Chasing Financial Freedom
Chasing Financial Freedom
Ep 284 | Amplifying Community Impact Through Strategic Real Estate Collaborations
Can you imagine collaborating with a major investor to transform entire communities? This week, we're thrilled to share our journey of teaming up with a significant player in the investment arena, which promises to amplify our impact across multiple neighborhoods. We'll provide exciting updates on the Bayard Parks project, where the second house is finished, and the third is underway, despite grappling with city regulations. Our discussion also covers our evolving strategy of building homes for investors and how staying consistent on social media, especially on Facebook and YouTube, is crucial for broadening our reach. Amid the backdrop of housing market uncertainties and inflation concerns, we passionately argue for making housing decisions based on personal financial health rather than market noise.
Ever felt bogged down by daily tasks and need a strategy to stay focused and grateful? In this episode, we reveal our personal tactics to avoid overwhelm, such as using a whiteboard to break down goals into manageable chunks and starting each day with a moment of gratitude to set the right tone and objectives. We underscore the importance of appreciating what we have while working towards our goals, enhancing our satisfaction when milestones are achieved. Don't miss out on our upcoming content, including an insightful video on CPI and a fresh episode of the Chasing Happiness podcast, designed to keep you inspired and informed in these turbulent financial times.
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Hey guys, another week in the books, and this week I want to talk about three things that are going on in life with me, but also just talk about all the craziness that we're seeing in not just real estate but the financial markets. Inflation is truly eating at our pocketbooks, but then also mindset. So let's start with one. This week in Real Estate Guys, for us we are talking to a substantially larger investor than we've worked with before. When I say substantially, it's nice little numbers that we're going to potentially be able to do four or five deals with at a time. Right now we're working with two to three, but we're also going to be able to impact more communities, to where we could be working in three different cities at once. So we're excited about that. So that's on the real estate investing side.
Speaker 1:The Bayard Parks project we've got the second house done. We're going to get the third house started. We've got to knock down three houses still. I'm going back and forth with the city on that and I just I don't even want to talk about that. That's just depressing because it's just a royal pain in the butt. And then we have several investors that want to buy lots from us and have us build the houses and then be able to help them sell them on the back end so that's a different concept and then be able to help them sell them on the back end so that's a different concept. I know I spoke about it in a prior episode, but this is vetting that process out and seeing where it goes. And then, lastly, on Bayard Park, we are starting to garner more eyes on the actual project to where we have anywhere between three to five leads solid leads coming in on a weekly basis, and I would say that we are getting better quality leads coming in the door than we did before. And those individuals are coming either through our social media or word of mouth.
Speaker 1:So back up a little bit. I want to talk a little bit about social media or word of mouth. So back up a little bit. I want to talk a little bit about social media. I know we're on chasing financial freedom and really focused on small business.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I've been really focused on and pushing myself to do is social media on a daily basis. It's been a while. I have to continue to push myself through this evolution, and that evolution is I've got to get good at putting social out on specific channels and then be able to hand it off to either a virtual assistant or somebody that has more time to spend with the actual social media to spend with the actual social media, because I know that I am not the social media king, but I also know I can win by being consistent. The consistency is paying off. We are garnering anywhere between two to 500 followers on a monthly sorry, on a weekly basis on Facebook. On YouTube it's a little slower. We crossed over the 2000 followers there, or subscribers, but we still have not monetized the channel. Is that something on my mind? Yes, am I worried about it? No, but I'd like to get better engagement. So one of the things that I'm working on and trying to understand is can I find somebody that can help us with the YouTube marketing and be able to create better thumbnails, maybe even our descriptions? I'm using Opus to do the descriptions and so forth, but I think we could do better and then try somebody out that potentially would help us over a period of time to grow the views but, better yet, grow the channel, get our word out there, because our ultimate goal is to be able to talk to people not just nationwide but worldwide, and be able to bring people in on this affordable housing journey because we have such a shortage of it.
Speaker 1:And today Gen Z's I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal that they feel to live comfortably a family of four, they need to make $171,000. Damn, that's a lot of money. And majority of their monthly income is going towards housing and student loan debt. And I admit, I got student loan debt too. I learned to speak English. Today I have student loan debt also, but not to that amount. I've been paying mine for several years. It still needs to get paid off, but not that high. But with that there's just a lot of uncertainty in the market real estate-wise and a lot of people are worried that if they go buy a house it's going to cost them more.
Speaker 1:And I hear all the naysayers in the actual social media channels in the comments saying now's not a good time to buy a house. When does it become a good time? And I'm going to back up and say this If it makes dollars and cents for that person trying to buy a house, then they should go buy it. But if they can't afford it, then of course not, don't go buy it. But you cannot say and dictate to somebody that because interest rates are high, that it's not a good time for them to buy a house. That's their decision. And when I hear these individuals talking and that's what it is talking and telling people that what I'm spewing is garbage because I know nothing, guess what, why don't you get stuck in your house of whatever you're doing and stay there? And ultimately, that's your choice. Do I dislike it or like it? No, that's your choice. But if other people want to go buy a house and they have the ability to buy one, guess what they have the right to do it. And I don't get where some people think you don't get the right to buy a house when interest rates are not at 2.75.
Speaker 1:Because I'm going to humble myself and say that more than likely we are not going to see 2.5% interest rates on mortgages anytime soon. And if we do, it's because the market crashed and we had a huge unemployment number come through. That's going to be the challenge. How is the Fed going to balance all this out to where they still keep the rates high and still keep the market moving? We're at all time lows right now on home purchases and mortgage applications. Got it. But at the same time, every single day, there are houses being sold and closed. It's still happening. But people think that, oh my God, I can't go do that it's because the interest rates are so high. That's dumb, as I've always said.
Speaker 1:Column A, column B compare owning versus renting. Whichever one makes it more affordable you go after. That's all I say. You can't tell people what to do. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people doing that, but in the end all it is is just a reflection of yourself, just like people think oh my God, I'm going to get a HELOC against my house and they're going to come and foreclose. They're going to foreclose because you have bad spinning habits and you've charged up all your credit cards again and so they're going to come after you for those credit cards and then they're going to file a lawsuit against you. And then that's when they foreclose. If you cut up your credit cards and not spend on them ever again, guess what? You're ahead of the game and now you can pay down that HELOC. So if you ever have to use it again God forbid you can actually use it.
Speaker 1:But our problem is we think we can continue to spend ourselves out of debts when actually we're not going to be able to run away from it. This time we're over a trillion dollars in credit card debt, the highest it's ever been. Inflation is eating at our wallets and we still don't have relief at the grocery store, at the fuel pump gas pump, however you want to call that. Housing expenses are still up, houses are still at the top. I get all that, but the one thing that I don't understand is people think that we have to keep up with the Joneses and we don't. That's the challenge. Everybody's chasing this happiness on the external side of their bodies when it should be on the inside of their body and figuring out what do I need to do to secure my family and my four walls and making sure I've got food on the table and I can go to work. We don't think that way. We're a consumer society and I get that, but in the end, what are we going to actually do if we've got a mountain full of or excuse me, a mountain high debt load? I saw a credit card bill the other day that was almost 25% interest. How are you going to get out of that if you continue to spend? I'd love to be able to hear the comments, guys, because putting on a credit card and then hoping it goes away, or this buy here, buy now, pay later, doesn't work either. Later doesn't work either. It's all problematic to where we're starting to see more defaults, more collections and, unfortunately, you're going to see more bankruptcies if we haven't seen them already. I've not kept up with bankruptcy filings. To know where we're at. Mindset guys.
Speaker 1:The last piece that I want to go over is mindset. I know I've had several conversations about it, but I want to just wrap it up here and tie it up in a bow. Mindset-wise, on a scale of one to five, I'm like a two and a half to three. I'm still struggling making sure I stay focused on a daily basis on my revenue-generating tasks. I've brought on a cold caller. She's starting to call 20 hours, going to excuse me, going to start calling 20 hours a week and we're going to see how that goes, and I'm going to compare her results with our AI caller that's going to do the same thing. We'll do 20 hours and we'll see how the results turn out. I might use both, I don't know.
Speaker 1:But my mindset wise is I've got to get out of working in the business and start working on the business, because how am I going to scale and attract more investors to where we can actually grow the bottom line? I'm not worried about the top line. The top line is great, but bottom line is where we all get paid but also have the largest impact in the communities we're serving. And this group that we're getting tied into really has an ambitious goal of doing 500 houses and I don't know how they're going to get to that. I've only had our first initial deep dive in a conversation, so we'll see where that goes. Had our first initial deep dive in a conversation, so we'll see where that goes.
Speaker 1:But in all of this mindset is I have to keep grounded and make sure that I'm focused on the business aspect of what needs to be done daily. On the other side of the camera, I've got my whiteboard, I've got goals up there, but I also have tinier steps that I can use to break down what we're doing and what needs to be done, because otherwise I get overwhelmed. I shut down, it slows up, everything falls apart. It's just not worth it. I'm leaving you guys with this.
Speaker 1:If you're feeling overwhelmed and anxious, focus on the now, right now. I wake up every morning and I'm grateful that God woke me up and I get another day to live. And then I start writing down the goals that I want to accomplish for the day. They might be continuous, but I have them in front of me, so I know exactly what I need to do. And the last piece is be thankful for what you have, because you could be even more grateful when those things that you want come along after you've been asking for them and working for them over a period of time. All right, guys. Hope you guys have a great week. I'll see you guys on the other side. Cpi comes out this week, so I'll have a video on that, and then we'll have another episode of Chasing Happiness podcast on Saturday. Talk to you later.
