GI29: Multifamily Investing: Capitalizing on Today’s Market with The REI Mom Anna Kelley

GI29: Multifamily Investing: Capitalizing on Today’s Market with The REI Mom Anna Kelley

Anna Kelley is the founding partner of Zenith Capital Group, Apex Multifamily, and ReiMom, LLC. She is a former top ranked Financial Relationship Manager for a Private Bank, and began investing in real estate 20 years ago.

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Announcer: Welcome to the Global Investors Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host, Charles Carillo, combined decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now here’s your host, Charles Carillo.

Charles: Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast. I’m your host, Charles Carrillo. Today we have Anna Kelley. Anna is a formal financial relationship manager for a private bank and began investing in real estate 20 years ago. Anna has purchased, renovated, and rented millions of dollars in real estate across numerous asset classes while working full time in raising four children. She recently retired from her corporate career after creating financial freedom through real estate investing. She has active ownership and manages a rental portfolio, valued over $60 million and has an invest in over 1500 doors as a limited partner. She’s an Amazon number one bestselling author and runs a meetup group for Women in Real Estate and also formed REIMOM and coaches new investors and enjoys helping others to overcome fears, increased knowledge, and minimize their risks when starting to invest in real estate. So thank you very much for being on the show Anna.

Anna: Thank you so much. It’s my honor to be here today with you.

Charles: So I briefly touched on your background. Are you able to expand a little bit on yourself prior to starting? I know you have three different real estate businesses now and education businesses current to your current real estate businesses.

Anna: Sure. So as you mentioned about 20 years ago, a little more than that, I started out working for Bank of America and their private bank department. And so what we did was, we worked with the top 10% of our wealthiest clients, both personal and business and we help them to basically not navigate their finances. So we would tell them about, you know, the different products we had available from insurance to annuities, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and try and CDs and things of that nature and try to bring, you know, their capital into the bank and through our products. And so one of the interesting things that I discovered in and starting out as a very young person myself that really didn’t have assets but had been trained to talk to people about what to do with theirs is a lot of my wealthy clients had real estate. And in fact, one of them said to me one time when I was telling them about the returns that, you know, we, we were paying out through an annuity. He said specifically, I make so much more than that in real estate. Why would I invest in anybody? And it kind of made me say, huh, you know, I really don’t know anybody that has real estate. I grew up in section eight housing in San Antonio, Texas. My mom worked two jobs and you know, it was very driven to succeed and do well in school, but I didn’t know anybody that really knew or understood about money or had any money to be honest with you. And so it was interesting how I was kind of catapulted into this job where I really started to about money and finances and it picked my interest to say one day I want to own real estate. So fast forward several years I was pregnant with my first child in 2003 and home with him. Right after he was born and through a period of bedrest, really thinking for the first time in my life after being really driven to succeed in the corporate world, to be home with my children. And I just, you know, I held that baby in my arms and I said, I don’t want all of this anymore. I just want to be home with them and raise them and how can I put them in daycare? And it was that deep desire, that internal, you know, instinct as a mom to want to be home with him. That I knew I had to do something to figure out how to make more money so that I could leave my job and be home with my child. And that kinda got us into flipping houses. That was the first thing we thought we would do to make money. A HDTV convinced us anybody could do it. And we tried and we failed to be honest with you. But we learned a lot of lessons through that. And then my husband became a chiropractor and we decided to become entrepreneurs. And so we moved from Texas to Pennsylvania to start his business. And what I noticed was that when we were trying to find space to lease, it was very expensive. And there were a lot of these buildings and on main street in our little town in Pennsylvania where the businesses were on the first floor. And then they had apartments above them and sometimes behind them, some garages. And I just started, I saw this building and I said, you know, it’d be nice to own the building instead of to lease the building. So let’s just crunch the numbers. And we figured out that if we had tenants paying down part of the mortgage, it would make it easier for his business. He’d have to pay less out for the space. And so we really bought our first rental property for his business just because we knew it was a smart idea to have tenants. We moved to house hacking, we bought our first property here was a four unit apartment building. So we sold a big house in Houston and really downsize and took a step back so that we could move forward in the future. And we inherited three tenants where we lived and we learned to be landlords really through a trial by fire, just to try to make a smart move, you know, in the midst of making a really dumb move to start a business with three quarters of a million dollars in debt in 2007 before the crash.

Charles: Wow. Wow. Yeah. How has hacking was the first I did with a three family. But it’s, it’s a great, it’s a great way for to get started, especially with the financing you can get for it since it’s still residential. So mixed use was your first real estate investment that you had that. That’s awesome. Do you still own that today?

Anna: We still do. My husband still leases the bill leases the space for me. I bought the building in my LLC and his business rents from my business and then we have three tenants and four garages in that building.

Charles: So you’ve all, you’ve invested in many different asset classes in commercial and then going all the way to multifamily. So are you currently focused right now with your business mainly on multifamily?

Anna: I am. With that said, I’ll give you kind of a caveat putting on kind of my investor hat and from the background that I have, I really think about investments in terms of those that can bring you income, those that can bring in growth and those that can preserve your wealth. And as an investor moves through their life, their focus might shift from, you know, income to then growth to then, you know, preservation. And so as an investor for myself, you know, I like cash flowing assets, I, my goal was to retire and it’s, it took me 16 years of investing to really make enough money to replace my six figure income. And I just retired in may and I did that through buying primarily four unit apartment buildings. And so my husband and I have 70 units that we have in our little area that we self-manage. And that was more than enough to buy our financial freedom to retire me. And to be able to then move into, you know, beyond just cashflow to get me retired, really wealth growth. And so I shifted right about six months before I, I knew I was gonna pull the plug and retire from the corporate career. I had worked for AIG for 20 years. I knew that I needed, it was time for me to start working with partners so that I could scale up. Your own money only lasts for so long. And what we did is we continued to buy these small rental properties, like a four unit. We would raise the values by rehabbing them, raising the rents, putting a new tenant in there, we’d refinance them and then we’d take that equity and use it to buy another one and another one and another one. So we were kind of tapped out into buying more. And I knew that I had developed the skills over the last 12 years to really take a property through its full life cycle and to make them worth something. And that it was very easy to do the same thing on a larger scale with more units in one location and you could hire out, you know, a full time property manager or maintenance person. So my focus and you know, last year was to let start buying some bigger stuff with partners so that we can really continue to escalate that growth. So the last year I’ve bought 200 units with two partners, a joint venture. And that, that’s really was my foray into the getting into the bigger multifamily. And I just syndicated with some other partners, my first larger two apartment complexes in Atlanta, Georgia, 250 units. And that’s kind of my focus, both to develop my own portfolio through smaller rentals as we have cash that we can invest in and grow our own small portfolio and then through my JV partnerships, you know, buy locally several hundred more units and then through syndication, you know, start operating and buying larger properties and bringing in investors for those.

Charles: Yeah. That’s awesome. When you were buying the 4 units the four unit properties and building your portfolio that way was you were buying everything with hard money or with cash initially and then just using bank financing too when you refinanced out?

Anna: No, I wish that that had been an option for me. But part of my story is when we had moved here and started everything in Oh seven, I worked for AIG life insurance company and we were at the top of the market and that started the business really in hindsight at the worst possible time. And a year later, you know, the market crashed and AIG was on the hook for a lot of money and billions of dollars because they were one of the largest mortgage insurance companies. And they also sold some type of credit called credit default swaps, which is like insurance on other company’s stock at a high level. And so AIG was going under, I was told we were gonna all lose our jobs. We thought we were losing our jobs. And it made it very difficult for me to think about buying more investment properties when I truly had no money. We were like barely scraping by covering my husband’s overhead. And within a year the lenders really tightened up. So they did not want to lend to real estate investors and no less to a real estate investor who had, you know, three quarters of a million dollars, did that on a business startup and worked for a company that they thought was about to fail. So I could not find a banks to finance me. And truly, I didn’t even know there were hard money investor, hard money brokers out there at that time. So it kind of strapped us and caused us not to really move forward for a few years. And we just worked on, you know, renovating the units that we already had rather than buying more. And it wasn’t until about five and a half years ago that I really started thinking, how can I get more properties when these banks are all saying no, and started looking into some creative financing. So I did a few seller finance deals about five, five to six years ago found a partner to buy a couple of units with and then discovered hard money and used hard money for flips, but not to purchase our own. We basically use the equity from our buildings as the down payments and then credit lines and business credit cards very strategically and carefully to pay for the rehab until we could cash out.

Charles: There you go. That’s a, that’s a great system. That’s a great process for doing it. And yeah, hard money is it’s kind of, I mean not you’re using it when you get into larger properties, but with those smaller properties, it’s a, it’s a great asset to have when doing it if you don’t have the cash 100% yourself. Right. Or the availability of the credit. But so what is your, what is your strategy now in reviewing potential multifamily investments? What do you look for and what is kind of, what are you looking to do with it?

Anna: Sure. So my primary strategy is very much geared toward continuing to find an asset that’s going to have a combination of producing income, having some upside at the end, but also going preserve capital. So when we’re at the height of the economy, as you know, many properties are very overpriced. And so when people pay too much for properties, they’re not going to cashflow well. And if they’re not really careful with their underwriting or they’re buying in a bad market, maybe they’re chasing yields or they’re going to a tertiary market that they really don’t know anything about. It doesn’t have a lot of great employers. It doesn’t have a lot of great growth, but they think that they can make money because they can find a deal outside of the MSA where there’s so many comp, so much competition. I think what’s going to happen with some of these deals as if we hit a recession and then those values are going to go down and the vacancy rates are going to go up and they’re going to struggle to make their cashflow and to grow wealth and maybe even not be able to preserve the value of that property if they overpaid. So for me, I learned a lot of lessons by starting a business in Oh seven without understanding the economy and economic cycles and I bought it the worst time and I never saw coming a major crash that could have destroyed my job, destroy our 401k and destroy my husband’s business. So I’ve become a wiser investor and that I now understand building cycles and economic cycles. And I believe that we are at a top, either really close to the top, are already coming down from the top of of hyper supply, meaning that there’s so much supply in the market and things are so overpriced. Where we’re the natural progression is that we head toward a recession and there’s so many economic indicators that show we’re heading there that I believe that we are heading toward a recession and that affects my buying in that I want to buy properties that I believe are a recession resilient. They might still go down a little in value. Occupancy rates might dip a little bit. Maybe my rents can’t sustain 3% increases like we try to see and so I’ve got to find properties that are going to say even in a recession, even if some people lose jobs, even if some of those things happen, I’m in the right market that has a strong economy that has a very diverse employer pool with different industries and who has a lot of growth and really good supply demand dynamics. So I want to be in an area where it’s a hard barrier to entry. It’s hard to get permits and zoning and build new construction because if people are moving into those areas and employers are moving into those areas, but there’s a lag and when new product can be built or if the income doesn’t support new product pricing, I know that I’m always going to have more demand for my apartment units than what there is supply and that’s going to help me during a recession to keep full and to be stable until we come out of that. And so I just look for really strong markets and try to find products a product that is slightly older like a C class age, an A or B class area. So I liked the best areas with a strong school districts because when a recession hits and people have to downsize or they have to cut back on loss, if their kids are in a good school, they’re not going to move. They’re going to do whatever they can to stay in that school district. And if they might not be able to afford the nicest department so they’re going to downsize into like your B, C class asset, but try to stay in that AB class area. And so that’s kind of my sweet spot is finding a little bit older buildings, maybe they’re mom and pop, maybe the, the rents are well below market cause the older landlords don’t have a mortgage and they can afford to just keep them low. And I like to go in and just freshen them up, add paint, you know, vinyl plank flooring, maybe paint the cabinets, whatever the market demands. Maybe change out some appliances, maybe not. And be able to naturally raise those rents as is today a couple of hundred dollars a month. So even if we have a downturn, if I bought them at a point where, let’s say the rents are $700 a month, I think I’m going to get nine and in a downturn only gets me eight 50 or eight I’m still cashflowing well above what I paid on a pro price per door basis. And so I’m going to be okay during that recession.

Charles: Yeah. The the C to be my C plus is kind of our target where we’re looking for properties as well. And kind of what I focus on cause for your same exact point is that when there’s a pullback, if people drop down affordable apartments, now people can, you know, rate maybe the rents don’t come all the way down or come down that much, but they’re just not getting the increases. And what you’re saying now about how expensive everything is, there’s so many syndicators out there now that are trying to have aggressive rent, increase value add models, and if there’s any type of pullback that, or they might be able to still cashflow the deal and stuff like this, but they’re not going to be able to hit any of those projections of what they’ve said that they’re going to do. And if they’re pieing and extremely aggressive from high price, I mean, it’s, it’s going to be an issue, you know. But

Anna: And even as a passive investor, because once I retired I had access to all my retirement accounts and I self direct them into a qualified retirement plan. So I’m investing in in other deals as well. And I kid you not at least 90% of the deals that come my way, I feel like they’re underwritten extremely aggressively. You know, they’re thinking that they can go and raise rents and become the top of the market price with the top of the market. You know, amenities, they have rent growth every year. Their exit cap rates are not really adjusted for a downturn and you know, it makes it, you have to be really, really careful as a passive investor when you’re investing in these types of deals to make sure that the underwriter and the operator really are conservative at this time in the market.

Charles: Yeah. I want to circle back to that in a second with how you do passive investing and how you, how you plan on doing and what your strategy is for it. But how do you leverage with currently when you’re active investing, syndicating right now, I imagine is what you’re spending most of your time on. How do you leverage partnerships when investing in addition to using financing as well?

Anna: Sure. So I’m a firm believer in using financing as leverage when rates are low. So we’ll start with that. You know, basically some studies have been done and people have a difference of opinion as to whether you should use leverage, maximize leverage or not. And when rates are, you know, sub 6%, it typically makes sense to use leverage to buy investment properties. So I don’t like loans and credit in general for like regular spending you know wants or needs really, you know, cars groceries, shopping trips, anything like that. But when it comes to real estate, leverage is so powerful because it allows you to basically purchase about five, four to five times the value of properties that you could purchase without leverage. It’s an inflation hedge. So while inflation is eating away, instead of eating away at my money, it’s eating away at the bank’s money. Who’s given me the loan? And it we’re really protects you from legal liability because if I buy properties, cash and I have a lot of equity in those buildings, if somebody slips and falls or my son gets in a car accident and they come after me, if I’ve got all of this money free and clear, they’re going to go after that. If I’ve leveraged at 75 or 80%, the attorneys aren’t even going to go after that because they know that the cost to dispose of it and the cost of litigate, it’s just not in a work. And so it protects me to basically use all the equity that I can to buy more and more cashflow and properties and it increases my income and my network and releases, you know, reduces my liability. So I leverage as much as I can get up to 80%. I only use traditional financing. And personally I am not comfortable with bridge financing at this point in the market cycle, even though I know a lot of people are. So I don’t want to be a hundred percent leveraged. I don’t want to use temporary leverage. I want to use fixed rate, longterm financing like through the agency loans that we’ve tried to go after. In terms of partnerships, most of my focus is actually JV deals. And so we would prefer to be able to buy, you know, like with my two partners that we bought the 200 units. Now we buy these 200 units, we plan to own them for 10 years and we own them 100%. So we have total control of those assets and we’re really playing the long game and, and you know, wanting to be in these great areas for a long time and if it makes sense to refinance at some point we’ll do that. But we really want these longterm stable assets where we’re not having to syndicate and share the wealth with, you know, 80 or a hundred other investors. So my primary strategy is by on my own and by joint venture deals. But I’ve also formed a company with one of my JV partners and we are, we are syndicating deals. And so if we find the right asset and the right markets that we’re comfortable with, we will send a Cate those deals and bring on investors. But it’s, it’s honestly much harder to do that right now in this market cycle than it is to find slightly smaller properties that we J beyond and make just as much money on without all of the, the headaches and the hoops that you have to jump for a syndication.

Charles: Can you explain JV and then bridge financing as well?

Anna: Sure. So a joint venture is typically just is that at a very high level when just a couple of partners who know each other get together and they decide to buy something or, or start a business. And so rather than a syndication where you have an SCC registration statement or an exemption and you’re bringing a big pool of investors, many of who you might not really know well who are passive, that’s a syndication in a joint venture. All the partners are active and they know each other and they’re buying something together. They’re not just throwing money in and sitting back and letting somebody else do the work. Does that help?

Charles: Yeah, no, it’s just for my investors or my listeners. It’s, yeah. And then with bridge financing, how do you explain that? I consider when I explained to people it’s a hard money lender for larger properties.

Anna: Yeah, that’s a really good, good explanation. You’re basically, if you have a really good deal that works at the pur just price that you’re buying it, you should be able to get agency financing where they will give you a 30 year amortization. They’ll give you a really good low fixed rate, locked in for five, 10 12 years and you can bank on what your, your payment’s going to be for the long term. When people go to bridge financing, it’s usually because the deal that they’re buying has something in it that doesn’t make it ideal to the traditional lenders, which are hard to qualify for quite frankly. So either you’re buying an asset that is really distressed and so maybe the the occupancy is below 90% or there’s a lot of rehab that has to be redone, or quite frankly, you’re just flat out over paying and since you’re overpaying, the property won’t pass flow and have the debt coverage ratio that it needs to make these banks happy. So your only way to get these deals is to go to some other lender that says, I know this property isn’t ideal. It, you know, you’re overpaying, but I think you have a good value add that you can make it worth a lot more in the future. We’ll give you this, you know, temporary loan. We’ll give you some time to turn the property around and then you’ve got to pay us off. And that’s basically a bridge loan or, or like you said, hard money to get you through the period when you can go back to an agency and lock in better rate terms.

Charles: Yeah, it’s, it’s not for someone that’s the beginning of, that’s for sure. Maybe not even an intermediate because, because it’s very risky if you don’t know what you’re doing and you can’t get refinanced. So circling back to passive investing, I want to just touch on what you, what your strategy is. Like for instance, we’re looking at a deal if we’re passive in it or even if we’re planning on actively investing in it, we go through and look at one of the things is decreasing or even just pulling out rent increases over inflation and kind of seeing exactly how the model works out for that. And that’s where you really, that’s how we really see exactly what it will do if we have a pullback. What is, what does a strategy that you guys use when you’re looking at any type of passive investings

Anna: Yeah, I agree with you being able to, to stress test the deal and kind of say, you know, what happens if this, if I’m passive, what happens if this operator can’t achieve the rent roll? You know, the rent growth, what happens if this operator can’t sell the property and what they think they are in the exit? What’s my return? Really going to be and what would I be comfortable with that if that happened? And if you said, you know, if a recession happens, I’m not comfortable with this deal, you probably shouldn’t invest with that operator right now. And if you’re an operator and you do the stress testing and you know, you put in a, let’s say a point higher cap rate if, if it’s going to be a 10 year hold or maybe half a point if it’s going to be a five year hold. And if you put in, you know, flat rents and no increases and even some decreases in rents or increases in occupancy, if the deal’s going to be really tight and you’re not going to be able to pay your investors or pay your mortgage, it’s probably a deal that you don’t want to buy. Or you’ve really got to negotiate the price point so that you get it, you know, less expensive so that you can make sure that you’ll, you’ll pan out and be able to pay your investors and then pay your mortgage over time. So as a passive investor, I kind of look at the same things. I’m like, what type of debt are they taking on? Is it a bridge loan? And there are some guys that I really like who, who are operators or who are capital raisers who’ve brought me deals and I trust the operators themselves. But just because it had bridge financing and just because I didn’t have the same outlook for what level of rent bumps they can get. I’ve passed on those deals for now, you know, and maybe in a different economy, I would have been okay with those types of deals. But I just think we have to be really, really careful right now. Say what is my comfort level and make sure that anything that you invest in, it’s like a perfect pair of shoes. I heard somebody say that and it’s like if the, if the shoes don’t fit exactly what the operator’s goals are and what your goals are as an investor, then you just have to pass on that one and wait for another one to come to you.

Charles: Yeah. The bridge bridge financing as we spoke about early, extremely risky. There’s a lot of unknowns even with agency debt and you can do it shorter term. We’re doing making sure that we have 10, 12 years a term on that. Just to make sure whether any type of storm or any type of market disruption that happens no matter how strong the market you’re in. If there’s a pullback, if interest rates go up and you’re having an issue trying to refinance it, like you’re saying, seven O eight O nine I mean that’s going to be a problem where you can, where you’re going to lose a property that might actually be cashflowing if you could refinance it, which is, which is a terrible, terrible, terrible day. The..

Anna: To really prepare for that quite frankly, because what happened with the last crash, and I wasn’t the only one impacted, but big operators were impacted and ended up going into bankruptcy, is that banks start pulling back and where they might have refinanced you before, if your numbers aren’t strong because of a recession [inaudible] and you need to refinance at that point, you’re basically [inaudible] I’ll lose the deal. And so not, you know, most people think, Oh, it’s not going to be a problem. I’ll be able to refinance because the rates are going to stay low. Well, rates stay low, but if the economy is struggling and banks are struggling, they’re going to get rid of all their properties that have risk. And so your, your risk profile by not being able to operate the property according to your, your original loan terms will make you unattractive to be able to refinance.

Charles: Yeah, no, it’s a hundred percent correct. So with commercial real estate, one thing I like asking ’em to when I have, when I interview women on the podcast is commercial real estate is such a male dominated business. How, how does it, does it, does it benefit you for being a woman when you’re dealing? Do you stick out from the rest of all the guys that are trying to get a deal from a broker or trying to raise money from investors? Can you explain that?

Anna: Sure. So I love being a woman, but being a woman in this business is definitely a little bit of a two edge sword. And I think that sometimes we’re at a disadvantage quite frankly. And sometimes we’re at at a real advantage. And so your question about about brokers, something that happened recently, we had a 96 unit portfolio that we were going after here in Hershey and the seller was retiring and we had tried to contact him off market through letters and through phone calls and referrals from another owner that we had bought from. And he didn’t really, you know, give me the time of day. And I ran into a broker. We were looking at another property and said, you know, I’d really like to buy something in Hershey. And he said, Hey, we’ve got this seller, we’re about to list it. You know, would you like to see it when it’s listed? And I said, please don’t wait till it’s listed like get me in now. And so he got us in and we met with the seller and so did two other potential buyers that, so there were three of us pre market and I really spent time, you know, trying to get to know, get to know him. I rode with him in his car as we talked to the broker, you know, from one place to another and just kind of built that rapport poor. And at the end of it he called me, the seller called me personally and said, you know, I really like you and I’d love to do business with you and you’re just so genuine and I love that you’re doing this so that you can be home with your kids. But I promised this one guy that I would sell it to him first. So I’m going to put it under contract, but if it falls through, I’ll call you. Cause I’d love to work with you. And thankfully for me, the guy couldn’t perform. And he came back and he gave me the deal and his wife, you know, told me, gave me the deal. Versus this other buyer versus listing it cause they really liked me and felt, you know, a connection. And so I think sometimes with guys it’s all business and you’re just trying to get the deal done and it’s all numbers. And, and for me it’s important to share who I am and to talk to them and try to build that rapport. And sometimes I think women are just more trusted and easier to talk to then than another guy when it comes to brokers and sellers. And so I think it has been an advantage to for me. And I’ve had a couple of other sellers of really small multi-families that I’ve bought on seller financing tell me that they’re only doing this because they love what I’m doing and want to help me while I’m trying to help them. So that’s been a benefit. And events and things like that. I think because I’ve built up a good reputation and, and I’ve had some success and been able to, you know, have that financial freedom that so many want. I, I have some more respect, but there are definitely guys who just kind of look at me and you know, underestimate you as a woman and especially as, as a blonde and just think, you know, probably don’t have what it takes to succeed and then they tend to be kind of shocked when you tell them what you’ve been able to accomplish.

Charles: Oh, that’s awesome. So one last question I had in regards to you know, you’re, you’re married, your mother a fora. How do you systemize your business to maximize productivity? I mean, you’re involved in so many different things. How do you do that?

Anna: You know, I, it’s been a little bit of trial and error to be honest with you. You know, there’s times when I worked full time, which the first 12 years that I did this, I built my real estate business on the side while working full time and raising my children. And so I just borrowed and stoled every minute of time that I could possibly find between work and between the kids being home. So early in the mornings, every single lunch break four to five weeks of my six week vacation, I would just completely work and hustle late nights, you know, 9:00 PM to one o’clock in the morning. I mean, it was just, it was just a blood, sweat and tears for years and not really systematized time. Just every waking moment that I could, I was focused on doing something to grow my business. So since I’ve retired, I’ve gotten much better at, at really being purposeful. And so I, I time block my time and I basically say, you know, I have committed that, that I retired and built my, my wealth through real estate so that I could have financial freedom. And that means the freedom of my time. So I’m really committed to not working more than about 35 hours a week because I want my evenings with my children that I worked so hard to be able to do, to say, you know, from three o’clock on I’m a wife and mom and I have to accomplish everything I need to while they’re in school. So I have time blocked my day and I have, you know, goals for certain categories. So for example, if I want to find more deals, I need a time block time each week hopefully each day, but at least each week to evaluate deals, I need to have a time block of a section where I’m calling brokers. I need a section of time where I am, I’m working on off-market creative marketing to try to get these sellers to get to me. I have time blocked where I meet with other investors that, that might want to invest with me or where I’m meeting with other operators so we might be able to partner with. So I just have time blocked chunks every single week and my calendar from 7:00 AM until 10:00 PM has something blocked in that time and that keeps me on target and make sure that, you know, in this 30 minutes a day I absolutely have to call somebody in my network to reach out because I believe if you make all the right actions over and over and over, the growth and the deals and the right opportunities will come. You don’t have to just frantically evaluate a hundred deals a week to find something. You can do activities systematically that that grow you as a person, make you a stronger partner, investor and operator and ultimately you’ll find the right deals and the right investors to do them with.

Charles: Yeah, the time block is so important. Someone was telling me about that. They worked in a fortune 100 company and they would time block out everything and something I do now with like vision and planning stuff. That’s when you’re working on the business and not in the business. Yeah. Those kinds of things are all, I’ll do that. I’ll do that. And you never do it. When you time block it. It’s like, Oh, it’s 2:00 PM or whatever. Like this is what I have to do on this day. And you actually will do it. If it’s on a to do list, yeah, it’s not going to be, you have to set a time for it and you have to stick to it, but awesome. So can you let us know about your author? You’re a speaker, you’re a mentor, all your different teaching that you, that you do with REI mom.

Anna: Sure. So I had the pleasure of being a part of a book by the publisher of chicken soup for the entrepreneurial soul. Well, he was his name is Kyle Wilson and he was Jim Rowan’s business partner for 18 years and just an amazing promoter and marketer and just all around guy and connector. And so he asked me to be a part of this book. It’s called resilience, turning your setback into a combat, just amazing stories of resilience and, and encouraging other people to keep going when they hit the hurdles of life. And I share a little bit about my real estate journey there. I run a local meetup group called REI, like a girl where I reach out to other women and help them to get started in real estate and to do it like the girls do, like the guys do a little, little a play on words there. And then I do some coaching and, and mentoring of a handful of people at a time just to help them to kind of get started in, in buying real estate more so on their own, building their own small portfolio. And then I also speak at various around the country just to really encourage and inspire other people, especially women too, to start taking control of financial future and to start, you know, building some wealth through cash flowing real estate to supplement their income and maybe eventually retire them so that they can spend more time with their families as well.

Charles: Oh, that’s awesome. So how can people learn more about you and your businesses?

Anna: Sure. So I have a website, which is REImom.com for coaching and speaking and some small mentoring. And then Zenithcapitalinvestments.com is my website where we, we talk about different potential opportunities that we have for accredited investors. And then on Facebook you can find me at Anna REIMom Kelly.

Charles: Okay. All right, perfect. Well, I’ll put all those links into the the podcast and YouTube notes and I really want to thank you for being on the show today and I look forward to connecting with you in the future.

Anna: Thank you so much. It’s been my privilege to be your desk today.

Charles: Have a nice day.

Charles: Hi guys, this is Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in investing in real estate and you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 15 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Global Investors Podcast. If you’d like to show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes or Google play to get new weekly episodes. For more resources and to receive our newsletter, please visit global investor podcast.com and don’t forget to join us next week for another episode.

Announcer: Nothing in this episode should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Any investment opportunities mentioned on this podcast are limited to accredited investors. Any investments will only be made with proper disclosure, subscription documentation, and are subject to all applicable laws. Please consult an appropriate tax legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of harborside partners incorporated exclusively.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

About Anna Kelley

Anna Kelley is the founding partner of Zenith Capital Group, Apex Multifamily, and ReiMom, LLC. She is a former top ranked Financial Relationship Manager for a Private Bank, and began investing in real estate 20 years ago.

Anna has purchased, renovated, and rented millions of dollars in real estate across numerous asset classes, while working full time and raising 4 active children. She recently retired from her corporate career, after creating financial freedom through rental property investing. She has active ownership in and manages a rental portfolio valued over $60 Million, and has invested in over 1500 doors as a limited partner.

Anna actively seeks out the best multifamily investment opportunities for her partners and investors. She coaches new investors and enjoys helping others to overcome fears, increase knowledge, and minimize risks in real estate. She is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author & runs a meetup group for Women in Real Estate.

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