Secrets of Successful Female Investors with Jasmine Calio - Episode #437

But eventually he said, okay, we can do one, just one. So we bought our first turnkey property in the Midwest. And that was the biggest investment I ever made. That most terrifying investment I ever made. It wasn't the investment in general. It was if anything went wrong, I was on my own. Because CJ did not want to do this. It was not his idea. He was in fact probably sitting there waiting for me. Do something, something to go wrong so he can point at me and say, I told you so.

Welcome to let's Talk Real Estate Investing. Sharon Mournholdt is the host of this show and the creator of the Louisville Gals real estate blog. Learn how to become a savvy real estate investor, make money, build passive streams of income, and create a lifestyle and a business that you love. Whether you're a seasoned investor or you're just getting started, this show is for you. Now let's Talk Real Estate Investing. Hi there and welcome back to another episode of let's Talk Real Estate Investing. I'm your host Sharon Bornholt and I'm so happy you're tuning in today. My guest today is Jasmine Kalio. Jasmine is the founder of WNN Properties LLC along with her husband and she's a full time investor in residential and commercial real estate. She is the operations and marketing manager of the company and she also holds a master's degree in business and a master's degree in adult education. I had her husband CJ on the show a while back and that's when I found out that it was Jasmine that dragged her husband to the RIA meetings. So welcome to the show, Jasmine.

Thank you.

I thought that was so interesting since I've been doing this 25 years now and it's a sea of men and there are just a handful of females in the audience at any given time and half of them are there reading a book and they came with their husbands. So it's a little bit of a different dynamic that it was the woman in the business that started with Ria. Tell me a little bit about your background. You know, it's obviously you're kind of a unicorn in the real estate investing space. So let's talk about how you got started.

Sure. I actually started before I met my husband around 08 and 09. And what happened was I was looking at real estate as a potential to just be an extra form of income, something that I could do so I could help myself when I retire, that type of thing. It wasn't something that I was looking to do full time and I went and just happened to know that in general something was going on in the real estate market at the time. I didn't quite understand that it was like a huge deal. I just knew something was going on and maybe I should go look in to find a investment property. Happened to walk into the first real estate place I Google searched and I talked to the realtor there and I said, hey, I'm looking for an investment property. Do you think there'd be anything in Hawaii? Because that's where I was living that I could buy as an investment. And Rena sat there for a second, maybe like five seconds, staring at me, and he goes, forget Hawaii, go buy something in the mainland. And here's. And so he gave me his partner's car and he says, you need to go call him. I don't know, I'm. Maybe it was just complete and total luck that I'd happened to meet a guy who would say, be honest like that and send me that way. But he sent me to a guy who happened to be buying foreclosures in California and I picked up my first property there.

Wow, that's also an expensive market though, California.

Yes, but. And the. What he was pointing out was that at the time it was such a rare event that at the moment I bought it, it was immediately cash flowing because the price dropped over 50% because it was the biggest recession that you know, in history. And I had no idea that I was getting that lucky because I didn't know what I didn't know. I was a completely new investor. So I sat on that product for quite a few years and I got married. We bought our first property together as primary home, had our first child. And that property appreciated. It's what's in California. It appreciated in quite a nice way and I wanted to exchange it into something or do something with it. And that's where it hit with CJ's not on board. My husband was not on. He, he said, you bought that property before we met, that's fine as a couple. I don't want to do any of that. And that's where the issue started. As far as I wanted to go farther, I wanted to do more, I wanted to build our portfolio and, and he wanted to see touch feel if it was going to be anything, it'd be in Hawaii. But the numbers didn't make sense. So it was very. It was a difficult time for us in our portfolio.

So you did not hang onto that property. Then you mentioned that you exchanged it. You did a 1031 exchange into something different. Is that what you did?

Yes. And before I could do that, we had to, we had to go and buy one property first because I knew that California was not long term cash flowing, the cash flowing state that I wanted to be in. And if I was looking for cash flow, there's the Midwest was going to be the place that the numbers just made more sense because I was only looking for that monthly cash flow. And it's great that I got the appreciation. And I'm just, I'm sitting on an asset that's not going to serve me for my long term goal. And in order to do that, I needed C.J. on board. I knew that our relationship and moving this together with him was more important than what a real estate portfolio was going to look like. Right. So I started making him come with me to networking events to get, to get him informed. And he was very resistant to that. But eventually he said, okay, we can do one, just one, you can get one. And so we, we bought our first turnkey property in the Midwest. And that was a really big, I'd say it was the biggest investment I ever made. That most terrifying investment I ever made. It wasn't the investment in general. It was, if anything went wrong, I was on my own. Because CJ did not want to do this. It was not his idea. He was in fact probably sitting there waiting for me to do something, something could go wrong. So he can point at me and say, I told you so. But I was determined this is going to, I'm going to do it. So thankfully it worked out.

Yeah, kudos to you because that is a pretty common thing when women want to do real estate. And the husband or the spouse, the partner does not want to do it if they're not on board, they're really not on board. And so that getting them to change and to get on board, that's a process. But it sounds like you, well, I know you did that successfully, so that was your second property. Now I know that at some point you made a big move to the mainland, but did you buy more properties before you made the move here? How did that work?

Oh, absolutely. Once that timeframe of wow, he really understood that it could work. And what we were doing was moving us in the right direction. CJ is the type of person that once he's on board, he is full blown 100%. And having him there with me and us moving together moved us so much faster. From 1, we went to 7. From 7 we went to I think 30. And then so on and so forth. And we built our entire portfolio and quit our jobs before we even moved up to the mainland. In fact, we were able to move to the mainland because we didn't have the two jobs. And we were able to just. You live where you want to live, invest where it makes sense, live the dream, work.

Exactly. So we talk about working with your spouse. I did that at one point. It's not always easy. You can be a great couple, but not always agree on business things. So one of the things that seems to be a common thread is the division of labor. Your strengths and their strengths. How did you all work that one out?

Did you and I have very different personalities and different strengths? So. Absolutely. Figuring out whose strength is what was absolutely key to not just our marriage, but our portfolio. Right. And respectfully, staying in our own lane is what we call it. He's going to be clearly responsible for certain things, and I will be clearly responsible for others. As an example, he is the. He's the one who likes to put out the offers. He's the one who goes through all those types of things. But the minute we get into contract, I'm doing the due diligence because that's my part where I'm more of a numbers person. I like to do research. Right. He's a people person. He loves talking to people and realtors and all those types of things because he has a unique capability in a certain area and I have a unique capability in another. We absolutely make sure we stay in our lanes, and when the other person is moving into the lane, we get to quickly let them know in a respectful way. Hey, thank you for your your opinion. And this is my lane.

So let me talk to you a minute about something. Given that we are in the minority, not so much today as all those years ago when I started, but female investors are still definitely in the minority. What do you feel like, are some of the reasons that females are so good at this business? I have my reasons. I mean, we start negotiating from the time we have toddlers. So in that sense, as much as I can see where some people are better negotiators than others, we at least understand the give and take of negotiation, having done it with children. But what do you think are the most important traits of female real estate investors?

I'd say communication, definitely. Communication and mediation is what I prefer to call it. Men, not all men, I mean, but in general, men tend to have more emotion through their pride, and it comes out through more like anger. Women tend to have a moment where they can step back. Because I think for women, at least, when you're handling kids, yelling and screaming at them doesn't work out as the best result. Right. Same thing if you're speaking to adults. Okay, what's the best way to resolve an issue? Women tend to have a better way of doing it. And issues come up all the time, especially in real estate and in high ticket pressured negotiations or even in situations with tenants. Right. You can actually save a lot of money simply by getting to the root of the problem in a respectful manner.

I like that you use the word mediate because that is what it is. It's finding a solution that works for everyone while keeping the fact that you're in business to make money at the forefront. Because sometimes that's not the tenant's first or even 15th thought. They want what they want and it's. You have to be kind of savvy to. To negotiate that or get in that whole process. But I personally think women are uniquely qualified and uniquely suited for real estate because of the things you talked about. We are good communicators in general. Men are more direct, more to the point. And I work a lot in probates. And I think with those particular people, women can just easily have conversations with them. They don't really think about the fact that the situation exists. We'll say that they just think about finding a solution for that person that works for them and helps to move them forward in the path. So I do think women and men think about things differently. And there are situations certainly where men are more capable than women in certain situations. But I do think those differences play well to women. You were clear on your why when you started your business. You wanted to look towards your retirement. You wanted, I would guess at some point you wanted to be able to quit your W2 jobs and be in business, to have a successful business. But how did you handle that? How much does your why play into your decisions when you have unforeseen challenges, when you have things that go wrong? How do you. How does that all play together from the psychological viewpoint of it?

For me, knowing your why is one of the most key things that's going to get you through those hard times, those hard situations. There was so many times where I just kind of throw my hands up and be like, this is really worth it. And our why was more towards CJ Than anything else. He was not happy with his job. And that was such a strong why for not just him, but for me. He affects our entire family and the need for Us to want it so much sooner. We had to put a lot more work than most people tend to because of the time frame was so much shorter. It's easy to have a why of what my why was. Right. Oh, in 20 years, maybe have enough to be nice with my Social Security or whatever it is. Right. That's not as strong of a goal as I need to replace my income in less than three to five years. And what you need to do in order to do that are huge differences, right? Absolutely. Needing my why and what, the real reason and the real goal, so I can start doing those little things every day, the things that really matter, those little steps, getting there, knowing that the. That it's going to lead me there and keeping me focused was hard.

You scaled up pretty fast. You got to 30 properties in how many years? Three years or something like that?

Four. And you may have been less. I think we did before when we quit our jobs. It was probably around 90 by then. And so it was less than four or five years or something like that.

Wow.

Exactly.

How did you manage that? What were some tips that you could give people that if they wanted to do that?

Oh, well, absolutely. Knowing your why, I would say the network. Building a strong network that can give you better ideas. The biggest mistake, and I personally think we could have done it a lot faster. And because once we did this one thing, we moved 10 times faster than where we were the first two or three years. And it was simply meeting people who did what we wanted to do and had what we wanted to have and then making sure we added value to them in some way or form so we can learn from them because we don't know what we don't know. So that was a huge thing on suddenly having those ideas that never even occurred to me come from someone who was like, why don't you just do this? Or why don't you try that? Right. Or see them do something else that it just. I take that and run. And it would just create so much results.

From a financial standpoint, how did you manage the money end of it? That's especially true after you all quit your W2 jobs. Did you use private money lenders or what did you do about the funding along the way, as we grew, the.

Funding part actually turned out to be not as hard as we thought it was at first, but it was because we got better raising private money, finding creative financing banks that do something different, those types of things. Suddenly there was thousands of different ways to get us to that point. And it suddenly became it wasn't even something we think about. It's. It only mattered about what the deal was. The money will come. And I know people say that a lot, but it's true. The more reps you get in, the more work you put in, the more people you learn from that, have what you want. They. It just. It makes you. You can think of 20 different ways to do a deal.

If you look back to when you did your first couple of deals, what did it look like back then? Did you use traditional financing, bank financing or private money back then?

Yes, absolutely. Anybody who starts off right, you know what you know, and that's all you know. So that was the only tool I had. I knew I could go to a bank because I had a W2 job and that was the only tool I knew of. That was my mindset. That's the only thing I can do right. And as I met more people, as we continued on and got more experience, I learned there's a lot more tools than that.

What are your plans now? To grow and scale. How many properties do you have today? Haven't you moved into multifamily a little bit too, or not?

Yes, we are absolutely our majority. Our portfolio now is mostly commercial, not really multi, but we do have multifamily. We have multifamily, we have office, we have medical, we have strip malls, those types of things. Just an array of commercial assets as well as single family. And we just. We basically purchase off of the deal based on deal by deal basis.

That's interesting because not too many people venture right off into the commercial space. I know people that do, but not everyone does. And my daughter manages a lot of property, some of which is commercial. And she says, oh, commercial tenants are so much easier than residential tenants. They're business people. They don't get emotional about property.

It is, it's definitely. There's pluses and minus to it. And it was absolutely different. It was starting from scratch, knowing, learning the way commercial work was completely different from residential. So we did the same thing. We started off with one and really watched it and worked with it and then ran from there. And I'd have to say the positives is like you said, they are business minded, they have longer leases. I feel like they're much easier to maintain. And at the same time, you're playing with the big boys. Residential, these people are mostly people who are their primary homes. They're not really there as investors. When you're playing with commercial, you're playing with big numbers and people who have a Lot of experience. Most of them will have more experience than you.

That's true. And one thing that about commercial property, when you look back at 2008, 2010, a lot of those people, they left their commercial spaces, they simply lost their business, their source of business, and then they couldn't afford their commercial space. That was true for all sorts of businesses. And when you get stuck with those, you can, if you have a mortgage on those, that can be a very painful experience. Whereas if you're looking at single family homes or even apartments multifamily, the people always need a place to live. So it's a little bit different structure. And you're smart to have everything in your portfolio because one offsets the other. And God forbid, should we ever have another time like that, the Great Crash, that Great Recession, hopefully that won't happen. So what are your plans going forward as far as scaling? You still have a lot of years in front of you there, Jasmine. I mean that you could be investing. You're still young enough to add a lot of properties. What do you have a plan to scale? I know you probably do. You probably have a written plan.

Wow, you know me pretty well for such a short period of time. Yes, I do. See, we, we really just enjoy building the portfolio and regardless of whatever it looks like, it's just, it's a lot of fun and I wouldn't, I have no plan on stopping. And we love just looking for opportunities in whatever it may look like. I learned a long time ago on it doesn't have to look a certain way. So if an opportunity is within whatever frame, whatever it may look like, an opportunity is an opportunity and I get to look at it. That's the main thing, as long as the numbers work and I get a new chance to build that portfolio. And of course, we spend a lot of time this, you know. Now our main focus of ours is with our company where we teach people how to do these things. And the more I learn and the more I do, the more things I get to teach too. So it really works out in that sense too.

So you are teaching other people how to do what you have learned to do?

Yes. We were asked a long time ago on how did you build it so quickly? A lot of people ask a lot of questions and that's where the company came from. And now we get to do not only build our own portfolio, we build it with people, whether in residential or commercial. Do you.

So you. Do you partner with them or is that what you. Do, you partner with them?

No, we we teach them. So we'll see, we'll explain like the things that we've done or we'll go through properties with them if they, if needed, those types of things. But the idea is doing what we do right, simply building that cash flowing portfolio.

Do you have, okay, do you have a plan, let's say in your. When you're teaching people to do that, do you have. Teach them how to buy a certain number of properties in a certain number of years? Or do you, some people say I will teach you to buy five properties in a year. Over year. Or do you have an over. I guess I'm trying to saying do you have a, like a path for them or is it solely based on each person's goals?

Oh, it has to absolutely be solely on your goals because a lot of people can say I want five properties in one year. And then when you really talk to them, oh, I'm going to spend about two hours a week doing it. Stuck with that. Now I'll honestly tell you that that's a real. Let's just go with realistic expectations here. Are you really going to hit that goal with that time frame? Right.

A lot of people don't have the educational background that you have, but they are still successful as real estate investors. What do you say about that? Obviously there's nothing ever bad about the education, but how successful do you think people can be if they're not as educated as Jasmine?

Education can come in a lot of different forms. It can be in an actual university and most of your education really, truly will be through your actions and experiences. And that's where I think that you're really going to make a lot of progress is what are you willing to do and how much commitment and hard work are you willing to put into it?

Yes, I agree with that. I think it's been proven time and time again that you can have a higher level of education or you can completely. I know people that came straight out of high school and their desire was to be a real estate investor. These are again, they're unicorns, but they. I know several young men. That was their desire. One person I talked to, he said I wasn't worried about applying for colleges. He said I needed to get my driver's license and turn 18 so I could write a real estate contract. His mom was in real estate, but he knew always that's what he was going to do. And he did end up going back to school and getting a couple of years of college. But he said at the end of the day he was an entrepreneur and he needed to learn what you said, learn from other people that were where he wanted to be. So he was a, he was really a smart, 20something man, young man that knew exactly what he wanted to do. So what advice, Jasmine, would you have for other people? For men, for women who maybe think there's not a place for them in real estate investing because you're clearly a leader in a role model for other women? What advice would you have for women that think maybe this is not, there's not a place for them in this business, Right?

Say for me, if you don't think you belong, you don't. That's the honest and personal truth, right? If you do think you belong, you do and that's the end of it. Regardless on what I would say for any man or woman, find the person who has what you want and does what you want to do and following them and build that value is that was the big thing for me. Male or female, take massive action, do what they do the things that you need to get done and just keep pushing forward.

That's great advice. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. What's the best way for folks to get in touch with you?

W and N properties would be the great way to get started. We have a lot of free content for anyone to look at and one of the things that we put out there is a free PDF at why not now in real estate where we teach people how on that PDF to load your real estate portfolio with limited funds.

I love that. I love that. So I will put the links to all their sites in the show notes. That's such great information. And so thanks again, Jasmine and thanks to all the listeners for coming out today. And please share the show and leave us a rating and a review on itunes. Jasmine and I would both appreciate it and I will see you same time, same place next week. Bye for now.