[00:03:17] Amelia McGee: I took my portion of the proceeds and purchased a triplex in my hometown for $78,000 which is wild, which is unheard of outside of the Midwest. But here in Iowa, you can buy properties for pretty cheap. And once that rent money started coming in, I was hooked. I was like, this is my way out of working a full-time W2 job.

[00:03:40] Amelia McGee: And I just continued purchasing from there. But that is kind of just the start of how I got into it. 

[00:03:46] Patrick Donley: What gave you the confidence to do a flip right off the bat and how did you convince your parents? That’s a big ask. It’s a for it’s a difficult first step. So I wanted to hear how did that happen?

[00:03:57] Patrick Donley: Like how did you have the confidence to do a flip? 

[00:04:00] Amelia McGee: I’m not really sure I think I’m just reckless enough to have that confidence to do things that I’m scared of But also it’s like planned recklessness almost But I’ve always been someone that watched HGTV. I grew up in a very handy family. My mom likes to say we’ve never lived in a move in ready home.

[00:04:18] Amelia McGee: They’ve always done projects. My parents are both very hands on. My dad can basically build anything. And so I think a little bit of having them as partners on the deal gave me the confidence, but my dad is a Midwestern dad. He’s very scared of risk. So again, it took me two years to convince them to buy this property, which for reference.

[00:04:40] Amelia McGee: We bought a four bedroom, two bathroom home for $30,000. So it’s even if we absolutely tanked on the flip, how much were we really going to be out? I think that was part of it too. So the risk was very low. And I also just, I don’t know, I just had the, I was so into not working for someone else for the rest of my life that I was willing to take that risk.

[00:05:04] Patrick Donley: But you didn’t come from a real estate family. Like your parents were not real estate people or investors, correct? 

[00:05:11] Amelia McGee: No, they owned one rental property 30 years ago. They bought our neighbor’s house actually because they wanted control of who lived in the property when I was very young, but then they sold it.

[00:05:23] Amelia McGee: And my mom’s I, man, I regret selling that so much. I wish we would’ve kept it. But other than that, nope, no realtors, no investors. They work full-time W2 jobs, and I was kind of the first to break the mold, I guess. 

[00:05:38] Patrick Donley: Yeah, that’s great. I really admire anybody getting started so young. It’s really impressive.

[00:05:44] Patrick Donley: Grace, how about you? You started as an engineer, right? Like you were working as an engineer during COVID. Talk to me a little bit more about how you kick started your real estate career. 

[00:05:54] Grace Gudenkauf: Absolutely. I was in college as a senior when my boyfriend was flipping a house and I would paint every once in a while and I was like, this is a good idea, but maybe I’ll do it in 10 years.

[00:06:06] Grace Gudenkauf: Then I graduated, I had a good, high paying engineering job, and I wanted to figure out how to maximize my income. I was also very interested in personal finances, paid off all my debt, wanted a super solid foundation. And I distinctly remember my boyfriend, Brandt, playing a BiggerPockets episode in his truck, and I listened and I was like, I could do that.

[00:06:29] Grace Gudenkauf: That’s not that hard. So that winter of 2020, we, I bought a house to house hack, although I didn’t even know it was called house hack at the time. And then we together went and found a DIY gut job to do our first BRRRR. Took six months, we worked every single day, night, weekend. It was not fun, but somehow I fell in love with the process.

[00:06:51] Patrick Donley: Let me ask, there’s a lot of our listeners who won’t know what BRRRR is. Can you talk a little bit about what a BRRRR project is? 

[00:06:58] Grace Gudenkauf: Yes, it’s Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat. Basically, you just buy a really crappy property, add value to it, and refinance it to get your capital back out and do it on the next place.

[00:07:13] Patrick Donley: How did you, I mean, you’re in college, how did, and you’ve got a good job, I imagine, as an, with an engineering background. Were you using your capital to make these purchases, or how did you get started in terms of financing and capital? Because a lot of people have that question. 

[00:07:28] Grace Gudenkauf: Yeah, we got 20 percent down on an $80,000 house.

[00:07:31] Grace Gudenkauf: So we only had to come up with $16,000, which we self financed. And then we also financed the renovation, which was around 30 or we paid for the renovation, which was around $30,000. But to be very clear at that time, that was like every last bit of money we had. I remember having a conversation where it was like, we’re at the end of the project.

[00:07:55] Grace Gudenkauf: We’ve got no more money to sink into this. It better finish up quickly. 

[00:08:01] Patrick Donley: So how did it turn out? it was a flip, right? 

[00:08:05] Grace Gudenkauf: It was BRRRR and it went well, although it took twice as long and twice as much as we thought. We still have that property today. It’s been a cash flowing property. We’ve got decent equity in it and it was a perfect first project.

[00:08:17] Grace Gudenkauf: Although I don’t recommend a DIY gut job for somebody’s first project, but thankfully Brandt had a lot of hands on experience at the time. 

[00:08:26] Patrick Donley: You guys both just kind of went deep down the rabbit hole and got started on pretty hard projects right off the bat. 

[00:08:32] Amelia McGee: I think that’s what makes an investor successful is having just a little bit of risk and gumption to actually get started.

[00:08:43] Amelia McGee: Because we talked to so many people who say they want to be real estate investors, but they never take the next step to get started. And I will tell you, you will learn so much more on your first project than you will by reading all the books and listening to all the podcasts. You just have to get started.

[00:09:00] Patrick Donley: I interviewed a guy in Houston who he recommended just buying what he called old raggedy houses, like just buy an old raggedy house. It doesn’t cost too much. You know, it depends what market you’re in, but in Iowa, where you guys are, Columbus, Ohio, where I am, you can, you know, you can buy raggedy houses and really just use it as education and learn on your first flip or BRRRR project or whatever it is.

[00:09:23] Patrick Donley: I think that’s a really good way to look at it. I think some of the BiggerPockets guys like recommend that too, just view it as education. And if you make money, great. If you don’t, it’s the cost of a course or a seminar or something like that. 

[00:09:36] Grace Gudenkauf: Yeah, I just want to add, I’ve lost, the only deal I’ve ever lost money on was a flip that I lost a thousand dollars on, was the first flip I tried to do myself without a GC, and I remember thinking to myself, that is the best thousand dollar course I’ll ever buy on house flipping.

[00:09:53] Grace Gudenkauf: So let me figure out how to turn this thousand dollar loss into many more successful flips, and I would say I have. 

[00:10:01] Patrick Donley: What was the reason for the loss? What would you attribute that to? 

[00:10:05] Grace Gudenkauf: I was trying to manage it while also moving across the country to Arizona, and I let it manage itself. I wasn’t on top of the contractors, I wasn’t on top of the budget.

[00:10:15] Grace Gudenkauf: And then when I went to sell it, I wasn’t on top of the finances to know when the price cut. I was actually now in the red and I should have just refide it and had a cash flowing rental, but I just wanted it off my books. And then three months after I close, I get my books caught up and I’m like, I lost $994 on that.

[00:10:33] Grace Gudenkauf: That sucks. 

[00:10:35] Patrick Donley: Especially on a flip, like you put a lot of time, energy, obviously money into it. It kind of does suck to lose money in the end, but. But it’s not a ton of money, like you said, and it sounds like you got a ton of lessons that you’ve applied, to future flips. Amelia, actually, I wanted to get into a little bit more about, just how you learned about education.

[00:10:53] Patrick Donley: what were the books or podcasts or things like that? How did, you said you were into the FIRE movement. But talk to me a little bit more about like just how you educated yourself because I assume college, high school, you didn’t have a lot of, you know, how to invest in real estate education. 

[00:11:09] Amelia McGee: No, I had no education on how to invest in real estate, but I was always one of those kids that was looking to make money.

[00:11:15] Amelia McGee: Somehow I would count the pennies in my piggyback. I’d go under the couch cushions. I would set up the lemonade stand. So I’ve always been an entrepreneur. But I have the very common story of reading the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and that kind of changed my perspective on how I looked at money, making my money work for me, working smarter, not harder, leveraging real estate to create wealth.

[00:11:40] Amelia McGee: And so that was my first book. I was also a Dave Ramsey follower for quite a while. Like I said, I was into the financial freedom, paying off debt. And I still would say that I’m, you know, fairly conservative when it comes to debt. Although I have a lot now in real estate, I would never say get into consumer debt, but Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Dave Ramsey, and then just all of the BiggerPockets products.

[00:12:01] Amelia McGee: So I started like Grace listening to the BiggerPockets OG Real Estate Podcast. I listened to the Rookie podcast quite a bit. And then I would just pick up real estate books here or there. Any of them from BiggerPockets are great. I can’t name specific ones off the top of my head because they’re all awesome, but I’m also someone that just uses Google for everything.

[00:12:20] Amelia McGee: So anytime I would have a question about real estate, I would shoot it into Google. A lot of times the BiggerPockets forums would pop up and this is not an episode sponsored by BiggerPockets, but they have so much good free information out there. That is so underutilized that you can learn so much from.

[00:12:37] Amelia McGee: I would not recommend paying 20, 000 for a course because you can learn it all for free online. 

[00:12:43] Patrick Donley: Yeah, there is so much out there. You mentioned the, Rookie Podcast. I had Ashley Kerr, I think. K E H R is her last name. And she’s got a great book called the, it’s called the Real Estate Rookie, like 90 Days to Your First Investment.

[00:12:56] Patrick Donley: Really great book. Like for anybody listening that kind of needs a playbook, that book I highly recommend. It’s, it just gives you the steps of how to make your first real estate investment. Grace, how about you? what were the big impacts that, in terms of education, the biggest way that you learned outside of traditional education, which unfortunately we just don’t get great financial education in college and high school.

[00:13:20] Grace Gudenkauf: Number one, Instagram. It sounds crazy, but I followed so many people who would talk about their day-to-day and tips and tricks and things that they did and learned, and I was just a sponge, and I would absorb every single thing that I heard people talking about. And I liked to follow smaller investors who were still in the day-to-day, not preaching about making millions and all of their courses, but Hey, I bought this house and then this happened and this is what I did.

[00:13:48] Grace Gudenkauf: And I seriously think I learned over half of what I know in real estate from people who are sharing their knowledge on Instagram. And I like to think I do the same thing and Amelia does the same thing, but don’t discount, just make sure you follow people who are actually walking the walk and not just talking the talk.

[00:14:05] Patrick Donley: Amelia, I want to get into how you both started scaling and building your portfolio. So can you go into that a little bit, Amelia, like what your strategy was, what your buy box was, just how you started to grow your portfolio? 

[00:14:20] Amelia McGee: Again, I started out with the triplex, which was $78,000 purchase price. I also did a BRRRR on that property, which allowed me to pull my money out that I had used for my down payment and recycle it to purchase a new property.

[00:14:37] Amelia McGee: And if you’re newer to investing, there’s lots of resources out there about what a BRRRR is. It took me a long time to understand the process, so if it seems kind of like what the heck is this when you’re just starting out, just know that’s normal. It’ll come. I did a BRRRR, pulled almost all of my money out, and purchased a quadplex from the same seller who sold me the triplex actually at the closing table when we walked out of the realtor’s office.

[00:15:06] Amelia McGee: I asked if he had any other properties that he wanted to sell, and he said, I have this quadplex. I’m, older. I’m kind of looking to get out of the business. Would you be interested in this? And so I told him yes, but I didn’t have the money quite right then. But once I was able to refinance and pull the money out of the triplex, I closed on that quadplex with him.

[00:15:27] Amelia McGee: So very quickly, I had 7 doors, in real estate terms. And I was so addicted at that point. I love the cashflow every month that was coming in. And my parents started to see me making money and they were like, hold on, wait a minute. We want back in. Remember when we did that? Then they’re like, hold on. Oh, you’re successful at this.

[00:15:48] Amelia McGee: Let’s get back in. We’re getting ready to retire. They were going to retire a few years early. And the way they looked at it was we need some extra money to cover our insurance premiums. Between the time when we retire and the time when Medicare or Medicaid, whichever kicks in. So I was like, great, because I’m out of my own money.

[00:16:05] Amelia McGee: I need to find money somewhere else. So we partnered together and I purchased, I think, eight doors with them. And then found a private money partner on Instagram and the story goes on, but it really started kind of buying two of my own properties. My parents came back in and then just continued to document my process on Instagram and then was able to find private lenders there and keep purchasing after that.

[00:16:29] Patrick Donley: I’ve got a couple questions. Did you always do a value add when you, like with the quad, did you do a value add as soon as you bought it or was it rent ready and ready to go? 

[00:16:39] Amelia McGee: So the triplex was not rent ready. I did a lot of cosmetic rehab during the couple of weeks that I owned it prior to putting tenants in.

[00:16:47] Amelia McGee: So I actually took a week off my full-time job at the time to work on that property because I wasn’t doing anything else. It was during the middle of COVID. So I used some PTO. Did floors, did paint, did fixtures. Again, I’m pretty handy. I can DIY most of that stuff. The quadplex was value add in terms of raising rents.

[00:17:06] Amelia McGee: So all the units were move in ready. They were already occupied, but the value came within raising rents. They were severely under market value. The landlord had not raised rents in many, years, so I was able to add value that way, but, and then moving forward, yeah, I would say a lot of my portfolio is value add to where we buy it severely under market value, we do a bunch of renovations, and then we turn around and refinance with the bank, pull our money back out to recycle into the next deal.

[00:17:36] Patrick Donley: What’s the seasoning process? Like at what stage can you pull the money out, do the refinance and get your equity back? How long does that take? Like from the time you purchase it or, you know, get rental income in, but to the point where you can actually refinance and pull your equity out for the next project.

[00:17:56] Amelia McGee: So the PC answer is six months. However, it varies depending on the bank that you’re working with. Grace and I are both huge proponents of using small local banks. That can be a lot more lenient on their terms. They’re not reselling these loans on the secondary market, so they don’t have to abide by a lot of the rules that the secondary market has.

[00:18:17] Amelia McGee: We usually purchase in cash. Again, you can buy very cheap in Iowa, so we’ll purchase in cash. There’s no bank involved. We purchased a triplex for 48, 000 that needed a lot of work. I think we put 30, into it. And then we took it to a bank after four or five months and said, this project is done. We’re looking to get a mortgage with you.

[00:18:39] Amelia McGee: And they did sent an appraiser out, did an appraisal, and then they put a mortgage on the property. So six months, but if you’re working with a local bank, it could be less than that. Some banks might require a year. It really just depends on who you’re working with. 

[00:18:54] Patrick Donley: Grace, how about you? How did you start scaling?

[00:18:56] Patrick Donley: You, you’re at this full-time job being an engineer. How did you have the time to research deals and buy deals and start building your portfolio? 

[00:19:07] Grace Gudenkauf: I remember after our first project looking, hearing online something about how if you find a good deal, the money will come. And I remember promising myself, I’m not going to let the money stop me.

[00:19:21] Grace Gudenkauf: I’m going to keep finding it and I’m going to keep doing this. So I actually turned to creative financing for quite a few of my deals. And then also BRRRRs, which I was able to raise capital for through social media, people who wanted to work with me and saw what I was doing and believed in, in my portfolio and my abilities.

[00:19:41] Patrick Donley: And so were you mainly focused on single family homes, duplexes, kind of that kind of, those kind of rentals? 

[00:19:49] Grace Gudenkauf: At first, all single family homes. And then I did a few projects in, I bought two duplexes together, then a few projects later I bought two fourplexes together, did a BRRRR on that eight unit. And then the creative financing was on a lot of single family homes as well.

[00:20:06] Grace Gudenkauf: I was really all within a 15 minute radius buying, but I was using different strategies on if it was a good deal. I wasn’t going to let be defined by one strategy. And I think one thing people get wrong about a small market is it’s not that hard to be well known and to become the person that’s the go to close a deal.

[00:20:28] Grace Gudenkauf: So in our smaller markets, we get a lot of word of mouth referrals. We get a lot of agents who send us deal and wholesalers who send us deals directly because there’s not that many people playing in this market. 

[00:20:41] Patrick Donley: Do you provide a referral fee to anybody that brings you a deal that you end up closing on?

[00:20:46] Patrick Donley: Is that something that you do? 

[00:20:49] Grace Gudenkauf: I always tell everybody you should advertise a thousand dollar referral fee, probably more if you’re in a bigger area, that you pay out if somebody brings you an off market deal that you close on. So they need to give me the seller’s information and it needs to be a dollar amount that’s big enough to make an ex boyfriend call.

[00:21:08] Grace Gudenkauf: That’s what I always say. And you bet I’ve had a high school ex boyfriend send me deals because he’s thinking of that thousand dollar check, even though I haven’t talked to him in five years. So it’s free unless you actually close on the deal. So there’s absolutely no reasons to not advertise that. Get your contractors, your families, your friends, your bankers, your agents to be walking, talking billboards for your business.

[00:21:32] Patrick Donley: Yeah. And once you get that snowball rolling, you are kind of the go to person in your community. It’s a really a great strategy. Amelia, do you focus to geographically on how you’re investing? 

[00:21:43] Amelia McGee: Yeah, definitely. So I invest in the Des Moines Metro, which is the capital of Iowa. And then I also invest in Southern Iowa in my hometown.

[00:21:52] Amelia McGee: So my portfolio is 41 doors. That’s pretty split 50, 50 between those two markets. I would say moving forward, I’m trying to diversify a little bit more in the Des Moines market versus a smaller market, just because it’s not as stable in a smaller market. There’s not the appreciation. If one major employer in the area moves out of the area, there goes half of your tenant base, but I would say I’m mostly focused in Iowa.

[00:22:18] Amelia McGee: There’s a lot of people that invest out of state, but I’m of the opinion that if you don’t need to go somewhere else, why would you? Basically, I’m in Des Moines, Iowa, and I’m mainly focused on small to midsize multifamily. So anything from three units up to 20 unit apartment buildings is really my buy box.

[00:22:37] Patrick Donley: Grace. I wanted to hear about how both of you got connected. Like how did you meet up and form this partnership that you guys are doing a podcast now you’ve got the book that we’re going to talk about here shortly. Talk to me about how you first teamed up together. 

[00:22:53] Grace Gudenkauf: Like I said, I loved following really cool people on Instagram who were doing a lot of real estate.

[00:23:00] Grace Gudenkauf: And I found Amelia. I was like, Whoa, you’re another young, cool girl doing real estate in Iowa. I swear there’s only two of us. We should be best friends. So I slid into her DMs and I introduced myself and immediately we started to become very close friends because we were both When you’re doing something like real estate, you want to have an outlet of somebody that you can talk to and bounce ideas off of.

[00:23:24] Grace Gudenkauf: And many people don’t have that in their real life. I had also put on my 2021 goals to start a meetup. So I was like, Amelia, you want to be the speaker to this not yet created meetup? It’s going to be for women in real estate And I just put out a link on Instagram and I told myself if five people come to this I’ll be happy.

[00:23:45] Grace Gudenkauf: And 30 people showed up to it and I Remember saying to Amelia that was crazy. We’ve got something. Something is here. We should do this and make it actually a thing. So from that month on, that was in January of 2021. We did that meetup every single month. It was free. That slowly turned into what WIIRE is today.

[00:24:07] Grace Gudenkauf: And it has been such a ride and never when we started that meetup would I ever think we’d be doing retreats and a book and everything that we have going on today. 

[00:24:16] Patrick Donley: Amelia, let’s get into that. I really am super fascinated at how you’ve built this community. WIIRE stands for, tell me again, just for our listeners.

[00:24:26] Amelia McGee: Yeah, it’s women and best in real estate. 

[00:24:29] Patrick Donley: Okay. And then tell me about the retreats. Like how did that come about and where are you doing it? How are you structuring it? I think, my wife is actually a mental health therapist and she talks about doing retreats a lot. And I’m very interested to learn more about how you guys have, have done the retreats.

[00:24:47] Amelia McGee: We started the free meetups in February of 2021, and then we hosted our first retreat in February of 2022, and it was really created out of selfish necessity, I would say. Grace and I were both looking for a retreat for re female real estate investors. And so one day I just texted Grace. I said, Hey, we’re going to be hosting this retreat.

[00:25:12] Amelia McGee: She said, Oh no, I’m not really so sure about that. And I said, Oh, I already sent out the email invite. So I, we’re doing it. We had no idea what we were doing. But again, I think we just have a little bit of reckless confidence and that we can get things done when we set our mind to it. So we sold out of that retreat within a couple of days because it was so needed.

[00:25:34] Amelia McGee: Women in real estate really want to connect with other women in real estate, especially younger millennial investors who haven’t quite made it to multimillion dollar status yet, because we’re all going through the same problems. We’re facing tenant issues, funding issues, contractor issues, whatever the case may be, and just having someone to talk to about it is so powerful.

[00:25:54] Amelia McGee: And so these are 20 person retreats. We’ve hosted 6 sold out retreats now all across the United States. There are generally about 20 women, and we all stay in one super gorgeous mansion Airbnb. for three or four days and network, learn, connect. It’s a super fun time. Grace and I are great hosts if I do say so myself.

[00:26:16] Amelia McGee: So that’s kind of what a WIIRE retreat is. 

[00:26:20] Patrick Donley: That’s such a great idea. So it’s at an Airbnb. Is it, are you bringing in speakers from outside or is it mostly the two of you that are leading the retreat or how do you guys do that? 

[00:26:31] Grace Gudenkauf: We keep the conversations and the masterminds at the retreat as collaborative as possible.

[00:26:37] Grace Gudenkauf: We’re not there to preach at people, although we do lead some of the masterminds, but you’ll find that if you get any group of 20 women in real estate together, there’s so much knowledge already there in the room, just waiting to be shared, that the best things about our retreats is just what you learn just talking to people and having conversations.

[00:26:57] Patrick Donley: That’s so cool. So how often are you doing them? And when is the next one? 

[00:27:02] Amelia McGee: Great question. So we did four in 2022 to 2023. And we got, we were like, man, we might need to slow down. So we’re doing two a year. The next one is September 5th through 8th in Salt Lake City. I’m not sure when this episode is coming out, but the waitlist for that is open.

[00:27:21] Amelia McGee: We open registration for the waitlist before anyone else gets access to it. And our last retreat sold out in 12 hours to the waitlist only, You have to be on it if you want to get in. Super fun. These are for investors that have done at least three deals because we really want you. It’s not where you come and learn how to invest in real estate.

[00:27:42] Amelia McGee: It’s where you come and you network with people that are already doing it just like you are. There’s so much fun. Highlight of our year. If you want to get on it, go to WIIRE, you can find the waitlist, but we would love to meet you there. 

[00:27:56] Patrick Donley: Grace, you’ve also got this podcast that you’re doing, and I think initially you approached BiggerPockets, they turned you down, so I wanted to hear a little bit about the backstory of that.

[00:28:07] Grace Gudenkauf: When we first started, Amelia and I were like, there’s nobody fun. young and female talking about real estate. We need to do that. And so we kicked it around for a year or two and we were doing YouTube for BiggerPockets. So we told them, Hey, why don’t you have us be another show? You don’t have any demographic like this.

[00:28:27] Grace Gudenkauf: We’re really fun. We’re funny. We keep it real. And they were like, you know, great idea. We’re not ready for it. Why don’t you guys do some more YouTube? Which, thank God they said that, because about a year later, we ended up launching our own podcast, where we’re in control of what we get to do and say and record, but I think the lesson learned is shoot your shot, ask what you want to ask, you never know who’s going to say yes, and we didn’t let them say no.

[00:28:54] Grace Gudenkauf: And now fast forward another two years and we’ve written a book for them, so it all worked out how it was supposed to be, but it is funny that we shot our shot and they were like, no. 

[00:29:06] Patrick Donley: Tell me, I mean, you guys have so much going on, how Amelia talk to me just about how your time is being spent. You’ve got these retreats you’re doing, you’ve got the podcast that you’re doing, I think you said it comes out twice a week.

[00:29:18] Patrick Donley: You’ve got your own portfolio that you’ve got going on. So talk to me about just how you’re spending your time. 

[00:29:24] Amelia McGee: Yeah, a lot of it comes down to calendar management too, just batching what we’re working on. So Grace and I will film our episodes on two days of the week. Property management for me has, and asset management has become less of my day-to-day just because I’ve hired that out now to an internal property manager, which is great.

[00:29:46] Amelia McGee: But we work on WIIRE four days a week, just content planning, planning for any courses that we have, retreats, the podcast, and then we both take one day a week on Tuesdays where we don’t do any work for WIIRE and we specifically just do asset management for our own portfolios. So everything to do with our rental properties gets done on those days.

[00:30:07] Amelia McGee: And that’s kind of how we balance it out, but it’s kind of crazy. It’s kind of wild. Some days just running around doing what we can, but we try to kind of calendar block and manage it that way. 

[00:30:17] Patrick Donley: Grace, do you have more in the works in terms of content creation, like a newsletter or anything else that, that are in the works for WIIRE?

[00:30:24] Grace Gudenkauf: We have a team. I think that’s also a huge piece is that we have a team for real estate. We have a team for WIIRE. We just hired our first full-time person. We do have a newsletter that comes out every week, I believe. Yeah. And we have people behind the scenes working on the sponsorships and the Instagram and editing our podcasts and all of that.

[00:30:44] Grace Gudenkauf: And there’s no way we could be doing everything that we’re doing if it was just Amelia and I. 

[00:30:49] Patrick Donley: How are you monetizing the podcast? Is it sponsors that you’re seeking out that have signed up with you? 

[00:30:55] Grace Gudenkauf: Yeah, we’re really lucky that, first of all, we have a very niche audience just like you do, and we’ve been able to work with some really great sponsors that are real estate specific, who have sponsored our episodes or meetups or anything like that, and are a great match and fit for our audience, we’re very protective of the people in our community and making sure that we’re only recommending things that are incredible and useful, but we’ve worked with some awesome sponsors.

[00:31:22] Patrick Donley: I wanted to take a step back and talk about how and when you eventually both left your W2s. At what point did you have the income, the passive income to leave and say, I’m done with regular employment. I’m going to focus on real estate and WIIRE. Amelia, can you talk about that? 

[00:31:41] Amelia McGee: So bought my first property 2020.

[00:31:45] Amelia McGee: I ended up quitting my full-time job in June of 2021. And I remember specifically having conversations with Grace about it. Like I want to quit my job, but I think I’m going to wait another year to six months because that salary is so much extra money that I can use to buy more properties with all of the things.

[00:32:02] Amelia McGee: And during that time, I actually switched jobs. I switched companies. I got a really great offer from another company, which had a 20 percent raise. I made the switch there, about two weeks into that job, when they actually started to expect things from me, and I was out of the training process, I was like, I just can’t do it, my passion isn’t here, my brain is somewhere else, I actually left, this is a crazy story, I left my laptop, left my badge, left everything at my desk, Went home one day, wrote an email to my supervisor and my manager and just said, I’m done.

[00:32:42] Amelia McGee: I’m not coming in tomorrow. I am going to pursue real estate investing full-time. And I texted Grace and said, I quit my job. I did it. Again, I can be reckless, but if it was, if I had been in that position for a long time, of course I would have given them two weeks, but I was still kind of training. They weren’t expecting things from me.

[00:33:00] Amelia McGee: I didn’t have clients I was working with yet. And hitting send on that email was probably one of the scariest moments of my life. Because once you send an email that says I’m quitting today, like there’s no taking that back. Really. I said, I left my laptop at my desk. I’m not coming in tomorrow. I’m so sorry.

[00:33:20] Amelia McGee: I didn’t want to waste any more of your time. I’m done. So that’s how it went. 

[00:33:26] Patrick Donley: It’s scary, but did it feel really good too? Like you’re onto this next chapter that you’d been building towards anyway, right? this was going to happen eventually. 

[00:33:35] Amelia McGee: Yeah, it felt so good. I would say that my cashflow from my rental property is also just to give you a little insight financially.

[00:33:42] Amelia McGee: It wasn’t quite what I was making at my full-time job. It didn’t quite match up, but I knew that with 40 extra hours in my week to focus full-time on real estate investing, I could make up for that money very quickly. And even if I couldn’t, I could go be a bartender. I could wait tables. I could donate plasma.

[00:34:02] Amelia McGee: There were so many other ways that I was willing to scrap around and make money that I knew that I could, make it work. 

[00:34:10] Patrick Donley: Grace, what about you? You’re working as an engineer. How did, I imagine you’re pretty strategic, like how did you formulate your plan to leave W2 employment? 

[00:34:20] Grace Gudenkauf: Well first of all, I want to say I was absolutely not making the passive income that would to match my W2.

[00:34:27] Grace Gudenkauf: It was a leap of faith. I had a little bit of a different story around the same time as Amelia switching jobs. My first job was remote out of California. So I was in purgatory for six months to a year, not knowing, should I move? And that’s when I started to invest in real estate. And I finally decided I’m not going out to California because I will not be able to do any real estate out there.

[00:34:50] Grace Gudenkauf: So I let my team know that I was quitting. I only lasted 10 or 11 months, maybe, and I knew it was leap of faith. I had an emergency fund. I also wrote out my worst case scenario. Do I need to bartend? Do I need to do this? Do I need to move home if this happens? And I knew I was going to have to wholesale or do something extra to make up for that cash flow.

[00:35:13] Patrick Donley: I think that worst case scenario kind of, what is the worst that can happen here? You know, and to your point, Amelia, you can always go bartender, be an Uber driver, do whatever to make enough income to, you know, have enough to make it till you’re, You know, you’ve actually built your portfolio. Once you left your jobs, talk to me a little bit about the financing.

[00:35:32] Patrick Donley: Did you find that harder, or was it not really an issue because you were doing more creative financing? 

[00:35:37] Amelia McGee: For me, it wasn’t an issue because I’d already been building relationships with small local banks, and I was also partnering with my parents, and a couple other people, so they were able to show their W2 income to secure loans for us.

[00:35:54] Amelia McGee: But actually the bank never even questioned it after I quit my job. And one other thing that I did want to add for anyone out there listening, like Grace said, we both had big emergency funds. Neither one of us had any consumer or student loan debt left. So we were also in a great position there and neither one of us have children or anyone else relying on us, or even neither one of us even have pets.

[00:36:18] Amelia McGee: So it was easier for us to make that leap, I would say, than someone in a different situation than us. 

[00:36:24] Patrick Donley: And when you’re young, it’s such a good time to take risks like you both have done. 

[00:36:30] Grace Gudenkauf: Yeah, I agree. A lot of people ask how I was able to quit so early and it was because I was so young. I was less than a year out of college.

[00:36:38] Grace Gudenkauf: I was still living like a college person. It is so much easier for me to take a chance than if I have a full mortgage and two car payments and two kids. That’s a completely different story. But I did want to add a couple of things about the financing. I also didn’t have any issues the first two years because I already had a relationship with the commercial bank and did commercial loans where it’s more about the asset, not you as a person.

[00:37:01] Grace Gudenkauf: And also I did learn creative financing with a purpose. I did create a financing because I knew I was going to be quitting my job. And that’s why I went all in on that. And actually the only time I’ve ever had issues with financing was about four months ago, we bought a primary residence here in Arizona, and two and a half years into having a job with absolute, or having a full-time business with absolutely no issues financing any of my rental properties, I actually had trouble with the bank here in Arizona.

[00:37:32] Grace Gudenkauf: of getting on the loan. And so they ended up just putting my partner on the loan because it was quote unquote too hard to figure out my self employment, which I thought was hilarious. 

[00:37:42] Patrick Donley: Let’s get into a little bit about the book. Amelia, talk to me about the book, how that came about, the title of the book.

[00:37:49] Patrick Donley: It’s going to be released here real soon. So talk to me more about how you guys got started on the book. 

[00:37:55] Amelia McGee: The book is called The Self-Managing Landlord: More Profit, Time, and Peace of Mind with DIY Management. And it first started, just to give you a backstory, I think a year or two ago, two years ago, Grace, we also pitched a book to BiggerPockets.

[00:38:12] Amelia McGee: We are going to shoot our shot no matter what. 

[00:38:15] Grace Gudenkauf: Hey, to be fair, they said no to the podcast, but let’s talk about a book. We talked about the book. Both parties agreed there’s really no meat on the bone here. Maybe another time. 

[00:38:27] Amelia McGee: We couldn’t quite land on a topic, so we didn’t move forward with that. turns out a year later, they sent us an email.

[00:38:35] Amelia McGee: They said, remember when we had that conversation about writing a book? we have a really awesome idea that we think you guys would be perfect authors for. Let’s set up a meeting. And we were so giddy. We were like, Oh my gosh, what’s the topic going to be? We’re so excited. It’s going to be fun. And they said, it’s going to be about how to self manage rental properties.

[00:38:53] Amelia McGee: And we were like, Oh my gosh, that’s the most boring topic on planet earth. Oh, but we were going to do it no matter what, honestly. That is the whole process, how the process started of writing the book, and Grace can kind of give more insights, but that’s the background. 

[00:39:09] Patrick Donley: I do want to hear about the writing process.

[00:39:11] Patrick Donley: Like, how did you guys divide it up? How did you structure it? Did they provide some coaching for you? I mean, it’s your first book ever. Talk to me about that process. 

[00:39:21] Grace Gudenkauf: So the second that we realized, let’s talk about self management and systems and processes behind being the CEO of your business, we really started to get behind the idea.

[00:39:31] Grace Gudenkauf: And we started with a very thorough 10 plus page outline that they then approved. It was split up into two pieces. The how to’s of self managing, renting, leasing, evictions, maintenance requests. And then the how to’s of running a business. Banking and systems and processes and procedures and checklists and quick guides.

[00:39:52] Grace Gudenkauf: Then we started to get really excited. We did the whole first manuscript in six weeks. They reached out in July or August of 2023. It’s now out published April of 2024. So we did the first manuscript in six weeks. They gave some edits, actually ended up rearranging the chapters because Amelia and I had split it into she was writing about the how to’s of management and I was writing about the how to’s of the business.

[00:40:17] Grace Gudenkauf: And then now the final layout is a more into four parts, setting up your business, the actual parts of management, which you can skip if you feel like you already know that piece, difficult situations, and then ending with how to continue to build upon your portfolio without buying more, how to continue to operate as the CEO and delegate maybe to an internal manager.

[00:40:39] Grace Gudenkauf: So I think it’s a pretty darn good book and it really applies to a wide audience. 

[00:40:45] Patrick Donley: Let’s get into the difficult situations. What are some of those difficult situations that you wrote about that you’ve experienced yourself? Talk to me a little bit about that, Amelia. 

[00:40:55] Amelia McGee: Good question. That’s a whole can of worms.

[00:40:58] Amelia McGee: That’s just part of being a landlord. There’s going to be difficult situations. It’s a customer service based business in our opinion, because the tenant is very much our customer. They are paying for a product, which is their home, but difficult situations. Anything to do with tenants, non payment of rent, maintenance requests, tenant issues between with other tenants, inherited tenants, because inherited tenants, you didn’t get to screen them.

[00:41:27] Amelia McGee: You didn’t get to onboard them. They aren’t used to your rules. I can, we can tell specific stories if you want to do you have a horror 

[00:41:34] Patrick Donley: story that just comes to mind real quickly of I can start with one. Yeah. If you go ahead, Grace, 

[00:41:41] Grace Gudenkauf: The story I told in the book is how I got desperate for a renter in February in Iowa.

[00:41:48] Grace Gudenkauf: If you know anything about Iowa, nobody wants to move in the middle of winter. So instead of having a very strict procedure that I could follow and know exactly what I was going to do and what my requirements were, sorry, and what my requirements were, I got emotional and desperate. I found a tenant willing to pay what I wanted and move in immediately.

[00:42:08] Grace Gudenkauf: Which, that’s a red flag. And so I dropped all of my rental requirements and didn’t do a background and credit check, which now is very standard and streamlined in my business. What do you know? Six months later, she’s been evicted for non payment of rent. She never had any intention of paying rent. And that was a great lesson to learn of if you don’t have systems and processes and you just run around making emotional decisions, barely keeping your head above water, you are not in a head space to make the best decision for your business and you’re going to get burned.

[00:42:41] Patrick Donley: Amelia, I want to hear a little bit about like your, both of you, like your tech stack, like how you are managing the rentals in terms of just the technology used to kind of streamline things and make things more efficient. 

[00:42:53] Amelia McGee: The most important part of your tech stack is your property management software.

[00:42:59] Amelia McGee: We would recommend from day one, you start with one. We both use Tenant Cloud, but there’s probably literally hundreds out there. We would say that what they need to be able to do is sign e leases, collect rent, auto assign late fees, and handle really robust, have a really robust maintenance request system.

[00:43:20] Amelia McGee: Those are huge in tenant messaging system, because the goal is to be able to keep everything as systemized and in one place as possible right from the get go, so your property management software is huge. The second thing that we both use, because we do a lot of midterm rentals, which are 30 day stays that are furnished for traveling nurses, usually, is some sort of calendar management software and messaging software.

[00:43:46] Amelia McGee: So we use what’s called hospitable for that. And that’s huge. It automatically talks to our cleaner. It sends messages to our tenants. It keeps a calendar because we’re onboarding these tenants from Airbnb, Furnished Finder, Facebook Marketplace Groups, Word of Mouth, so there’s not one centralized system to keep track of your calendar, so we are huge on that.

[00:44:10] Amelia McGee: What are some things I’m missing, Grace? Those are my top two. 

[00:44:13] Grace Gudenkauf: We do love our project management system. We use Monday and both WIIRE and our own real estate. You don’t have to do that. If you’re just starting out, you just need to have some sort of system. So if it’s checklists and Google sheets, absolutely use that.

[00:44:27] Grace Gudenkauf: But we’re at the point where we’ve got very dynamic businesses with lots of acquisitions and turnovers and dispositions happening. So when we can auto populate a checklist that we’ve created to specifically for our business that has assigned to people in our business with due dates, that’s how the day-to-day gets done.

[00:44:44] Grace Gudenkauf: Nothing gets missed, nothing is late, and everything is done the same way every time. 

[00:44:49] Patrick Donley: Grace, how did you turn over property management? You’re doing it yourself initially, like at what point did you explore turning it over to a property manager at all, or how did you make that transition from managing it yourself to farming it out?

[00:45:04] Grace Gudenkauf: A year and a half in, I bought that eight unit I talked about, and it was managed previously by one of the quote-unquote premier property managers in the area. And automatically upon acquisition, there was so much value added in the mismanagement. It was under market rent, the pet fees weren’t being assessed, there were broken down cars in the parking lot.

[00:45:23] Grace Gudenkauf: So I was like, if this is what management is, I am never hiring this out. But I knew I couldn’t do the day-to-day forever. So about three, four months later. About two years in, maybe a year and a half in, I hired 10 hours a week, hourly, for somebody to help me with all the paperwork. So the leasings, the turnovers, handling maintenance requests.

[00:45:45] Grace Gudenkauf: She helped me for a year. It was incredible. It was the best 800 a month I ever spent. And I was like, I have a taste of this freedom. I need more. So after a year of her. She went her own way. She had a great job offer. I flipped her into a full-time position of project and property management. So I now have a full-time W2 employee who does probably three quarters project management and a quarter property management.

[00:46:12] Grace Gudenkauf: So I have way better quality service. I pay probably a third to a fourth of what I would pay a PM company. And I have the quality control because I get to set the procedures. 

[00:46:23] Patrick Donley: Amelia, did you have a similar, did you kind of transition in a similar way or was it different for you? 

[00:46:29] Amelia McGee: Yeah. So Grace pushed me for a long time to hire someone because I did not do that nearly as soon as she did.

[00:46:36] Amelia McGee: So kudos to her. My portfolio was at 36 doors, which were a combination of midterm, long-term. I had a short-term Airbnb rental in there. And I knew it was time to hire out when me being the property manager was literally losing me money. The money that I was going to be spending on a property manager would actually save my business money in the long-term because I wasn’t doing that job as well as I could, because I was trying to do so many things.

[00:47:07] Amelia McGee: So I’ll give you an example. One thing that was costing me money was on my turnovers. I was so busy, I couldn’t prioritize my turnover procedures. a tenant would tell me they were moving out in 30 days and I’d say, okay, I can handle that in 30 days. I would totally put it out of sight, out of mind. And then when the 30 days rolled around, I had nobody to take over the lease and it would sit vacant for a whole nother month, a month of vacancy, it really kills your cash flow for the year because there’s nobody paying that 1, 000 in rent or whatever the case may be that month.

[00:47:40] Amelia McGee: I, right off the bat there, I was losing 1, 000 a month. So when I hired a property manager, now our procedures are. As soon as we get a notice, we list the property for rent, we do a pre move out walkthrough about two weeks before they move out so we can make note of any repairs that we need to have our handyman or our painter come in and do.

[00:48:01] Amelia McGee: So then the day they move out, the minute after they’re out the door, our handyman comes in, he makes those repairs, we’ve already pre-listed the property, we’ve already been doing showings, so we can get a lease signed immediately and get someone moved in. 

[00:48:16] Patrick Donley: You both have talked a little bit about being the CEO of your company.

[00:48:21] Patrick Donley: There’s a book called The E Myth, which talks about working on your business versus working in your business. And you really, you know, you want to get to the point where you’ve farmed everything out. Say more about that because you go into it in the book, it sounds like. So how do you think about becoming the CEO of your own portfolio?

[00:48:39] Grace Gudenkauf: I think Amelia’s example just said it best. If you’re stuck in the day-to-day, You cannot be proactive enough to keep up your income and keep your expenses down because she couldn’t look up from her business and think about how to cut down on vacancies. working on your business would be finding new deals, making new contractor relationships, increasing your rent or changing your rental strategy to make more money.

[00:49:05] Grace Gudenkauf: Working in your business is not enough. Is sending over paperwork for tenants, handling maintenance requests, dropping things off in person. It’s all that day-to-day stuff that keeps you from looking up and being able to see the bigger picture. And the other thing I want to point out is you don’t need to be good at everything.

[00:49:23] Grace Gudenkauf: You should focus on what you’re really good at. I’m good at finding deals. So when I’m able to hire out the property management now, I don’t have to dread property management and I get to spend four times more time on finding good deals to fuel my business and make myself more money. 

[00:49:41] Patrick Donley: Yeah, it’s like the 80/20, you know, the Pareto principle.

[00:49:44] Patrick Donley: It’s what are the 20 percent of the activities that are driving 80 percent of your profits and focus on that, right? 

[00:49:50] Amelia McGee: That’s a hundred percent it. 

[00:49:53] Patrick Donley: I wanted to go into a little bit of Amelia, like how, do you see your strategy changing over time? do you think you’ll just continue with your current strategy or do you guys have future goals that you want to take it to a different level?

[00:50:08] Amelia McGee: Oh boy, that’s a great question. 

[00:50:11] Grace Gudenkauf: So I have one that we want to do. We want to syndicate a WIIRE house, a WIIRE retreat house in 2025. 

[00:50:20] Patrick Donley: Say more about that. Like how would that look? 

[00:50:24] Amelia McGee: Yeah. So for anyone out there listening, that doesn’t know what syndication is, it’s basically where you raise funds from private investors.

[00:50:31] Amelia McGee: To invest in a property, a large multi doesn’t, you know, whatever it is, you raise outside funds. So we spend a lot of money on renting out the retreat houses and we’re like, what are we doing? Let’s just buy our own or build our own house. Let’s fund it using all women in the WIIRE communities money.

[00:50:53] Amelia McGee: They’ll make dividends on that money. And then we save paying all those fees to other investors. Plus we do real estate full-time. We know how to run Airbnbs. We know how to run short-term rentals. We’ll just rent it out when we’re not using it for our own retreats. That is a huge thing on our list. And Grace, I was going to say, I’ve always been of the opinion.

[00:51:14] Amelia McGee: I want to be a small and mighty investor. I don’t want a portfolio that’s hundreds of thousands of units, because at some point you lose sight of why you even invested in the first place, which for me is, For very passive income to be able to live a life outside of having to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week.

[00:51:32] Amelia McGee: I have a lot of hobbies. I need to be self employed, but I want to build a very small but mighty portfolio, but Grace and I have talked about that syndication part. Are we going to move into? We have an amazing community of women investors. Are we going to buy bigger deals and use private money with the women that are in our community?

[00:51:51] Amelia McGee: So that’s something we’ve been talking about lately, but not sure where that’s going to go. 

[00:51:56] Patrick Donley: Well once you get the wheel or the ball rolling to like more and more opportunities open up to you at some point, you have to figure out what you say no to, right? It’s like you have the no list. 

[00:52:09] Grace Gudenkauf: I think, Amelia, where you’re able to marry those two concepts is we’re not willing to work 40 hours a week on a syndication.

[00:52:17] Grace Gudenkauf: We are willing to build a great team who can run it for us, and we can stick to what we’re good at and keep our time freedom. Make money and be more passive, but also lend our expertise to the project, which is what people are investing in. We’re not saying I’m going to go work a hundred hours a week to run 90 syndications.

[00:52:37] Patrick Donley: Yeah, you have no desire to do that, correct? 

[00:52:40] Grace Gudenkauf: No. 

[00:52:41] Patrick Donley: So it’s more about lifestyle, using real estate to build the lifestyle you want, right? 

[00:52:47] Amelia McGee: We don’t want to manage a syndication, but we can definitely raise the funds for one. Cause that’s our area of expertise. It’s finding deals and it’s raising money so we can hire out the rest.

[00:52:57] Amelia McGee: We can do what we’re good at 

[00:53:00] Patrick Donley: Now with WIIRE is it, are you in multiple cities or how there’s, I forget there’s, there are groups that like almost like a franchise there. There are different cities. And are you guys, is that on the, drawing board at all for you guys? Yeah. 

[00:53:13] Grace Gudenkauf: We’ve talked about that many times.

[00:53:15] Grace Gudenkauf: We don’t currently have in person chapters, but there are lots of groups who do it and are great at it. For us, we’re really focused on our free Facebook community and cultivating amazing relationships there. And also we run our retreats. And then I’d say our third thing we’re really focused on, which is also virtual, is our CEO bootcamp.

[00:53:36] Grace Gudenkauf: which teaches you everything you need to learn to run your business and not be in the day-to-day. So while we’d love to get in person, it’s not on the next 12 months docket, but it might be in the future. 

[00:53:49] Patrick Donley: Amelia, I just wanted to hear just in thinking back of building your portfolio, Is there anything you would have done differently or mistakes that you made that you wish you would have corrected at some point, just you know, somebody that’s listening to this, like, how, what would you advise them to don’t do this?

[00:54:04] Patrick Donley: You know, this was a mistake I made that I could have avoided something like that. 

[00:54:09] Amelia McGee: I would actually say my biggest mistake when I started real estate investing was not house hacking. And I know that’s kind of a weird answer, but I’ll give you, I’ll share with you what house hacking is, if you’ve never heard of it.

[00:54:22] Amelia McGee: It’s basically where you buy a property and you rent it out. So either if you buy a duplex, you live in one side of it because you get a lower down payment with an owner occupied loan. You’re usually going to get a better interest rate. And if you live in one side and rent out the other, a lot of times the person living in the other unit will probably be paying enough rent to cover the entire mortgage and insurance and property taxes.

[00:54:46] Amelia McGee: If not cover all of it, cover most of it. So then you’re living rent-free and the money that you could have been spending in rent or would have been spending paying rent somewhere else, you’re saving that money and using it to buy another property in the future. It’s such a powerful strategy. I wish that I would have used it right out of college.

[00:55:07] Amelia McGee: Grace used it, which is amazing. But other than that, another thing for me is just not documenting what I was doing the first time around and reinventing the wheel every single time I would do something, whether that was onboarding tenants or creating a lease or maintenance requests. That’s so important because you want that passive income.

[00:55:27] Amelia McGee: You want that time freedom. You need to start documenting what you’re doing. So you’re not doing it over again every single time. 

[00:55:33] Patrick Donley: So you can create a system that you can then just replicate. 

[00:55:37] Amelia McGee: Yeah. 

[00:55:38] Patrick Donley: I love the house hacking idea the I interviewed the FI couple I don’t know if you are familiar with either of them they’re a couple that invest in real estate and they said basically exactly what you did, Amelia, just that house hacking is the way to get started in real estate.

[00:55:54] Patrick Donley: Do that, learn, cover your rent, and then you can start building from there. Grace, how about you? Is there anything looking back on things that you would have wished you would have done differently? 

[00:56:04] Grace Gudenkauf: I agree with Amelia. I call it the sit-and-think when you go to do something you’ve done a hundred times and because you have nothing written down.

[00:56:11] Grace Gudenkauf: You sit and you think, what am I supposed to be doing right now? I wasted so much time and effort the first two years scaling doing that because I wasn’t able to step into a CEO mindset and systemize things. So if you’re just getting started, like Amelia said, start a simple Google doc. It can be bullet points of when you’re buying a house, what are you doing?

[00:56:33] Grace Gudenkauf: You’re reading over the alta, you’re scheduling the WIIRE, you’re checking your due diligence, just writing out everything so you can do the same thing every single time. It saves you so much money. And Amelia and I, for example, love to forget to buy insurance for our rental properties until the day of closing.

[00:56:51] Grace Gudenkauf: So that will never happen. That’s a huge disaster waiting to happen, but don’t do the sit and think, get systemized. 

[00:56:58] Patrick Donley: So you’re doing all this to create the lifestyle you want. I wanted to touch on a little bit, Amelia and Grace, like what do you guys like to do outside of real estate? 

[00:57:07] Grace Gudenkauf: I am a very mediocre pickleball player.

[00:57:10] Grace Gudenkauf: I love hiking. I love climbing. I’m probably even more mediocre at climbing, but anything outside is very fun in Arizona. And I also would say I’m a huge reader. 

[00:57:23] Patrick Donley: That’s awesome. I just was out in Joshua tree doing some bouldering and it’s so beautiful. I love the desert. So I’m kind of jealous that you’ve made the move from the Midwest to Arizona.

[00:57:33] Patrick Donley: And Pickleball is awesome as well. It’s such a good game. Amelia, how about you? 

[00:57:38] Amelia McGee: Yeah, I would consider myself an advanced Pickleball player. I love it. She beat me 11 to 0 once. 

[00:57:45] Patrick Donley: Oh man. 

[00:57:46] Amelia McGee: So I love Pickleball. I love traveling. That’s something that Grace and I are both really passionate about. We do a lot of traveling.

[00:57:54] Amelia McGee: I just love being outside. Craft beer is a hobby of mine as well. 

[00:57:59] Patrick Donley: Making it And I’m also an 

[00:58:00] Amelia McGee: avid reader. drinking it. I’m really good at drinking it. 

[00:58:04] Patrick Donley: That’s awesome. 

[00:58:06] Amelia McGee: I used to work at a brewery for seven years as like a fun side hustle, part time job. and really anything board games, I am in a neogram type seven.

[00:58:14] Amelia McGee: So if you’re out there listening and you know, neograms, so is grace. We’re always down for an adventure. We’re always down to try something new. So lots of hobbies. 

[00:58:23] Patrick Donley: That’s cool. Since you’re both readers, Grace, is there one book that has made a, like a huge impact on your life or something that you, like your most gifted book?

[00:58:31] Patrick Donley: Do you have something like that? 

[00:58:33] Grace Gudenkauf: Recently, 10x is easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan. That was huge. And I will say the reason it was huge was because when I read it, I sat down and I read it slowly and I did every single exercise in the book. Normally I like to read things really quick and be like, I’ll do that later.

[00:58:51] Grace Gudenkauf: But it really is so much more impactful when you do what the book tells you to do. 

[00:58:56] Patrick Donley: Say more about that. I’ve, I’m familiar with the book. I’ve not read it. What’s the main idea? what’s the main takeaway? 

[00:59:03] Grace Gudenkauf: The main idea is that if you attempt to 10x something by default, it’s always going to be easier than trying to double your effort.

[00:59:11] Grace Gudenkauf: And the reason is, because when you go to 10x something, you have to be revolutionary and how you’re approaching it. Cause to 10x, Your profit or your output or your rental portfolio is massive, so you have to think massively outside the box, delegate massively, be super attentive to detail, and even if you fail by half, you still 5x it.

[00:59:33] Grace Gudenkauf: And it’s also basically saying, what are the 10x things that you’ve done in the past? For me, a 10x was quitting my job. In WIIRE, it was throwing the first retreat. in appreciating them and knowing that there are different waves that you go through where a 10x might happen. And they get bigger and bigger.

[00:59:52] Patrick Donley: I’ll have to check it out. It sounds, I’ve definitely heard about it and many people have recommended it. So I’ll definitely have to give it a read. I’m a huge reader too. But, Amelia, how about you? What’s one book that’s made a huge impact on your life and career? Yeah, 

[01:00:06] Amelia McGee: Mine’s the boring answer of Rich Dad Poor Dad, and I know it’s kind of a controversial book these days, but it opened, it just opened my eyes to the world of entrepreneurship, like I said earlier, and just making your money work for you, whether or not I apply the same principles that they preach in the book, is irrelevant to me because it was the pivotal turning point in my life to start thinking in terms of being an entrepreneur.

[01:00:34] Patrick Donley: Yeah, it’s a great book. I mean, I don’t know that there’s any controversy about the book. I mean, the author itself.

[01:00:44] Patrick Donley: Not everybody’s cup of tea these days, it doesn’t seem but this has been a lot of fun, ladies. I really admire what you’ve both done and the portfolio you’ve built. You’ve got so much going on in terms of content creation. Say a little bit more about, Grace, how people can get in touch with you, how they can learn about the book, the WIIRE.

[01:01:02] Patrick Donley: Just go ahead and give a little plug for what you guys are up to. 

[01:01:06] Grace Gudenkauf: You can find WIIRE on Instagram @wiire.community. WIIRE has two I’s. Also www.womeninvestinrealestate.com and then me personally @grace.investing on Instagram. 

[01:01:18] Patrick Donley: And that’s where you’re most active is Instagram? 

[01:01:21] Grace Gudenkauf: Yeah, that’s probably the best way to get a hold of us.

[01:01:23] Grace Gudenkauf: I’ll let Amelia share her handle as well. 

[01:01:26] Amelia McGee: Yeah, mine is @ameliajorei on Instagram. And then if you’re interested in purchasing the book, It’s available on BiggerPockets.com and it’s titled The Self-Managing Landlord. Like I said earlier, it’s a beautiful blue cover. So if you’re looking for it, that’s what it looks like.

[01:01:44] Amelia McGee: But we would love to meet you on Instagram if you want to join us over there. 

[01:01:48] Patrick Donley: Very exciting about the book. Congratulations. You’ve got such a great life going on, the things that you’re up to. So I really, appreciate your time. I’ll put links in the show notes to everything that you’re up to.

[01:02:01] Patrick Donley: BiggerPockets does such a fantastic job in terms of publishing their books. They’re so well done. So I’m sure it’s going to be a great book. Really you know, I hope you sell a ton of it and, just wish you both the best of luck in everything that you’re up to. 

[01:02:17] Grace Gudenkauf: Thanks, Patrick. 

[01:02:18] Patrick Donley: Yeah. Thanks for your time.

[01:02:20] Patrick Donley: Okay, folks, that’s all I had for today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I’ll see you back here real soon. 

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