a driveway. And they got to dig in, and they sent me a quitclaim deed. Actually, back in 1992, when I was in the second grade, the city had taken this road and decided they didn't want it anymore because there was nothing there. And just this company on the other side. So they made it a driveway, and they gave the right side of the driveway to me, and they gave the left side of the driveway to my neighbor, and that was it. And my neighbor had been driving on this driveway since 1992, thinking it was all theirs. So I mean, I left the code's office like hot and heavy, ready to go down to my neighbor's office. And I busted in there like kool aid. And I was like, hey, y' all are driving on my driveway and I want some rent. The guys say that I can get some money from this. And they were like, sure, little real estate girl, that's not how things happen. And I was like, alright, well you have it surveyed and let me know. So they did, they had it surveyed and came back and called me two weeks later and they were like, yeah, Ms. Nicely, we have recently had the property surveyed on Prosser Road. And it turns out we're driving on your driveway and we like to pay you rent. I mean, it was like totally different than when I went in there the first time. And I was like, oh, that's great. And they offered me 250 bucks a month. And I was like, that's fine, but you know, I've had this for like four or five months at this time. And I knew big companies don't just drop checks. It was going to be another couple weeks before I get my first check. I was like, I'll let you in it for 250amonth if you'll pay me for the whole time that I've owned it. And they were like, okay, because 250amonth for a Fortune 500 company, what do they care about? They spend more than that on toilet paper. So I said, but another thing, I want you to pay my property taxes every year. And they were like, well, how much is it? Seriously guys, it's less than 100 bucks. Again, they don't care. And I said, and finally, third thing, I don't want you calling me like, my mom has trucks, we've got gravel, but if there's a pothole or a tree falls, like I don't want to go fix it. Y' all take care of it. And they're like, okay, so. So I basically did a triple net lease on my first little chunk of property. I got fifteen hundred dollars the first time they sent me any money. And I was back in the game, baby. And after you do that, like you just want to do it again and again and again and again. And now we rent that driveway. We rent that driveway for over three years, for 250amonth. And now we rent the lot, just the lot. Empty dirt for 500 bucks. So we get 750amonth on a fifteen hundred dollar investment. Yay, real estate.

This is why we love land so much. It's so simple. Nothing to maintain, nothing to protect. So, Scott, Ty, what do you like?

Well, who? Like, you're renting 500 for $500 a month. Like, what are you renting for? Like, what are they doing with it?

When you flip a house, you have to rent a dumpster or most good flippers will rent a dumpster and throw all the trash in there. Well, when those dumpsters aren't on the job site, they have to sleep somewhere. And everything isn't zoned for outside storage. But this half acre piece of land that I bought is zoned industrial. So we can have outside storage containers on our chunk of dirt. So that's what they have out there, just big dumpster containers. And you know, when I flip a house, it's really convenient. I just call my tenant and I'm like, hey, come bring me something, Mark.

I'm speechless, man.

I know, I know.

I love it.

It's.

Yeah, it's so good.

But you had to keep going. I did. When I bought it, I had no idea this is gonna happen. Right. Like, now that I can look back on it now, I'm very kind of. I'm very picky because I bought some duds. Okay, that was a good one. I can tell you a bad land story. But now when I look at stuff, people want 10 or 15,000 and I'm like, I can't rent it for that. So it took that, you know, kind of going blindly into a situation and figuring it out as I went to, to be able to become a better investor. Now when I buy stuff.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what's some of the worst advice that you hear or see given in land investing? Or not land investing, but just real estate investing in general.

In real estate investing in general, I see tons of people that say you can't get started unless you have $100,000. That's bullshit. Sorry. Are you going to edit this?

No editing. It's okay.

That is, though, you don't need $100,000 to get started. I started with literally like, what, 2,700 bucks? And I didn't lose my lunch money over that. That wasn't anything that I actually needed to survive. That was getting in, getting it going and getting started. And my houses were the same way. Well, the first two houses I spent some pretty big money on, but the next 12 I spent $10 on. So you don't need a whole bunch of money to get started. You certainly don't need a license I'm starting to think about creating a joke to certify people to become house buyers, because people ask me that all the time. Well, do you need a license to buy houses? No. There is literally not a license in the world that says you are now qualified to buy houses unless you turn 18 now you were qualified to go buy a house. When you get a license, you're representing other people buying and selling houses, land, property, apartments, whatever. You can't just, like, you can get a certification to be a life coach, but there's not one to be a house buyer. So I'm thinking about developing that.

I mean, isn't there. I mean, it is kind of crazy that you say that because, like, I know people who. They want to. They want to just do any type of real estate investing, right? They want to do a real estate investing or they want to do land investing, whatever it is. Then the first thing they do is they get into this and maybe it's a little bit more difficult than what they anticipated. And then what. The next thing you might hear is, oh, yeah, I'm gonna go be. Go get my real estate license. And, you know, I ask them, like, okay, well, that's cool, but do you want to be a realtor or an investor? Right? There's two different things. Like, they don't. Just because you go learn to be a Realtor does not mean that you have any skill set at all to be an investor.

Right?

It's a totally different skill set.

Totally different. And it's a totally different mindset. It's totally different goal. It's totally different outcome. And you said something that was great. You said that it's more difficult than they thought when you got into it, you know, like, everybody wants to say, oh, I want to go be a real estate investor, and it's going to be great, and I'm going to have a Lamborghini and live on the beach and. But then you get into it, it's some work. But you could say the same thing for marriage. I've only been married for two years, and I thought it was going to be, you know, bright and great and awesome, but it's a little bit of.

Work every single day, Every single day, forever and ever.

Right?

Right, Mark?

Yeah. I mean, I just celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary.

I think people should get awards for that.

I'm like, two weeks away, man.

Yeah, it's got to be a week away.

One week and a day away from 20 years. And I agree. I think we should get an award.

No, it's Much harder than investing in real estate.

Oh, yeah.

You know, it's so funny. Only bad things in life happen fast. You know, it's a weird thing. Like, all the bad stuff happens really fast, you know, but the good stuff, it's just a very slow and going.

On that people tell me all the time. They're like, well, I could get a real estate license in two weeks. Okay. It takes nine months to create a baby, and that's pretty amazing. So the fact that you can do this fast doesn't impress me at all. In fact, if it takes a long time, you'll probably be better.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Whitney, now you're into lease options, right?

Oh, yeah.

And I ran out of money. You ran out of money. Okay, so explain what the lease option is and why you prefer it and what sucks about lease options. Why doesn't everybody lease options?

Because they're weird. They're not popular right now. Wholesaling is really popular right now, and wholesaling just doesn't always work. So there you go. So a lease option is a really fancy rental agreement that also gives you the right to buy the property in a certain amount of time. That's. That's all it is. And you can complicate it as much as you want to, but at the end of the day, we all know people that have a mortgage on their house. Like, y' all know people that have a mortgage, right?

Yep.

Sure.

And if these people decided they wanted to rent their house, would anybody have a problem with them renting their house?

Nope.

It's not weird at all. If these people with a mortgage on their house decided they wanted to sell their house, would anybody have a problem with them selling their house even though there was a mortgage on it?

Nope.

Nope.

So a lease option does both of those things in one contract, or you can do it in two contracts if you want to. You can have a lease and an option, or you can have a lease option, but it basically says, I'm going to be renting your house. I'm going to buy it sometime in the future for a price that we agree upon today.

And that price is usually higher than market.

Not market. No, not always. I try to get mine for what they owe on the house. So I try to make three. I try to make money three different ways. I try to take over their payments. So I'm looking for people that are tired of being a landlord or they're accidentally a landlord. And, like, that wasn't their goal to be a landlord. And it's just Stressing them out to have to keep up with these tenants and these toilets and all this stuff. And they end up just letting the house go empty. And then they make the payments for a couple months or a couple years. And then I come in and say, you know what, I'll start making these payments for you. I will stop the bleeding. You just go away and do whatever it is you need to do. I'll buy it for what you owe and how much you pay every single month. So I don't give them any money. I don't pay a lot of overhead. There's no closing, no traditional closing cost, origination fees, all that stuff, none of that. And I get to make money because I'll find a tenant buyer that'll give me 10 or 15 or $40,000 to move into this house that I didn't give any money for. And then if my payment is 800 bucks a month, I'll find somebody to give me 1200 bucks a month. So I'll make $400 a month. And then if I bought it for, you know, they owed 100 and I could sell it for 120, well now I've made 20 in a back end payday if my tenant buyer goes to get a mortgage. If not, I'll get somebody else to come through, give me another 10 or 15, give me another monthly payment and rock and roll. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. We can make it 10 times as complicated, but that's the nuts and bolts.

I like it. Scott, what do you think?

You know, I think that I like it like I like the lease option strategy. I mean, I think that anytime that you can leverage, you know, control over a piece of property for like either $0 or pennies on the dollar. But you know, it's funny because you're not, I mean, I assume that you're not, you're not hitting like higher end houses here. You're hitting more like a bread and butter house, right?

Absolutely. I love three bedroom, two baths with a two car garage in a working neighborhood, something. Because my tenant buyers have bad credit or they had a bad divorce or they had a foreclosure a long time ago or they are self employed. You know, self employed people can't go to the bank and get a loan. Like you need to have a regular job to be pretty at the bank. So a lot of self employed people do a lease option with me so that they can show they can make the payments, they can make the money, they can do all these Great things and I get to help a lot of people.

Sounds good to me. I love it. So we're at that point now, Whitney, in the podcast where we're going to put you on the spot and ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

I don't know if y' all use if this, then that, but it's a website that's pretty much a VA that you don't have to pay. You just take some time, set up some URLs, plug it into if this, then that it'll email you anytime it something hits that you're looking for. Like, I have it set up for Craigslist. Anytime a for sale by owner has a three bedroom, two bath in Newmarket, I get an email about it. And that way I don't have to spend hours on Craigslist. I just check out my email, see which one I'm interested in and call them back.

I do the exact same thing for Land I love. And in fact, I made a YouTube video teaching people how to do that. So for those of you listening, go on YouTube and look up Land Geek and then look up, you know, automate deal flow. That's a great tip, Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark?

I.

I actually got a book today.

Ready? Okay.

It is the Four Agreements, A practical guide to personal freedom. And it's by Don Miguel Ruiz.

It is one of my favorite books, by the way.

This book is.

Wow.

I mean, I just stumbled across this book over the weekend and it's. It's great.

Are you serious? I thought I told you about that book. It's based on Toltec wisdom.

Yeah, no, it's new to me. New to me.

So I.

It's a great book. Check it out.

All right.

Don't be like me and wait for. For much longer.

Yeah, it's. It's one of those books that like, you have to. I got the. I got an audible, but you gotta listen to it again and again and again. You know, now that I'm like. Now I'm like, okay, what are the four greens again? It's like, do your best be truthful with your word or always true to your word. What are the other two? They're great, though. They're great.

It's a good book.

Yeah. And then my tip of the week is learn more about whitney nicely@whitneynisly.com and go a little delve a little bit deeper into how she does what she does and get motivated as well. She's got a cool Facebook group as well that you could join. Whitney. What's that? Facebook group?

It's right now it's become a real estate rock star with Whitney Nicely. But if you go to whitneynasley.com group, it'll take you over there. So if I change the name, which I do periodically, it'll take you the same group.

Very cool. Very cool. All right, Whitney, are we good?

I'm good if you are. This has been great.

That's great, Scott, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

I just want to remind all the listeners, today's podcast is sponsored by GeekPay IO. It is the only Set it and forget it. Automated financial collections. Get your money paid. Ach. Ach fails. It'll charge the credit card on file. You will get paid. It's gonna lower your defaults. It's gonna be transparent for your borrower and the lender. They can log in. No more being on the phone. Hey, what's my current balance? They can go and see it. No more being on the phone. Hey, can I make a prepayment? They can do it. So you're sure to getting paid. Totally transparent. Get your first note for free at GeekPay IO. And again, I want to just remind everybody the only way we're going to get the quality of guests like a Whitney Nicely is if you do three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, and you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of your review to support helanc.com, we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit. All right, well, I want to thank Whitney Knisley, Whitneynisly.com, scott, Todd, the listeners, and Scott, you want to lead us out of this?

You know what they say, Mark? One, two, three. Let freedom ring.

Thanks, everybody.